Heavy Metal Madness: Content Management by the Pound

Gene Gable

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Some people choose hobbies that serve as antidotes to their work selves — high-risk extreme sports on Saturday, mild-mannered, cautious office worker Monday through Friday. And then there are those of us who pick hobbies that only magnify our work selves — instead of extreme sports we go for extreme compulsion. So if you constantly tap your fingers during work meetings, you may become a budding rock drummer on the weekend. Or you turn workplace meticulousness, which drives your coworkers nuts, into a weekend lording over a perfectly-detailed model-train layout.

I am what you might call an obsessive cubby-holer. I like things to be put in boxes, well labeled, stacked by size, and grouped in some vague way that makes theoretical sense, if not common sense (see figure 1).

Figure 1: A good label is only the first step in a full-function filing system. How you associate items and the type of container you put them in is critical to user friendliness.

To me if something is in a folder, box, tin can, old briefcase, cabinet, or drawer, and is properly labeled, then it’s okay — it’s been dealt with, even if it’s not finished or even started. At least you’ll be able to find it. Never mind that sometimes we spend more time handling projects than actually working on them, but that’s why they call it a compulsion.

So the hobby of metal type is perfect for me — lots of things to be sorted, grouped, boxed, labeled, stored, and retrieved. And the other best thing about content management: lots of cool boxes, metal trays, special cabinets, and unique storage vessels to play with. An organizer’s dream project (see figure 2).

Figure 2: The best part of an analog content management system is all the various drawers, boxes, cans, and trays you can play with. Now all they need are a good set of labels.

A Good Label Speaks Volumes
A label is only good if it’s clear, and if it means the same thing to everyone who needs to use it. In my home shop, I am the arbiter of relevance, and I am free to label something as “Unusual Font” or “Little Pin Guys” if I want to. I know exactly what I mean, and no one else needs to know. But imagine designing a content management system that purports to anticipate almost every need for every bit of information, now and in the future? That’s some challenge, and no amount of Avery labels and Sharpies is going to be enough.

Thankfully, we now have XML metadata so at least the electronic version of my “Little Pin Guys” will also be found by someone looking for “Register Pins” and/or “Spring Tongue Gauge Pins.” This is a great step and is kind of like if I used a Dymo LabelMaker to label everything I own so it all used exactly the same format (see figure 3).

Figure 3: The Dymo model M6 can crank out consistent labels in minutes, and comes with two interchangeable type wheels. Blank tape comes in a variety of Pantone colors.

But these labels are still only as good as the information put into or on them, and labels are only half of the way we find things, anyway. Computers are good at finding words that match, but there is so much more we need.

You Can Learn a Lot by Spying on the Neighbors
The relationships and associations of things to each other is critical to retrieval, and very difficult to automate. Like I prefer to put WD-40 with the spray paint (same size cans and nozzle-application method) than with the other lubricants (mostly in tubes), which go with the glues and caulks (also in tubes and all applied by squeezing). I find things based on their container type, not by their job function or specific chemical content. So far, I have seen only the earliest demonstrations of artificial-intelligence software that can anticipate all the ways people would prefer to organize their content (or glues and caulks for that matter). We pride ourselves at our unique way of doing things, which most of us profess is better than anything the so-called experts could have come up with.

Of course you can force everyone to adopt common work practices and standard tagging and filing methods. This may have to be the short-term solution in the digital world outside my garage, but it takes a lot of the fun and creativity out of work and we should demand better.

Sometimes the Container Makes All The Difference
The reason I prefer my hobby world of cigar boxes, tin cans, trays, drawers, cabinets, shelves, racks, baskets, baby-food jars, and muffin tins, is partly because I think the vessel in which something resides is important. In the digital world the files are fake — just an illusion created with icons to give you a comforting visual reference. In the world of metal type and old print shops, the vessels are numerous, terrific, very real, and a great source of pleasure to we compulsive cubby-holers.

I guess every generation of organizers relies on the tools of the day — you are likely to see several Amazon cartons, See’s Candy boxes, and Altoids tins being put to good use in my garage. But they do not measure up to the quality and organizational usefulness of the historical containers I have found while unpacking this print shop.

Some past owner fancied Portuguese sardines and anchovies, or their shop was located next to the fish market — either way I’ve inherited several well-made wooden boxes that were once the home to tiny salted fish. They (the previous owners, I assume, not the fish) also enjoyed Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese, which once came in wooden boxes that now make a nice home for small fonts (see figure 4).

Figure 4: Thanks to a previous owner’s love of sardines and cream cheese, I now have several perfect containers for metal type paraphernalia.

But mostly I’m discovering the sheer practicality, versatility, and artistry of cigar boxes. When the content management world comes up with the digital equivalent of a cigar box, then we may be getting somewhere.

The Perfect Place to Put Things
I only smoked a cigar once, at a sales meeting during Seybold Seminars Boston 1998 with a group of male executives from Agfa who were later dismissed under a cloud of controversy. (I’m not suggesting the smoking of cigars somehow added to the cloud, though I can’t help but make that association in my own mind.) So I don’t know how modern cigars are packaged, yet I’m guessing it’s gone downhill along with everything else.

But I have discovered that at one time cigars came in really terrific boxes. Finding so many of them full of machine parts, type, art cuts, and what-not has definitely helped transport me back in time, even if it is to a place where men worked 10-hour days in sweltering heat and inhaled toxic fumes (not to mention all that cigar smoke).

At about the time of WWII, 8 cents would buy you a legal mild Havana cigar from Salome. A Roi-Tan was popular at 10 cents, and promised in italic picture type that it is “The Cigar that Breathes” (see figure 5).

Figure 5: Roi-Tan is the cigar that breathes, so you don’t have to worry about doing it. Presumably, “the hole in the head” refers to the cigar, not the purchaser.

White Owl Cigars proudly proclaim on its box that it sponsors Guy Lombardo with Burns and Allen every Wednesday night on the Columbia Broadcasting Network. Optimo features a well-tanned, mustachioed tobacco farmer from Florida, and Sante Fe appeals to “Young Men of All Ages,” while using Victorian sex appeal to sell its product (see figure 6).

Figure 6: Sometimes it makes sense to group items by size or color or theme. Cigar boxes prove not only an effective system, but a pleasing one to look at as well.

These recycled and half-broken boxes all beat the Rubbermaid containers I bought at Target, and they’re much easier on the eye, that’s for sure.

The Cigar Box of the Future
In the analog world, I find things more easily by having a visual picture of their physical location in my mind. And I organize things based on how I work, which is typically linear, but often changes on mood or sometimes even based on what clothes I have on that day. I look forward to the software tools that will allow me to work as unpredictably in the digital world, but I doubt they will ever be packaged as nicely as a box of 8-cent Cubans from 1942.

There are a lot of smart people out there trying to design the perfect repository for the worlds information — a giant web of like-minded computers that can help you find the stuff you need, and point you to stuff you didn’t know you needed (but do), and make sure that when people look at your stuff they see it the way you want them to and only if you want them to. And most importantly, cut out all the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Until then we’ll all continue to fake it a bit and spend way too much time trying to find things.

Postscript: You may want to look at a product like Six Degrees from Creo, which if not yet a useful product–and I haven’t used it so I can’t say–is a great idea for a product. It tries to help users get organized without making them change their work habits. I think Creo is one step closer in the quest to associate information, correspondence, files, and other digital data in a meaningful way.

Read more by Gene Gable.