Out south, walking the far mist I am, this morning—looking off to the Ghost Forest, the ancient legacy of a monster wave, cracked in the earth, Japan, And rolling here—out there, the fogged forest, where dead trees tell their story, a force so great, they are washed clean, salt-poisoned, skeletal. Meanwhile, the same mist glides the dead red cedar grove, And a Kingfisher chitters—“you there, get out!”

This relates my history with ravens, likely—10 years old. Six and more decades later, I still think about it—that day. It goes like this: I was dropped off by my parents at a summer place at that was a boat-in-only location on Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. No roads to it, only by water. With them gone—Mom and Dad—I was immediately bored—and, too, I had an idea that I could walk home. I asked the people there, “where the road was, back to Spokane?” And they said that "it was back that way, over...

The Design of Prada You might know something about Miucci. Then, too, you might know about Luxottica. Of course, I’ve studied these things pretty closely. I’m very interested in design and art, and how Design can make Art more powerful. So when Miucci Prada was thinking about taking over a compound of industrial buildings in Milan to rethink their presence as a significant array of art-filled buildings, who do you think she chose? For everything? them. Well, him. Rem: What you’ll see are...

AS A DESIGNER, A BRAND PERSON — A CREATIVE, A STRATEGIST, A MARKETER — YOU WORK IN THREADING ALIGNMENTS OF CREATIVITY. THAT COMES TO THIS PARALLELISM: THE SYNCHRONY OF HOW YOU THINK, WHAT YOU’VE WORKED ON AND WITH, AS WELL AS WHERE YOU’VE BEEN. IT COMES DOWN TO: WHAT YOU ACTUALLY KNOW, AND WHAT YOU UNDERSTAND — which I’d play as two different things. WHEN IT COMES BACK TO YOU — THINKING JOURNEY, what comes to mind? WHERE WERE YOU? Where did you go? What did you see? Why was any of that...

As designers, we stand to create ideas, impressions, messages and visualizations. And they are patterns — patterning of recognition, patterning pathways, patterning constructions. We create code, don’t we? You might ask, just what is a pattern? It’s an ancient phrasing to the notion of a modeling —something right, as a portrayal, an outline, a plan, a modeling — to that of principle, and yes, a principal. Could be true as a patron, as in the Latin “patronus” — that would be a 14th century...

Sure, we all love type. We love letters that we can relate to — whether handrawn, clean fonts, old-style work or hyper-modernist future fontography. I go old, deep, dark, pre-Christian. Really old. And really new. I like both. Really old. Moderately old. Recent. Now. Future. I go where the story is, and needs to be told. But we forget about how it actually works — the alphabet is a mystery of markings that reach back thousands of years yet in the last 500 years, there has been a wide dispersal...