MeyerBros

I decided to check out candidate websites today to see what they were saying about themselves. But before I got to any text I was struck by the different brands being presented in logo and site design. Here’s a rundown:

Barack Obama: Hope, The Apple Way.
Everything about the Obama brand is hip and trendy. While the color choices for any candidate are limited by the patriotic palette, Obama’s blues and reds are clearly affected by current design trends. They tend towards more muted hues, and fit in comfortably with grays and whites. The Obama blue, in all it’s gradients and shades, is the number one web 2.0 color choice, clinched by it’s use as a nearly monochrome palette for the site. The logo is a circle complete with drop shadow, gradients and and a playfully altered uppercase serif wordmark. The flag isn’t just a flag, it’s a sunrise over a field. The Obama brand is, as he would say, hope.

This logo is flexible and shows up everywhere, with a one-color version used at the bottom of the site and an animated version in all the videos. You are lead through the site in a very intentional way, with minimum text at every turn. The site design is based on low-contrast grays and blues, bevels, horizons, reflections, gradients and drop shadows. If this were long-term corporate branding it would be obsolete in under two years. Lucky for Obama, it doesn’t even need to last one more year, and in the meantime he is appealing strongly to his target audience: young and savvy.

Hillary Clinton: Clinton for Mayor.
Clinton has a different target demographic and her design choices show it. Her logo is not unique in any way, and could be used as a lawn sign for the mayoral race in your local town. She is in fact hoping to be elected mayor, I think. A flag is waving as the underline for her name. This isn’t designed, this is her name and the flag. The site is also boilerplate, taken from any corporation or web business that knows it should look web 2.0 but just can’t figure out where to put everything. The gradients aren’t integrated, they are messy. And she has banner ads on the side. Banner ads? The site is a mess of information despite the smooth gradients and curves, leaving it stilted in it’s small attempts towards hipness. What should I click on? I have no idea. This brand is about what you already know and expect, big business and slow movement. (On a side note, I find it interesting that her’s is the only logo using only the first name. I have heard accusations that she is the only one referred to by first name in the press, but it seems to be true in her own materials as well. There could be any number of reasons, but it’s interesting.)

John McCain: An Army Of One.
John McCain is running on his military record, can you tell? This is a very strong design choice along the lines of Obama’s - but in a different direction. Where Obama was reaching out to the iPod crowd, McCain is reaching out to an audience of military personnel, veterans and families. He uses stark, imposing and classy white and gold on black. the logo is simple, and it’s simply military. He is making a visual statement about strength and class. Bold. This is “straight talk” designed right. Vote for McCain and please join the army.

Mitt Romney: Romney IS A Republican.
If McCain was the republican counterpart to Obama, Romney is the counterpart to Clinton. Where McCain is stating a clear vision, Romney is yelling “I’M A REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE!” His requisite flag is an eagle! Look at that! He’s a republican! Yes, he also has banner ads for merch in his sidebar, and his favicon looks like an airline logo. Oh, he also put quotes around “blog” - because this is, you know, as the kids say, “a blog”. This man is trying to be president, enough said.

Mike Huckabee: Huckabee is Magic.
And last, and least: Mike Huckabee is magic. He lives in Disneyland and may well be a fairy prince. There is very little else to say. His website is not much of anything, and his logo has stars floating (up? down?) beside his oh-so-local-county-commissioner-layout name. Is he still running?

Moving On:
All of these candidates seem accurately (if not “well”) branded to me, though it seems only Obama and McCain could afford real branding efforts.

I only got into reading the issues pages on Obama and Clinton’s sites. There is a clear distinction here, not on what issues they mention but on the specificity of their comments. Clinton’s page is about what she has done, Obama’s is about what he will do. When it comes to action as president, only Obama makes specific claims. Take equal rights for women. Clinton says “As president, Hillary will continue her lifelong fight to ensure that all Americans are treated with respect and dignity.” Obama says “Obama will work to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that curtails racial minorities’ and women’s ability to challenge pay discrimination. Obama will also pass the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work.” The difference seems clear throughout their sites. They might both have plans, but Obama is willing to tell you what that plan entails.

“The more people you reach the more likely it is that you’re reaching the wrong people.” –Seth Goudin

Ursula K. LeGuin has a fantastic article in this month’s Harpers, called “Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading.” The premise is this: reading was never popular in the first place. The decline is in books as exponentially profitable big business. The crossover is easy to see in other artistic mediums.

