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Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review

What exactly goes into phrase book design?

It’s not exactly a secret that I also blog at Women Learning Thai. And as a designer, design does tend to sneak into my posts.

For instance, in Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review, I found myself critiquing the book designs.

In preparation for that post, I approached the project as if I’d been hired by a client to scout out what arrangements worked best for phrase books, then report back. In detail.

First, I surrounded myself with every type of phrase book imaginable. Then, I culled out the cacca. Next, I immersed myself in all things phrase books by reading each from cover to cover, all the while keeping my design mind open.

Not exactly a surprise was how effective some of the one and two colour versions were. What did surprise me was how a leader in the phrase book business, The Rough Guide, could make a disaster of a colour choice.

In the first sections of The Rough Guide there are 16 pages of light blue with knock out white copy. Have you ever tried to read white copy on a light blue background? Printed on thin paper? You got it, it is pretty much impossible to read in good light, let alone bad.

And when you think about the situations for reading phrase books – dimly lit restaurants, street corners at dusk, at the back of a bus – then it should be obvious to everyone involved that phrase book design needs to be super legible.

But, designers being what they are, sometimes the urge to create something different (insert ‘pretty‘) gets ahead of us and we lose our way. Either that, or someone needs to smack their printer and/or the person responsible for the print check up the side of the head with a paddle. Hard.

Living in the country, I also brought my own Thai culture and language experiences into the mix: what was left out, what didn’t belong, as well as what I found new.

So the other surprise was a seeming lack of a Thailand focus. And here I’m not taking about actual design as in pixels, I’m talking about their target audience.

Perhaps, as a cost savings, some of the larger phrase book producers took the cookie cutter approach by using the same phrases for each country?

Well, I can’t talk about all countries, but I can tell you that it does not work for Thailand. For starters, Thailand does not have ski slopes, or avalanches or ice skating.

What it does have is a rich, embedded culture that comes out in their phrases. Yes, there is another beef coming up…

In Thailand, a common greeting is ‘have you eaten rice yet’ which translates to ‘have you eaten yet’ but really means, ‘how are you doing?’ or ‘what’s hanging?’ or ‘yo mamma!’

And did I find this very common Thai phrase in all of the Thai phrase books? No.

Deep sigh… But, instead of continuing on with a full-blown rant, I’ll leave this rant at that.

The (badly timed) series on Thai phrase books:

• Travelling with Thai Phrase Books
• Using Thai Phrase Books
• Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review
• When They Can’t Speak Thai
• Thai Phrase Books with a Twist
• and one other (still to be determined).

Enjoy…

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Hey all, apologies for incomplete posts going live.

Seems like WP Leprechauns are posting from my drafts folder on a regular basis… ah, the mysteries of life, plugins, whatever.

I’ll get it sorted as soon as I can track the little buggers down.

In the meantime, please try and enjoy the surprise posts if you can…

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Snooty Designer?

The Creativity of Crowds

CrowdSpring aims to slash the cost of graphic design work–and democratize a snooty business.

snooty |?sno?t?|
arrogant, proud, haughty, conceited, aloof, superior, self-important, disdainful, supercilious, snobbish, snobby, patronizing, condescending, uppity, uppish, high and mighty, la-di-da, stuck-up, hoity-toity, too big for one’s breeches, persnickety, bigheaded and snot-nosed.

Yup, that’s me. I’m one bigheaded la-di-da designer with a hoity-toity arrogance.

Want more? Then read…

David Airey’s Forbes calls designers snooty
Steph Doyle’s Forbes Promotes Graphic Design Kitsch
Steve’s Design is a ’snooty’ business: Forbes
Erik Akers’ Designers = Snooty?
Jeff Andrew’s Forbes Magazine: Graphic Design is a Snooty Business
Brian Yerks’ Why CrowdSpring Owners Should Be Ashamed of Their Business

And of course, NO!SPEC’s Forbes Says Designers are Snooty

These past few weeks have been total strangeness.

Thanks Forbes. For everything…

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How to Motivate Creative People

Photo by aleksey.const

Heads up everyone! Mark McGuinness from Wishful Thinking has another fabulously free e-book on offer…

How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself).

An e-book for leaders, managers, directors — and other creative people.

(Do I ever need this… or what?)

