i spy candy

Hahaha New York & New Jersey. Why am I not suprised….

Here’s how states are ranked by happiness levels:

1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine
11. Alaska
12. North Carolina
13. Wyoming
14. Idaho
15. South Dakota
16. Texas
17. Arkansas
18. Vermont
19. Georgia
20. Oklahoma
21. Colorado
22. Delaware
23. Utah
24. New Mexico
25. North Dakota
26. Minnesota
27. New Hampshire
28. Virginia
29. Wisconsin
30. Oregon
31. Iowa
32. Kansas
33. Nebraska
34. West Virginia
35. Kentucky
36. Washington
37. District of Columbia
38. Missouri
39. Nevada
40. Maryland
41. Pennsylvania
42. Rhode Island
43. Massachusetts
44. Ohio
45. Illinois
46. California
47. Indiana
48. Michigan
49. New Jersey
50. Connecticut
51. New York

Source: http://www.webmd.com/news/20091217/southern-states-are-the-happiest?src=RSS_PUBLIC

In general, this course has been an eye-openingly interesting semester of discoveries and discussions. The conversational more than lecture style of the course really helped fuel discussions amongst classmates on topics of race, gender and diversity in the media. In some of these discussions I was surprised by what some people had to say on certain topics, usually by how honest they were in sharing their feelings about a certain race such as African-Americans or Asian-Americans. At the same time, I could feel the air in the room tense up when no one was answering a very race-driven question that would be difficult to answer without potentially offending someone in the room. Tense or not, these discussions leave the classroom with me. From the very beginning of the year, when I read my book about Asian-Americans in the media, I started to realize how I was becoming ultra-sensitive to race. I would go on with my life as usual, but I would notice things pertaining to race much more strongly and heavily. On television shows, commercials, magazine advertisements, even the cosmetics aisle at the grocery store. I felt like I was getting offended much more easily and perhaps reading too much into things. In particular, I realized how much my Korean and other Asian friends actually did fit the stereotypes discussed in the book and our class. Being a journalism major, I am one of the very few Asians or minorities in the J-school. Most of all my Asian friends really are pre-med, business, engineering or prepping for law school. It made me realize that, in a way, there are reasons why there is less or limited access to certain minorities. Similarly, the lack of coverage could be a result of a lack of care/activism/response from us—the minority group. If no one wants to report or be reported on, then it’s not going to happen. Obviously, this is not always the case and there is truly a problem with the lack of minorities and diversity in the news and the newsrooms, but at the same time, this class made me realize that there needs to be some effort on our part as well. As to many things in life, teaching and learning—educating is a great place to start.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html?_r=2

I think it’s truly sad that in our society today, a black person feels the need to hide attributes that give away his/her race, such as his/her name and involved organizations. But there is no doubt this article sheds truth on the reality out there. I think the biggest obstacle behind this problem is that white and black people are often not socially integrated and the fallout from this is extended to the dominant group. Also, coming back to our class, the problem is the way these white employers and executives are viewing their colleagues and potential candidates of color: they are holding them to the standards of our culturally-imposed biases of our media. We much challenge the way black culture is packaged and presented as a fundamental misrepresentation of what being black means for so many and in return change the impressions that whites atop major companies (who are already many degrees separated from a real encounter with blacks) have of blacks.

“Minorities in the Media: Where do students fit?” was held in Carroll 143 from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on 11/18/09.

The panelist featured:
-Dr. Trevy McDonald, UNC School of Journalism & Mass Communication
-Dr. Lucila Vargas, UNC School of Journalism & Mass Communication
-Grant Bollmer, UNC Department of Communication Studies
-Sara Gregory, Student, Online managing editor of The Daily Tar Heel Former Print Managing editor of The DTH

Some of the topics discussed were:
1. Do you feel minorities are covered fairly in the media?
2. How do you feel about local coverage of minorities in the media?
3. What is the role of student journalist?

And here are the notes I took during the discussion (the focal points):

1. lack of coverage

-letter to the DTH about the lack of coverage on the step show

-lack of coverage of native americans community

2. racial pop culture branding — the Obama effect

-black men in the age of pres. obama coverage by CNN

-can you take a pop cultural icon like Obama and turn him into a news beat?

3. bad coverage better than no coverage?

