Recent Contributions from Munier Salem

Chem-E Car Team Wins With Most Accurate Car

Munier Salem — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Cornell’s Chem-E Car Team competed this Sunday in the national Chem-E Car competition, taking first place with their shoebox-sized hydrogen fuel cell car. The competition was held at the American Institute of Chemical Engineer’s Centennial annual meeting in Philadelphia.

The cars were designed to transport anywhere between zero and 500 mL of water anywhere between 50 and 100 feet in under two minutes. Right before the competition commenced, an announcement was made that this year’s competitors would need to transport 250 mL exactly 60 feet.

The Cornell team’s vehicle stopped zero inches from the 60-foot marker — the first time a car has ever demonstrated that level of accuracy.

shiny, me push

Munier Salem — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Designing History

Munier Salem — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

America has voted and Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America. Students storm the libraries, cheers erupt in Collegetown Bars, and the staff of the Cornell Daily Sun frolick, drunk, through the Commons into a party held by the Ithaca Workers Council.

The staff heads back to 139 W. State street and up to the board room to hear the election speech. With Obama's word of hope and message of change, we file downstairs to finish up the paper. Time to design the front page.

science & politics

Munier Salem — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:08:54 -0400

Weill Hall

Munier Salem — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:01:44 -0400

Nano in Context

Munier Salem — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:38:46 -0400

Famous Experiments

Munier Salem — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:21:26 -0400

Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Munier Salem — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:48:02 -0400

Wilson Lab & the ERL

Munier Salem — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:51:06 -0400

A Bright Future: Wilson Lab Competes to Build Ambitious Bright X-Ray Source

Munier Salem — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In a tunnel deep below Alumni Fields, electrons accelerated to nearly the speed of light have revolutionized scientific discovery by allowing researchers to form images on the atomic scale using powerful X-ray radiation. Cornell physicists are currently planning an ambitious expansion to this facility, which will provide a more powerful X-ray source which promises to push the limits of atomic imaging.

The expanded device, known as the Energy Recovery LINAC (ERL), will use an unprecedented number of superconducting cavities to provide a continuous, bright stream of X-rays which scientists will harness to image tiny molecular objects previously impossible to see.

A Tenth of a Billionth of a Meter

The Half-Palestinian Gay Guy from Poughkeepsie

Munier Salem — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I want to talk about politics, because you are reading the opinion section, so chances are it’s a subject you enjoy. My mother is the smartest women I’ve ever met, and she once told me never to make political discussions personal. Today I wish to ignore her invariably wise advice and talk about my personal politics. This is my last column that will appear in this section, so why not? My name is Munier, and I’m a half-Palestinian gay guy from Poughkeepsie. Let’s be friends.

Carbon Freeze

Munier Salem — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Fossil fuels suck. I can blame 90 percent of problems on fossil fuels. Illegitimate third world dictators? Fossil fuels got them into power. Illegitimate U.S. presidents? Again, it’s fossil fuels’ fault. Melting ice caps? Toxic air? Destroyed marine life? Rich frat boys who can zip around campus late at night in SUVs, gunning their engines? Well, that’s at least partially fossil fuels, though I also blame trashy television, Abercrombie, and Fitch. But basically, we need to 86 those fossil fuel bitches.

Designing Breaking News

Munier Salem — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:13:17 -0400

Assistant Design Editor Munier Salem ’10 writes about what it was like to design at The Sun the night Schedulizer went down.:

Breaking news on State Street! It’s just after 8:00 p.m. down here at The Sun and we’re rearranging the front page to make way for the PeopleSoft debacle.

In a nutshell, the new software Cornell uses to enroll students is slow, buggy and frustrating to work with. Schedulizer.com, a website that aggregates Cornell course roster information and uses it to create optimized schedules for students, has had enough with the new PeopleSoft, and it has shut down the website indefinitely for its Cornell clients.

Turn and face the Sun, cha-cha-changes!

Munier Salem — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:27:59 -0400

Well folks, we here in the design department are working furiously to bring you fresh new layouts for the fall semester (I always thought fall fashion trumped spring's anyway!). Carol is in the home stretch, working on a brand new Ecplise layout on thick, white magazine-style paper. We're also pumping out a tweaked sports section, featuring a new "Inside Sports" bar, a new "Inside This Issue" bar for the front page and fresh infographic styles and ideas. The entire department has been revving up with assistants and night editors to get ready for the first intense months of school, where we'll be training new staff and balancing new coursework.

Weathering the storm: Design's take on print journalism's decline

Munier Salem — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:55:34 -0400

News Editor Ben Eisen’s '10 recent post on the survival of print journalism in The Sun's From the Editors blog represents a huge concern flowing through the newspaper industry right now: can print survive alongside web based news.

Cascadilla Creek, Sporting a new Span!

