There’s little better that you could do right now than to go and buy a decent pair of headphones. They don’t have to be those fancy noise-canceling ones or have magical ergonomics or anything like that. They just have to be a decent pair with a really robust range of sound, especially on the low end. Go to an electronics store or buy ’em online, I don’t care. It’ll cost some clams, but you don’t need to spend more than $100. Go now and do that.
Ok, so none of you did that. I’m going to try to convince you that you’re wrong not to. Hopefully I can help you see the error of your ways, plus engender enough trust in me generally that you listen when I make arbitrary and/or ridiculous suggestions in the future.
(If you already own a decent pair of headphones, good job. If you already owned a decent pair of headphones and then bought another pair because I said to, then…less good job? That’s maybe a little too compliant; but whatever, just give them to a homeless guy who needs a pair.)
The reason why it’s imperative that you own a decent pair of headphones is because they, more than any other sound system, will help you accomplish the task at hand: appreciating basslines.
(Actually, the task at hand isn’t to appreciate basslines; it’s to painstakingly build up an analogy that will allow us to talk about the relative importance of design in the context of building systems. But, you know, baby steps.)
If you had a decent pair of headphones, you could plug them into your computer box and listen to some music, preferably rock or jazz. (Something with a bassline, natch.) And then you could lean back in your chair and listen to that music with no distractions, something that so few people ever actually bother to do. And then, on top of that, you could start paying attention to the basslines, and then you might begin to understand what it is I’m rambling about.
Because you’ll likely realize that basslines are awesome.
Which is not to say all basslines are awesome. Lots of basslines suck. Lots of bassists suck. Even when bassists don’t suck, it’s pretty rare for them to get much real respect. It’s the unimportant instrument; not flashy, not sexy, not dramatic or sweeping in its range. It’s just sort of there.
But that’s part of why, in general, basslines are awesome; despite their ubiquity, they’re hugely dynamic. Guitars are, like, whatever, man. Decent guitarists are a dime a dozen, and even if they’re not particularly musical they’ve probably got the technical chops to put out something formulaic. All you really need is the melody and the basic chord structure (courtesy of the songwriter, not the musician), and you’re on your way. You might say that playing the guitar, as part of an ensemble, is an engineering process. You take some inputs produced by a creative person (a songwriter), structure them into a playable guitar part, then play the part, potentially with some creative flourishes depending on your skill and context.
(Woah, did I just make an analogy to engineering? Weird, I wonder what’s coming next.)
But then you have the bassline, which is simultaneously simpler and more complicated. On the simpler side, the bassline is rarely if ever expected to be as technically complicated as a guitar part (unless you’re Rush, i.e. Canadian, eh?). But on the more complicated side, the responsibility is much greater for the bassist. The guitarist just turns a conceptual melody and chords into physical melody and chords; the bassline, in contrast, defines the song’s tone. It drives the rhythm of the song and gives it soul. You might say that the bassline defines the interaction between the song and the person listening to it.
(Oh man, we’re so close I can taste it; are you kids ready for this?)
The bassline, then, is design. (Ta da.)
“Design” is a word, that, frankly, I don’t much care for. It’s not a bad word from a linguistic standpoint (the stressed vowel is a little nasal for my tastes, I guess), but its denotations are many and its connotations even more. Call yourself a “designer” and it’s likely that most people will have an opinion about that, but all those opinions will be different and many incompatible.
Design, at least when I talk about design, is the process of developing this interface between a song and a listener. Unless you’re actually a bassist, though, you’re probably designing something else, like the interface between a user and a product’s functionality (interaction design), or the interface between a person and a space (architecture), or the interface between a person and other people (community design). But it’s always an interface, and there’s always a human being on at least one side of it.
(I suppose, in theory, you could be in the business of designing cellphones for dogs or something. Just…work with me here, ok? The argument still works if you replace “human being” with “entity capable of interaction”, but the latter is boring and wordy and lame.)
Ok, so we’re saying that design is the process of producing interfaces for human beings. Well what does that mean? A bunch of stuff, but let’s focus on two key points, one on each side of the interface:
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Design must inevitably address human psychology. (Fine, or dog psychology. Now go away.) Anything that is designed will be used by a person to interface with whatever’s on the other side of the design. Because the presence of the human being is endemic, it’s imperative that designers know and study how their psychology interacts with that interface. (For some types of design, human physiology or other intrinsic human properties are also likely to be relevant, but human psychology always.)
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Design must inevitably address constraints beyond those intrinsic to human psychology. The “other side” of a design is a product, or a set of functionality, or a piece of art, or even another person, but something that is probably relatively fixed. As such, one of the key tasks of design is to work smoothly within these constraints. (And changing those constraints when they conflict with human psychology/physiology/what-have-you.)
So we’ve said that design is an interface, and it follows that design needs to address the world on both sides of that interface in order to be a “good design”. But what else does it mean for a design to be “good”? What other lessons can we learn from the bassist?
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Design should be fundamental. Like the bassline, design sets the tone of the interface being produced, and thus has a deep impact on how end-users perceive that interface. It also significantly impacts how that interface will inevitably be engineered. You can technically engineer a system without designing it, just like you can technically arrange a song without knowing the bassline, but it’ll probably lack a fundamental coherence. The tone will be more or less arbitrary, and likely won’t be consistent; certainly not ideal for engaging with the human psychology or a system of external constraints, as we claim it must.