Books no longer have a monopoly on pop entertainment. Literature as an art, on the part of both authors and readers, was never popular to begin with, and isn’t going anywhere. Some people like writing or reading as art and others don’t. But publishers who rely on the next big hit are finding that the next big hit may be in a different medium.

That is from the artist’s perspective: we’ve always been a minority, even when our medium was being used as the pop medium. But there’s a business/technology side to it as well, that companies may have to pick up on. The advent of the internet is the advent of the long tail: Why make everyone buy the same product, when you can easily sell each person the product they want? Suddenly the long tail of small sales become a threat to business built around pop hits.

Theatre was once the pop medium, to the point of riots between fans of rival actors. The fact that pop media has found a new venue doesn’t mean theatre is dead. Taking the focus off big hits might even make room for more new theatre to happen. Can the long tail make a comeback once the hit-makers are gone? I think it’s something to hope for.

Art isn’t dying - the middleman is dying. And it’s about time. Just ask Radiohead and Wilco.

“Words are too awful an instrument for good and evil to be trifled with: they hold above all other external powers a dominion over thoughts.” –William Wordsworth

This presidential campaign and the coverage of it have focussed heavily on the personalities and integrities of the candidates over-against their stances on specific issues. Recently I have heard more and more complaints about this being a problem. How can we be informed voters if we don’t talk about the issues?

Call me a character-ethicist (it’s probably the accurate thing to do), but I’m not sure I agree.

I am entirely in favor of voting for a candidate that has a similar opinion to mine on various issues - and some of those issues are very important to me. But I’m afraid we may have become blinded by the entire concept of ‘issues’ with ‘positions’ and ’solutions.’ I have said repeatedly in my theatre work that I cast and hire based on personality as much or more than skill, and will continue to do that proudly. I am convinced that the most important features of a candidate for any position are their relational abilities. If you aren’t a good person to relate to, it doesn’t matter what technical skills you have - your work will lack connection and humanity. I will happily vote for the candidate best displaying the qualities I want in a leader - qualities that display intelligence over party loyalty: Listening humbly and articulating passionately.

I’m not talking about wavering compromise or glib ignorance. I’m talking about passionate movement with an actual understanding and care for people as human beings.

Anne Bogart, a contemporary theatre artist, says “One of the most radical things you can do in this culture of the inexact is to finish a sentence… Political agenda has conspired against a citizen’s ability to speak. Words are dangerous and they can be powerful.” Articulation is a key to action. When I think of the most articulate voices I’ve heard in politics and history, they have always been the harbingers of change, and have often been received with fear and hate (MLK being a prime example, among many).

Several candidates have displayed articulation and the ability to relate to people. I look forward to hearing more from them, and care very little about the positions of the others. Count me in as one proud vote for passionate articulation.

How the hell can you argue with this list of courses and course textbooks for my fall semester? You can’t, so don’t try. It kicks ass.

Narrative Theology - Keith Graber Miller

Theologies of Whiteness - Dean Johnson

Love and Justice - Malinda E. Berry

Can you really argue with that? I’m lovin’ it…

The usual readers of this blog (all three of you) may find this quite uninteresting, but I’m posting it here as Google-fodder in hopes it may be useful to someone out there.

Say there’s an internet audio stream that interests you (like, for example, a radio feed). But say you’d rather not listen to it while tied to a device with an internet connection - you need to rip it to a file on disk. And lastly, just for kicks, say the radio feed already has its advertisements kindly blanked out with silence by the stream provider, but you find those three-minute silences irritating to skip over manually.

read the rest of this entry »

http://eric.meyerbros.org/ - the eric meyer blogfolio - is back up and running with a whole new look to match my business cards. i’m glad for comments (leave them here) or ideas. i’m glad for critique and personal confessions. i’m mainly glad for you to check out my site.

i only have a few things up. forgive the lack of content. there is, in fact, nothing under theatre or design - though many of the writings are also theatre. and anyway, this gives you the chance to see my 404 error. are you excited?

Another Post! I’m on a roll!

We’re playing a concert with Emily Rodgers as part of Goshen’s August First Fridays event. It’s a great event for Goshen, and I’m super excited about playing with Emily. I’ve been a fan of her music (and a friend of hers) since way back.

August 3, 2007 on Washington Street beside the Electric Brew
Emily will start at 6pm. We’ll start around 7 or 7:30. It’s all free.

but I did make myself business cards today. so here’s a sampling of them:

Seriously though, that was a serious lull in the virtual conversation (triple-monologue?) that is this blog. Our blogging energies (and interests) seem to have been pilfered by the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog, but that can’t stop me from rambling about nothing in particular! And then I want to know what things all you other people are currently wasting time on.

