Book Design Choices I Dislike

I read physical books, still, quite a bit. One might say I do most of my reading in them. That may or may not be true, but it is true for most of my long-form reading. And there are a few things I notice bookmakers doing that I just can’t understand. I would assume that, aside from actually selling you a thing that you want to read, a bookmaker’s job would primarily be to provide you with the best possible reading experience. And many publishers do (my favorite-feeling books are regular Penguins, though sometimes Penguin makes mistakes, too.) And while none of these things will ever drive me away from reading physical books, they seem like easy-to-fix things that the printers would think about.

My least favorite of the three things I’ll mention are deckled edges. I cannot fathom why they still exist when I know that we easily have the capacity to produce nicely squared-off books. If it’s an older volume I’ll let it slide, but what are my brand new, just from the bookstore copies doing with this unprofessional edge? It looks like they don’t know what they’re doing. To some it might make them feel, I don’t know, “nostalgic”, for lack of a better word. But the uneven pages are just a nuisance, it’s hard to keep, find, or even turn a page, which I do quite often when reading a book. It also makes then not fit nicely against the back of bookshelf, I don’t understand why they are there, they only detracts from the reading experience and is so easily avoidable.

Not quite as antiquated or problematic, but just as nonsensical, are dust covers. I will never understand who invented them in the first place, but removal of the dust cover is phase one of reading a hardback book, and feeling bad about completely ruining it is at least one phase at some point in the reading. They just don’t do anything. They protect nothing, and at this point, printer tech has advanced enough that we can print high-quality images right on the book’s cover. I guess they do allow one to swap between the flashy, bookstore cover, and the classical library cover, but who in the world does that? I’ve only ever ripped the things or laid them next to me when reading. I guess they can serve as a bookmark, too, if you want to bend them out of shape.

And least annoying, and only really annoying to those with collections, as it affects the reading of the book in no way, is the inconsistency in the graphic design of series spines. This is especially true before the boxed sets of series are released, when sometimes two books in the same series are released with different spine heights. This is also the most excusable because I know that many people and companies can’t predict the exact time between two books in a series, or if a book will even be a series at all. But, still, a little more consistency would help my shelves a lot. And looking at little problems like that irk me. But I will still read boks, so the publishers have me there

Review – PaperMate Flair Colors – Maroon, Brown, Caramel, and Grey

And now it is time for the final part of my look at the 20 colors of the Papermate Flair pen. This section only has 4 pens, and it’s special because I couldn’t find names for these colors from any official source. So the 4 names presented here are just what I think most represent the colors. Let’s get started and wrap this up.

Papermate flair colors part 4

Maroon – I love a good maroon shade, and this one does not disappoint. It’s easy enough to tell, even amongst other dark colors, what it is, and the tone is nice to look at. It might not be the most natural maroon I’ve seen, but it’s quite good, and sometimes it may even be work compliant. It doesn’t smear much but it’s not the best at resisting water, either.

Brown – The brown is a nice dark, UPS, brown. It doesn’t quite look like dirt, more like bark, and it barely smears. It’s easy on the eyes, blends in with dark colors, and could work in some office settings.

Caramel (error in image where this is labeled as Sepia and Micron Colors are switched) – Caramel is the color I’ve had the hardest time naming. I just don’t really get this light brown. It looks fairly standards, but it’s a bit off from the browns in Micron, Crayola, Pilot, and other such brands. It looks all right, but not the most natural, and most workspaces wouldn’t appreciate it. Although smearing is next to none.

Grey – And the final color is also one of the most boring. Grey is a color I love that isn’t featured in many color sets. And that’s because there isn’t much use for it. In nature I can only think of fog, and in an office only if you convince them it’s just your black pen running out. That being said, it’s a nice dark, even grey with very minimal smudging and feathering.

And there we are, the 20 current colors of the Papermate Flair. I do like them, and even some of the more garish colors are better in these sets than others. There’s a good mix of water resistance, workspace appropriateness, and personality in there. And I would recommend the set if you like tones of colors and like the Flair. But it’s a bit expensive and maybe one should consider the smaller sets if they want specific colors.

Google Non-Functionality

I think I’m an average user of the software services provided by Google. Perhaps I use a bit more than some people, since I upload Youtube videos, but I don’t have an Android phone, so I think that balances it out a little bit. I don’t really want a Gmail address, because I already have an email address (several), but I do have ads on my website and have used Google to run ads for someone else. And, of course, I’m now forced to have a G+ account that I never use, for statistics-jacking purposes. And, I’ve got to say, for being a tech giant, the set of Google systems I’ve used have been surprisingly lackluster.

Now, I’ve used Android devices, and it’s a fine OS, so not everything they create is clunky, but I’ve used a few clunky systems by them, let me tell you. The first is their most prominent: the back end of Youtube. It’s just a mess, unless one is commenting. Then it works well, until the days when that doesn’t work sometimes (for various reasons, like needing a Google+ account). And that was when they were trying to say that the entire library of Google services could be accessed from one account. Not only is that a bad idea that can only lead to compromises (both kinds) in the future, but it shoves a lot of programs and dashboards in the faces of people who don’t want them, (or a damn Google+ account). But it’s also a lie. Yes, in theory I can access all of my Google services through one login, but there is exactly zero integration for this. From Youtube I can get to G+ and AdSense, but there is no way to get back to my Youtube account. I guess I could frantically mash on the back button until I outrun the page reloading and hope my form didn’t expire.

Still, I can understand them not being able to properly link the back ends of their various sites. But since no one I know of was asking for such a thing to be done, it does beg the question as to why it was done in the first place. And why couldn’t Google just wait until they were able to fully integrate their services to launch such a program?

