Ben Dunkle's Blog

I hate restaurants.

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:24:38 +0000

Most people love restaurants. I’m gonna go on record and state affirmatively that I hate them. I hate being seated, being served (no one should ever be “served” in this world), trying to get the attention of the waiter when something inevitably gets f’d up, looking around at the piles of wasted food everywhere, trying to figure out what the tip is, trying to figure out who owes what, waiting for the bill. Give me local street vendor food and quick/over the counter service, or let me cook it myself.

Eli

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:46:13 +0000

I saw Eli playing with toy guys today-Batman, Frodo, the Mask. I glimpsed him doing it in the front room, in our CA cottage. Probably the last time I’ll ever see it. There is nothing more magical than watching your son play with toy guys; the way their hands and fingers connect with the toy and animate it. I’ll write a book about it someday.

NEA logo entry

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:59:33 +0000

So last month I spent a bunch of time working on a logo design in response to Uncle Sam’s RFP: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/wholl-design-the-new-nea-logo-it-could-be-you/
. Regardless of what I think of spec work, I love high scale design competitions. Too much design is born from who-you-know and schmoozing.
Here’s my submission:

The mccondo

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:06:13 +0000

I’m at the ft Erie town meeting and 2 hours into it were hearing the same pro-condo heads go on and on. Were all in agreement on this point- the town needs more people, more business.
The people you’re gonna get are not what you want. You want people to fix the cottages and build new ones. Most are gonna be summer residents. Sorry, anyone who thinks CB is gonna turn into year round destination is nuts. We need to maximize what we have.

On “Where the Wild Things Are”

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:05:55 +0000

Too much music. Not enough Sea Monster.

Futura vs. Verdana

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:02:45 +0000

OK all you typography snobs out there, up in arms over Ikea’s recent switch to Verdana (google ikea verdana), ask yourselves: If you had one store to shop for all of your furniture, what would it be? Ikea, right.
If you had one font to use on everything you designed, what would it be? Well, you basically have to choose a web-safe, sans-serif font to maximize utility, so here are your choices:
Arial
Tahoma
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
Lucida

Personally, I’da gone with Lucida, but Verdana’s as good as any.

Bang Bang You’re Dead

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:20:16 +0000

I want this book:
http://bit.ly/2dwULc
The kids basically maul each other in a war. This would make such a better movie than “Where the Wild Things Are”.

Things are better for my kids

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:19:57 +0000

A theme you hear is how parents want to make sure their kids have all the things they didn’t. I don’t get that. I had everything; my parents gave us lots of toys and good food and everything. Maybe it was being a child of the 70s/80s, when things were pretty plentiful.

Today I was proud to see my kid Grif riding his bike with his helmet on, while his friends went bare-brained. Growing up, I never wore a helmet, and I rode my bike everywhere. Most of what my kids have I had too, but at least they’re a little wiser.

Textwrangler 3 released

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:15:26 +0000

My favorite text editor just got updated. Woopee!

The BBPress icons

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:07:33 +0000

Here’s some recent icons done for BBPress: