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Here are some of the collections that filled our house over the years, not in any particular order: arrow heads, ink wells, pocket knives, antique belt buckles, military swords, Colt pistols, snuff boxes, Scrimshaw, antique currency, Daguerrotype photographs, vintage postcards, railroad watches, coins, bayonets, guitars, carved wooden animal figurines, tin signs, and most recently Zippo lighters.

It’s hard being a father, and it’s hard being a daughter. When one of you is a quiet, blue-collar, middle-aged man, and the other is a chubby pre-teen girl who loves Pokemon, what is there to say? I decided I could start liking antiques more easily than my dad could make the jump to Pokemon, so in the second grade I started collecting too.

Civil War Union coat buttons

The choice of what to collect was made for me, when a friend of the family who owned Dottie’s Florist & Military Antiques Shop gave me a few tiny buttons from the cuff of a Union soldier’s uniform. They were the size of a dime, gold plated, and had proud eagles on the face. Some had small letters on the chest, indicating what type of soldier wore them (C for calvary, I for infantry, and A for artillery).

The back of each button held the mark of the factory who produced it; some said “Extra Quality”, others “Scovill Mfg Co. Waterbury.” The style of these backmarks, as well as the engraving on the face of the button, told a story about who wore them, where they came from, and what they saw.

The manufacturer’s insignia on the back of the buttons

In awe of the history of these tiny adornments, I imagined they’d held a man’s sleeve together while he bled out at Gettysburg. I was caught up in the romance of the period, and the detailed craftsmanship of this overlooked military paraphernalia. I wanted more. I also knew this was my ticket to spending time with Dad, a task that eluded me until then.

We spent Saturdays sweating under the brutal Florida sun, scouring dusty flea markets and haggling at roadside antique stands. If we got an early enough start, by the time we arrived home for lunch we’d usually amassed a decent amount of treasure. We’d spread our finds out on the dining room table, pull the appropriate reference books from Dad’s library (this was before we had a computer), and tell each other about what we’d bought.

These are my favorites: Confederate infantry buttons. I love the solid brass construction. I love the way the soil content of the battlefields they were dug from gives each a different patina. I love the big, blocky, “I.”

Some weekends we’d take road trips to Civil War battlefields, or Dad (a pilot at a small local airport) would borrow a plane and fly us to an out-of-state show. These trips took me all around the South, and along the way I heard the stories of other collectors. They were mostly old men, many of them World War II vets with incredible life experiences. I’d guess many of them have since died, and I feel fortunate to have met them.

Collecting plays a huge role in shaping who I am. It’s taught me to love history, enjoy research, and value the experience of the elderly. I’ve learned to appreciate small details and craftsmanship. These experiences also revealed the introverted, nerdy girl I am at heart.

As the story tends to go, once I turned 14 I stopped collecting buttons and started collecting friends, surfboards, and illicit experiences. This put a halt on my relationship with my dad, since I spent my teenage years trying to be someone completely unlike him. He did the same thing at that age.

I’ve since rediscovered the nerdy girl I was before. I love collecting and treasure hunting, and nothing is more precious to me than sitting in companionable silence with someone equally obsessed with details.

I started this post because I was thinking about collecting things, and wondering why I treasure my buttons, dozens of ceramic owls, piles of old cigarette tins, and rows of broken vintage cameras. Each appeals to me for different reasons, and each requires their own post. But I love that sitting down to write about the things I have collected really means writing about my father, my favorite childhood memories, and who I am.

Rob and Jeffery’s statements resonate with many of us, and not just creatives. Jason (boyfriend, fellow Studiomate, iOS developer) regularly writes emails to his boss detailing a coding problem he’s having. Most of these emails are never sent, because the simple act of writing the problem helps him to solve it. Similarly, I’ll often drop what I’m doing to write a post about a thought that’s picking at my brain. Once the idea is “on paper,” I can go back to focusing on the task at hand.

For me, that’s the real beauty of writing. Ideas can be noisy, heavy things. Trying to ignore them is like trying to ignore a bored cat. It will sit on your chest while you’re resting. It will paw at you while you work. It will purr, it will scratch, but it will not go away until it is acknowledged. Writing is how I acknowledge an idea, so it will finally go to sleep.

Usually, the writing is pleasurable, if not easy. It’s a selfish, cathartic act. The hard part is publishing. After all, I don’t want to pollute your feeds with this noise. And the style of my site isn’t quite right yet. Maybe one day I’ll write something worthy of posting to my crappy little blog. But, in the meantime, it’s best to continue to Save as Draft.

