OBEY. Rough Trade have been storming this whole publishing lark of late. Craig Oldham’s new celebration of John Carpernter’s They Live is particularly stunning introduction to their new Epiphany Editions series, featuring fictional books from films made for real.
What Did You Learn from Your Design Degree?
I didn’t study design at university – it was film and theatre for me – so I’ve always been curious about what I missed. Yesterday I tweeted a request for design graduates to summarise in 280 characters or fewer what they had learnt from their degree … and was rather taken aback by the volume of responses.
Read MoreSmall Joys
Thanks to Marie Kondo, there’s a whole lot of talk about “sparking joy” at the moment, mostly in the context of auditing/justifying your clutter. It seems a shame to only acknowledge tiny moments of pure happiness when you’re contemplating whether or not to incinerate an old sweater, so last year I stole an idea from chuckle maven Moose Allain and started cataloguing my own small joys on twitter.
Read MoreAbout about
It's the same every morning. I plonk myself and my coffee down at my desk and harry the computer awake with a random smash of keys. And then there it is, waiting for me, staring at me from the top of my to do list: WRITE ABOUT PAGE.
Read MoreWhy Dinosaurs Matter
Making its way onto my bookshelf and into my brain this week, Kenneth Lacovara’s Why Dinosaurs Matter, expanded from his 2016 TED talk. Every page is littered with paleontological anecdotes (paleontodotes?) and mind-blowing facts, a long-overdue correction to the wildly incorrect dinosaur books of my childhood. Did you know that T-Rex and Stegosaurus were separated by more time than separates you and T-Rex? Or that penguins are dinosaurs? Even the little fluffy ones?
Penguins are DINOSAURS.
Remembering Myspace
Deep in the bowels of my hard drive, I've stumbled upon a back-up of an old blog from my youth. In one charmingly quaint post, I proudly announce my arrival on an exciting new social network website thing: Myspace.
Read MoreChristmas Cards? Again?
Am I doing Christmas cards this year? I can’t very well not do Christmas cards, now can I? I should, shouldn’t I? This seasonal excuse for a spot of self-promotional mailing is too good an opportunity to pass up, surely? So how am I going to go about this?
Read MoreDesigners and Their Notebooks
Ten years ago, Michael Bierut wrote a column for Design Observer about his notebooks – “On August 12, 1982, I took a 10 x 7 1/8 inch National Blank Book Company composition book from the supply closet of my then employer, Vignelli Associates. From that moment, I have never been without one.”
Read MoreIrritating gentlemen, distracted boyfriends and milkshake ducks
“The secret source of humour is not joy but sorrow; there is no humour in heaven” — Mark Twain would’ve loved Twitter. Since its inception in 2006, the platform has become home to both an endless stream of soundbitten misery and a very particular strand of comedic discourse.
Read MoreThe Pebbles on the Beach
We’ve just returned from three glorious days of seaside frolicking at Boggle Hole in Robin Hood’s Bay. Within moments of arriving, I dawned on me that I’d made a huge mistake and neglected to buy Clarence Ellis’ rock-spotter’s guide The Pebbles on the Beach. Faber's beautiful new edition, designed by Alex Kirby and illustrated by Eleanor Crow, has a wonderful fold-out jacket for easy reference and would’ve really come in handy for imparting some geological wisdom to my boy.
In its absence, he had to make do with my own home-brewed classifications, such as:small pebble; largish pebble; black pebble with a stripe; pebble that is probably a new potato; don’t touch that pebble, a dog made it; and fossil it’s a fossil FOSSIL no wait it’s seaweed.
Pestering Artists About Their Pens
Jeffrey Alan Love recently tweeted a sketch, simply captioned “illustrator’s funeral”. Leaning over an open casket, a mourner asks one final question of the deceased: “What pen was that?”.
Read MoreA Burglar’s Guide to the City
I’ve been a fan of Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG for a years – his intelligent look at the world from a very particular architectural perspective makes it one of those blogs that leaves you feeling a little bit smarter after every visit.
Read MoreFont Review Journal
Font Review Journal — informed and insightful writing from Bethany Heck plus lots of examples of fonts in use makes for a fantastic site. The latest review, of Kris Sowersby’s reverse-stress beauty Maelstrom, is a particular joy. An essential bookmark for all designers.
The Face Redux
NME RIP. It was a slow, painful death, but it’s still left a great void in British pop journalism. Which seems like as good an excuse as any to relaunch The Face, right? But not your grandma's The Face; a different kind of magazine to the original, but retaining the same core pop ethos.
Read MoreThe Wolpe Collection
One of my favourite projects from last year: art directing the launch of Monotype’s revived typeface family The Wolpe Collection, working alongside type designer Toshi Omagari and writer Michael Evamy. As well as various bits and pieces of marketing material, the launch involved an exhibition of Berthold Wolpe’s work at the Type Archive.
Read MoreLetraset
Ever wondered how Letraset was made? In this extract from Unit Edition’s Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution, Adrian Shaughnessy talks to type designer and typographer Freda Sack about the process of creating the letters – from making her own tools and cutting stencils by hand to designing entire typefaces.
Between Levinas and Lacan
Cover for Mari Ruti’s Between Levinas and Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics, published by Bloomsbury Academic. One of those designs that just immediately happened, an idea plopping straight out of my head onto the page.
Inflatable war
How the allies tricked the Nazis with inflatable tanks, sound effects, fake officers and terrible camouflage. may 2015
Ghost Army members walked into French taverns wearing counterfeit arm patches from other divisions. They'd talk loudly about fictitious exploits, figuring the lies would find their way back to the Nazis by way of local spies. Fred Fox, who'd produced baby food radio commercials during peacetime, championed these charades … he believed in more showmanship and less military. If you impersonate an infantry division, then you need someone posing as a general roaring up to the fake command post in a jeep. You're not supposed to impersonate high-ranking officers in the army, but Fox persuaded his superiors to go along with it.
Type Safari
If you have a bit of time on your hands (or indeed if you don’t, but are procrastinatively inclined), may I recommend a stroll down the infinite scroll of typesetting.co. It’s an archive of type found on the streets of Leeds – all the painted, stencilled, chiselled, carved, forged, tiled, scrawled, unique, peculiar characters that populate the city.
Read MoreArt Gallery
Staving off freelancer hermitism, I’ve decided to get myself out of the house, find other places to work every once in a while. So today I’m at York Art Gallery. It’s a great spot – there are comfy seats, a respectable wifi signal and a serenity rarely found at home.
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