That is, "Yay! I can imagine using them now," but I doubt I have any projects coming up that could justify the cost of buying a massive type family, no matter how pretty and awesome it is. It will be interesting is to see how designers work with the Guardian family and make it the projects look like something other than the Guardian.
Today's mission is to hunt around and see who's actually selling it, and then invent ways to justify paying for a license.
]]>Likewise, I don't see myself adapting to the use of "nought", "whilst", "banger", "bollocks", "snog", or "shag" in the kind of reflexive way you need to make them work. And there's just no point in trying to use "arse," because it only works with the accent. (Brits, you'd sound just as silly if you said "ass", trust me.) And I definitely can't use "bloody" with a straight face, unless I'm talking about a horrible accident.
I'm fine with "bin", "flat", "prawn", "dodgy", "queue", "hash" (#), and referring to things like "half seven" instead of "seven-thirty". I also have no trouble with the British notion of "pudding" and "biscuits" compared to ours.
I'm getting better and better with "trousers," "quid", "maths", "zed", "chips", and "cheers", but it's an ongoing struggle. I can refer to "rocket", "coriander", and "courgette" without thinking about them, but I do have to regularly remind myself that I'm actually talking about arugula, cilantro, and zucchini. "Bloke" is OK, because I get that it's often referring to a certain kind of guy. I'm working on "blimey" and "crikey" because I like the sound of them, but handling of them is tinged with knowing it's not quite natural, like when I use "golly" back in America.
]]>The project is for outputing a variant Typeface from an existing open source Typeface, where the variant is replacing only 1 alphabet (upper,lower case, basic and italic) and putting a sanskrit alphabet (upper, lower case, basic and italic) that will have to be designed. . . . The budget is about $100 via Paypal, Moneybookers. Delivery for early/mid-next week.
Yeah, that's not really how things work, my friend.
The rest of the request, and one of many appropriate answers to it is here, at Design Rants.
Update: Hmmmm, it's all even weirder than I thought.
]]>I finally had a chance to watch the outtakes from Helvetica (the documentary that any and all type and/or graphic designers know about, but the rest of you may or may not know about), and I was pleasantly surprised.
The surprise was not that I enjoyed the film and the extra footage. When I first saw Helvetica last summer I really enjoyed it, and thought it might be the best way to actually make other people understand what I do and why I often feel so passionate about typography and design. It tells the story of Helvetica in a clear way that connects this one typeface — and the importance of typefaces in general — to the whole environment of printed, manufactured, and broadcast stuff that's around us all the time. When I was back in New York for Christmas, I wished I had a DVD of the film with me so I could show my family and give them a better idea of what I've been up to since I left the country.
The extra footage on the DVD was rightfully left out of the film itself. Much of it ventures off into other territory about type and design in a way that would water down the story of Helvetica itself. It's all really fascinating, though, for people who have more of an interest in design. All the interview outtakes from people like Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Neville Brody, and even David Carson (I'm over him, but I still remember what a shot of vitality his work once was) are a rich source of information about design process — the way different designers work and think. They shed some light on an aspect on what we do that's often obscured by people just paying attention to the end results alone, and it's a treat to have this kind of off-the-cuff talk available somewhere other than the more exclusive realm of a professional conference or lecture, or the more formal realm of published work.
If you're curious enough to check it out, Netflix has it now, or you could always throw a little support the filmmaker's way and buy yourself a copy.
]]>— John Waters, This Filthy World
]]>(From Nerve and IFC's "50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time", which is filed with genius.)
]]>
When worlds collide, eh? I love both Barbarella and Battlestar Galactica, but for very, very different reasons. Seeing them mashed together for a promo shoot makes my head hurt a teeny bit. If I were more of a straight persuasion, though, this would make me all tingly, though.
Of course, Apollo or Helo done up as Pygar would certainly do the trick.
]]>Barbarella — The Bob Crewe Generation
Pygar's New Wings — The Bob Crewe Generation
Well, looks like there's another reason not to bother going back to New York. My beloved Cheyenne Diner is finally closing down.
I used to work down the street, and spent many, many happy lunch hours there, enjoying almost perfect platters of grilled cheese with fries. It was also a favorite spot to drag anyone I ever had to meet in Midtown, and not just because I'll take any excuse to get a decent milkshake.
I can't say that I'm shocked about the closing. In fact, I'm amazed they resisted the pressure to cash in on that real estate for so long. Still, it's a shame to see another free-standing classic diner go away, especially one that felt a little like home every time I went inside.
The Cheyenne was the kind of place I have in my mind every time I crave the perfect diner experience, a thing that doesn't really exist in Boston or the UK, the only two other places I've ever lived. It's not the that food is incredible, but that it's just right: comforting, tasty, familiar, and not trying to be fancier than necessary. Most of the seats are booths lining the windows that look out on the street, with room to relax for one or two, or room to squeeze in a bigger group of pals. One of the waitresses would proudly show us pictures of her son in his dancing-school costumes, and occasionally give us free slices of cake.
(Tip o' the hat to Norm for catching this for me.)