But I’ve come to realize that, while it’s good to practice writing, it’s just as important to practice publishing. Posting my ideas teaches me to edit myself, spark conversations, and accept criticism. Being evaluated is an essential part of a creative career; it happens every time I try a new style, propose a first mockup, or give a presentation. Right now, I’m not very good at accepting critiques. I suspect that publishing will help me develop this skill.

In conclusion, this post has several aims. It is my start to developing a new habit: I will write ideas down, and release them. This post is also intended to be a warning: I am going to be publishing more things! If you find this an unwelcome declaration, I encourage you to back out now. Lastly, in writing this I hope to encourage all of you to follow suit: share your thoughts, start conversations, and don’t be scared.

The view. Photo by Raul Gutierrez

Also, this past week was my last at Hoefler & Frere-Jones. During my brief time with them I learned a great deal, and it still blows me away that I was able to work with such a legendary group of designers. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done, and I can’t wait to see all the amazing things they’re sure to do in the months and years to come. I’m going to miss working with them, and I wish them the best of luck.

The reason for my departure is nothing dramatic; I’ve just been hungering to do client work again. I didn’t know how much I would miss the pacing and challenges that come with juggling a variety of projects, and I’ve found that without that environment, I’m unfulfilled.

This is good news for any front-end developers looking for full-time work, since H&FJ is hiring again. If you’ve got a strong knowledge of Javascript, and feel passionate about web development, let Jonathan know.

Lastly but definitely not least-ly: what’s next? Well, my good friend Andrew of MetaLab got in touch and said they needed design help right away, and I jumped at the chance. I’ve worked with MetaLab in the past, and we’re a perfect fit. Andrew and his team understand exactly how I work, and our sense of humor and style jive well. Not to mention they’re insanely freaking talented. So, if you’re looking for a fantastic group to make your next interface, get in touch.

There are lots of people watching me stumble around; a few of them are laughing at my faltering, confused steps. It’s okay, I have to laugh at this clumsy stagger too. Some of the observers are hoping I’ll trip and fall, which I often do.

Many are shouting out directions, “go left! No, back a little! Reach higher!” But how do I know they’re not directing me face first into a massive pile of shit? I can hear the voices of the people I love, too, and I trust they’ll guide me clear of any major pitfalls. But I can’t rely wholly on their instruction, because I have to find this thing on my own, sightless as I am.

Sometimes the blindfold is squeezed so tightly around my head it hurts. I feel dizzy and sick and fed up with all the dark, and all I can do is lie very still for awhile. I don’t care to search anymore. If I lay here long enough, I won’t have to.

But I get back up, and I hope I always will. The search is worth it. And every now and then the blindfold slips away for a second, and a vision of the way forward is briefly clear. This makes me hopeful.

So, along the way I pick things up, test them out, and hold them to me. Whispering, “are you The Right Thing? Is this it?” Sometimes I drop them immediately; the smell or the texture are wrong, and it’s obvious this isn’t Happiness. But the best part is when I find a treasure, something that makes the searching worth while, and I carry it with me for as long as I can.

My hope is that eventually I will find this elusive thing, or amass enough of these little treasures that it will still have been a pretty good search.

Even if I trip and fall more than I should, or end up in the occasional pile of shit, I don’t mind. As long as I keep looking.

Coming up next on this silly web design blog: CSS3 Selectors and Media Queries and the Secret World of Box Shadows. I promise.

As some of you may notice, I’m gradually redesigning this site. Here are some of the goals for this undertaking:

• Use a fluid layout
• Design a better logo
• Improve the typography
• Incorporate CSS3 hotness
• Re-think the content

While these sound like good, important objectives, I think the primary drive behind the redesign is that I simply need something different. I can’t look at the same design for more than a year before I start to loathe it.

The erratic type in version one.

After months of adjusting I’d managed to execute the first two goals with some level of satisfaction (though I continue to tweak the layout, and have scrapped dozens of logos). So, I recently decided to start giving the typography for the site some serious thought.

This aim to make the type look better began only with the vague knowledge that what I’d used in the past was rubbish. The original version of Owltastic featured lots of arbitrary all-caps and italics, and the occasional cluster of Zebrawood. As I embarked on improving the type for version two, all I could think to do was to experiment with that old standby of Helvetica and Georgia, juggling the two around, and always feeling they came up short.