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Design should be humane. Because design engages directly with human psychology, there is a social responsibility to do so ethically and effectively. Using design as a way to manipulate people or deceive them is right out. Design that is intentional about efficacy, working with people’s strengths and bypassing their weaknesses, is ideal. And if people happen to enjoy interacting with the design, well, that certainly doesn’t hurt. (For more on what it means for design to be humane, Jef Raskin’s book [The Humane Interface, 2000] is of course the first port of call.)
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Design should be discreet. This is the most controversial point, but, I think, the most crucial. Design is a means, not an end. Design for the sake of improving products/art/what-have-you for human beings is an admirable goal. Design for the sake of showing people what a good designer you are is self-absorbed and runs fundamentally counter to the priority of designing humanely. There is such a thing as too little design, just like the bassist who has no creativity or soul, but there’s also a thing as too much; no one likes an aggressive bassist, because the tone of the ensemble is compromised so one person can show off. A good designer has to sacrifice their own ego for the sake of the people the design is intended to help.
Design is the bassline, then. It’s the process by which something is given not form or function, but force and feeling. It is that thing produced in order to make something merely good into something great at interacting with human beings like us.
Oh, and full disclosure: I don’t actually own a decent pair of headphones. But I’m working on it.
Filed under: Essay | Tags: Beauty and the Beast, Disney, disney princesses
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is, undoubtedly, an outstanding film. It’s the only traditionally-animated feature film to ever be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Cinematically, it’s brilliant, featuring lovely animation and an impeccable score. The story is deeply compelling, with its resonant characters, touching romance, and heart-wrenching tragedy. It also has an atrociously bad ending.
In case the basic plot has escaped your memory, allow me to recap the salient points (spoilers, etc.):
- Handsome prince is cursed for his selfishness, becomes the Beast
- Beautiful girl meets Beast
- Girl and Beast fall in love
- Beast is critically wounded by a jealous suitor
- Girl saves Beast with power of love, and he becomes a handsome prince again
On paper, this sounds fine, if a bit cliché. It’s a tale as old as time the storytelling tradition itself: you’ve got the character development, the romance, the villain, the climax, the resolution. What more could you want?
The problem is Item 3: Girl and Beast fall in love. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the motives for it happening aren’t consistent with Item 5, or at least not the way Items 1 and 3 flow into Item 5…look, let’s back up a bit.
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The Cannon [sic] of the Disney Princess
If I had even the barest smattering of drawing ability, I would draw a picture of the various Disney princesses as cannoneers. But since I don’t, I’m going to have to ask you to just imagine it: the deck of a ship, worn and battered from the ravages of combat at sea; the tempestuous waters, rising in a fury, ready to claim those who fail the trial of war; enemy ships fast approaching (have them manned by Disney villains if you’re really feeling it); and of course the lovely ladies, grim-set and determined, hard at work readying the guns for battle.
Like many people who write (certainly people who write more than I do), I maintain a running list of ideas for things to write about. Ideas range from novels to screenplays, short stories to essays, as well as titles and even individual words I’d like to get around to using if I could only think of a clever enough context. (The number of things I have written purely in order to use a particular word or phrase is larger than I care to admit.)
But by far the oddest thing to end up on my idea list is “whaler fanfiction”.
It’s odd for the obvious reason, i.e. it’s whaler fanfiction. But it’s especially befuddling to me because I have no memory of adding it to the list, and I cannot for the life of me think of why I would have put it there.† But if it’s on the list, I must have thought it was a good idea at some point, right? (That, or I was just trying to sabotage my future self.)
So let’s run with this. How would one write whaler fanfiction?
Filed under: Essay, Rant | Tags: grammar, linguistics, psycholinguistics, spelling, writing
I’ve never been fond of writers. That is to say, I’ve never been fond of people who call themselves writers. I don’t mind people who write; after all, communicating is a very natural thing to do, and if people enjoy writing then they should do it. But it does bother me when “people who write” transcend to that level of pretension required to be a “writer”.
Granted, for some people writing is their career. And if that’s the case, fine; you’re a writer. But I live in Seattle, a city filled with “writers” who can’t write but do it anyways. And even of those who do somehow turn hobby into career, the vast majority can’t write.
There is a discontinuity here, as there usually is with any kind of contentious statement. By “writing”, I am not referring to the ability to put pen to paper and make words come out. Nor am I referring to the practice of describing a series of emotions or ideas with the written word. I’m not even referring to the phenomenon by which people manage to produce something that a publisher wants to sell or a consumer to buy. I’m talking about a craft.
Some people would call writing art, not craft. We have a thing for writing-as-art; we call it “literature”. Literature is fine, I guess; like paintings or symphonies, we have a particular place in our culture for “art” of this type. But I personally have never bought much into it. In the “culinary arts”, there are two kinds of food; food that tastes good, and food that looks good. (Or, at least, looks difficult to prepare.) If you prepare a delicious steak, you’re not an artist. But if you make an inedible sculpture from food, then you are.
No, what we’re talking about here is writing as a craft. Like the culinarian and his ribeye, writing-as-craft is the art (if you will) of digging deep into words, and the ideas that they can express, and from individual lexemes constructing something that is both wonderful to consume and substantive enough that the craftsman can take pride in it. This isn’t writing for writing’s sake; this is writing for creation’s sake. To write is to practice one’s craft in order to make something that is better than nothing. And, like any craftsman, a writer needs tools.
