Chapin JV Lacrosse pre game huddle at AC Flora. 11-2 win.
The lucky garnet jacket is still lucky.
35/52: Retweet Responsibly
This post was originally posted on February 18, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
You are responsible for every meme you share.
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 35.
The school shooting in Florida this week was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because of the loss of life. Heartbreaking because this keeps happening and no one acts to try and prevent it from happening again. Heartbreaking because I send my wife — a teacher — and three kids to school every day and pray that they are never placed in harm’s way.*
In the aftermath of the shooting, social media was … chaos. I know that friends were hurting and angry like I was. They wanted to make a point that something has to change. I get it, and yet, many of them were retweeting things that were false or exaggerated. Bogus stats. Exaggerated claims. Speculation.
Gun advocates were rushing to similarly harshly drawn conclusions. Recommending “solutions” like arming teachers. Tweeting and retweeting false or inflammatory statements — anything they could do to shift the blame towards something other than the American gun culture.
And as if that wasn’t enough chaos, Russian bots jumped into the fray stirring up trouble in their own way.
Here’s the thing, though. When you push false or hastily checked information, your side in the debate suffers. Even if you are mostly right, the minute you stop offering facts and a path forward, you lose credibility.
Retweeting — or sharing on Facebook — information that you don’t know is true, but you want to be true… it does more harm than good. You are as responsible for the things you retweet as the posts your write yourself. When you share something, you personally endorse that you believe it. So spend a few minutes researching before you hit the retweet button.
Twitter and Facebook reward the quick retweet or share.** They are designed to allow you to react with minimal thought. Don’t fall for it. Don’t feed the outrage machine — there’s enough to genuinely be outraged by. Think and help advance the discussion, because something has to change and we have to get there together.
You will be able to buy Retweet Responsibility at Threadless.
* Heartbreaking because I know the feeling of fear that comes with a lockdown. I’ve been in a active shooter situation twice in the last five years. Once at the University of South Carolina because of a murder-suicide. And once with my entire family at a local mall when there was an apparent shooting.
** I’m beginning to appreciate Manton’s hesitation in introducing reposting to Micro.Blog.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
34/52: Rocket
This post was originally posted on February 11, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Getting excited about space again.
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 34.
I grew up fascinated with space. I had books on the space shuttle. I wanted to go to Space Camp.* I watched movies and documentaries about the Apollo program. I remember the loss of Challenger. And the loss of Columbia. As the shuttle program came to an end, I followed along with the International Space Station and all the probes and rovers that we’ve sent out to the solar system. I listen to a podcast about space regularly. But with our future of space exploration in doubt, I admit that my excitement has waned a bit over the years.
This week, Space X reignited that excitement.
Falcon Heavy — the largest rocket launched since the Saturn 5 took astronauts to the moon — completed a successful test launch.
The launch was spectacular, but for me the highlight was the landing of two boosters in unison. Online, I saw too many people focused on the Tesla Roadster now floating towards the Kiper belt, or the loss of the third booster. But the Falcon Heavy represents the next step to returning to the moon, and maybe someday heading to Mars. Falcon Heavy is a big deal, and the test was a massive success.
“The launch was spectacular, but for me the highlight was the landing of two boosters in unison.”
I started the day as the only one I knew excited about the launch. I gathered my coworkers around the screen as I watched the launch live — with commentary from Jason and Stephen from the Liftoff Podcast. Some of them weren’t sure what it was a big deal. Others had no idea there was a launch happening. But it was wonderful to share the experience with my friends.
Later, after dinner, I shared the video with my wife and kids when I got home and talked about the launch and space exploration in general. Space X and Falcon Heavy have given people a reason to be excited about space again. I hope they continue to push forward.
I wanted to celebrate this new excitement with this week’s shirt, Rocket. It’s a Falcon Heavy roaring out of the atmosphere. You can buy Rocket at my Threadless store.
Closeup.
* And yes, this probably had something to do with the movie, Space Camp.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
Good catching coffee with this guy today.
Decade
This post was originally posted on February 5, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Ten years of Sketchbook B
Ten years ago today, I launched this blog. My plan was to use Sketchbook B as a home for a bunch of side projects that were rattling around in my head. Typefaces and photography, mostly. I’d spent most of my career up to that point as an art director in the insurance industry and I needed a home for more creative endeavors — projects that would keep me energized when the day job was a little too straightforward.
Over the last decade, I’ve averaged about a post a week. Roughly 520 posts. And while I’ve posted about creative projects, I’ve also written about just about everything else you can imagine. I’ve written about my community. I’ve gone through phases where I was providing weekly InDesign tips. I split out an entire “off-topic” blog. And then I merged it back in with the main blog. I added Google ads. I took them out. I’ve written long posts and short posts. I’ve written about social media, pens, cars and popular culture. It’s been an ongoing experiment.
