Let me start from the beginning, I have been using an old version of Microsoft Office Word 2004 for Mac for almost as long as it’s been released. Being a graphic designer, pretty much the only thing that I need Word for is to open Doc files and paste them into InDesign or other text editors like TextEdit or TextWrangler. Shelling out $130 or more for the luxury of text editing just seems to be unfathomable. After all, I live in Rockland County near New York City and that $130 really needs to get spent on rent, or perhaps something more fun than a word processor.

Recently I’ve been running into more and more issue opening up .docx files. Therefore, I decided to give OpenOffice.org a go several months back and try to save the $130. I’d used Open Office for Mac in the past, but it needed to be run out of a Linux window and was a clunky nightmare as a result. Let me just start out by saying the current version of OpenOffice.org 3.4.1 is awesome and a vast improvement!

I’ve recently been involved with a website based in the Blogger/BlogSpot CMS platform. The project required taking tons of old content originally printed on paper and transferring the digital files to Blogger. I initially started copying the files into InDesign to lose all of the excess code bloat and then pasting the resulting text into Blogger’s compose post dialog box. Simple enough, but a lot of the text needed to be reformatted once I brought the stripped out text into Blogger. It was going to be way too time consuming to reformat everything.

Therefore, I took the lazy way out and just started posting it straight into Blogger from OpenOffice.  Following this production method, I noticed right away that the Blogger Theme I was using was displaying some minor code bloat in the site’s post snippets. Well we can’t have that, so I reluctantly went into the HTML view and deleted the bloated code out of each article. It was still faster than re-typesetting everything, after all.

Last night, though, I pasted an old article out of Microsoft Word 2004, which I opened just out of old habit. I was surprised at how much more code bloat seemed to be getting carried over to blogger from Microsoft Word.

So I decided to conduct an experiment and share the results with you fine readers. Both of the examples below used the same exact Word Document. One example copies the document’s text directly from OpenOffice.org into Blogger. The Other copies the text Directly from Microsoft Word 2004 into Blogger.

An illustrated example of the amount of code bloat that is retained when a Word 2004 document is copied and pasted into an HTML text editor

An illustrated example of the amount of code bloat that is retained when a OpenOffice.org document is copied and pasted into an HTML text editor.

I think the results here, really speak for themselves and once again, Microsoft sucks! I’m starting to sound like a broken record. There is simply way more code bloat being produced by Microsoft Word than a OpenOffice.org text document. I found this to be pretty interesting, and useful information (I know I’m a total nerd). I only wish I could further this comparison experiment with Word Perfect, iWork and Microsoft Office X. Based on my statements above, there’s obviously no way I’m going to purchase any of those programs. If any of you readers happen to take an interest in this and want to conduct your own research with these other programs, I would love to see the results, please post them below.

The Meridian Signage for a condominium real estate new development located in Suffern, NY.

Suffern, New York is a really wonderful place to live and work. Its main thoroughfare Lafayette Avenue is reminiscent of the scenery in a Norman Rockwell illustration. The Village of Suffern is known for the historic and beautifully restored Lafayette movie theater which is complete with its own working Wurlitzer organ used during the screening of vintage silent films. For this Graphic Designer, though, the town’s main marquee is the sign near the condominium building known as The Meridian.

This sign was a fun project to work on because the campaign was built from the ground up. Meaning, the development’s logo and entire marketing campaign needed to be designed from scratch. The name “Meridian” conjured nautical imagery based on its association with navigation. Therefore the logo design incorporated a compass rose as the mark. You can see this and other logo design samples in the corresponding portfolio section of this website, by clicking here.

The sign’s design is fairly simple. The primary element is the logo set over a burgundy background, which was the main color in the Meridian’s graphic design system.  Meanwhile the, only supporting color utilized is the Meridian’s cream color. This allows the contact information and Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty logo to stand out clearly in black. The only other design elements in the sign are a few of the condominium’s features and the address.

Because the Meridian sign was intended for only temporary use as a marketing piece, little thought was put into its shape or the materials it was produced with. Instead, size was the sign’s key importance. The sign was created using a four color grand format UV print mounted to a 10 foot by 5 foot sheet of Alumalite and installed on two painted 4×4 posts.

For those unfamiliar with materials Alumalite is a composite substrate consisting of an interior corrugated plastic core sandwiched between two sheets of aluminum. This material is ideal for promoting real estate new development projects because of its durability, lightweight and relative low cost. Its lifespan is not as long as other materials, but for use in real estate marketing it lasts for the duration of most marketing campaigns. The largest size sheet of Alumalite available is 10 foot by 5 foot. Although this size would be too small for readability on the side of an interstate, in a small town like Suffern, it really is quite large.

For Graphic Designers and Art Directors, one of the most validating things in life is to walk past one’s own work. Living in Suffern, this Art Director has the opportunity to walk past a labor of love on a regular basis. It’s rough being a practitioner of the disposable arts, though. As the Meridian Development has almost completely sold out (a good sign for a successful campaign) this sign will be dismantled sooner than I like to think.