I hate designers with more good taste than sense. That mess of characters isn't easy on the eyes. It doesn't make you look hip or cool. Making it an image means my readability bookmarklet won't work on it. There might be lot's of good info there but who want's to spend 5 minutes untangling that mess.
People who learn English as a second language and whose native language doesn't use latin letters have an extremely difficult time reading words in ALL CAPITALS.
I was amazed when I gave a class a handout once which had sentences in all caps and they had an extremely tough time reading it.
Since many people do not read each individual letter, but read by looking at the word, putting a word in all capitals changes the structure of the word and makes it more difficult to read.
Hmm... maybe they didn't learn English the way it "should" be learnt, but applied the way Chinese use letters? (aren't ideograms supposed to convey the meaning? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters)
I don't think Russians or other people that use the Cyrillic alphabet, or Greeks have the same problem - so I believe it's not the different character set, but the ideograms.
Learning a language as an adult is hard, I just wonder if it might have something to do with that. (I never had problems reading German or Portuguese in all capitals, or other languages I've tried learning, but they're almost the same language as English or Spanish when compared to an ideogram)
Having studied both Chinese and English, I agree with you. Once you possess some sort of mastery with the English alphabet, you can more or less pronounce words phonetically. You might not know the meaning, but you could at least read it. With Chinese, Mandarin in particular, either you know the word or you don't. There might be clues to the word that (equivalent to English prefixes, roughly) allow you to associate it with an ideogram that you recognize and guess its pronunciation, but then you have to choose among 4 intonations of saying it.
As a Russian reader and the son of two Russian parents who sometimes had problems with learning English later in life, I can agree with you there 100%.
Of all the weird English rules, idiosyncrasies, etc. that would confuse my parents time and time again, words in all-capitals were never one of them.
I'd chock this up to the Chinese alphabet.
It's all to do with what your original language has and doesn't have. My parents still can't understand why you need the word "the" or where you're supposed to use it, since Russian doesn't have anything like it.
As a designer myself, I wouldn't even consider this good taste. It fails at its primary function — being readable — which inherently makes it "bad design." Not to mention the poor leading and awkward formatting, making it hard to follow.
This looked like a standard quite nicely typed "motivational speech", albeit a bit cliché, until the last sentence: "Live your dream, and wear your passion".
Coming from what appears to be (I didn't know them before) a t-shirt company, to me it now reads as "life is short, buy our t-shirts". But maybe I'm just jaded. :)
Not easy to just leave job with wife and kiddo on your shoulders. Yeah it is sounds good, but any job have good things and bad things, i'd say better try to find positive, good things about your job and concentrate on it, learn to concentrate on good things.
I would have been impressed if this was done CSS3, but really... An image? With a wall of text? A wall of text with words being pulled at random? A wall of unreadable text being pulled at random with little stylistic elements and such a variation of weights that my eyes water (and tears flow because of the pain) when reading it? I now wish to never leave the sanctity of my corporate, well paying job which, by the way, allows me to buy stuff, eat, and provide for my family.
I hate this sanctimonious bullshit people try to pull off as being motivational. Everyone knows that loving your job is the best way to go, but you could be doing a lot worse (tried being a shoeless kid with no clean water and a sever case of malnutrition) than not 'loving' your job.
You might not enjoy working at your local McDonalds, but if that's where you are now (for a lack of a better job) you better freaking try your hardest to better yourself, and in the process smile when you're giving me my fricking order. Not everyone has the luck of getting their dream job right away or the benefit of rich parents that allow some fast climbing in the social world. Stop preaching.
I've found it's more about being in the hole than getting back out. It's only when you're really, truly screwed - in the sense that you're out of your comfort zone and have no clear path forward - that real learning happens / your character comes out.
There's very few people who are decent and / or successful who haven't had some seriously hard knocks involved in shaping who they are.
Edit for anecdote: I was a mid 20's guy with an average job and bad investments that put me close to 3/4 million in debt just before the crash. A lot of pain, panic and off the cuff decisions to save my own ass, but hell, was one of the best things to ever happen to me in hindsight.
I don't think the two are related quite so closely.
The idea isn't to do everything alone. The idea behind the walkabout is indeed to find yourself -- and when you return, you are accepted into society as a member. It's a coming of age ritual, and finding yourself is one of those things that only you can do.
My sensei once told me that he could show me the road, but I had to walk it myself. I didn't get as far down the road of enlightenment (google Okinawa Kodokan if you want context) as I did without help, but I did walk the road myself.
Both the articles statement were vague I guess, however I was referring to getting lost in thoughts and the trap of trying to figure everything out before making your move. I really am starting to find that is not have conscious thought about everything you want to do with your life and instead just do it. I really think over thinking or "getting lost" second guessing everything holds a lot of people back, including myself.
But these guys are really great. I met Mike from Hostlee at the 'A Better World by Design' conference up in Providence. He's a really cool guy, and definitely believes in living what you dream. I kinda wish he had designed that whole poster himself.
Still, very cool, considering his dream is helping others.
"Quit your job" is not the crux here. The crux here is "Live your life" and one way of achieving it could be quitting your job. And I think the cut-out is trying to convey the same. It actually says "IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR JOB, QUIT" rather than "QUIT YOUR JOB". Quitting the job or sticking to it will hardly matter as long as priorities are set straight.
Regarding the readability of the message, I think it depends on your reading frequency. I did not struggle at all. And just for the records, my native tongue is not English.
Mixed feeling about your fine comment. On the one hand, it masterfully debunks the original text. On the other hand, it's way too redditty, and I don't know if I want to see this often :)
+1 nonetheless, since your comments are frequently very good.
Hahaha! Very true. Plus you should be lucky enough not to have a spouse hanging around your neck all the time questioning your every move and asking for justification.