-CNN’s Latino in America had some harsh critique saying that it was “sensational and shallow”

4. everyday racism highlighted today

-is it ok to turn an everyday event into a huge news story? (e.g. of Charles Brown)

5. strength of headlines VS sensationalizing with “racially-charged” headlines — having a suggestive headline will draw traffic, but it that fair to use such racially charged headlines then?

-AP News Mt. AIry - 4 Hispanic men shot in Mt. Airy

-“man suspected of fatally shooting four Hispanic men” — does that need to be mentioned in headline if it doesn’t directly relate to incident? How many more eyes/clicks does that story get?

-was fixed by the AP and unable to find the same headline again….

discussion questions

-What is the role of students?

-this idea of diversity curriculum is pretty new in the j-school. (trevy)

-experience and exposure affects their role

-even if you aren’t producing, you are consuming (vargas) “consumer responsibility mentality”

-simply looking at

-Obama bowing to the leaders of other countries is a controversy

-e.g. of a Washington Times editorial blatantly being racist against Obama.

-How do minority based org’s interact with news media?

-How receptive are news ors to criticism that minority groups were covered but just not fairly?

-Minority Groups Beat! - is it wrong to assign writers to cover specific minority groups on regular basis? is forced coverage a solution?

-covering only a specific minority is specialized journliasm

-How can we get students to branch out beyond their comfort zone?

http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/arts/story/213404.html

The Unsung Founders Memorial

The Unsung Founders Memorial located on the lawn of McCorkle Place in front of the Alumni building was created by Korean artist Do-Ho Suh. The memorial depicts 300 black figures holding up a polished table and honors the African-Americans—enslaved and free—who built the campus. The statue is stirring up a controversy because of some criticism that the statue is small (the figures are 2-foot), especially in comparison to the 20-foot tall Civil War solider monument of “Silent Sam,” (aka the Confederate Monument) which stands less than a hundred yards away. Also, the fact that the 2-foot African-Americans are holding a table is the source of much debate. Artist Suh’s specialization in miniatures and the fact that he(?) is Korean and not African is also being criticized by some, such as local poet C.J. Suitt.

I personally feel that starting to criticize the artist and the selection process is getting slightly oversensitive about the topic, especially when considering a black and a Latino artist were also considered in the selection process. However, in the N&O article, UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South said that “Unsung Founders was meant to counter criticism of the Confederate Monument, ‘perhaps the most controversial memorial on campus.’” If that was truly the intentions behind this memorial, than I can see why people are upset about the Unsung Memorial. How is the memorial supposed to counter another monument with such a difference in size? That doesn’t sound right to me. The arguments in favor of keeping the Confederate Monument say that the statue is a part UNC’s history and reality of that time period. If that is history and it is to be preserved, I think there is and we should utilize much more control over what has been created recently, such as the Unsung Memorial, and what is to be created in the future. If we know the Confederate Monument is big, shouldn’t we have created the “countering” memorial just as big?

However, as a design and visuals student, I do have to point out that bigger doesn’t always mean better. The size of the memorials may be important to some people, but as works of art, I think the Unsung Memorial has deeper meaning and thought behind its creation than the Confederate Monument. The Unsung Memorials has symbolism and depth to its meaning, while the Confederate Monument is a literal statue that is very shallow in depth.

I should be studying for an exam I have in less than 8 hours and transcribing an hour-long interview, but instead I am posting this photo that I took last Thursday outside the UL. Autumn is in full-blown mode.

This article reminded me of myself so much! Haha I totally am obsessed with fonts that I run into everyday. Key example? The water-conservation signs on the inside of the UNC bathroom doors. They say pull the lever up for #1 and down for #2. But the “#1” is slightly smaller than “#2.” A defect of Helvetica for sure. Check it out next time people! I swear it’s true! Pics to come…..

——

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/arts/16iht-design16.html?_r=1&em

November 16, 2009 Design By ALICE RAWSTHORN

Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loathe the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage.

Seeing the clean, crisp shapes of those letters and numbers at station entrances, on the platforms and inside the trains is always a treat, at least it is until I spot the “Do not lean …” sign on the train doors. Ugh! There’s something not quite right about the “e” and the “a” in the word “lean.” Somehow they seem too small and too cramped. Once I’ve noticed them, the memory of the clean, crisp letters fades, and all I remember are the “off” ones.

