A fellow designer lends me Thich Nhat Hanh’s Being Peace, and I read from cover to cover in a couple of hours. In a nutshell, the book shows us how to find peace within ourselves and bring peace to the world around us. One of the forms of Buddhism that strikes me the most is the Tiep Hien (Interbeing) Order, which is to live and to appreciate the moment. The word “Tiep” is “to be in touch” and “Hien” is “the present time.” This practice is something I have been striving for the last couple of years. I have tried my best to not worry about the future and to free my mind from unnecessary burdens. I still haven’t found that peacefulness inside of me yet, but I am much calmer and mellower than before. So turn off television, log off cyberspace, kick back, relax, and enjoy a mindfulness experience of Being Peace.

I am plowing my way into Visions of Jazz: The First Century. The 690-page text featured 79 essays on jazz musicians and their works written by Gary Giddins, one of the finest jazz critics. Although I am only up to the eleventh piece, “Louis Armstrong (The Once and Future King),” I like what I have read so far. Giddins’s passion for the music and knowledge of the history make his writings personal and informational. In the introduction, he states, “Everyone has his or her vision of jazz, and this is mine.” His vision is an inspiring if not an important one.

Robert Brownjohn was a graphic designer, but he lived his life like a jazz musician. To be specific, his lifestyle was more like Charlie Parker’s. Was Bj also under Bird’s influence? According to Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography—a book written by Emily King on the life and work of a bold, brilliant graphic designer as well as an addictive, heavy drug-user—he did hang out with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Miles “Prince of Darkness” Davis.

In the “Life” part of Sex and Typography, Brownjohn’s story—from Chicago to New York to London—is pieced together through the voices of his family, friends, colleagues and associates. Even though King has done a marvelous job of placing the interviews in a chronological order, the transition from one dialogue to the next is still choppy. Nonetheless, the individual accounts provide different perspectives of Bj’s personality, and how his behaviors shaped his design.

The “Work” section featured distinctive, innovative and provocative pieces of design including Pepsi-Cola World magazine covers, Obsession and Fantasy poster, Goldfinger title sequence and Rolling Stone’s Let it Bleed album cover. My personal favorite is the Watching Words Move experimental typography booklet. For instance, the playfulness of words, such as “addding,” “subtrcting,” “multimultiplying” and “div id ing,” is clever. One of the most striking pieces is Bj’s Peace poster. The design is minimal, but the message speaks loud. The poster is consisted of two handwritten letters PE laid next to the centered Ace of Spades followed by a scribbled question mark. Despite the controversial issues behind the work, the design concept is ingenious.

Although Bj lived ten years longer than his musician friend Parker, he, too, died young from excessive drugs abuse. Also like Parker, Bj’s had left behind invaluable works that guarantee to inspire the new generation. Mad kudos to King for sharing the life and work of a remarkable contemporary designer.

West Coast Jazz is another noteworthy reading on jazz written by Ted Gioia, author of the invaluable History of Jazz. Unlike hip-hop, there was no beef between east and west jazz. Gioia is not interested in defining the territory, but the music itself: the sound of the West and the musicians. He delves into the lives of major jazz phenomena, whose works flourished in the west, including Dave Brubeck, Chet Beker and Art Pepper. He also mentioned the avant-garde sounds of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman as important contributors not only to the west but the entire jazz world.

In Hillman Curtis on Creating Short Films for the Web, New York-based Web/motion designer Hillman Curtis reveals his DIY (Do It Yourself) digital video production. With nine short projects—produced exclusively for the web—ranging from designers’ documentary, portrait and music video, to short movie, Curtis shares his experimental approaches to filmmaking: how a movie or a song inspires his vision; how he comes up with a concept; how he learns from his mistakes.

Curtis is not only an exceptional designer, but also a fine writer. Even though he touches briefly on technical notes (equipment acquiring, lighting, directing, editing, and interviewing) here and there, the heart and soul of Creating Short Films is behind the thinking process. This is where his ingenious writing comes in. He knows how to float his words on the page, and his style is captivating. Take the following paragraph for example:

Like most of Mogwai’s songs, “Sine Wave” starts low and mellow, and then builds to a dissonant crescendo. It consists of a warm, basic chord progression on a keyboard, coupled with a static, harsh percussion track. In fact, the song sounds just like James Victore’s work looks: stark, dissonant, and above all, beautiful. Victore’s work, like the Mogwai song, consists of just a few strokes that, taken collectively, build on one another to covey powerful, often jarring messages. Like Fellini’s film, the song gave my imagination a jumpstart, setting me back on track.

The language is beautiful and Curtis’s honesty is delivered. Not too many designers (especially those who are highly respected) would write about a project that has failed miserably. In the making of Superdrag’s “The Staggering Genius” music video, Curtis not only explains why his concept didn’t work, but also admits his failures (something most designers have a hard time dealing with).

For those who seek to go into filmmaking, Creating Short Films is an invaluable text to initiate your experimentation, to learn the process, and to build up your confidence. Even if you have never shoot a film before, this book will motivate and encourage you to pick up the camera. With his openness to a personal level, Curtis has crafted an enjoyable book to be read from cover to cover.

From the intricate syncopation to the elaborate rhythms to the meticulous phrasings (instruments, scats and vocals), jazz is one of the most complex forms of music. Like a sophisticated lady, jazz takes time, tremendous patience and careful attentions to get acquainted with. Of course, the experience is rewarding once we tapped into her body and soul (I am referring to the musical pleasure).