Google tends to do these things now. Quite a while ago they introduced the annotations system on Youtube (was it owned by Google then? I don’t remember), and never updated it to work on mobile devices, which are the main market for Youtube videos now. Since then, they’ve tried to replace it with “cards” which barely function as more than annotations, work completely differently on every possible platform, and replace the Youtube-styled watermarks, making the Youtube watermarking system useless. They did a great job there, if you ask me. They now work like every Google system: vaguely or not at all. I have no idea if I change one setting in one place, how far reaching that change will be, or if it will even do anything.

They’ve made their living and stake in the consumer experience, which is very good. Viewing Youtube always works, even if it isn’t the most pleasant experience. Their search algorithms are great, their ads always show up and work, their email is nice and stores a lot. From what I can tell, Android is responsive, and almost everything loads fast. But they just don’t put that amount of effort into their creator experience. And I’ve taken to not using most of their offerings. The back end of AdSense just confuses me: lots of buttons that don’t go anywhere and two tabs with words that mean the same thing that inexplicably hold different options make it not worth much time. I don’t know how my Youtube Account(s) attach to G+ and since I don’t use G+ I don’t bother learning. Youtube comments are so broken I can’t keep track of the last time they worked, and the differences between the messaging systems just serve to create barriers between people, not facilitate communication. And AdWords is specifically engineered to make stopping your ads a terrible task.

As you can guess I’m not exactly part of the Google fan club, but I don’t hate them. I just wish I could get a more cohesive and well-thought-out experience from them. I’d expect the kinds of broken and untested systems from a startup company, but not from the giant will billions of dollars. I wouldn’t trust their car if they integrated it to any of their other systems as poorly as they do now.

Really, Google has never made that good of a product, as in one that functions and looks nice. It just makes the best search engine and owns the best online video site, and until there is a competitor, they’ll get to make all the mistakes they want.

How I use Notebooks (basic)

Notebooks are a very personal thing, and, many believe, an increasingly less relevant one in this increasingly digital age. Yet some of the large notebook manufactures do claim that as we move to more and more digital media, the urge to use analog becomes greater and greater.

I don’t really care about any of that. I’ve loved notebooks as far back as I can remember. I was always fascinated with pocket books, and I kept all of my old school notebooks to draw in (I wish that had meant my drawing would improve). It used to be that I would just grab and use what was on the shelf at the dollar store, but my tastes and ways of using notebooks have changed significantly.

I do have one problem with notebooks, and I’ve had it forever. I can’t stand having more than one subject for one book. This in the past lead me to cycle through books like nobody’s business, or tear out so many pages that I compromised the book’s integrity. I’ve essentially made up for this now by using each of my books for more general purposes, and letting the very specific topics go into pocket books, like Field Notes.

My main theory on notebooks is that “way too many” is “just about right”. I quite literally have a full shelf of notebooks that I am using currently. That doesn’t mean a lot of use, though:  it just means I started them at some point in the past and haven’t finished with them. Unfortunately for my hopeless system, many of these books will never be finished. The books I do finish are part of my regular system, which breaks down like: Sketchbook (large), Every day drawing (large), Every day ideas (pocket, hardcover), and Pocket (pocket, soft cover). These 4 books generally cover anything I have to do in a given day. From cartoon ideas to grocery lists, they’ve generally got me covered.

If I carry the books I generally carry them in reverse order to what I’ve listed, starting with the pocket book, which goes with me everywhere. And I think it’s very important to have a pocket book go with you everywhere. It’s not only something that I can easily jot notes down in, it’s something that can be easily remembered. When I get home one of the first things I do is empty everything I can from my pockets, and the book is usually one of those things, prompting me to look through it– unlike my notes on my phone, which I keep in my pocket and forget about (though those work in a pinch).

My dedication to carrying a notebook everywhere is aided by the fact that I don’t usually go to non-notebook friendly places (I could use ‘Write in the Rain’ I guess) and that I don’t have a job where my notebooks would get damaged. Mileage may vary on that bit, but I believe it is good to carry a notebook whenever possible. The notebooks that aren’t my pocket notebook go in my bag and can be pulled out whenever I feel necessary, which is generally only during intolerably long wait times, as I, in general, am inclined to sit back and observe before writing in a notebook or diddling on my phone.

When back at my house, notebooks used to be scattered all over the place, but recently I made an attempt to corral them. Now they are generally in one area, that being my desk and the shelf next to my desk. My small living-space allows this quite easily, though at the cost of moving other things (like regular books) farther away from my working area. Still, having a notebook and a pen close at hand is one of the handiest things I’ve ever come across.

For me, the specific notebooks don’t matter. I just have the ones I like at the moment. I do tend to go with cleaner looking, more established company notebooks for my general stuff, though. Moleskines look nicer on the shelf than a bunch of Wal-Mart, dollar store, or even custom-made books do on the shelf, simply because of uniformity, both when being written in, and when finished. And I’ve finished a lot more of my daily writer Moleskine books than my one-of-a-kind, or different-looking books.
So that’s a bit of how I use my notebooks. I’d love to hear how you guys use yours in the comments, and I hope you enjoyed.

Table Topics Family 40 #79-80

QUESTIONS

1. How are you like your mother and how are you like your father?

2. What are the qualities you look for in friends?

ANSWERS By: Austin Smith

1. How I’m not like either would be a much shorter list, and even then I could list far too many things to make this at all interesting. I’m going to have to cheat on this one and maybe come back to it at a later time.

2. Higher than I can find apparently. (the answer is too many to list)