That’s the problem with loving typography. It’s always a pleasure to discover a formally gorgeous, subtly expressive typeface while walking along a street or leafing through a magazine. (Among my current favorites are the very elegant letters in the new identity of the Paris fashion house, Céline, and the jolly jumble of multi-colored fonts on the back of the Rossi Ice Cream vans purring around London.) But that joy is swiftly obliterated by the sight of a typographic howler. It’s like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas.

If it’s bad for me (an amateur enthusiast who is interested in typography, but isn’t hugely knowledgeable about it), what must it be like for the purists? Dreadful, it seems. I feel guilty enough about grumbling to my friends whenever I see this or that typographic gaffe, but am too ignorant to spot all of them, unlike the designers who work with typefaces on a daily basis, and study them lovingly.

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy,” said Michael Bierut, a partner in the Pentagram design group in New York. “My font nerdiness makes me have bad reactions to things that spoil otherwise pleasant moments.” One of his (least) favorite examples is the Cooper Black typeface on the Mass sign outside a beautifully restored 1885 Carpenter Gothic church near his weekend home in Cape May Point, New Jersey. “Cooper Black is a perfectly good font, but in my mind it is a fat, happy font associated with the logo for the ‘National Lampoon,’ the sleeve of the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album and discount retailers up and down the U.S.,” Mr. Bierut explained. “I wouldn’t choose it as a font for St. Agnes Church even as a joke. Every time I go by, my vacation is, for a moment, ruined.”

Choosing an inappropriate typeface is one problem. Applying one inaccurately is another. Sadly for type nuts, movies often offend on both counts. Take “Titanic,” in which the numbers on the dials of the ship’s pressure gauges use Helvetica, a font designed in 1957, some 45 years after the real “Titanic” sank. Helvetica was also miscast in “Good Night and Good Luck,” which takes place in the early 1950s. “I still find it bizarre to see type or lettering that is wrong by years in a period movie in which the architecture, furniture and costumes are impeccable, and where somebody would have been fired if they were not,” said Matthew Carter, the typography designer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The same applies to TV shows, including the otherwise excellent “Mad Men.” It is rare to find a review of the show that does not rave about the accuracy of its early 1960s styling, yet the “Mad Men” team is woefully sloppy when it comes to typography. Mark Simonson, a graphic designer in St. Paul, Minnesota, blogs about typographic misdemeanors on his Web site, www.marksimonson.com, and he once catalogued the flaws in “Mad Men.” The 1992 typeface, Lucida Handwriting, appears in an ad in the opening titles. Gill Sans, a British typeface designed in 1930 but rarely used in the United States until the 1970s, is used for office signage. A lipstick ad features one wholly appropriate 1958 font, Amazone, but two incongruous ones, 1978’s Balmoral and 1980’s Fenice. He noted lots of other clunkers too, but admits that he has spotted fewer new errors in the most recent episodes of “Mad Men.”

“I guess they must be doing a better job,” Mr. Simonson said, adding that the same applies to other TV shows and movies, with the unfortunate exception of the animated feature film “Up,” in which he espied Verdana, a font designed by Mr. Carter in 1996 specifically for use on computers, in scenes set in the 1930s and 1940s. “But I’m not sure how picky you should be with a cartoon.”

Yet another common blunder is the misuse of the individual characters in a typeface that includes obscure versions of letters and numbers as well as more familiar ones. These gaffes often occur when lazy designers confuse one character with another, thereby making the typographic equivalent of a spelling mistake.

The British typography designer, Paul Barnes, remembers seeing one on a poster in a Gap store. “It was set in Adobe Caslon and was supposed to say ‘Your first clothes,”’ he recalled. “Rather than use an ‘f’ and ‘I,’ they decided to use a long ‘s’ and dotless ‘i,’ thus spelling ‘sirst’ rather than ‘first.’ ” He is equally irritated by similar errors in the use of historic fonts, like the archaic black letter typefaces that date back to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

That said, even the type-savvy Mr. Barnes claims to have become more tolerant — or less intolerant — of such howlers over the years. “I’m not sure if it’s a case of growing older, or maybe I have lower expectations,” he explained. “In France recently, I drank some nice Côtes du Rhône wine with a fairly dreadful typographic dress. I was less bothered than I used to be; after all, it’s the wine that’s important!”