Want to know what it’s like to live in NYC? This short film pretty much captures the feel.

THE BEAT OF NEW YORK from tim hahne on Vimeo.

A page from another Sony Move brochure I designed got picked up and posted online fueling a ton of comments from gamers on the Move motion controller. Over 600 comments and counting at this point. You can view the chart and join the fray here.

As a side note, it’s a little disappointing that IGN couldn’t be bothered to get a clean scan of the page. It looks like they used it as a napkin before scanning and posting it. It’s not a big deal for me (I know how the page should look), but as a “publisher” it shows a real lack of concern for quality (and therefore a disdain for their viewers).

For a long time now, I’ve been quietly working to bring more space into the world. Specifically to typography and the em dash in particular. The en dash (–) and to a lesser degree it’s cousin the em dash (—) are some of the most misunderstood pieces of punctuation in the English language. Being a designer, I’m intimately concerned with the visual aspects of text and seeing an en dash crammed in between two words just screams, “HELP!” I find myself adding a single space on either side of the en dash consistently and repeatedly in my work. Using the em dash to separate phrases in a sentence has always seemed jarring and then to use it without any space on either side causes it to act as a hard stop on the eye of the reader. Not very pretty and not very functional.

And I’ve always thought it was just my quirky pursuit of a certain visual aesthetic. One of those quiet tasks a designer faces. A task that at first, you try to turf onto the writers through education (along with many of the other of the finer points of digital typography) but eventually resign yourself to as just part of the job.

Recently though, I came across some typography tips which expressed and reaffirmed my beliefs regarding the en and em dash. And from none other than famed typographer Erik Spiekermann in the FontShop publication, “Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips.” Right there in Tip #2, he summarizes the proper use of both the en and em dash and (thankfully) helps to justify all the quiet work us designers do to improve the visual appeal of the written word.

It’s nice to be in good company (and to have a resource for explanation when the curious ask why there’s a little breathing room around an en dash).

It’s an old motto that, the more information you can give a designer, the better the final design will be. This is especially true in the case of the audience. One of our key audiences, which is near and dear to my heart, is the video game community. I’m of the generation that came of age with the Atari 2600 and hung out in dark arcades dropping quarters, so it’s an audience of which I’m a member. Designing for yourself is always fun and whenever I get a project targeting at gamers I dive right in.

There are a few things that will always peak the interest of a gamer and at the top of my list is robots (others include ninjas and monkeys — both completely viable options). Access Communications hosts an annual party at the gaming industry’s biggest trade show E3 and I was tasked with developing some email invitations for the event. Naturally, I developed, designed and wrote the copy for the invites using a robot theme. The key concept of the 2009 invite was that the event would feature alcohol dispensing robot. After a hard day trudging around the trade show, everyone’s ready for a drink and it seemed natural to combine the two ideas. Of course, the whole idea is meant to be taken as tongue in cheek humor — there would be no actual alcohol dispensing robots at the event (but we can dream). The invite was met with success and even got picked up and posted by the online gamer press which is always a good sign.

When this year’s event rolled around, the team and I brainstormed and narrowed it down to two themes: pirates (another gamer fave) and a continuation of the previous year’s robot concept. The pirate theme centered around a skull and crossbones logo I developed (more on that at another time), but it didn’t have a story behind it. Crafting a compelling story is another key to getting the audience to engage and without a story (or time to develop one), the pirate concept got shelved.

I was also completely intrigued with the idea of continuing the robot story from the previous year. It’s rare that we get the opportunity to tell long arc stories and to continue the conversation with the audience. So many projects are just one time affairs soon to be forgotten. For the follow up invite, I wrote copy that directly referenced the previous year’s invite and moved the story forward. The invite was met with a ton of positive feedback and although it did not get picked up by the gamer press, it had a more substantial impact — Access had to increase the budget for food and booze to accommodate the increase in RSVPs.

Here’s sample screens from the two invites and each links to the full invitation:

E3 2009 Invitation

E3 2010 Invitation

Here’s a few of the comments the team received on this year’s invitation:

• “I will try to make it unless the robots get me first”
• “FINALLY, ROBOTIC BEINGS RULE THE WORLD”
• “Please RSVP me for this event, even though I will have to order drinks from a filthy human and not from a precision calibrated robot”
• “It just won’t be the same without the drunk robots, but I’ll still be there!”

Coming in Part Two: What I designed for the events themselves.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it. Every summer I end up working on projects that are promoting something for the winter holidays. The old phrase is “Christmas in July” and I never cease to find it weird. It may be 90+ degrees outside, but I find myself drawing snow.

Here’s some samples from this summer’s big winter project. They’re from a Sony PlayStation fourteen page booklet I designed and illustrated. I really like the way the cover came out and no one can resist Sackboy.

For an added bonus, one of the pages of the booklet got picked up in the gaming press and posted online — starting a huge debate (i.e., flame war) regarding Sony’s new motion controller.

Here’s a poster I’ve been drawing up for the upcoming holiday weekend. It’s about 90% complete, but I wanted to post a preview before the holiday. There’s still some minor tweaks to do, but I think it’s looking good. I’m thinking of using it as a foray into screen printing — actually working with a printer to get a limited edition run on a nice paper stock. The hard part will be pairing down the colors. I tried to keep it to four colors, but kept coming up with other ideas — and that was before I started working on the texture for the background. In any case, I think I get a version that is somewhere around 4-6 six colors for screen printing (although that’s still a lot). It’s 22″ x 28″.

Sometimes meaning is unintended. Here’s an example I ran across recently that couples hand written text and improper installation to create new meaning.

It’s from a panel of scaffolding on a neighborhood home renovation. Obviously, the panel has been installed upside down and the text is supposed to read, “520 W.”

Instead, when viewed upside down — and very importantly, with the specific handwriting — it now reads, “Moes”

There’s something wonderful in how the “2” transforms into a lowercase “e” right in the middle of what appears to be an all uppercase word. And the number “5” doesn’t always make a good capital letter “S” but yet it works in this case. Additionally, there appears to be no space between the zero and the “W” helping to create a single word. All very accidental and more wonderful for the fact.

Beyond typography and design, it also made me think of “Moe’s Tavern” from The Simpsons.

Mmm…beer.