Before diving into Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, I faced a dilemma. Should I jump right in or should I wait until the fall since the book is required for Graphic Design History class? Once I began the first chapter, however, I couldn’t stop.

With almost 600 pages, the book began with the invention of writing and ended at the digital revolution. The first two parts are fascinating, especially chapters on the alphabets and the progression of print and typography. Part three and four are comprehensive in documenting the graphic design moments and prominent designers. While the layout is filled with rich visual examples to complement the texts, the body copy, which set in Sabon Next, is a bit loose.

The historical details definitely needed to be revisited again, but this is the first textbook that I have read from cover to cover.

The double album kicks off with a hypnotizing, tantalizing blues about being stoned and never letup. Musically speaking, Dylan is at his most expansive up to this point of his career. Weaving blues, folk and country, Robbie Robertson of The Band rocked hard the whole way through. Dylan’s lyricism continued to be poetic, inventive and idiosyncratic as ever: “With your mercury mouth in the missionary times / And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes.”

I am pleased to announce the release of the new web site for the George Mason University School of Law, realigned to simplify the user experience.

The goal for this redesign is to rethink the main navigation and hierarchical structure to let users find what they need quickly and without being overwhelmed. As a result, the numbers of navigational items have been reduced as much as possible and the color choices have been limited to Mason’s brand. Whitespace has also been generously given.

The role of typography has been reconsidered. Lucida Grande had been the default choice for the Law School web site in the past decade. The new design takes advantage of embedded fonts. Myriad Pro was chose for user interface and headings. The body text is now set in Minion Pro. The pairing of Minion Pro and Myriad Pro worked well together and compliance with Mason’s style guide.

I started the redesign initiative a year ago, but it was shelved because we were waiting for the major rebrand from the University. That process has been extremely slowed; therefore, we decided to move ahead with our redesign. I spent the past month delving back into the redesign. We want to relaunch it before the summer is over and here it is.

“Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement thinking about the government,” Dylan kicks off his fifth release with a rock-up energy and makes a remarkable transition into electric territory in the first half of the album. In the second half, however, he returns to the acoustic for the subliminal “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the tearful closing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”

For two decades, Eric Meyer shared his CSS knowledge to the world. His clear technical writing taught us the skills we needed to make web site. Last year, Eric shared his daughter’s battle with cancer to the world. His thoughtful, courageous writing moved us to tears.

Rebecca lost her life to cancer when she just turned six. Being a father myself, I can’t even begin to imagine what Eric is going through, and yet he gives us a piece of his mind through his blog and his tweets. I could feel his love, grief and pain in every word he has written.

Today Rebecca will be buried. To celebrate Rebecca, I turned my site to purple, her favorite color. Rest in peace, sweet little girl.

Released in the same year of the dark, protest-heavy The Times They Are A-Changin’, this album shows the light-hearted, whimsical side of Dylan. Although his singing is bordering irritation at times, you can’t help but laugh your ass off to “Motorpsycho Nightmare.”
Another Side reveals Dylan at his most personal, vulnerable youth.

“Come gather ’round friends / And I’ll tell you a tale,” Dylan starts off “North Country Blues” as if he’s two inches away from you with a guitar on his hands. The raw intimacy, in which Dylan seemed to be more interested in telling stories than singing, captured in this album brings out the bleakness images in disturbing lyricism including “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “With God on Our Side” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” Fifty years after its release, The Times They Are A-Changin’ remains one of the most provocative musical statements on social injustice, class and race.

For the 1963 release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which goes down in history as a “global phenomenon,” Dylan channels his personal perspective on love, war and racism through an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. In “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Dylan stripped the accompaniment down to just simple ostinato and focused on his startling lyricism: “I met a white man who walked a black dog / I met a young woman whose body was burning.”

As far back as I can remember, the first time I listen to a Bob Dylan record was in my freshman year in college. One of my roommates had a sizable collection of Dylan’s CDs. I borrowed one, can’t recall which album, for a spin and was unimpressed with his voice. At the time I was not into lyricism and I was not a rock fan. The only rock music I have listened to all these years is Jimi Hendrix’s.

Last week I read the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and learned that Jobs was not only a big fan of Dylan, but he was also using Dylan’s music in his works and quoting Dylan’s lyrics in his presentations. Jobs piqued my interest in Dylan once again. As I searched through my music collection, the only full album I have of Dylan is Highway 61 Revisited. Tim Brown, a former colleague at Vassar College, gave me the album years ago. We shared similar taste in jazz, blues and hip-hop, but I was not into rock.

Upon revisiting Highway 61 in the past couple of days, I still not am impressed with Dylan’s voice—though it is growing on me. The lack of interest in his singing forces me to pay attention to his lyrics. Right off the opening, “Like a Rolling Stone,” Dylan demonstrates his master of storytelling through four concise verses of from-riches-to-rags tales. The chorus of “Tombstone Blues” is already stuck in my head:

Mama’s in the factory
She ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley
He’s lookin’ for the fuse
I’m in the streets
With the tombstone blues

Yet the track that epitomizes Dylan’s genius of lyricism is “Desolation Row.” Clocking in over eleven minutes without a chorus, Dylan drops ten verses filled poetic allusion, powerful imagery and countercultural references. By stripping the instrumentation down to just picking acoustic guitar, Dylan gave the song a raw, authentic feel and free of distraction from the lyrics. I am now a fan of Dylan and about to embark on a journey to rediscover his music. I now have two favorite rock musicians: Hendrix and Dylan.

In the introduction of Typefaces for Books, James Sutton and Alan Bartram argue:

While display faces can be extrovert, colourful and rich in character, book faces must be transparent, allowing the reader to hear the author’s voice without distortion or interference.

It is in answering this little question of the author’s voice that the book typographer’s task lies. He must invent an action, a tone, and decide on the volume: should he whisper or shout or sing? whatever he decides he must keep in mind that he is making a window through which the reader can see the view as clearly as possible and be quite unconscious of the proportions of the glazing bars.