I spent a lot of money on eBay and Amazon.com in the past week buying various roleplaying games (RPGs). I’ve been listening to the Fear the Boot tabletop roleplaying game podcast recently, and it’s energized me to start gaming again. But instead of sticking with the all-too-familiar Dungeons and Dragons system, I want to try some other roleplaying game systems and worlds that have received good reviews and that the guys at Fear the Boot (FtB) seem to enjoy. So here’s what I bought:

• Star Trek (FASA) — This one cost a lot more than I expected ($44), because it’s long out of print (published in 1984). However, it’s supposedly a solid system, with a creative character creation system that FtB likes. You start by rolling to determine your education received through Starfleet Academy, and the results of this process determine your options as a character. The characters also fill specific roles (Captain, Engineer, Helmsman, Navigator, and Communications Officer) during combat, which sounds like an interesting concept. Also, I miss the ol’ days of watching Star Trek: TNG after school, which leads into the next purchase…
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer’s Manual — A supplement to the FASA Star Trek game that adds new rules, ships, and characters to update from the original Star Trek to the Next Generation era.
• Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga Edition — The latest (published June 2007) Star Wars roleplaying game set in the d20 rule system. I want to try some sci-fi roleplaying, and I figure that this is the best of the games still being published and supported. Plus, I want to be a Wookiee.
• Serenity Role Playing Game — Spawned from what is probably the best TV series ever, I figured this game would be a letdown after the decent movie of the same name. But after reading a number of positive reviews, I decided to give it a try. Partially I’m interested because it uses a Sovereign Stone game system, not the now-standard d20 system. I doubt it’s a whole lot different, but it’ll be interesting to see. I may be disappointed that I can’t roleplay dialogue as well as Joss Whedon can write it, but I’m hoping his universe will still be fun to explore.
• Iron Heroes — A low-magic variant player’s handbook for the Dungeons and Dragons setting, created by Monte Cook. Carl contends that D&D players become too familiar with the monsters and spells of the tradition D&D 3rd edition, so a good way to keep surprising the players is to change the magic system or add some new monsters. This rulebook changes the character class system to foster a more realistic combat-oriented game that doesn’t rely on spells and magical items. It should be a fun addition to our campaign.
• Classic BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat — The original BattleTech tabletop miniatures wargame boxed set, published by FASA in 1984. I have vague memories of playing this with my older brothers as a young child some 10-15 years ago, and I’m excited to try it again. This is not a roleplaying game, but is used along with the…
• Classic BattleTech RPG — The latest 2007 printing of the original MechWarrior roleplaying game, published by FASA in 1985 to add a roleplaying element to the BattleTech universe. This can be used as a standalone RPG, but in-game combat situations are often decided by using the aforementioned miniatures wargame boxed set, thus combining a tabletop wargame with an RPG. Some reviewers claim that the roleplaying aspect of the BattleTech universe is limited, but FtB swears by this game combo as one of the best games ever. I’m willing to give it a shot.
• Classic BattleTech: Total Warfare — The latest addition (2006) to the BattleTech game set, adding new rules for vehicles, artillery, etc.

How much money did I waste on all this stuff? $197.49. Do I have that kind of money? No. Will I enjoy not having time to play these games because I’m working to pay for all of this? No.

C’est la vie.

an interesting piece of advice from marketing guru Seth Godin:

Need to design a logo? Don’t.

I’m not sure how well it really holds up, but I think he has a great point behind it. The content makes the logo. All you need is something that will work to carry it. It doesn’t need (and shouldn’t have?) a lot of meaning already.

Every time I sit down to play Advanced Civilization, I rediscover my love for that game. The problem is, it takes 8-10 hours to play — so I seldom sit down to make my incredible rediscovery. Yesterday I played as Crete for the first time, which was a challenge. But I won, so obviously it wasn’t that much of a challenge. In any case, check out the game if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Because everyone needs a little 10-hour break every now and then.

In other news, this is a shameless plug to go join in on the online TnE fun. It’s an online game based on the strategy board game Tigris and Euphrates. And it’s lots of fun, so sign up and start a new game or join a current one.

As you can see, since my girlfriend is in Peru and I haven’t started my summer job yet, I have a lot of time on my hands.

But it still means re-examining the entire structure of existence.

I don’t see it as losing a brother so much as gaining a nephew.

The first important shift will be in each Meyerbros name. We must no longer be referred to as simply “big” “middle” and “little” Meyers. We are now “Big Daddy Meyer” “Middle Uncle Meyer” and “Little Uncle Meyer.”

