On my flight home from Los Angeles (I was there for the fabulous Typecon conference — more on that later), I watched the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage for what I think was the third time.

During one segment of the film, the filmmakers explore the period in which Rush were recording and promoting their landmark 1981 release, Moving Pictures. Through a part of that segment, the song “Tom Sawyer” played in the background.

For whatever reason, my brain latched onto those lines from the song and I realized that they so suscinctly sum up how I try to approach just about everything. As a designer, drummer, music enthusiast, and I hope, well-rounded human being, it’s exactly that which drives me to do over-extend myself in my own work — to hope for the best, to try to do more than I’m able — or at least think I am. To push myself and others toward new things and to never sit still for too long.

After an unexpectedly long hiatus, Luke, Grant and I are back at work on some new stuff for Ligature, Loop & Stem and over the last few days I’ve shared a couple peeks at one of the pieces we’re finishing up on Dribbble.

The big news, aside from that we’re doing something new is that we might do things differently this time based on the frankly overwhelming reaction to the Ampersand print. This could go a few ways:

1. A first limited edition letterpress run. Possibly at an extra-large size as we now have a line on a printer than can handle letterpress work up to 28” × 38” (I know — wow!)
2. An in-person only conference exclusive (Hint: Typecon) since Luke, Grant and I will all be in attendance to sign and number the prints and pose for glamour shots
3. A second general run based on a smaller print size and possibly different inks and stock

We haven’t finalized anything yet but will shortly. While we don’t want to give the game away too soon, we’ll no doubt toss a few Tweets out and provide some sort of early info via either Twitter and/or Dribbble.

I don’t think there’s any denying that technology and the internet, two interrelated things that should be helping streamline parts of our busy lives often result in the opposite.

Over the years many, many articles and studies illustrating this have been written and smart people have come up with approaches to at least attempt to counter the constant barrage of information, requests for our time and attention. These things each conflicting with our basic need to be in the moment or to be able to just get on with it.

I’ve been struggling with these things over the last few years myself as many people know. They directly relate to my experiences with burnout. Recently I started to notice that my particular burnout buttons felt like they were being pushed again — little by little.

This time though I’m ready.

I like to think I generally learn from my mistakes. As a result I’m taking a proactive approach and closely monitoring those particular triggers. This means changing routines and taking an objective look at how my days have been and are generally structured.

In doing just that, what I quickly discovered was that I’d become lazy about certain triggers. In other words, someone left the water hose on and the dripping was turning into more of a trickle.

To counter this I’ve started setting new rules for myself and going back and revisiting ones I let slip. Simple as that. For example:

• Very deliberately breaking my day into managable segments
• Turning off all social media distractions throughout the day
• Setting specific times when I will check and respond to email
• Taking deliberate breaks to clear my head
• Setting limits and reinforcing how long I’ll allow myself to work on something
• Maintaining a clear work-home boundary (with obvious exceptions when required)
• Prioritizing tasks more effectively

These rules and others that I’ve been attempting to set up around myself are simply to ensure the time I need to be creative is carefully guarded. If that time isn’t protected and nurtured, it’s easily trampled on by others, whether intentionally or not.

If you feel like you’re days are too often spent in a reactionary tailspin, you might want to take a hard look and do some of the same.

The other night while home alone with the kids I had a little accident and slipped and fell, landing badly on my right hand. At first I figured I just sprained it, but the pain didn’t go away and the next morning I found myself in the ER to get my hand checked out.

I was told it was fractured, or rather my fifth metacarpal was. And so now for the next few weeks I get to enjoy being somewhat useless due my being right-handed. Fantastic.

Using a mouse is near impossible, or at least comical, especially as I try to compensate with my left. Writing or drawing with a pen is equally pointless mostly due to an inability to move my wrist because of the splint. My Wacom hasn’t proven to be much help either.

What I realized though was that this was going to be a good opportunity to use my iPad to it’s maximum potential. I can type reasonably well with one hand (I wrote this entry as such in Simplenote) and can doodle with my finger using Adobe Ideas or Drafts. Anything detailed is pretty much out of the question though which is going to prove challenging knowing what I have to accomplish over the next few weeks.

This time I suspect will also turn out to be somewhat of an exercise in better empathizing with the accessibility needs of those with reduced motor skills or inability to use a mouse; if for no other reason than for the next few weeks I more or less am one of those people.

If digital is the way of the future for (most) books, your bookshelves, or those of your children will start to look extremely barren — and the thought of this potentially happening in my lifetime gives me pause.

As much as I’m in favour of worthwhile new technology, the designer and anthropologist in me desperately does not want to see the physical object — the “artifact” — go the way of the dodo.

High Fidelity

Contrary to the music industry where fidelity has started decreasing — from CDs to MP3 and M4A audio formats, digital books are moving in the opposite direction and becoming higher resolution than their paper counterparts. Text on paper doesn’t scale well, but digital text does.

An important counterpoint though is the issue of photos and illustrations in books — those things will likely go the low-resolution route in the short-term.

Dots on paper require high resolution to output any semblance of quality. Pixels can be a bit more forgiving, though that is less true as displays increase in resolution and artifacts begin to become more apparent. Early HD television is a good example of this occurrence.

As technology and publishers’ familiarity with electronic format options improves, along with a bit of experimentation, this will likely change. There’s a lot of promise in digital books, but they should be handled properly now to avoid bad precedents leading the way. For example, as Wired magazine is (hopefully) learning right now, a digital publication made up entirely of JPEG images will not fly. I’m willing to give them a pass on the first attempt — because at least they’re trying something — but it’s not a viable long-term strategy.

Illustration by Brian Stauffer, from The Atlantic Monthly - April 2010