playing with letters

I found these collages on my computer, but cannot find the source. Could they be by illustrator Serge Bloch?

the words don’t fit or the medium is the message

Photo by derfrankie • Instagram.

british food

Exquisite paintings by Joel Pinkman. See more here: British food series.

summer snowflakes

How Do You Cut Your Snowflakes?.

I don’t know why I am posting about these winter themes in the middle of summer. Well, I guess I have had very little time for blogging this year and so there is a backlog. Anyway, this is a lovely idea for a simple project, cutting snowflakes out of junk mail by Michele Pacey.

the thing about the internet

 

 

– not only that, I also could not find the source of the photograph.

flat pack writing

 Some Ikea hack that is. IKEA Assembly Service found via S.Oliveros.

aspirational

This was the summer reading for toddlers offered in my local store: children’s magazines with “free” toys: mock mp3-Player, iPhone and mobile phone. Selling early literacy clearly is tied to selling media technology. How to work with that once children start school – that is a question teachers will have to be concerned with.

 

charming poster ads

Here are some funny faux vintage ads from Maximidia Vintage Ads – Poster download.

battles

I have subscribed to the Guardian’s art and culture section, and I find many of the things I read there interesting and educational, in a very good sense. What I mean, is that it makes me come across stuff, I would not know about otherwise, stuff which takes my imagination and thinking in new directions. Well, I guess that is one of the things art is supposed to do. But that is rarely what newspapers do.

As an example, here is Jonathan Jones musing about  Why Albrecht Altdorfer’s masterpiece gives him nightmares and the reader responses.

guydenning comments: I think, with the inscription floating around in finest script at the top, it almost predates modern TV (or early 20th century cinema) news reporting of war. Turning the terrible into a visual entertainment under the allegedly laudable excuse of education.

And somebody with the nick damienhurst writes: well, I certainly adore the craft involved in this painting but it really keeps amazing me how people can’t really understand that such paintings are basically equivalent to today’s commercials. this one even has a “brand logo” there on top.

That is certainly food for thought about the relationship between art and war, the human, terror and the sublime and, of course, the relationship (or battles?) between word and image, and their producers and audiences.

The picture can be dowloaded from wikimedia

merrymaking as political protest

In 1775 Austrian Emperor Joseph II dedicated a large piece of  land  for the use of  “all the people for their amusement and merry-making”. The park with baroque garden design is called Augarten and I live round the corner, and so it is close physically and close to my heart too. Over the years there have been various attempts to build on parts of the land, which have been for the most part thwarted. But since a few years, the City Authorities in liaison with private investors have been planning to build a large concert hall on one end of the land. Protesters have been squatting on and off for three years now. Political protest has become more playful and performance orientated in the last decade or so, for example in the form of flashmobs. But only in Vienna I guess, protesters would come up with the idea to do it in such style and in baroque style too. After some of the trees were cut down last year to prepare the ground for the building work the activists staged a funeral procession around Vienna. On May 1st, Labour Day, they arranged for a colourful protest procession in full regalia. You’ve got to love the dresses! Makes me think of the work of artist Yinka Shhonibare.

Also, they do the prettiest leaflets! I fear it will all be to no avail.

the letter O in film poster design

I enjoyed reading the “The letter O in film poster design” and flipping through this collection of film posters. And here is a blog post about the use of guns as letterform.

I could have sworn I had seen another interesting take on a letter on a movie poster by a film of Shyamalan, but could not remember the title. A quick search revealed –  it was the movie poster for “Signs” which I had remembered. So much for my memory – I could not remember the word, but remembered the play with typography.

neon boneyard

Check out the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. via trendland

type nesting

Dubi Kaufmann created a webiste on typenesting.tumblr.com showing images of birds nesting in letters. How sweet is that!

cryptic messages

On Transcrypt.de by Frank Baranowski you can find a description for exercises in designing mysterious fonts, derived from known latin scripts, which do not mean anything,  see Kryptic 1 and Kryptic2.

