KC Central Library

Kansas City Central Library Parking Garage

How cool is this? In 2004 the Central Library branch of the Kansas City Public Library moved into a new building which had been the First National Bank. This facade that runs along the parking garage is called the Community Bookshelf; it comprises 22 book spines each measuring approximately 25 feet by 9 feet according to the library's website. They go into detail listing all the titles and mention that they were "suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees", but they never mention who designed the piece. Someone had to have come up with the idea and the layout.

Central Library Children's AreaThe book motif is repeated here in the entrance to the children's area of the library. How fun! I love the quotes (especially the one for "Where the Wild Things Are", a personal favorite).

Stanley H. Durwood Film Vault, Central LibrarySince the library building was once a bank, they made use of the bank vault and turned the inside into a 28-seat theater. Very clever and I wish I could give credit to the designer(s). There are more photos of the library in the library's Flickr set. If I'm ever visiting Kansas City, I'll be sure to check out the library (pun not intended, sorry).

(Via adamengst on Twitter)

Newer is not always better

I am so glad I photographed this building last year. I wish I had taken more photos of the wonderful script lettering used in the signage. It gave the bank such character and fit in beautifully with the other unique establishments in Del Ray.

I always stopped to admire the signage whenever I visited and I never took it for granted. It's a good thing I didn't, because now it is gone. Unfortunately, they changed all the signage to match Burke & Hurbert's new bland/generic brand.

Now the building looks like any other bank, except for the one large bank sign they haven't taken down. It's such a shame. I'll miss those beautiful letters.

Logo Math

I really wish I knew who came up with this hilarious piece. If I find out, I will update the post and give them credit. This is some clever person's idea of how some famous logos originated.

(Via LogoDesignLove)

Eli, no!

Illustrator, graphic designer, Katie Kirk has been a favorite of mine for a few years now. I love her minimalist illustration style. She has written, illustrated, and designed this adorable book called Eli, no!, all about the trouble her dog, Eli, gets into.

She explains how she was inspired to create this book:

The book was inspired by my nephew, Parker. Whenever we were together, I would say "Eli no!" — and every time I said it, he would say it too! He liked how fun it was to say and so did I. I had always wanted to write and illustrate a children's book, and I thought this idea was too fun not to do.

This is the perfect book for dog lovers and for children. You can buy it here.

And this is Katie's dog, Eli.

(Via Graphic-Exchange)

Installing Adobe CS4 on a Mac Running Lion

A couple of months ago I purchased a new MacBook Air (MBA) laptop. The computer came with OS X 10.7 loaded (also known as "Lion"). I ran the Migration Assistant and also installed my applications on the MBA and that is when my problems started. I'm writing this article in hopes that anyone else in a similar situation will have a less painful experience and be able to solve their problem.

I installed Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Premium on the MBA. Most of the applications I used regularly worked fine (InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop). But unfortunately, Acrobat 9 Pro would not run at all. If I tried to launch it, the program would ask for a serial number. When I typed in the one serial number I have for the entire suite, it would reject it. For several weeks I just worked around the problem. The laptop is not my main machine. Also I could create PDFs from InDesign and if I had to view a PDF I could use Preview. But during my regular workflow, I use Acrobat 9 Pro quite a lot to modify PDFs that I create initially from InDesign. So if I was using my laptop, it became increasingly frustrating to me that I could not run Acrobat 9 Pro. So I tried to solve my problem and that's when the fun began.

At first I tried searching for information in Adobe's support articles. As I'm wading through Adobe's labyrinthian website, I get one of those pop-up windows asking me if I want to chat with a support person. My first instinct was to ignore it, but I decide to give that a try. The "support" person was actually just a customer service person and not a tech. So all he wanted to do was sell me on buying an upgrade to CS5.5. That would have cost me more than $500 (this includes the 20% discount they are offering until the end of the year). Oh and about that, when I asked him how long this discount was being offered, he tried to pressure me by implying that it was ending soon and I should take advantage of the offer today. I did not want to open a whole new can of worms by upgrading the software, so I told him I wasn't ready to buy the upgrade. So he was no help and I did not appreciate being pressured in to upgrading.

The next day I tried calling Adobe's tech support (based in India and they don't try to hide that fact). I spoke with one person and told him my story. After being on the phone for a while, it turns out he's not really a tech person and transfers me to someone else. That person hears my story, puts me on hold and eventually drops the call. Despite the fact that this person had my phone number (they ask for it in case you get disconnected), I never received a call back.

Next step, Twitter. Often times it's the best way to get help from a company. While I was on hold I posted this on Twitter: "Trying to chat with Adobe tech support. So far not having much luck." Sure enough, someone from Adobe with the Twitter handle "Adobe_Care" responded: "How did your chat go? What product and issue were you having problems with? ^Bing" Eventually I get a message from Adobe_Care to read this support article entitled "Error “Invalid Serial Number” | Acrobat 9 installed with CS4" and see if the instructions solve the problem. I was nervous to do what the article said because it involved uninstalling the entire suite and at this point all the other programs were working. It was only Acrobat that wasn't working. Unfortunately, my instincts were right.

I followed the instructions from the support article. Ran the uninstaller and deleted the Library files that they mentioned in the article. Then I tried to reinstall the software and this time the installer would not run at all. I never even got to the screen that asked for a serial number. It wouldn't install anything. Now I couldn't run any of the Adobe CS4 applications on the new laptop. I was in worse shape than I had been before I started to contact Adobe. Out of desperation, I tried calling Adobe tech support again. This time I got a tech named Shiva who eventually solved my problem (thank Shiva!). The whole call took about 2.25 hours but in the end, I was able to load the entire CS4 suite successfully on to my laptop and the programs ran (including Acrobat 9 Pro).

It turns out that the first support article was missing a step. After uninstalling all the software and deleting the 2 files from the library, you need to download and run the Adobe CS5 Cleaner Tool. Apparently there have been installation issues with CS5.5, CS5, CS4 and CS3 because this tool resolves the install problems for all these versions. Here's the really strange part, when I ran the Cleaner Tool, it said it didn't find anything it needed to "clean"; however, right after I used the tool I was able to run the installer for Adobe CS4. So who knows what the cleaner tool actually did, but it worked.

But here is where Adobe let me down again. I suggested both to the tech (Shiva) and to the person that handles the Adobe_Care Twitter account that they need to update the support article "Error “Invalid Serial Number” | Acrobat 9 installed with CS4". They need to link this support article to the other article about the Adobe Cleaner Tool and add that as an extra step after doing the uninstall (but before you try to reinstall). Neither person seemed to think this was a good idea. They were just glad that they helped me. But what about the next person that has my same problem? Why make them go through all this just to solve their issue? I hope my story helps someone else.

Update on Monday, November 14, 2011 at 6:38PM by Lisa Glassberg

Today I got an @ reply on Twitter from Adobe_Care thanking me for the blog post and letting me know that they've contacted Adobe's Help & Learning team to look into linking the two tech support documents.