Issue 18: Eat Your Veggies
On summer, stickers, and (Comic) Sans.
🍅 Tomato Tomato
It’s an uphill battle (me vs. me) to get me to keep writing about summer when fall is RIGHT THERE. I woke up to a crisp in the air. I have so many autumnal posts planned. I’ve already eaten several apple cider donuts. There are upwards of 10 leaves on my lawn. And isn’t time relative anyway? Are seasons not a social construct?
Yes. And…
My wishful thinking cannot stop me from sweating in the Irish sweater I wish I was wearing. It did not stop the tomato daiquiri I drank on Saturday night from tasting seasonally appropriate (I know, I was also surprised). It did not make the sunshine feel any less nice when I ate lunch outside yesterday. And it will not save me from myself when I inevitably throw a Duraflame on tonight in an attempt to manufacture a cozy autumn evening.
If I’ve learned one thing as a designer, it’s that you cannot force anything to be what it is not.2 So often, I have a vision of what I want for a project that, on further examination, does not tell an authentic story. And when I fall in love with that vision, it can be so easy to try and make a circumstantial case for why we should pursue it anyway. But to do that is a disservice to whatever the real story is. Inauthenticity undermines even the dopest of designs, but more importantly, it misses an opportunity to let something beautiful shine. When there are so many tomatoes left to eat, who am I to tell summer its time is up?
That’s why this week, we’re not just eating our veggies – we’re slicing them into a galette and celebrating them like they deserve. What did we do deserve the colors of fresh produce? How on Earth did I spin vegetables into a soundtrack? And most importantly, is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?3 Read on for all this and more!
🌽 Moodboard of the week
This week’s moodboard is a celebration of the late summer harvest. Usually, I like to throw some actual design work into the mix, but honestly, what can humans create that holds a candle to colors like this? Click here to see the original images and full board on Pinterest!
PS – Do you know how hard it was not to make this board all tomatoes? The theme of this week should probably have been tomatoes.
🔍 Question of the week
“Should I judge a potential therapist for putting their email signature in Comic Sans?”
This question made me laugh so hard. Everything in me wants to say, “Yes. Run screaming in the other direction.” But that's probably not fair to them, and, as in everything, my real answer is more nuanced than that.
This image’s source has been lost to the Internet Abyss, but I sourced it here.
The truth is, we’re asking the wrong question here. Should you judge a potential therapist for putting their email signature in Comic Sans? No, probably not. Font choice technically has no bearing whatsoever on somebody’s ability to provide mental health care. None of us are experts in everything, and if this person has been spending more of their energy learning how to provide quality care than how to choose a font, that ultimately bodes well for both their relevant expertise and their time management skills.
That said. Will you judge a potential therapist for putting their email signature in Comic Sans? You’ve answered this question by asking it.
I’ve had a lot of conversations in my life about how branding shouldn’t matter, and however much I love my job, I fundamentally agree with this. I wish we could objectively choose the best products and services based on qualifications alone. But there is no way to avoid branding—and I mean that very literally.
We are hit every day with so much information that we rely on visual cues to help us sort it, whether or not we are aware of it. This doesn’t always mean we look for the most sleek and dazzling design (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I would not trust an overly-branded dentist). But we do look for clues about the service we can expect, and font choice plays a big role in that. When you can simply use your email service’s default font, deliberately choosing Comic Sans establishes an unprofessional first impression that you now have to work to undo.
Regardless of how much time and effort we can put into our brands, it’s important to be intentional about how we will be perceived because people will perceive us no matter what we do. An intentionally designed look and feel is always going to tell the most compelling story. But barring that, simple and professional choices (like your email service’s default sans-serif font) at least allow your expertise to speak for itself. If you are picking a therapist, try not to judge them for choosing Comic Sans. If you are a therapist who has chosen Comic Sans, know that you will be judged.
Submit your burning design questions by sending me a message below. Questions can relate to design itself, entrepreneurship, workflow, or anything you think I may be able to answer. There are no limits.
🎧 Soundtrack of the week
I love you guys too much to make you listen to a fruit-and-vegetable-themed playlist, so in formulating this week’s soundtrack, I thought a lot about the songs that helped me grow up big and strong. Paul Simon’s Graceland and Don McClean’s American Pie run in the background of virtually all of my core childhood memories, and the deeper I dig into the family tape collection, the luckier I feel to have been raised on tunes like these. Listen below, or click here to see the full playlist on Spotify.
🍌 My Favorite Things
I’ve been following Chiquita Banana’s themed sticker campaigns religiously ever since their first Despicable Me promotion (don’t come for me, that movie is amazing). I’m not sure if these are actually in stores, but I am in love with their current range of stickers based on famous paintings.
My approach to design is very methodical and thought out. So invariably, I am most inspired by design that makes absolutely no sense. Why are the bananas art? I think the real question is, why wouldn’t the banana be art?
Check out the Banana Masterpiece collection, created by 23-year-old Italian designer Mariangela Rinaldi, here at the Chiquita Banana website.
🌱 Touching Grass
📖 What I’m reading: Babel. Oh. My. God. With 150 pages still to go, it’s probably too soon to call this my favorite book, but I couldn’t be more obsessed with what I’ve read so far.
🎧 What I’m listening to: My loan for the second Mistborn book finally came through on Libby, so at least 29 hours worth of that.
📺 What I’m watching: A friend of mine highly recommended Origin—the biopic about Isabel Wilkerson and her process writing Caste, which is one of my all-time favorite books.
🍴 What I’m eating: A friend of mine made a gorgeous tomato galette this week, and I’m feeling extremely inspired. Hold me accountable for making this one. Last week’s emotional support passionfruit has not yet become an emotional support passionfruit mousse 😬