Topics covered include:

• What makes creative people tick
• Why motivation is crucial to creative success
• Why you can’t motivate anybody – but what you can do instead
• What Iggy Pop can teach you about management
• Why offering rewards can harm creative performance
• How to write 47 novels before breakfast
• Why some people seem so weird – and how to deal with them
• The positive side of peer pressure

If you missed Mark’s other e-books, you can download them all from his
Free E-books page.

And if you love Mark’s writing (as I do) then truck on over to Lateral Action for even more of Mark.

Enjoy!

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Women Learn Thai

I’m a workaholic by nature, so when I got into the design industry, I was well suited for the multi-tasking ahead.

Coming in from the arts, I had to learn industry standard software, bookkeeping, client juggling, and the dealing of difficult and sometimes errant printers. All while learning design.

Hours were often long, 12-14 and up. Weekends off were few. Holidays were spent passed out, with the scenery a blur.

(I still need to see Bali again… for the first time).

It wasn’t unheard of for my system to crash after a large project.

Feast. Crash. Famine. Recover.

And a given, it was during the Feast, Feast, Feast times where I suffered the most.

Blurry eyed and soggy brained, I’d make decisions impacting the success of a project. And unknown to me at the time, they also impacted my future reputation.

And that’s how I learned an important lesson the hard way (quoted in Jeff Fisher’s must have book for budding designers, The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success).

Get a life, preferably your own!

I was lucky in that it only cost me Singapore $800 to fix that snafu. But, my reputation with that one client was forever changed.

Which brings me to the reason for this post… forever changing.

When I moved to Thailand (needing a change), I went into a sort of semi-retirement from design. But not from all things design. I just moved my interests sideways.

But not sideways enough as I managed to forget my hard-earned get a life lesson.

Sliding into total burnout, my design brain was in fear of a total blackout.

And I guess the combination of the tsunami, then the coup, then the bombs (and now the Yellow Shirts taking over the airport) haven’t helped.

Catching myself, I searched for a non-design outlet.

And face it. Designers don’t just design. Or talk about design. Or eat, sleep, weep design (even though at times it feels we do).

Designers write. They travel. They have wonderful babies and make incredible parents.

And yes, designers learn Thai too…

Women Learn Thai is where I try out my writing skills and photography skills, with a wee bit of Thai thrown in. Oh, and a smattering of design… there’s always that.

And just to show you that I haven’t lost my competitive streak through all this, Women Learn Thai has been put forward for voting at Thai-stars.com

(yes, you can vote too!)

Ps: and now back to DWB’s regular schedule of fabulous design blogs…

And THAT’S a promise :-)

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I honestly thought this would be over already…

Six months ago, I thought all doings PAD would fizzle out and be gone.

And the less it impacted my life, the less I thought about it.

Then came the march on Parliament, followed by the take over of Suvarnabhumi airport, followed by the just announced takeover of our only other airport in Bangkok, Don Muang.

The Thai military is calling for a dissolution of parliament and new elections, but there’s a problem…

The BBC just announced a stalemate (yes, even those of us in Thailand depend on the BBC).

So now I’m waiting to hear the latest news on the announced meeting to resolve this problem… I’m waiting while watching the BBC…

I’m waiting and wondering if I too will be joining the ranks of those done out of their off-station holidays…

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In 2006 I made the long trek to Seattle to meet up with the staff of Creative Latitude and others.

In 2007 we did Seattle again. Only bigger.

I’m now on the back end of the Seattle 2008 trip, which was brilliant btw. To save money, we leased a double decker Penthouse condo overlooking the Sounds. And although we did a lot of running around, I could have easily sat there and stared at the ships going by. And done nothing.

So here I am, recovering from the latest Seattle trip. I’m also recovering from my traditional lookie I’m in the US so must have a cold, cold. Lovely.

Early next week I’ll be heading back to Thailand to warm. I like warm…

See you on the other side…

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10 Most Influential Bloggers

Last year, Home Rejuvenation held a 10 Most Influential Bloggers push.

The winners were…

First place: Design*Sponge
Second place: Apartment Therapy
Third place: MoCo Loco
Fourth place: Decor8
Fifth place: Desire To Inspire
Sixth place: Oh Joy!
Seventh place: Swiss Miss
Eighth place: NotCot
Ninth place: Sfgirlbybay
Tenth place: Bloesem

As you can see from the winners, it’s more of an interior, product design focus rather than communication design. No matter, it’s always fun to watch how these things pan out.