In 2016, I tried to get serious about Sketchbook B. And by serious, I mean that I tried to have a publishing schedule and build an audience. In the process, I stopped writing the things I wanted to write and started writing things I thought my “audience” would read. Two things happened… my traffic increased slightly and I no longer enjoyed writing posts.
As 2016 came to an end, I knew I needed to make a change and started to think back to why I started Sketchbook B. It was a creative outlet. It was my creative outlet. I needed to start writing for me and stop writing for statistics.
“I needed to start writing for me and stop writing for statistics.”
I spent a day at a coffee shop that December thinking and sketching. Planning. In January, I stumbled across the Micro.Blog kickstarter that made me think even more critically about my writing online. I read Stephen King’s “On Writing” which really challenged me to think about what I was writing — and more importantly — why I was writing.
That process led directly to the 52 Shirts project that I’m in the middle of. I love designing the shirts, but I also love writing the blog post that explains what I’ve created. I tell people all the time that the project isn’t just the shirt design, it’s the design and the explanation.
I’m writing about topics that interest me again. And two things have happened… my traffic has increased slightly and I love writing.
So here I am, ten years into this blog and I feel like I’ve finally found my voice. I’m excited to be writing regularly. I’m becoming a stronger writer and recognizing areas where I need to improve. I’m working hard to push outside my comfort zone.
I’ve got some plans for what I want to do over the next couple years with Sketchbook B. Plans can change, but I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.
And most importantly, I can honestly say that I’m more excited about Sketchbook B today than I was ten years ago when I launched it.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
33/52: Obscure Blogger
This post was originally posted on February 4, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Entertaining and informing dozens since 2008
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 33.
I’ve been writing here on Sketchbook B for ten years this week — about 520 posts. Basically averaging a post a week for ten years. Most blogs don’t make it ten posts, but I’ve kept this site going consistently for a full decade.
Recently I started to talk to friends who had blogs, and now don’t. And their reasons for abandoning their blogs were all pretty much the same… it didn’t feel like anyone was reading. No one cared. And so, they stopped writing.
Believe me, I understand that feeling. I’ll craft a blog post that I think is great, and ten people will read it. Being an obscure blogger can be discouraging.
Over the last year, I’ve recommitted to writing for myself and I’ve been happier with the posts I’m publishing. Every so often, I’ll look at my analytics and slip into the “no one cares about what I’m writing” trap, but for the most part, I don’t allow traffic — or more precisely, the lack of traffic — bother me. I write for me, and I hope people like it and go away inspired.
I wanted to design a shirt to commemorate not just the ten years of Sketchbook B, but also the struggle of the obscure blogger. The person who writes in relative anonymity, because they love writing.
This week’s shirt, Obscure Blogger, I wanted to use one of my typeface designs, so it features one of my Fontstruct designs — SbB Epyx — and the tagline “Entertaining and informing dozens since 2008.” 2008 was the year I started Sketchbook B, but I’m happy to make custom variants with different dates if you want them. Just reach out and let me know what year you started your obscure blog and I’ll add it to the Threadless store, too.
You can purchase Obscure Blogger at my Threadless store.
A closeup, since it’s a little hard to read on the mockup.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
Norah’s first Chapin JV lacrosse game.
Writing at Indah Coffee this morning.
President Pastides talking to the media about the impact USC makes on South Carolina. #uofscimpact
Press conference kicking off @onecolumbia cultural planning process, Amplify Columbia.
Warning!
We still can’t take a date night selfie.
32/52: Reboot
This post was originally posted on January 28, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Hitting reset on my digital life.
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 32.
I love technology. I’ve had a computer around since our family bought a Commodore VIC-20 in the mid 1980s. And yet, lately, I’ve been feeling as though my digital world — with social media, Slack, email, blogging, streaming video — is slowly burning me out. I used to enjoy Twitter and Facebook, but I enjoy them less now. Slack works great for small groups, but I have no idea how anyone can cope with the volume of messages. Email is still email — and work email is still work email — but I feel like I have a grip on how to handle email. I’ve built a system for how to handle my email, but I have no idea how to manage the volume and impact of everything else.
It’s time to reboot my relationship with technology.
When something goes wrong with technology, 99.9% of the time, the solution is to reboot. Start over. Turn it off and turn it back on. So I’m rebooting my digital world before I burn out. It’s a work in progress. I’ve eliminated many of my notifications — and I need to eliminate more. I’ve started to pay less attention to stats and numbers on my personal accounts and sites. I’m going to start implementing some device-free time.* I’m thinking about shifting task management back to paper.** I’m going to drop services that I don’t get value from and change the way I use the web. I’ve already started some of this — and I can already feel a difference.