One of the many variations on the seal logo.

I started to wonder if part of the problem was that Helvetica didn’t sit well with my pretty new logo, which contained a mix of handcrafted, old-fashioned typefaces. Trade Gothic, Avenir, Georgia, and… Helvetica? One of these things is not like the other.

I decided I needed something that jived well with my love of sturdy but slightly quirky fonts, and almost immediately I fell in love with FF Tisa. I’ve seen FF Tisa around the web for awhile now, and it must’ve been lurking in the massive Design Idea Dump in the back of my mind, because as soon as I set it up it felt right. From the Typedia blog:

“FF Tisa has become a web designer’s darling… Its rugged build, short serifs, lack of decoration, and gently leaning italics are all well suited for the pixel grid.”

Typekit, the service I’m using to display FF Tisa, describes the font as “a softer, more dynamic version of a nineteenth-century slab serif wood type.” This really resonates with me, since along with my endless pining after vintage, decorative typefaces, I am forever hungering for the perfect web-ready slab serif. So, I dumped the dreaded Swiss sans-serif, and settled into FF Tisa.

However, something was still off. The balance didn’t feel right; the headlines weren’t discernible enough, and the body and secondary text weren’t clearly differentiated. Frustrated, I gave up designing, and decided to browse through my forever backed-up collection of RSS feeds.

Owltastic, using FF Tisa, viewed through MIN

This turned out to be the right move, since there I stumbled across Brian Hoff’s link to MIN. Oh man, is this tool useful. I could’ve saved myself from some embarrassing line-height incidents in the past if I’d had MIN in my tool belt. MIN is a simple bookmarklet that, when clicked, hides a site’s imagery, colors, borders, and other ornamentation, displaying a stark, black-and-white version of the design. This helps to narrow the focus to the typography, and ensure everything is balanced and readable. After some experimenting, and frequent references to the godsend that is type-a-file, I struck what seems to be a better balance.

The overall feel for the type on the page was starting to strike the right chords, except for one distracting element: my brand new pretty logo. Now it felt like all the Avenir and Trade Gothic and Archer were competing with the lovely FF Tisa, not to mention how hokey the idea of an “Owltastic seal” suddenly seemed. Seals are trendy and hip and often look amazing, but it just wasn’t me. Of course, if trendy and hip isn’t me, then what is? I am silly. I love to doodle, I like cuteness, and cuteness was something I had in the old design, with its humongous, ridiculous owl.

A snippet of the illustration I created for Interlink

Unrelated to the redesign work, all week I’d been playing with this owl illustration I created for the upcoming Interlink Conference. I’m not sure why I kept returning to this illustration, since I suck at using Illustrator, and the “design” was already finalized.

I use sarcastic quotes around “design” because this little doodle looks like something someone scribbled on a scrap paper, which is exactly what it is.

When Shawn, the conference organizer, told me to make an illustration that is “classic Meagan,” all I could think of was the silly little owl characters I scrawl when I’m bored. So I scanned one in, traced it, and handed it off as a “design.”

The new sketchy Owltastic logo.

This got me thinking that if a hastily sketched owl is “classic Meagan”, then perhaps that’s what should greet visitors to my site. So, I tweaked my Interlink owl a bit and slipped him into the #logo div on the site. The “font” below him is something I drew in 30 seconds in illustrator, and pretty closely matches the crooked, lanky letters I sometimes draw.

Thanks to the new logo and FF Tisa, instead of 5-6 fonts on the site, I have two (if you can even count my hastily drawn “Owltastic.”) Things are simpler now. Simpler feels like progress.

I’m still not happy with the colors, or the layout, or all of the code, and I haven’t even finished the content (is there anything worse than writing your own about page?). And even after all this, I’ll probably still obsessively adjust the type.

I set out to write this blog post about doing a redesign, and almost 1000 words later I’ve barely touched on the ridiculous process I put myself through when selecting a typeface.

When designers do a redesign or personal project, it’s usually the only time we get to work unencumbered by petty demands. The sky is the limit: we can support any browsers we want, use any colors we want, and curse as much as we want. Sounds liberating, right? But if all my projects were this open-ended, then this level of obsessive, tortured adjusting is what my work life would always be like. Suddenly I’m incredibly grateful for the constraints of client demands, art director visions, time, and budget.

There’s a good chance I’ll have another design up tomorrow, but I probably still won’t have an about page.