The cast for this year (below) has a great bunch included. There’s some noticeable no shows dotted around, so, maybe give Home Rejuvenation suggestions for 2009? Like, who to add and who to cut?

And maybe they could even separate the focus a bit? Product design, Interior design, Communication design… or something similar…

(not that I’d place even then, but, hey…)

Vote for your favs of 2008…

2Modern Design Talk
30 gms
Absolutely Beautiful Things
An Indian Summer
Another Shade Of Grey
Apartment Therapy
Beach Bungalow 8
Behind The Curtains
Better Living Through Design
Bloesem
Blue Ant Studio
Brilliant Asylum
Casapinka
Charles And Marie
Contemporist
Cool Hunting
Core 77
Cube Me
David Report
Decor8
Design Boner
Design Boom
Design East
Design Milk
Design Observer
Design*Sponge
Design Spotter
Designers’ Block UK
Designers Who Blog
Desire To Inspire
Dezain
Dezeen
Dezona
Fabulously Green
Freshome
Grijs
Happy Mundane
Hemfeber
Home Rejuvenation
Ikea Hacker
Imedagoze
Inhabitat
It’s (K)not Wood
Josh Spear
K-Fresh Designs
Karin’s Style Blog
Katiedid
Laissezfaire
Land+Living
Lena Corwin
Made By Girl
Materialicious
MocoLoco
Mod Mom
Modern Roost
Modish
Notcot
Oh Joy!
Pan Dan
Patricia Gray
Poppy Talk
Print & Pattern
Product Dose
Sensory Impact
Sfgirlbybay
Shelterrific
Style Court
Swissmiss
The Cool Hunter
The Design Files
The Peak Of Chic
The SCOOP
The Style Files
Treehugger
Trend Hunter
Trendir
Uncrate
Yanko Design
Yatzer

Who to add: David Airey and Logo Design Love, both by David. They are two of my favourite blogs this past year, bar none.

And if there’s ever a blog voting what’s it for designers with language blogs, I’d put mine forward: Women Learn Thai

(perhaps a better name would be See the Expat Women Struggle to Learn the Thai Language from the Comfort of Her Own Sofa…)

Note: As mentioned, I’ve been absent from DWB with crazy health problems. With a lot of work to get it sussed, and more than a lot of bitching, I’m coming out of it. Slowly. So please look out for regular features on fabulous bloggers.

Ok, I’ll continue to kick up a fuss… but I’ll be back for sure.

Enjoy…

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Vote for Jeff Fisher

So here I am. Going on the third month of being under the weather. Going on goodness how long of my adopted country heading for another… political party in power? coup?… or… some such. Right now it’s a toss up on what happens today, so, who knows for sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Or next week…

So, in the meantime, what’s a blogger to do?

Decisions, decisions… as whatever it is, it needs to be short and sweet and easy and… you know… easy.

Well, if you are a designer (as I am). And there’s a home-based 100 competition (as there is). And all it takes is pushing one button a day, well, who do you vote for to win?

It’s not exactly rocket science from where I’m sitting, as it’d have to be author and design advocate Jeff Fisher of Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.

Website: Jeff Fisher LogoMotives
Blog: bLog-oMotives
Book #1: The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success
Book #2: Identity Crisis

There’s more, but let’s catch our breath and get on to what we need to do…

… which is to keep on clicking a button. Daily.

I can do that much. How about you?

Please join in by celebrating America’s most outstanding home-based businesses and the people behind them.

Vote for Jeff, or whoever else you believe has busted their butt to make good.

Because they certainly deserve a bit of recognition for their continued hard work. Yes?

Tip: When you decide who it is you want to support, temporarily set their page as your start up page on your browser of choice. Then, viola! You won’t even have to remember to remember.

Simple. Short. Easy. Yeah. I like.

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Back mid-March, the First Logoponds Awards Ceremony was announced. Today David emailed to say the winners were up. Excellent!

I’ve chosen to share the top 8 winners of the awards below, but you can see the winners in total at Logoponds here.

It was quite the job to get through all the winners with a snafu of a connection. But at the same time, a load of fun. Btw – be sure to check out the list of judges as they are a handsome bunch.

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