Munier Salem — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:51:15 -0400

Fall Creek, Sans Suspension Bridge

Munier Salem — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:48:39 -0400

A Conspiracy Theorist in Design

Munier Salem — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:45:42 -0400

I’ve always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Okay, so perhaps not in the “Who shot JFK?/Where were the air craft carriers for Pearl Harbor?” sort of way… more like in the “CNN is the mouth piece of corporate America” sort of way… So when I stumbled upon an interesting little anomaly in Cornell’s Comprehensive Master Plan, involving a bit of photo-shopping, my first thought was “hold the presses”. My second thought was “well, no one’s updated CMYK in a while…”

The Type-Off Goes National

Munier Salem — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:54:27 -0400

Graphic design has always eeked its way into presidential campaigns. Many remember the famous analysis of the Bush/Cheney and Kerry/Edwards logos which analyzed everything from the choice of fonts (obnoxiously bolded sans serif vs. light highbrow serif) to the placement of the flags (firmly anchored vs. flying off the page). All this seemed to confirm Bush’s brawny, strength-obsessed politics, versus the perception of Kerry as an elite weakling.

McCain/Obama logos

Munier Salem — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:54:13 -0400

John McCain and Barack Obama's 2008 primary logos.

Bush/Kerry Logos

Munier Salem — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:53:00 -0400

The George Bush and John Kerry logos from the 2004 general election.

Current Blog Logos

Munier Salem — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:51:02 -0400

Current blog logos are photographic, and come in many sizes with no standard typography.

Great Power, Great Responsibility

Munier Salem — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:46:31 -0400

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy! Your dedicated Sun editors are currently scattered across the US (and beyond) enjoying a much needed reprieve from Cornell prelims and endless “Sunny” nights putting together Ithaca’s favorite morning Daily.

Despite these large distances, e-mails have been whizzing over the heartland as we take this break from publication to examine the basic elements of the sun and how to improve them. One fun little project I’ve been working on for the past couple days is a logo for a new blog covering developments in the departure of Provost Biddy Martin.

New Blog Logo

Munier Salem — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:46:10 -0400

The new blog logo is much skinnier. The text is more prominently featured in a standard, heavy font. The logo uses two basic colors, and is iconic, rather than photographic.

Current Blog logos

Munier Salem — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:43:57 -0400

Current blog logos feature a lot of stock photography. Their dimensions are not standardized and the fonts are not consistent.

A Study Break, for Gazing Forward

Munier Salem — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:38:14 -0400

Alright people. It’s time for me to confess a dirty little secret. I am a Capricorn… no, not a casual Capricorn— a hard core, anal retentive, pica wielding, algebra-double-checking, relationship-controlling Capricorn. During this stressful time in the life of Cornellians we call “finals week”, I please my anal desires (tehehehe) by making a detailed study schedule.

When a page designer makes a schedule, it of course has to reflect all his design fetishes. For me, it’s neat, clean cut boxes, with gentle shades of green, punctuated by rich bloody red. My font of choice? California FB— light and springy, like the weather that beckons from beyond the library walls.

Light and Springy

Munier Salem — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:37:25 -0400

The use of a nice light, fresh font, like italicized California FB calms me, when the exams start to take their toll!

Oh No He Didn't

Munier Salem — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:36:07 -0400

Sadly, yes, I did make this study schedule, complete with my favorite fonts and colors :)

CMYK Presents "The TypeOff"

Munier Salem — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:01:57 -0400

It takes alkynes to make a world. While we in the Sun Design Department are definitely not nerdy enough to crack such a crude chemistry joke, we do have our own “geek sessions”. One such event took place this past Saturday when Design Editor Carol Zou, Assistant Design Editors Deb Tan and I, sat down for an informal conversation about some Daily Sun fonts, moderated by Arts & Entertainment Editor Julie Block.

'Why I Think Cornell Is Awesome'

Munier Salem — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I love The Cornell Chronicle. Nothing screams journalism quite like the University Propaganda Machine that is The Chronicle. Sure, it’s half weekly tabloid, half corporate memo. But the wonderful folks hired by Cornell to report on Cornell somehow manage to pack words of congratulation into each and every sentence appearing on their thick, white, high-cost paper. I think The Sun could learn a lot by trying to be more like The Chronicle. And so, in an effort to begin this learning process, I’ve decided to spend the next 800 words explaining why I think Cornell is awesome.

First of all, nothing is closer to the heart of Cornell’s awesomeness than its Big Red class sizes.

Sun Silliness

Munier Salem — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:59:55 -0400

Some say that graphic design is basically “selling out to the man”. To these critics, I say… you’re probably right. But in the meanwhile, I’m enjoying page design.

One thing I don’t enjoy are carry pages. You know when you finish a front page article and it says “See DEBATE page 8”? Yup, page 8 is a “carry” page, since the article carries over onto it. We tend to do these pages late at night, under-caffeinated and over deadline. These pages tend to have a lot of ads on them, and fitting the articles is tough, since they have exact word counts (on the front page, articles can spill over).

