Blog is a funny word

I want to start with I Love Typography: An interview with Kunihiko Okano. When I started reading this I had just finished a cup of coffee, so I was antsy. I thought it was just the coffee that was making me skip over entire sentences of the blog, but upon closer digestion of the material I linked my disinterest to the use of jargon. I mean sure, I’m not that into typography in the first place so it’d be a challenge for anyone to write a blog about typography that’d I’d be in to. But, I won’t say it’s impossible. The interview starts out fine enough; they were smart to start with a general question about how the artist got into type design. I could relate to creating something from scratch and being excited by my progress. However, I quickly lost interest when they started to talk about what I will refer to as insider information such as “Matthew Carter won the Tokyo TDC award in 1993 for his typeface Sophia”. This was still early on in the blog, and they provided a link to help me figure out who Mr. Carter was so I wasn’t completely disinterested yet. Though they were making me work to understand something I had yet to really care about, I didn’t want to press on a link, don’t they know I have things to do (this is the internet equivalent of already being sat on a couch and needing to get up to retrieve the remote across the room)! I understood though, it was after all and interview and they couldn’t break the form to cater to my ignorance. I was obedient for that question. Then they threw more insider information at me: “TypeCooker recipe”, “Typeradio”, “Latin component”, “weight to the inside of the strokes”, “layer script component”. I was kept reading by the use of pretty pictures, and appreciated that they attempted to educate me with the use of these pictures. I even found the part where the interviewee talked about a font that “could be used for social networking by implementing emotional feelings in a font” interesting. But, honestly, it was the fact that this was an assigned reading that kept me reading. Don’t get me wrong, I completely respect the field of typography, and the blog is done well. However, this blog caters more to insiders; it’s not trying to attract ignorant people such as myself into the world of type design, at least not in my opinion. Admittedly the coffee really isn’t helping.

I wanted to start with that one because it helped to highlight what it is that does draw me in to a blog. I don’t really read blogs. Even if I am an insider in the subject matter I still don’t read those blogs. If I do ever read blogs they have to be funny, or even give me some sort of human emotion to connect to. That is why I enjoyed the other two much more. This leads me to believe my expectation of blogs is to ENTERTAIN.

In Mr. Howe’s Live-Blogging Parkinson's: (Re)Learning To Walk, I get the feeling he isn’t necessarily writing for his audience. He is conscious that his audience is most likely going to be people whose lives have been affected by Parkinson’s, but he isn’t writing for them. In my opinion, he is writing for himself. The act of blogging about his experience is therapeutic for him. I get the sense that in the act of blogging he is able to let go of the anger and frustration caused by Parkinson’s slowing him down. By typing it out he is able to come to really insightful conclusions: “I walk a couple of miles every day out of necessity, but my focus is no longer on where I’m going because I’m no longer convinced that I’m automatically going to get there”, and “When I find myself becoming mindless, I snap to and try to alter my step”.  By sharing the perspective of a person with Parkinson’s he actually touches on some universal life experiences. He tints his entry with humor which, again, I get the sense is just him, his personality, and isn’t really out of concern of making a serious topic light. I have the urge to back pedal and say maybe the use of humor was more of a conscious decision to make the blog more open to readers. As soon as the thought enters my mind I dismiss it because I realize it is this strong sense of letting go, of sharing his experience to free his mind that draws me most to this blog.

In Amy Tan’s blog post How to start and end an email, I am immediately drawn in by her humor and informality. I really enjoyed her typos (“r "Guests…”), and enjoyed even more that she points to them, and explains “Aas always,  I  don't proof-read my emails, which saves time,”. She provides a personal entry point for me through my shared experience of being so absorbed in a writing that I, for the time, forget about correctness. Through reading this blog I also realize something else that draws me to certain blogs: talking at length about simple, inane, or everyday things that, when given a humorous twist, become entertaining to ponder. By naming the blog post exactly what it is about I instantly want to know more; how in the world is this person going to make this worth reading? I see it as sort of a challenge to herself, and I am the judge of whether or not she successfully turned email salutations into a must-read.