The majority of the Dungeons and Dragons training falls in the hands of the youngest uncle, according to tradition, but I’m doing my part to prepare for a new adventurer. I bought a set of dice the other day. I’m ready for you, oh mystical eight pound something nameless one. BRING IT ON.

I’ve been kicking this article idea around in my head for awhile, but Sam Hurst actually wrote it. Good stuff.

Hurst: New Iraq sounds an awful lot like the Old Pine Ridge (Rapid City Journal, Mar 18 2007)

bonus:

No land, no shalom: Indigenous group wins land battle

We didn’t know about this until we saw it on MCC’s website - and we still don’t know how to get in touch with these people. MCC seriously needs a dedicated “indigenous issues” desk, or at least an email group or something.

I posted over at YAR before the bell tolled, but one of the main things I forgot to include was this: I hear over and over and over that the problem with Feminists is how much they hate men, and reverse discrimination and this and that, and beyond not buying that entire concept, it just isn’t my experience. Feminism, as I’ve always heard it articulated by feminists themselves, seems to me the most universally accepting and aware ideological system I’ve ever encountered. I was introduced to feminism in a memorable car ride by two women who put a lot of energy and compassion into correcting my somewhat naively sexist preconceptions of the world. Over the last year I’ve started reading a wide range of progressive blogs, and it is only the feminist bloggers who consistently

1. Will stand up for anyone against oppression or discrimination,
2. Will say exactly what they think without mincing words or apologizing,
3. Don’t bother navel gazing,
4. Can comprehend and explain complex and seemingly paradoxical effects of oppression on both the oppressor and the oppressed (without agreeing to disagree),
5. Are always on the side of the oppressed, and
6. Are humble enough to admit, accept and challenge inconsistencies.

And yet they seem to have the least support of the progressive blogging community - consistently fighting to even be understood by the supposedly aware and open minded community they are part of. Why are we so defensive? I have been. My friends are. It’s the first thing people say when you mention the naughty F****ist word. Why?

Almost makes you think patriarchy might be an issue.

This is not my post about sexism for the day, though I do plan on making one. This post is several things:

• link love for Kyle Dean’s new blog, Cafe Eclectica Music, which I think is fairly well done and has a broad range of music covered for just one guy living in NYC. Good stuff Kyle. Today he brings us a new LP from Iron and Wine. Check out his archives for great stuff from Sigur Ros, Jeff Tweedy, Bjork and much much more. If you like what you see, send his link around.
• a clipping from an Aaron Liechty drawing that I’ll post later if he gives me permission. We’ve both been drawing all the characters from the campaign we’re in. He’s already done. This is Bill (me) the half-orc barbarian with a chain and some mean dancing skills.
• a comment to Tim and Jonny, that yes, THACO is old school and you should know better, but that I miss it with all my heart. I also miss opportunities to roll percentage dice since they’ve simplified everything down to twenty-siders. as if patriarchy wasn’t bad enough.

I was just reminded at Ilyka’s that today is not only International Women’s Day, but also blog against sexism day. So I thought it would be a good time to take a break from our other recent conversations and, um, blog against sexism.

The gender-split commentary over on this post at Hugo Schwyzer’s got me thinking about how patriarchy hurts men (or, in gennimcmahon’s ever-so-much-more-eloquent version, “how the cultural view of men as irresponsible children whose backs hurt from the weight of following their dicks around, hovering in the air like a divining rod that’s found a ocean beneath their feet, is damaging and limiting”), and conversely how men so often love to divert conversation about patriarchy into “but women do bad things to men too!”, which is a technique for denial and minimization of male privilege.

I do think it’s important for privileged people to reflect on how privilege warps and damages our spirits, because until we do this internal work, any anti-privilege work we do is all about “helping out those poor oppressed women/people of color/queers” and not about a mutual struggle for liberation (cf the tagline quote over at AllyWork). It’s equally important for us to recognize that our privilege benefits us in lots of very concrete ways - recognizing our own hurts doesn’t make things “even”. And we’d better not think it gives us the right to take over a marginalized group’s conversation space with our tales of woe-is-me. That’s why I’m posting this here. And lastly, this can really verge on navel-gazing, so I’ll try to skim the edge of that cliff and (hopefully) keep this interesting or relevant to someone besides me.

Anyway, two personal stories come to mind. Not surprisingly, they both have to do with parents - hi Mom and Dad!

The first story I don’t remember myself, but Mom has told me several times. I guess at age three or so I had a pair of Raggedy Ann/Raggedy Andy dolls that I loved to pieces, including “nursing” them (Mom must have been breastfeeding Eric at that point). I told Mom that when I grew up I was going to be a Mommy, and she (very compassionately, I’m sure) informed me that I would never be a Mommy, but that she was sure I’d be a very good Daddy. Apparently this was crushing news to me, and I put those dolls away and never played with them again. (Mom makes it clear when she tells the story that she still regrets that, and given a do-over would just tell me “I’m sure you’ll be a great Mommy” and leave it at that).

What does that say about my images of mommy-ness and daddy-ness at that age? How much of this difference is due to the biological reality of mother-child attachment (maybe some, but I’d guess not the bulk of it), and how much is due to what I had already experienced from my parents (or observing other parents)? And what will I do to help my child, due next month, see both Mommy and Daddy as tender, attentive caregivers? (Given that I’m totally speaking out my rear end here, having never been a parent, I’d love some reflective - and patriarchy-aware - commentary on this from actual parents - including my own!). Also, if I so clearly understood Mommy to be the one responsible for tenderness towards children, and I was told early on that I couldn’t be one, how might that have impacted my later perception of myself as able to relate tenderly towards children?

The second story that comes to mind (I was reminded of it by gennimcmahon’s quote above), is the whole saga of parental reactions to my wife and I sharing a room in one context or another before we were married. Both her parents and mine reacted strongly to this at different points. In both cases, I initially thought it was just a generational issue of worry over “what others might think” - and to some degree it was. But the more we got into conversation about it, the more stunned I was how much of the resistance seemed (at some level) rooted in the idea that, essentially, men are unable to control sexual urges or make good choices about them.

Now, clearly men make awful (even evil) choices all the time, up to and including rape and sexual assault. I’ve made some pretty poor choices myself (though thankfully not to that point). But assuming that men are inherently unable to control themselves justifies rape and sexual assault. Instead of putting the onus firmly on men to take responsibility to stop being violent and dominating, the responsibility gets put back on women to “not put themselves in the wrong situation” — because the man can’t be responsible for something he apparently can’t control. Others have written more clearly about this whole issue - this post at Feministe is a good recent place to start.

The idea that men are incapable of self-control is also insulting and damaging to the spirit of men. It limits my vision of who I can become as a man, and even perhaps becomes self-fulfilling.

Anyone else have stories or thoughts to share? How has patriarchy/sexism impacted you?

I ran into this* today, while checking out feminist reviews of various movies. Then I started watching Match Point because Blockbuster had it and I thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t. It broke the third rule. I didn’t even make it a half hour in.

update: I fixed this link.

Check out openID: the open (i.e. not-vendor-locked-in — hello MS Passport) single-sign-on web identity standard. Pretty cool. I just got myself a free identity page at myopenid.com. I thought about setting up an openID server at meyerbros.org, which doesn’t look hard, but then I ran across these instructions on using openID delegation. So I let myopenid.com handle the details of running the server and I can still use carl.meyerbros.org as my openID login URI. Nice.

Next step - setting up blog.meyerbros.org as an openID consumer (so people can login to comment using their openID identity instead of having to register). Looks pretty easy.

Since Eric kicked things off here nearly a year ago by pointing out some creative differences with a web deign firm, I thought it might be time to point out another example of web designer’s web sites gone badly wrong:

aPe Computers

I really don’t feel the need to say much. Just watch their space-elevator-world-shattering-apocalypse banner for a while and “Feel the Quality” while enjoying those fantastic rounded corners.

(This was originally a comment at YAR, thought it would make a good post here as well.)

Issues of patriarchy and sexism have become my central reading over the last week since Carl posted about sexism in the web design community, and someone sent me a link to I Blame The Patriarchy. It’s a great read, with interesting critiques of some more subtle and complex issues involved in patriarchy, and has become one of my favorite RSS feeds.

Be warned, though, that it can get a bit rough to read if you’re a sensitive man that takes things personally. This isn’t a sexism 101 site, so no one is going to pull their punches just because you’re new to the game. Follow their advice and read the FAQ before commenting.

There was a particularly good post yesterday calling out liberal male bloggers who responded to Ann Coulter’s most recent inflammatory comments (She called John Edwards a “faggot”) by throwing the exact same “insult” (and other, similar heterosexist and misogynist comments) back at her.

I also bought “The 51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do About It” by Lis Wiehl at Barnes and Noble last night. So far it’s a very interesting and enlightening read, laying out exactly how unequal women still are under the law, and how it’s getting worse, not better.