This week’s shirt is “Reboot.” I built the word on a five pixel high grid, and then changed the opacity on some of the blocks to degrade it a little bit. You can purchase it in a range of blacks and greys on my Threadless store.
* I’m pretty hard core with my kids about device free time, but I need to look in the mirror and put my own phone away.
** I’m a devoted Todoist user, so this is a big change. I have my reasons why I think this will make a difference and will write about it soon.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
Full house for the UX Roundtable at SOCO.
31/52: Digital Hieroglyphics
This post was originally posted on January 21, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
What’s old is new again.
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 31.
I remember learning about hieroglyphics in elementary school. Hieroglyphics, we were taught, were an early form of written communication in ancient Egypt, less advanced* than our modern writing system. We were given the assignment to make our own pictograms and write messages with them. (I’m pretty sure my daughter had the same assignment last year.) It was a fun experiment, but I remember thinking: Who would ever want to communicate with pictograms?
Well, turns out hieroglyphics are making a comeback. This time, they are called emoji.
I was a little late to the emoji train. I will freely admit that I thought they were a complete waste of time for a while, but I eventually came around. Emoji are fun and convey emotion and concepts well. I’m still pretty conservative with my emoji use — I rarely use more than one at at time — but I absolutely use them.
We as a society have embraced emoji. One of the biggest incentives for upgrading our smartphone operating system is to get new emoji. There are heated discussions about what emoji should be included in the next Unicode release. Micro.blog is experimenting with using emoji as tags — similar to how hashtags are used on Twitter — and it’s awesome. Communicating with pictograms isn’t primitive. It’s an effective way to get your message across.
“Communicating with pictograms isn’t primitive. It’s an effective way to get your message across.”
I wanted to make an emoji shirt and reference the similarity to hieroglyphics, so I built a pyramid** of emoji. It was tough to find an emoji font that I could use for a product like this one.*** Most charge extra for using their design in a commercial product. I finally found Google’s open source Noto family, which includes two emoji fonts. I didn’t like the faces in Noto, but the rest of the set was great and perfect for my pyramid. I decided to use the black and white version because I fell in love with the high contrast look.
You can purchase “Digital Hieroglyphics” from my Threadless store.
* Of course, I later learned that Egyptian hieroglyphics were much more advanced than we were taught in elementary school. I’m pretty sure this is another example of Western cultural bias here. Modern society assumed pictograms were primitive and letterforms were superior. Turns out pictograms can be a powerful way to communicate, too.
** I was fascinated by pyramids, mostly because of David Macaulay’s book, Pyramids. For a period of time, I loved to read about all things ancient Egyptian.
*** Have you tried to use emoji in print? Let’s just say it’s much harder than you’d think it would be.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
Drawing.
Micro.blog and Squarespace
This post was originally posted on January 18, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
Some notes on how I’ve connected Micro.blog to my existing Squarespace site.
I’ve enjoyed using Micro.blog for the last couple months. It’s developing as an interesting writing and sharing platform and it’s already become my first destination for finding new content.
There are several ways to set up your Micro.blog feed. The easiest way is to use Micro.blog hosting. Everything just works for $5/month. If you don’t have an existing site, this is the way to go.
The next best option is to use Wordpress. The Wordpress APIs connect seamlessly with Micro.blog and while it’s not as turnkey as Micro.blog hosting, it seems pretty straightforward. In fact, Manton updated the documentation about using Wordpress with Micro.blog yesterday.
But one of the interesting things about Micro.blog is that you can use it with pretty much any blogging platform as long as it has an RSS feed, so I decided to see if I could connect my existing Squarespace hosted site to Micro.blog. I’ve had my Squarespace site for almost 10 years. I’m happy with Squarespace so I don’t really want to move Sketchbook B over to another service like Wordpress.
For anyone interested in using Squarespace with Micro.blog, I wanted to detail how I’ve configured my Micro.blog account with Squarespace and talk about two options for how to set it up and my workflow for posting to Micro.blog.
Option 1: Add a new blog page
I added a new blog page to my Squarespace site and named it “Microblog.” It’s just a standard Squarespace blog page, so you can add text to the header and footer. My microblog lives at [**sketchbookb.com/micro**](https://www.sketchbookb.com/micro).
Then I headed over to Micro.blog and added the new RSS feed. On the Micro.blog web interface, you edit these settings on the Account page, in the Feeds section. I originally tried to add **www.sketchbookb.com/micro/ to Micro.blog, which worked, but didn’t seem to work consistently. After a little experimentation and some research, it seems that **sketchbookb.squarespace.com/micro/ works better as the feed address.*
And that’s it. Now, anything I post to my Squarespace microblog page posts to Micro.blog.