If jazz is the sophisticated lady, Tom Piazza’s Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen is a useful dating guide. He shows how the art is formed, explains how instruments integrate to create exotic sounds, and demonstrates the aesthetics of storytelling through syncopation, rhythm, improvisation, time and space. With an accompaniment CD consisted of seven classic jazz pieces including King Oliver’s “Weather Bird Rag,” Count Basie and Lester Young’s “Boogie Woogie” and Mile Davis Quintet’s “Footprint,” Piazza uses them as references throughout the book to help readers understand what he means when he talks about music. For example: “… listen to the series of descending figures [Sonny Rollins] plays in “Moritat” at 2:23, or listen at 3:02, when he alludes to the melody, or to the little grunt he emits at 3:42, or the yelp of assent right around 5:53, during his exchanges with drummer Max Roach.” In addition, the extensive of “Further Listening” recommendations at the end of each chapter will be helpful to those who wish to embark their journeys deeper into the world of jazz.

Understanding Jazz is recommended for the beginners. Once we understand the music, we can learn about the important figures, such as Pops, Duke, Bird, Dizz, Prez, Bean, Prince of Darkness, Lady Day, whose works made significant contribution to the world of jazz. The history is as intriguing and exciting as the music herself.

Ted Gioia’s History of Jazz is clear, concise, and comprehensive. From the prehistory of jazz to the swing era to the rise of big band to the pathbreaking of bebop style, Gioia’s analytic force captures images of jazz figures on the pages. Jelly Roll Morton places his pistol on the piano; Louis Armstrong drops the music sheet during a recording session; Charlie Parker drinks his life away; Miles Davis makes history with the recording of Kind of Blue. This book is a required reading for my jazz history class, and I can see why my instructor, Brian Mann, selected it, and it is highly recommended for those who are interested in learning the remarkable stories behind an American original music.

James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is an intriguing story of a talented ragtime pianist and an outsider (an ex-colored who does not belong to either black or white) looking into the world of both races, and not sure which one to be identified with. After witnessing a tragical incident, he decided to live his life as a white man because of the “shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals.” Even though this book is also a required text for my jazz course, it has nothing to do with jazz (more of a race issue). Still, the novel is short and compelling.

Dan Cederholm knows exactly what Web designers need, and he writes for them. I praised his previous book, Web Standard Solutions, as not only a markup and style handbook, but also an accessibility guide. With his latest publication, Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS, he takes accessibility a step further by designing with flexibility or in his own words, “being prepared for whatever is thrown at your design.”

Forward-thinking design is the approach the book takes on. As Web designers, we need to share the control of our sites with the users. For example, allow users to resize their text if they desired. By using percentages, ems or keywords instead of pixels enable Internet Explorer users to increase or decrease the default text sizes. In the first chapter, Cederholm suggests setting keywords for the body text, and then use percentages for the headings when styling the type size in CSS to accommodate IE browsers. Although the method is bulletproofed, a bit of hacking is required. To set the text sizes to display consistently across browsers with hack free, I suggest using percentage for the body and ems for the headings.

Other than the “Flexible Text” approach, I find his tips and tricks throughout the book to be useful and adaptable. The “Scalable Navigation” technique is not only accessible and easy to modify, but also saves bandwidths because of the lightweight markups. The “Expandable Rows” and “Indestructible Boxes” methods give the site invisible, extra spaces to prevent unpredictable scenarios. The strategies for “No Images? No CSS? No Problem” is seemed to be simple, but no less valuable. I am sure many designers wouldn’t be thinking of styling background colors to ensure readability incase users turn off images to speed up the loading process. How could we when we have like million other things to worry about? So this chapter serves as a great reminder for that sort-of-minor-but-important stuff, and be sure to check out the bulletproof tools (Favlets, Web Developer Extension, Web Accessibility Toolbar, and Validator) listed as well.

Once again, Cederholm’s solid writing combined with his easy-to-follow instructions complemented by clear visual presentations make Bulletproof Web Design an essential guide for designers who wish to create Web sites that would always look good under any circumstances. Even though he delves into the “Fluid Layouts” approach, I still feel the book needed a chapter on zoomable layout, which is one of the most flexible and accessible methods I have come to appreciate, to be completed.

Why universal usability is as essential as the visual layout on the Web? Why keeping the site clean and simple is important? Why should we replace graphic with text navigation when possible? How to create forms that are painless to fill out by both visual and nonvisual users? Web designers who are unsure what the answers are to any of these questions should take a look at Sarah Horton’s Access by Design: a Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers.

By eliminating the technical practices, Horton allows her book to focus on the design principles; therefore, anyone (with or without technical skills) who wishes to learn Web accessibility is welcome. With simple language complemented by clear visual illustrations, she walks readers through everything they need to know (including text, images, color, forms, links, lists, audio, and video) when creating universal usability for the Web. She points out what to do and what to avoid when designing for maximum accessibility, and shows both good and bad examples to back up her cases. For instance, nonvisual users may have a hard time distinguishing between parent and child items in compound lists; therefore, she suggests to either use ordered lists or break the compound list into sections with appropriate headings.

Although Horton favors flexible over fixed layouts, she does a thorough job of explaining the pros and cons of both designs. While the fixed design does not expand when users increase the text size, the flexible design causes readability issue with long lines of text. From my own experience, using em measurements is the best solution to accommodate readability. The default is presented in a fixed layout, but the text and the layout will expand or condense when users adjust the text size, and that is “where designers and users share control of its design.”

Access by Design offers nothing new on Web accessibility, but Horton’s clear and concise approach makes the book an important reading for Web designers and developers, especially the newcomers. Read it, learn it, and keep it by our side when working on Web sites.

Had an easy weekend. Spent time alone and got through both Ashley Kahn’s A Love Supreme : The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album and Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. Enjoyed both books. Kahn’s writing, especially on the sessions of recording the pieces, gives readers deeper appreciations on two of the most influential jazz albums. These two CDs are back on heavy rotations. Kind of Blue is for relaxing, and A Love Supreme is for spiritual uplifting.