From the Mailbag
"For a graphic designer, you sure as hell don't have no pictures on your sight."-- J.R.
Julia Responds...Thanks for noticing, J.R.!
Oh! You want more than that.
Well J.R., and the seven others who have written me recently on this very point, this is why I don't have lots of pictures:
I'm still more of a typographer than an illustrator, more enthralled by the use of text than the montage of other folks images, and I am never that pleased with the original ‘graphical’ stuff I've created for this site, in any case. I also spend my days creating images, altering, manipulating, merging, and reenergizing them, and would rather spend my limited spare time working on the content and structure of the site.
This site is very content-focused. I'm interested in words and their effect, the ways letters form ideas, the power of a word to create a shared experience, to teach, to impart, to share, to inform. Words are - for the literate - the single most evocative image I could place on the screen.
In the end - I like words. I like the ways the letters look lined up together. I like the way size and color shape words. I like the way a single word can stand out among the others. I like the power that words have, even when used in the most ordinary of ways.