Bobulate

posted on

August 31, 2009

by Liz Danzico

School Day 1.0

Backpacks, notebooks, and leather shoes in need of a firm breaking-in; even if years are significant since the days when there was a purchase protocol for attending school, the metaphors for tradition are no less vivid.

More than 60 years ago, Silas Rhodes and Burne Hogarth founded the Cartoonists and Illustrators School with three faculty members and 35 students, creating a model whereby faculty were working professionals and courses were held at night. This model allowed students to work during the days, brushing up on professional skills if desired. By blurring boundaries between the profession and academia, the founders set pace for art education going forward. They, simply, started a tradition. More…

posted on

December 30, 2008

by Liz Danzico

Anatomy of a Salutation

Salutations have three simple purposes in email. They are the greeting, the email handshake. They set the tone and tempo for the communication that follows. And they establish a hierarchy, depending on whether the writer attaches a title (e.g., “Professor,” “Miss”), thereby creating a formal separation, or a lack thereof.

We know this; many of us have been writing some form of email now for nearly two decades.

But what we may not realize is that when an individual offers a salutation, he or she is not going through some formal motions. He or she is engaged in an activity of relationship-building. A variety of salutations will likely be used over the course of an email correspondence, and their evolution reveals something about the developing relationship (or the perceived one) between the correspondents. Just as you wouldn’t ignore body language that indicates whether someone is intending to shake your hand or high-five you, nor should you ignore email-greeting intentions — no matter how well you know someone. More…

posted on

December 10, 2007

by Liz Danzico

Nothing to Write Home About

I’m not a photographer, but somehow I find myself carrying at least two cameras at any given time: an iPhone camera and either a point & shoot or, more recently, a digital SLR. The latter two are intentional tools—I carry them with the intention of recording something (or hoping something photoworthy will happen). But the iPhone camera is unintentional—its presence is purely circumstantial.

But more and more, I find myself reaching for the iPhone instead of a proper camera. It’s not that the iPhone camera is smaller, more impressive, or even more fun to use. Upon a quick examination of my photos, it seems that it’s not about the camera at all—the contents of my photos themselves are changing. More…

posted on

November 2, 2007

by Liz Danzico

Second Chance for a Last Impression

Forget what you’ve heard about first impressions; it’s the last impressions that count. Last impressions — whether they’re with customer service, an online shopping experience, or a blind date — are the ones we remember. They’re the ones that keep us coming back. But there’s one kind of final impression that people seem to forget.

The closing line of email — that line that you write before you type your name — has been all but forgotten. Go take a look at your inbox: you might be astonished at how little attention people pay to the closing lines when writing email. This underrated rhetorical device is so frequently disregarded that many people have the gall to use an automatic closing line attached to their email signature file. More…

posted on

July 8, 2007

by Liz Danzico

You Say Goodbye

When it comes to answering the phone, I’ve never been one for ceremony. I learned early on that our family was nothing if not practical. When I visited friends’ houses, they would impress us with phone etiquette, “The Barrett residence; this is Brendan speaking,” in their flat eight-year-old voices. But the Danzico kids: we just answered with a simple “hello.” It got the job done. More…

posted on

May 21, 2006

by Liz Danzico

The Gentrification of the Web

After handling the counter of Josie’s Java on Court Street in Brooklyn for two decades, Josie D’Esposito passed away in May 2004. (1) A few weeks of confusion followed, during which neighbors’ whispers (trying to predict the fate of the familiar counter) were quickly followed by the close of the coffee shop. More whispers were followed by a notably cool, yet out-of-place, Thai restaurant’s move in. The gentrification of the neighborhood had officially begun. More…