INTO THESE

Covers from Four Corners Books

PRETTY UGLY

A draft of my book ICEBERGS will be in our Pretty--Ugly exhibition and silent auction at London's Gopher Hole Gallery April 6–7th. 

PROJECTS no. 1

Download it here.

WORKSPACE

Mine.

SOMETHING

CASUAL

KATIE MILLER

SF-based photog Katie Miller.

FINALLY IT'S MARCH

Finally it's March. Pic above of an abandoned mill in Sorrento, found here. Hopefully I'll be able to check it out in a few weeks when I travel down Italy's west coast.

COMPANY

I like these two projects from London-based Company.

FEBRUARY

A DESIGNER

From Michael Rock's essay Fuck Content, 2005.

FLAT

Love these works by Martin Schoberer

TRANSITIONS

From photographer Rachel Rands

SCRAPBOOK

Cut out by illustrator Liam Stevens.

REAL LIFE

Dan Graham, Triangular Solid with Circular Insert, 1989

Courtesy: Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia. Photo: Claudio Franzini.

Found here

HEARTS

Found here.

ELEPHANTS

VERNACULAR

While googling I've happily stumbled upon eggbaconchipsandbeans, a guide of sorts to British caffs written by a man called Russel Davies, who also happens to have founded Newspaper Club.

OSP FOUNDRY

From Open Source Publishing (Brussels), comes OSP Foundry:
Could the production and distribution of Libre Fonts turn this patriarchal system inside out? What if expert and amateur users work together and make improvements to the typefaces they use, what if they share these fixes with others? What if the design of a typeface would benefit from the many eyes of designers working around the world? What if a typeface was not a fixed entity, but a networked set of elements, responding to context and types of use?

ANONYMOUS

NEW

Check out this A0 poster available from New Garde. Use as desktop wall paper or print and hang. Download here.

Q&A

Recently Shoreditch's house & home store Lifestyle Baazar featured me in a little q&a on their blog. Thanks guys!

COLOR

New series of Kafka book covers designed by Peter Mendelsund at Knopf/Pantheon. The calligraphic face, called Mister K (based on Kafka's handwriting) by Julia Sysmäläine, was designed separately in 2008. Read more about it on Peter's blog, or also find more on the CR blog here.

DEERHOOF

Apparently I'd sort of forgotten about one of my old favorites but recently a couple of friends have brought them up, and it feels good today.


The Forbidden Fruits

Desapareceré

Top Tim Rubies

HMMM...

Found on the Pilot Magazine blog (see also: Crisp), an interesting set of experiments from Turkish design studio Antrepo.

META

So yeah, I follow M/M (Paris) on facebook. Posted recently was this photo with the caption "lecturing tonight at head/geneva university of art and design. join us 7pm, auditoire". I guess the photo was taken in the car on the way to the event... shucks.

ILFORD

Found this image on ManyStuff, in a post about an exhibition of works by the Design Research Unit at the International Project Space in Birmingham. What interests me is how current the packaging looks. Either the mid-century trend is totally maxed out, or the Ilford packaging from 1946 is a classic. My vote is for classic.
Recently in a discussion with designer Christian Küsters, he brought up the point that design doesn't always have to be classic -- that one should be able to look at something and know exactly what era it's from. That idea definitely takes the pressure off of trying to make design 'timeless' all the time. Because really, is something actually timeless, or is it just so neutral that it never goes out of style?

ROLL & HILL

Recently graphic designer Alex Lin was featured on Sight Unseen -- a great people blog I've probably mentioned here before. Looking around Alex's site, this was my favorite project I think. Perhaps slightly on-trend with the graphic design scene, it's still pretty out there for a lighting company -- an interesting dichotomy. Roll & Hill's website here.

RIKA MAGAZINE

December cover of Rika Magazine, a new mag about models by Rika, a hand-bag company created by designer Ulrika Lundgren. You can also check out their blog here.
Frankly, I'm not *that* into model culture -- what I find interesting about this is the use of photo-on-photo. Last year a lot of my work utilized this effect and this seems to be a perfect example of collective consciousness (if we want to call it that). People in two separate places in the world creating the same type of work independently from one another -- I guess it's responding to the same stimulus in the exact same way, creating a movement of sorts. Too bad the wiki page on collective consciousness doesn't give us much to go on... maybe a good topic for a psychology MA.
Anyway, I like this cover. Image found here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The blog has been on vacation for the past couple weeks -- I was in Munich and Paris for the holidays, returning back to London with the worst cold of my life. Luckily things are finally getting back to normal. Happy 2011!

1972

Was just watching Woody Allen's Play It Again Sam, a film from 1972 set in San Francisco. The interiors feel kind of familiar, I guess it's the California vibe coming through. I'm trying to imagine the reception of the same poster if it were designed today -- love the cut out silhouette mixed with the super 70s style drawing.

INSIDE/OUTSIDE

LOVE this sitting area featured in the new Acne Paper. The caption reads "An armchair designed by Axel Vervoordt in the Castle's orangery." Orangery? Guess I should go check out the full issue -- image found online.

WHOA

Part psychological inquiry, part political statement, these colorful portraits of past death-row inmates by Julia Ziegler-Haynes are super eerie. Found at Refinery29, via artist and photographer pal Brook Schneider.