May 2007 – Page 5 – Andrew Careaga

Happy birthday to cool, calm Helvetica

The font Helvetica is celebrating its 50th birthday. The BBC celebrates the font’s staying power as “the butter on the bread.”

.We live in a world where we are surrounded 24 hours a day by adverts and corporate communications, many in typefaces chosen to subliminally complement the message.

Helvetica’s message is this: you are going to get to your destination on time; your plane will not crash; your money is safe in our vault; we will not break the package; the paperwork has been filled in; everything is going to be OK.

It is sans serif. There are no wiggly bits at the end of the letters. It has smooth, clean lines, and an unobtrusive geometry that almost suggests it was designed not to stand out.

Lars Mueller is a Helvetica devotee. He has published a book, Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface, and recently donated an original set of lead lettering to a Helvetica exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“It has a modern attitude which lines up with the aesthetic premises of the 1950s and 60s. Helvetica is a corporate typeface, but on the other hand it’s the favourite of hairdressers and kebab shops. It is the butter on the bread.”

Hat tip: Crazy Monkey.

Hacked, and possibly hijacked, one ID at a time

More than 22,000 current and former University of Missouri-Columbia students are the potential victims of identity theft after a malicious hack attack last week. How the hackers broke into the server is interesting. As noted in Computerworld, the attack came by way of a web form used to track the status of helpdesk queries.

IT staffers noticed unusual activity that began around 5:30 a.m. CDT last Thursday, then tied a large number of database query errors to the problem on Friday. Logs showed that the attacks ended at 9:34 a.m. Friday. That day, technicians disabled the account used to access the database from one IP address in China and another in Australia. The FBI was alerted on Monday.

“The hacker was able to reach the information by making thousands of queries over a span of hours, allowing the identities to be exposed one at a time,” the university reported.

Thanks to Wired Campus for the Computerworld link.

Marilee Jones’ bogus resume: Does it matter?

Writing in this week’s issue of Time, Michael Kinsley ponders whether MIT did the right thing by accepting admissions dean Marilee Jones’ resignation after she admitted that she had doctored her resume. Last month, Jones resigned after confession she didn’t have the academic degrees that were listed on her resume.

Wwhat a pity, though,” Kinsley writes in Time. “M.I.T. has lost an apparently great dean at a time when you don’t read a lot about successful university administrators. And, it turns out, she is one who had a personal as well as professional understanding of the stresses of our rÃ©sumÃ© culture. It would be a useful lesson for M.I.T.’s students if the gatekeeper who gets to award the golden credential of a degree from the world’s most prestigious technical institution is someone who lacks that kind of credential. It would say, ‘Don’t let it go to your head. An M.I.T. diploma isn’t necessary. In fact, it isn’t sufficient either. There are qualities that M.I.T.’s admissions office can’t sort for and its distinguished professors can’t teach. And as you go off to face the world with your M.I.T. degree, you may or may not have them.'”

Kinsley suggests MIT give Jones an honorary degree.

We’re coming up on the season when universities hand out these things with abandon, often to people who never saw the inside of a classroom at this, or sometimes at any, university. These folks get honorary degrees because they gave the university a million or two from piles so large you can’t even see the dent. Then she could go to the university health services and get another piece of paper stating that the rÃ©sumÃ© fib was the result of stress. She’s the expert on rÃ©sumÃ© stress, after all. And then let her go back to the work she apparently does so well.

Friday Five: Cinco de Mayo Eve edition

Happy Cinco de Mayo Eve, gentle reader. I don’t know about you, but all week long I’ve been thinking about kicking back on Saturday with some homemade guacamole, a few cervezas and some appropriate music (or, better yet, some Los Straitjackets!) for the holiday. Perhaps it’s more spring fever than anything. Anyway, in honor of this special day, I offer cinco cosas to ponder this Friday:

Katie Couric rated ‘most negative’ among network news anchors. So says a new poll (link via I Want Media). Who would’ve thought that perky Katie Couric would be a nattering nabob of negativity? Well, she isn’t, despite the headlines. A full 51 percent of those surveyed said they had a positive view of CBS’ Couric. It’s just that more people surveyed think more highly of NBC’s Brian Williams and ABC’s Charles Gibson.

EducationPR provides some good blog coverage of the National Education Writers Association conference in L.A.

Three higher ed blogs I’d like to see updated more often: College v2 (last updated in February), University Web Marketing and Usability (last updated March 22) and, of course, eRelevant (silent since March 30).

Fuzzy Content discusses social networks growing up and sheds light on a couple new networks. (While we’re on the topic of social networks, don’t forget about the latest one for higher ed PR/marketing practitioners, Higher Ed Experts, which combines social networking with professional development.)

My top five albums of 2007, thus far:

Living With the Living, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Rock and roll and politics.
Neon Bible, Arcade Fire. I never thought they could improve upon their debut, Funeral. I’m happy to say I was wrong. More Springsteen than the Smiths, but I’m OK with it.
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Of Montreal. Fun, experimental, ebullient stuff from Athens, Georgia’s quirkiest band since the B-52s.
Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, Rickie Lee Jones. A beautiful ragamuffin interpretation of spiritual concepts.
We’ll Never Turn Back, Mavis Staples. Mississippi Delta blues and gospel at its core from one of the Staples Singers.

Interestingly, all are available for download at eMusic, which offers the best deal for independent music lovers. Better than iTunes, IMNSHO.