Admissions Data for Class of 2012

Munier Salem — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:57:41 -0400

Deconstructing Milstein

Munier Salem — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

You can find a link to the audio slideshow "Deconstructing Milstein" by clicking on the image.

Cornellian Psycho

Munier Salem — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Career advice for the budding tycoon in us all

It’s official: socialism sucks. A headline this Saturday in the New York Times slapped upon socialized medicine the red-white-and-blue sticker of rejection as it proclaimed “In Massachusetts, Universal Coverage Strains Care.” A-hah! Take that you northeastern, elitist, pinko-commies.

The terrible system, lacking all the proper scientifically documented invisible hand forces Newton describes in Principia Mathematica, was leading to massive shortages — waiting lists longer than those for attending Harvard! And this was all socialism’s fault.

Barry's Human, Too

Munier Salem — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Every politician — even Saint Barack Obama — is only as honest as we force him to be.

The 2008 presidential election tends to trigger my gag reflex. Corporate America must love how docile we have all become. While they fill Washington with lobbyists arguing over actual policy we sit in our homes listening to uninformed network anchors, whose journalism credentials leave Pulitzer turning in his grave, arguing over which is worse: racism, sexism, or disrespect of the elderly.

Consistent colors.

Munier Salem — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:09:24 -0400

Of Mice, Men and Enginerds

Munier Salem — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Every day, millions of scissors take to the pages of local papers as avid readers rescue interesting content from the eventual fate of their morning paper. The provocative article favorite astrology clipping or picture of Jimmy’s last soccer goal are saved from the recycling bin and forever immortalized on the kitchen fridge or the office bulletin board.

Colonels and Campus Don't Mix: Are ROTC and Academia Compatible?

Munier Salem — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

First and foremost, a university strives to uncover new truths and exciting insights. While this pursuit is always imperfect, it is also self correcting, since the philosophy is to question, research, hear all opinions, hypothesize, doubt and critique. If a textbook fact is false, it will eventually be corrected by anything from an obnoxious undergrad’s e-mail to some ground breaking experiment.

ECAC Standings

Munier Salem — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:18:31 -0500

Hockey Scores

Munier Salem — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:16:50 -0500

A Full Color Press

Munier Salem — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:17:53 -0500

At one point or another in high school English class, a project comes along where the teacher asks you to make a fake newspaper; you know...where the headlines read something along like "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Found Dead" or "Hobbit Finds Gold, Magic Ring." If you’re any sort of ambitious student, you probably tried to make the project actually look like a newspaper with columns, headlines, bylines, tiny type...that distinct, tight, unmistakable look of newsprint, that always made current events that much more intimidating to read.

Post Graduate Preliminary Report

Munier Salem — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:26:34 -0500

Weird Science with AEP

Munier Salem — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The School of Applied and Engineering Physics is home to engineers with an identity crisis. What type of classes does an AEP take? What does an AEP do after graduation? Where on campus do they spend most of their time? Are they scientists or engineers? The typical student in this field has a pretty hard time answering these questions, but if you ever need to know a thing or two about electrodynamics, quantum mechanics or the difference between a Fourier series and a Fourier transform, he or she can definitely help you out there.

Milstein Hall Timeline

Munier Salem — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:32:05 -0500

Milstein Hall Timeline

Munier Salem — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:25:44 -0500

Milstein Hall: A Timeline

Munier Salem — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:55:24 -0500

Sartorial Strategy

Munier Salem — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

With Super Tuesday fast approaching, this year’s winter fashions are politics as usual! It’s time to find out which candidates will rock the exit polls with trendy attire, and what wardrobe nightmares will prevent big wins tomorrow in the unforgiving fashion mainstays of New York and L.A.

Logical Analysis

Munier Salem — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I have a beef with the The Sun. I find its editorials slanted. Fortunately for The Sun, this is perfectly fine. Journalism needs to be unbiased. Op-ed doesn’t. Alright, so The Sun’s journalistic credentials are intact (for the moment), but what about its views? Are they perhaps misguided?

I offer you two examples to illustrate my ‘beef.’ The first is an editorial from Nov. 29, 2006. This was shortly after Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel came to speak at Cornell. It read like this: “Despite talk of large protests outside the event, it seems that most of the would-be attendees took a more constructive approach: they came inside to seize the unique opportunity to question the ‘objectionable’ Israeli official.”

C.U. Students Discover Ithaca Farmers’ Market

Munier Salem — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:53:40 -0400

Article body:

From authentic Cambodian cuisine to massage therapy, adventures abound at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market. Every Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday from early April through Dec. 23, over 150 vendors gather on the shores of the Cayuga Inlet to sell local produce, crafts and food. However, despite its popularity, a proportionally low number of Cornell students venture off the Hill to experience the market for themselves.