Meanwhile I read on Popular Mechanics that the poster for Lost’s final season contains hieroglyphics. Dr. James Allen, Wilbour Professor of Egyptology and Chair of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies at Brown University analyzed the symbols and had this answer: “The hieroglyphs spell out two Egyptian words, meaning ‘Who is the guide?’ or ‘Who is the leader?”

via educating alice

words create worlds

Advertising for Anagram Bookshop in Prague by kaspen 

fantastic!

corporate safety blanket

Douglas Copeland designed some blankets made from cotton and silk. Comfort they may provide, but not much of  security. And they are actually quite beautiful.

alphabet of dialogue

This image struck me as really nice – advertising the Bologna Children’s book fair. I read it as imaginary script, a playful take on literacy, drawing inspiration from scripts from all over the world. A fantasy of what writing could look like in a parallel world. Only by accident I saw that this is an actual text, (tilt your head to the left and you can read it too). How blind  we are sometimes to the obvious. So actually it is a riddle to solve. Sweet.

Update: I just found more info on this here:

AbcBFont_09 is the first of a series of possible alphabets, imagined and designed by Chialab to build the visual identity of Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Year after year these typographical calligraphies will try to underline the fair’s uniqueness and describe its multitude of languages and subjects. AbcBFont_09 is the first typeface designed for the 2009 edition. Many ways of writing from around the world find themselves together sharing the fair’s international character. We like to think of it as the alphabet of dialogue. An alphabet not only black as ink – but a mix of all colours, as we would like the future to be pleasant and colourful.

library promotion

(Image credit: jonathan_moreau).

(Image credit: wcb0028).

I have found this on CrookedBrains:

The residents of Kansas City were asked to nominate influential books that represented their town, and huge forms of the winning selections were then used as the exterior of the library’s parking garage.”

Cardiff Public Library has done something similar:

(Image credit: keithpatterson).

with love from 1972

With Love from Burger King  – a set of “Love” themed post cards by Burger King from 1972, collected by whaffle whiffer on Flickr.

i love my life the way it is

http://ilovemylifethewayitis.com/

Funny project: Ali Alvarez started a collection of lottery scratchcards, however he does not scratch them, ever, he promises. He was thinking about how playing the lottery gets “your hopes high, dreaming, escaping, and then usually being let down.”, which he says; “happens to me on a daily basis WITHOUT the lottery’s help.” He started collecting scratch cards, as an experiment, and showing them to people he found “it makes them a little crazy. I think I’m onto something here.”

I think so too!

hand made campaign

Obama President 08 - Letterpress from antique fonts by Yee-Haw

So much happening and so little time to blog. But I cannot resist to add 2 pennies to the dabate by posting this Etsy find and pointing you to this article featuring a detailed analysis of Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose. I don’t know whether this is a traditional practice in the United States, to create handmade election campaign items, or whether this phenomenon is inspired by the current election campaign and Obama supporters in particular. In any case there are plenty of handmade Obama fan item to discover and buy on Etsy, giving Obama’s campaign a grassroots movement feeling. Here in Austria before elections people may be collecting useless made-in-china novelty items given away by the various political parties, but hardly anybody wears their support on their sleeves, or T-shirt for that matter. 

This print above, hand printed from 100 year old wood type, emulates the feel of vintage posters and ads, telling us that history here is in the making, whatever the outcome of the presidential elections. To buy from YeeHaw on Etsy where you can find more stuff ranging from “I’m Joe the Plumber” T-Shirts to “Knitters for Obama” and “Middle aged white woman for Obama” Pin-back Buttons, from “My Mama is for Obama” baby clothes and bibs to “Yes I can” hand pottered mugs, and various styles of screen printed T-Shirts, pendants and you-name-it – with Obama hopefully looking into the future (here). Ah, and for this you have to read this (tongue-in-cheek) analysis of Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose.

Kress & Van Leeuven in their Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design claim that in our culture the right of an image indicates the NEW and the top of an image the IDEAL. This seems to prove the point that there is good reason why Obmama is shown gazing in the distance, usually to the top right.

So think of the history of Che Guevara and Mao images – and buy Obama items on Etsy if you want to own a future classic.

Obama Pendant by hegildedlily

Obama T-Shirt Design based on Shepard Fairey design