Option 2: Use a category on your main blog
I was also able to connect my main blog to Micro.blog. Any post I tag with the category “micro” is added to Micro.blog. All I had to do was add **sketchbookb.squarespace.com/journal/ as a feed in Micro.blog. Since I typically post longer content to my blog, Micro.blog pulls just the title and provides a link to the post. It’s a pretty elegant solution.
Micro.blog lets you add multiple feeds to your account. So I have both option 1 and option 2 set up. I use the microblog page for my twitter-like posts. And if I want to share one of my longer essays — like this one — on Micro.blog, I just tag it with “micro” and the title and link are posted automatically.
What works.
Once it’s configured, everything pretty much just works. I post to Squarespace and it shows up on Micro.blog (with cross-posting to Twitter). Some other things that just work:
- The Squarespace Blog app works fine for posting on the go.**
- If you add an image to the post, it shows a preview on Micro.blog without any issues.
- Posts without titles work fine, at least with the template I’m using.
- Adding emoji works well, which is great because emoji tags are awesome.
- Formatting for inline links, bold and italics is really easy.
- If you change a post with 24 hours, it edits it in the Micro.blog feed.
- Cross posting to Twitter works great. I didn’t think it would be useful, but it completely is. I don’t post directly to Twitter anymore. All of my posts start on my own site.
What doesn’t work.
Connecting Squarespace and Micro.blog works well, but there are some minor tradeoffs. Since you are hosting your own feed and Micro.blog doesn’t have API access for Squarespace, you can’t start new posts from the Micro.blog app. Instead, you start your post on your Squarespace site, and then do replies and engagement in the Micro.blog app. It’s an extra step. Some other issues:
- There isn’t a character counter in the web interface or iOS app. So you can’t easily tell how close you are to 280 characters.
- Sometimes there is a short delay between when you add the post to your site and when it appears on Micro.blog.
- If you want to have a list of all your Micro.blog posts someplace on your Squarespace site using a Summary block… yeah… that’s not going to work. Squarespace doesn’t really know what to do with a post in that context with no title or summary.
- Because Squarespace doesn’t have an API or any hooks into services like IFTTT, you can’t automate some processes. For example, I’d love to copy my Instagram posts to the microblog using IFTTT, but that doesn’t seem possible.***
My workflow
My workflow for posting to Micro.blog is simple. I add a new blog post via the Squarespace web interface or using the Squarespace Blog iOS app. The microblog post has no title and consists of 280 characters or less. For a photo blog post, I add a picture to the post.
If I want to read other user posts or comment, I do that from within the Micro.blog app on my phone or on the Mac.
This workflow is more complicated than just posting and responding in one app like I used to do with Twitteriffic or like I could do with Micro.blog if I had a different hosting set up. But I prefer having all my content originate from Sketchbook B so for me, it’s worth the minor inconvenience.
Squarespace and open social
One last thought… I really wish that Squarespace would reintroduce an API that allows for interconnectivity with a new class of open social networks like Micro.blog that rely on RSS, JSON feeds, webmentions and more. I’ve been using Squarespace long enough, that I remember when they had an API. If open social networks take off — and I realize that’s a big if — expanded support for microblogging and connections to supporting apps and services are the kind of premium features that a product like Squarespace could offer.
It’s still early
Micro.blog is still in the early days, with Manton having just recently opened signups to the general public. The service is evolving in really interesting and fascinating ways.**** As Micro.blog changes, it’s possible my Squarespace setup will become less than ideal, but for now, I’m sticking with my Squarespace site and I’m happy that I’ve been able to integrate the two services.
* Squarespace recommends that for podcasts, it’s best to use the username.squarespace.com structure for that feed. I’m not sure why, but I guess the same logic applies to Micro.blog.
** I use the iOS app. There is an Android app as well.
*** I have a couple of ideas of how I might work around this, but it’s going to be complex.
**** I 💚 Emoji tags
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create.
Happy fifth anniversary, Drip. Thanks for the coffee.
30/52: Love
This post was originally posted on January 14, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
It’s simple, really.
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 30.
Love takes many forms. We love our partner or spouse. We love our children, our family and our friends. We love our pets. We love our neighbors, even if they are different than we are. We love others, even if they are in a different part of the world.*
We show love in many ways. We show it through our actions and our words. We show it through our compassion. We use our time and energy to serve others. Love is the foundation of a positive world.
Tomorrow is a holiday to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Love was his guiding compass. And it should be ours today.
Visually for my “love” shirt, I wanted to take a minimalist approach to the word love. I didn’t want to design anything flashy or do a bunch of hand lettering. Just simple and straightforward.
You can purchase “Love” from my Threadless store.
* And especially if their corner of the world isn’t as nice and safe as ours.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.