Comments on: Now That’s What I’m Talking About!

By: janet

janet — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:39:55 +0000

Daniel — I just found a really funny one: “pancreatic eyelet cells.” A good example of the kind of error that a spellchecker won’t catch, since it’s the correct spelling of the wrong word. (For the uninitiated, it should be “pancreatic islet cells,” which happen to be a subject near and dear to my heart.)

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 19:44:24 +0000

On the strength of this entry, I checked it out. It’s decent so far; but I have to say the editorial staff must’ve spent more time goo-gawing at all the blog publicity they were getting than the articles. I found several mechanical errors, including grammar and typos, just on something between a cursory scan and a deep reading. Mind you, if the content’s there it’ll shine past blemishes; but it would be nice if some folks who can keep their significant digits straight to use a spellchecker.

By: janet

janet — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 16:41:31 +0000

Of course I’m a cat person — the cats wouldn’t have it any other way.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:24:47 +0000

But Janet… step back from the complaint about the tear-out crib-sheet about Stem Cells, and look at the bigger picture.

It’s a tear-out crib-sheet about Stem Cells!!!

Isn’t that a great thing to have in a glossy magazine?!! Do you see my point?

-cvj

By: Clifford

Clifford — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:01:59 +0000

“I’m not angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” – Bruce Banner.

Hi Janet,

Believe me, it takes a bit more than that to get me mad at someone! And if I was mad at you, I would not spend precious time replying to your concerns. You just would not hear from me at all. Zip. Nada. You would not exist.

No. I reply to, and make jokes with (as time permits) you and others because you seem to give a damn, whether or not we disagree on things a little here and there.

And now I learn that you’re a cat person. So now it will be even harder to get mad at you….

Cheers,

-cvj

By: janet

janet — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:51:57 +0000

Um, that smiley should have been “p. 8.”

By: janet

janet — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:50:59 +0000

Actually, the main ad/article confusion was an article that I thought was an ad. When I buy a magazine, one of the first things I do is to tear out all the ads that are on stiff paper and toss them out. This makes it easier to flip through the magazine, or to fold it open to a particular page and keep it there — essential to reading a magazine one-handed, or while on a treadmill. I almost tossed out the “stem cell cribsheet,” which is designed to be “tear-outable,” but I realized in time that it wasn’t an ad and kept it. It doesn’t contain anything that was really new to me, so tossing it out wouldn’t have lost me much, but on the other hand if I’d tossed it out without realizing it and then later gone looking for it, I wouldn’t have known what I was or was not missing. There were a few other pieces of content that I thought at first were parts of multipage ads, mainly the “portfolio” pieces and the photo essay.

The column delimiters bugged me because they appear between the pictures (e.g. on p. 8), and since the leaders also appear between pictures I at first assumed that the column delimiter was also pointing from the picture to something. (My husband looked at my post and said “I could have pointed out Lisa Randall to you — I knew her when she was a post-doc at LBL.” Which of course wasn’t the point.) It’s not that I care that much what people look like, I just think that when I see leaders from text to pictures, there’s some reason for them to be there; otherwise, why have them at all?

I think my reaction is partly due to having studied user-interface design and worked in publishing, where I have assimilated the unpopular idea that design should be transparent — that good design is design that you don’t have to figure out how to interpret or use, it’s intuitive. This is not so important with magazines as it is with things like BART ticket machines (don’t get me started) and voting machines (ditto). You’re probably right that this magazine may draw in some people who might otherwise not look at a science magazine. I just don’t happen to like this type of magazine design, so it turns me off.

I am now reading the article on sociobiology. I hope he addresses some of the scientific and theoretical critiques of the field, not just the political ones.

Clifford, I don’t think I’ve ever yelled at you for disagreeing with me. If it came across that way, I’m sorry. I did throw that self-described hissy fit, but I thought we’d resolved that. I hope you’re not still mad at me; I really didn’t intend to offend you.

Scuse me — one of the cats is getting between me and the keyboard. I’d better log off before he types something catty and tries to post it under my name.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:51:40 +0000

Michael D. Thanks for letting us know about Cosmos!

-cvj

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:47:08 +0000

Hi Janet, I looked again. I think you’re being a bit harsh on them. You said:

“For example, as with Wired, it’s not always clear what is an article and what is an ad. And maybe I’m a fuddy duddy, but those stupid little fine lines that criss-cross the page in the apparent attempt to connect a particular image with a particular block of text have got to go!”

Actually, it’s really not that bad at all. I can’t find any ad pages which are not clearly ads…. which one did you have in mind? I don’t think it comes even close to the confusion I’ve seen in several standard magazines.

And the key to the criss-cross line layout idea (used on pages 8, 10, 41, 90, 91, 92, 93, and 94) is that they connect to the corners of boxes. (Except in one place where a box is round… There’s also a small screw up on a dinosaur picture which introduced no confusion. ) It is overall completely unambiguous, and a nice change from the usual methods. I actually agree with them that it makes for a nice alternative to cluttering the graphics with more text than neccessary. (I agree that on page 8 they could have left out the column delimeter lines for a cleaner look, but overall it is not nearly as big a problem as you seem to suggest, to the extent that you had to put it down to get over being aggravated.)

(Oh, please don’t yell at me for disagreeing…)

Cheers,

-cvj

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 21:55:36 +0000

Janet, Sean: The lines are a bit confusing at first, but I found them a nice sort of puzzle after a while. It became kind of fun. I hope they keep it. But then, I was not overly rushed to learn what the writers of the various articles looked like so I can see that you might have got a bit frustrated.

But keep your eyes on the prize here: There’s a lot of pointless design out there bent on creating eye-candy and making stuff look “cool”. But it is usually done on magazines in others fields. I’m very pleased that people are taking the time to play this way with a magazine that is about science. We should support the effort. And no, I don’t mean that we should accept flawed design; just that we keep our eyes on the big picture of what this sort of design endeavour might mean for the goal of getting more people to browse through a magazine about science rather than hollywood stars, or funky-looking table lamps (all worthy subjects, of course)….

At this point someone will now pipe up that this is all missing the point and we should just teach kids better in schools. Yep. Go for it. Sigh.

Cheers,

-cvj