Repost: It’s that time of year

Block print Christmas card

Last weekend, the fields around the village where I live started to turn from green to harvest gold. Like the changing of the season, I noticed the first uptick in traffic to this web log. Or rather to one post in particular — Advent Poems (or the 12 days of Christmas poetry).

Good design is subtractive

“Design that communicates efficiently is typically more subtractive than additive.” [read more]

Singular possessive or plural possessive

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Do people still diagram sentences?[1] Is writing still important in . . . read more ->

Afternoon walk


Somedays a walk to the river is a remedy. Amid . . . read more ->

Anatomy of print advertising

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Very excited about a mentoring opportunity with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee this afternoon. Last October I volunteered and really enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experience of graphic design with the students.

Here are my notes on the five basic elements of a print advertisement.

  1. Headline
  2. Subhead
  3. Body copy
  4. Visuals
  5. Layout

A print ad includes other components (like, color, shape, logo, etc.), but these five elements are foundational to print advertising.

A page from the history of graphic design

There was a time — somewhere around the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods of graphic design — when all pre-press art files were saved to a 250 MB Zip disk, packed into a Fed-Ex overnight envelope and delivered to a Fed-Ex pick location.

Working for a weekly newsmagazine, I was the last person to see that package and its digital content before it travelled 384 miles to the press that printed the periodical.

On one occasion I had to deliver the package to the airport due to a late breaking election story. That was before Adobe Photoshop CS arrived. And sometime between versions of QuarkXPress 4 and QuarkXPress 5.

The magazine introduced a virtual private network (VPN) in 2003. This linked the headquarters with various national offices as well as the press that printed the publication.

Soon Zip disks became novel items that were relegated to the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Like the extinction of the Neanderthals, the Zip disk has completely disappeared from all graphic design and print production today.

To make a cube bookshelf

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Because she asked for a bookshelf, I built one. A simple cube bookshelf was the plan. Nothing fancy. Something simple and useful. Something to fit under the window.

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To begin with, I visited the local lumber shop for 1″x12″s and 1″x2″ pine boards. Also, I picked up some screws and finishing nails. Already had wood glue, left over wood stain and finish in the garage.

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If I was a master craftsman, I would have made the shelf without screws and nails. Due to lack of equipment (like a proper workshop with a bunch of clamps, a router, and maybe a tenon jig) and time (the ever elusive weekend commodity), dado joint shelves were replaced with two-inch screws and Gorilla® Wood Glue. The only power tools used were a cordless drill/driver, a sander and a jig saw.

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After everything was glued, screwed and sanded, wood stain was selected. The Minwax can of espresso stain was half full, and was sufficient to cover the bookshelf. The stain dried quickly, but I let it dry overnight to let it set.

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Two coats of wood finish completed the project. The bookshelf was installed in our living space with a vase of roses atop it.

Request for a companion cube bookshelf arrived. More wood was purchased and cut. Request for bookshelf with a honey-colored stain finish followed. A quart of Minwax wood stain was purchased. And so on.

Template layout for a children’s book

This crude sketch is quite popular. A reader commented recently how the layout template helped his poetry book project.[1] The web site Moving Writers[2] posted “A Collaborative Writing Study That Will Rock Your Students’ World: Children’s Literature”[3] and linked to my rough layout template.

The origin of the drawing began at a local meet-up of illustrators and artists. The topic of children’s books came up. Several of the artists felt intimidated by the idea of creating a children’s book. As well they should. But it is not a path of labyrinthian impossibility. The big question is how to do it. At the time, I was a creative director for an international publishing company and had designed children’s books — specifically, picture books.

To encourage these artists and writers, here is a general anatomy of a children’s book:

  • 22 illustrations (five spreads)
  • 18 pages of text (51 lines to be specific) and
  • 32 pages (including title pages, front matter and back matter)
  • intro story and character on page four
  • intro dilemma on page 14
  • how to solve problem (pages 15 to 23)
  • problem solved on page 24 and
  • resolution on page 28

Several artists that night asked to take a photo of this sketch of an anatomy of a children’s book with their smart phones. Since then, several readers have expressed similar interest. So, I share this sketch again.

Like all recipes, what you do with the ingredients (i.e. text, words and pages) is up to the artist and writer. And, like any good disclaimer, results do very.

NOTES:
[1] “Anatomy of a children’s book,” coffeehousejunkie.net, December 10, 2012, accessed June 20, 2016 https://coffeehousejunkie.net/2012/12/10/anatomy-of-a-childrens-book/
[2] Moving Writers, accessed June 20, 2016 https://movingwriters.org/.
[3] Allison Marchetti, “A Collaborative Writing Study That Will Rock Your Students’ World: Children’s Literature,” movingwriters.org, May 30, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 https://movingwriters.org/2016/05/30/a-collaborative-writing-study-that-will-rock-your-students-world-childrens-literature/.

Best intentions

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The intent was to watch the sun set and watch full, strawberry moon rise on the summer solstice.[1] But I fell asleep and awoke after 1 a.m. — cloudy, nighttime pondering of lessons in risk management.[2] A few hours later, I watch the light brighten the room[3] as I prepare for a morning walk.

NOTES:
[1] Bob Berman, “Summer Solstice Full Moon in June!,” The Old Farmer’s Almanac, accessed June 20, 2016 http://www.almanac.com/blog/astronomy/astronomy/summer-solstice-full-moon-june
[2] Gregory Orr, “Farther’s Song,” Academy of American Poets, accessed June 20, 2016 https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fathers-song.
[3] Charles Simic, “Secret History,” The Writer’s Almanac, June 19, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20160619/.

Bonus Poem: Late Night Writing

Title poem by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.
Title poem by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.

Poem 12: Prairie Constellations

"Prairie Constellations" by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.
“Prairie Constellations” by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.

Poem 11: Sunrises I and III

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Poem 10: Always Departing

An excerpt of "Always Departing" by Matthew Mulder from the anthology Rooftop Poets.
An excerpt of “Always Departing” by Matthew Mulder from the anthology Rooftop Poets.

Poem 09: Narrative kernel

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One week to go with the write 30 poems in 30 days challenge

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Do you write every day? Not typing or texting, but composing ideas and narratives and lines of poetry?

Earlier this month, I sat in a coffeehouse for almost an hour — during a late lunch break — and all I was able to produce was a 15-line sketch. A rough sketch, but the general motif and elements of the composition were represented.

The challenge of writing everyday is particularly rough when involved in knowledge work all day long. In my case, the mind is revved to creatively solve problems at the office and with internal and external clients. And for an hour in the afternoon, the part of the brain required to compose a few lines of poetry is so exhausted that the task is herculean.

Still. The discipline of exercise is part of the process. Keep training. Keep writing. Drink more coffee.

RELATED BLOG POSTS & NOTES:
[1] April – write 30 poems in 30 days
[2] April – National Poetry Month
[3] 30 poems in 30 days challenge
[4] Write 30 poems in 30 days: a challenge

Poem 08: Reading “The American Zen Master” by Dick Allen

Reading The American Zen Master

Poem 07: A tube of wet rage

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Complications

Delightful read on simplicity and complexity and teaching poetry and more.

Ann E. Michael's avatarann e michael

National Poetry Month has rolled around again, and sophomores enrolled in the Poetry classes are trying to interpret poems. Somewhere along the line, people in the USA acquired the notion that teachers ought to make things simple to understand so that students can learn the material. What about diving into the material in order to learn about it? Asking it questions? Having a heart-to-heart conversation with it? Those are alternate approaches to reaching an understanding.

Truly, one aspect of teaching that frustrates me is that the majority of human beings want everything to be simple. “Simple” has become a click-bait word, an advertising slogan. Even the American embrace of mindfulness largely bases its premise on the idea that mindfulness is simplicity itself, when anyone who has seriously attempted meditation and mindful living can attest that the theory sounds simple enough but the practice is more complex than it seems.

Now…

View original post 442 more words

April – write 30 poems in 30 days

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It is April 15th. If you are participating in the 30 poems in 30 days challenge, than you are half way there!

Some of the results of the daily discipline of writing looks more like sketches rather than fully composed poems. Nothing yet looks like a Coleridge “Kubla Khan” or a Ginsberg “Howl” or even a Bashō haiku. A few sparkling lines, but a lot of raw material.

Fifteen days down. Fifteen to go.

And then the editing begins.

Poem 06: Last night at the New French Bar

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Poem 05: Values

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Poem 04: Loneliness visits

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Poem 03: Reading “My American Body”

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Reading “My American Body” by W. K. Buckley
by Matthew Mulder

Fireflies sparkle
outside. I see them through the
living room window.
It’s the time between
times as I
examine a new hole in
my jeans and consider
“Picking up their shreds
to the tangled light.”
Condensation rolls down
St. Pauli Girl who
makes me sparkle
inside.

NOTES:
(c) Matthew Mulder. All rights reserved.
Originally published in Rapid River Arts & Culture Magazine, October 2005

Poem 02: Saturday Night, Coffeehouse

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NOTES: Originally published in Rapid River Arts & Culture Magazine, April 2004. Unable to locate the printed artifact nor find a digital version on the publisher’s website, I photographed this draft of “Saturday Night, Coffeehouse.”