The teacher appreciation committee at our sons’ daycare asked parents to bring in a thank-you note for their teachers. So I decided to do some typographic notes for each teacher and printed them on the Southworth’s Corners Paper. I bought the paper for my resume project in a class on professional design practices. Even though the paper is beautiful, I only used one piece for the class project. Since I rarely use printed resume nowadays, I could use it for something else. Check out the teacher appreciation notes I posted on Pinterest.

Update

When I handed the notes out, one of the teachers asked,”Are you a professional graphic designer?” I nodded and she went on, “I thought so because this doesn’t look like an average design.” That made me smile. She’s also a really awesome teacher. Our little Dan loves her.

Caught a few standup comedies on Netflix.

Tom Segura: Completely Normal

Segura delivered many quick, witty shots. While he landed punches, I wish he covered less topics and more details.

Anjelah Johnson: The Homecoming Show

Remember Johnson? The Mexican chick who made terrible Vietnamese accent. Her recent show, however, was not so bad. Unlike most standup comedians, Johnson didn’t use one curse word. If you could get past her slightly annoying pitch, Johnson could be enjoyable. Her jokes were lighter and her charisma carried through. Thank goodness that she didn’t try the Vietnamese imitation.

Jasper Redd: Jazz Talk

Out of the three, Redd stood out the most. His metaphors were brilliant. So many great lines in his routine, but the one stuck in my mind was on racism: Before you do your laundry, you have to separate the white from the color because the color will fuck up the white. His perspective made even mundane things sounded interested. Try to explain to your kids how the Whopper Jr. was made. I am sure Burger King didn’t think of it when they came up with the mini version of the Whopper.

David Jury answers the question in three parts: The role of typography, its characteristics and professional examples. The handbook is a gentle intro to typography. Without delving too much into technical details, it’s a quick, easy read for people who are curious about the subject.

The ads for Simplexpression were produced for my graduate seminar project. The assignment was to create an integrative design of handcrafted types and digital components. The challenge was to gather the beads as well as the jewelry pieces that my wife had made and made them into letters. The arrangement alone took hours. Once I came up with the words using beads, I took photos of them and brought them into Photoshop to integrate digital typefaces. It was a fun project and well-received in class.

I still have to deal with the awful customer service with Perfection Glass this morning. After its failure to show up to replace the windshield, I had to call my insurance, talked to the glass’s warrantee representative and made yet another appointment with Perfection Glass for next Tuesday.

As if I hadn’t had enough stress in the morning, Dan kept on whining and whining from the moment he woke up to the time I dropped off to daycare. He had been so whiny recently and still hadn’t wanted to be in class. He still held on to me tight when I dropped him off. It got worse when one of his main teachers weren’t in yet. The other teacher was not even trying to distract him from holding on to me. After twenty minutes of trying to read him books and trying to get him to play with his friends, one of his main teacher came in to rescue.

Dao, on the other hand, has been wonderful. He helped me carried his brother’s backpack, helped me to tell Dan it’s ok to be at school. After we dropped Dan off, we walked to his class. He gave me a hug and a kiss before joining his friends. His affection is just what I needed to get through the day. What a sweet little fellow.

From Daily Exploration:

After snack and circle time, The Hummingbirds gathered around for shaving cream time… Ms. Ali and Ms. Natalia wrote everyone’s names in the shaving cream. They loved it! Dan was ready to clean up soon after and said “Messy! I need soap!”

Yesterday when I picked up the kids, Dan saw another boy eating a cookie and said to me, “Daddy, I want a cookie just like that.” One of the things that I have noticed about Dan is that he speaks in full sentences. Dao was quite talkative when he was younger, but I don’t recall he used full sentences like Dan. I think he picked up a lot of it from Dao now. Even Khoi has been imitating Dao whenever they hang out together. Khoi is quite fond of Dao. He asks about Dao all the time. Dao could be a fantastic older brother and cousin when he wanted to.

Notes from last night class in professional design practices. A guest speaker from Marriott gave us advice on presentation skills.

Famous presenters

• Steve Jobs
• Barack Obama
• John F. Kennedy
• Martin Luther King, Jr.

Building greatness

• Preparing you
• The tool
• Preparing your message
• Your style

Preparation

1. Know your audience
2. Know your materials
3. Know yourself

Know your audience

• What do they need to know?
• Why should they care?
• What do you want them to walk away with

Know your material

• Grabbing them in the first few seconds
• Clear and concise
• Compelling

Avoid using buzz words

• Synergy
• Best practices
• Out of the loop
• Value added
• Think outside the box
• Bandwidth
• Make it pop

Know Yourself

• Gestures: Be natural
• Poster: Stand up or sit up straight
• Movement: Move with purpose
• Eye contact and expressions: look people in the eye
• Voice, projection: Make sure your voice carries the message. Speak with confidence
• Diction and pace: Make sure you’re not mumbling

Challenging audience

• keeping it on track
• Topic migration
• Time mismanagement

Phone interview

• Practice with technology: Be ready ahead of time. Check to make sure Skype or whatever software is used for the interview works
• Focus on speaking style
• Timely: Make sure to be on time
• Introductions
• Connection: Make sure your phone has good reception. Use a landline
• Documents in advance
• Visual translation

Other tips to remember

• Be brief. Be bright. Be gone
• Command: Confident not cocky
• It’s fine to pause. Take the pause to gather your thoughts if you get lost

Topics in a hat

Each of us takes out a topic in the hat and present it for one minute. It was a nerve-racking but helpful exercise.

In the past few days, I immersed myself into the life of Miles Davis through the pen of John Szwed. I read from 10 pm (when the kids went to bed) until 1:30 in the morning, went to sleep with Miles in my head, and then got up at 5 am to read some more. Even though I have read a numerous books on Miles including his autobiography, I find Szwed’s So What enlightening. Most of Miles stories have been told before, but Szwed made some corrections through his extensive research and interviews of Miles’s family members. Once again, I lost count of how many women Miles had slept and slapped, but the way that he treated Frances Taylor, in particular, as told in this book is quite appalling.

Although Szwed claims in the introduction that this book is not a musical study, he had done anexcellent job of briefly discussing Miles’s albums from Birth of the Cool to Doo-Bop. If you want more in-depth studies of Miles’s music, however, make sure to pick up Richard Cook’s It’s About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record after finish reading this book.

After replacing the windshield with scratches for our car, the technician failed to come back two times. We waited for them two days and wasted eight hours for nothing. Someone was suppose to come today around 2-4pm, but no call and no show. This is ridiculous. If you call your work perfection. You better live up to it. This company is nowhere near its name. I would never use this shop again.

Perfection Glass, inc

501 East Diamond Ave
Gaithersburg, MD 20877
240-454-5812

1. Fewest possible typefaces
2. Fewest possible type sizes
3. No letterspacing of lowercase (which was then still used for emphasis in German-speaking countries)
4. Emphasis by using italic or bold of the same face
5. Use of capitals only as an exception, then carefully letterspaced
6. Format text lines into not more than three groups