All hope is not lost for American cities, though. One of the handful of things I really love in Los Angeles — Phillipe the Original, home of the French Dip sandwich and the 9¢ cup of coffee— is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary.
]]>The first one is from the comic tie-in to a movie based on a comic, Justice League: The New Frontier. Observe as Rip Hunter — Time Master! — takes a swipe at continuity nerds (click to enlarge):
Next, some literary commentary on Hamlet from Jack of Fables:
Leave it to the viking to cut to the chase.
]]>In the morning I went to the Design Museum to catch the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year (I know, but it's better than the name makes it sound) exhibition and a retrospective of architect/designer/engineer Jean Prouvé.
The Design Awards show had lots of nice things, but it wasn't especially stirring since I'd seen so many of them reproduced before. The fashion bits were a really great surprise, though, and some of the interactive stuff seemed interesting but I was prevented from getting a closer look by a pack of French school kids swarming around anything shiny in the gallery. It was also nice that they included Titus Nemeth's sketchbook as well as some of the proofs from his development of his Naseem typeface, which was perhaps the only part of the whole exhibition that shed any light on how some of the winning work came about.
The Prouvé show was excellent, and luckily the ticket for the museum lets you experience the brilliance of his stuff for a bit more, since it also gives you admission to his protoype Maison Tropicales, which has been reassembled over at the Tate Modern. (Hopefully I'll get a chance to check that out before the end of the weekend, at which time I may indulge in the big Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia exhibition they're running.)
The highlight of the day was an impromptu visit to the Design China Now show at the V&A. It's really Uh.May.Zing., especially since so much of the design work (except for the architecture) doesn't seem to have been shown around much in the West before, not even in the current explosion of design blogs. It's packed with gorgeous work, and for those of you with real jobs and stuff the related products they're selling in the shop might be just as tempting as the show itself. Seriously, just go.
]]>
For well over twenty years this man has been my hero. No lie. No exaggeration. It was John Waters and his affectionate fascination with with trash — and his own stylish, articulate, and eccentric way of blazing his own trail — that encouraged me to fully embrace whatever aspects of the high and low culture around me that caught my fancy. I was always a quirky kid. It was John who taught me that was a good thing.
Waters is most famous as a filmmaker, of course, but it was actually his books that first blew my mind. From the moment in high school when I first read Shock Value and Crackpot, I was hooked. When I finally caught a double feature of Polyester and Desperate Living some time in 1987 or so, they just confirmed what I had already come to treasure about his view of the world.
It's easy to peg Waters and his work as campy irony or immature shock tactics, but everything he's written, ever talk I've heard him give, and every interview I've ever read has made it clear that he really believes in the underdog and the honesty of being what you want to be, no matter how trashy. In Waters' world, you're only evil if you're a superior asshole who doesn't want others to be happy doing their own thing. For a man of refined tastes, his sense of irony is not something he uses to maintain a distance from anything, it's a way of celebrating the lovable in the generally unloved.
He's demeted and sweet and mischievous. When Hairspray first came out, I loved that the master of trash had made a subversive movie the whole family could love. Even the musical version throws a sucker punch or two in the midst of its squeaky clean reinterpretation of the movie:
Waters is entirely unconcerned about his oeuvre becoming softened as it goes broad. "In a way, the most subversive thing I ever did was think up Hairspray, because now families are sitting there watching two men sing a love song," Waters said, as a car finally pulled over. "Who would ever have thought that Jerry Mathers, who I grew up with" — the child star in the title role on Leave It to Beaver, who now plays the father in Hairspray — "would be singing to a man in a dress on Broadway in something I wrote!" (From his New York interview)
I want to keep trying to be like him as I keep trying to grow up.
]]>
It's a tricky thing, this whole appreciation of superheroes and comic books and such. Part of what seems so nerdy and embarrassing about it is how often people — even others who love the capes and the four-color reality — seem to get it wrong, how often they fail to grasp that we each love different things about the genre. No, not just this particular fictional genre — the whole idea of superheroes and comics.
I can't blame people for not getting it, because a love of comics is just so personal. They've been part of our culture for so long now, pushed and pulled and reinvented in so many ways that they can be something different to everyone. Every fan of comics loves them for a personal reason, and is convinced that a naysayer just has to read the right comic that will resonate and change his attitude forever. But not even all lovers of comics appreciate them the same way. Venture if you dare into any discussion forum about comics and you'll see what I mean. Some folks love the escapism, some folks love the intersection with or reflection of reality. Some folks are obsessed with details and continuity, and some with the core of any legend. Different strokes, y' know?
And it's hard to begrudge anyone who doesn't get into comics, because even though he — or shockingly enough, she — might just need to read the right one, the fact is that there's so much crap out there it's easy to say they're not worth any attention. And when the world of comics strays into other media — novels, TV shows, movies — the magic and myth usually just fall apart.
Usually, I say. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is one of the most breathtaking looks at superheroes and comics I've ever read. It takes the whole world of comics and wraps up the mythology and the excitement and the context in a delicious little package. When I read it, I was stunned that he cut through all the bullshit and the cliches and the cultural baggage around superheroics and put his finger on the wonder of it all, and the way drams of men and women in tights can speak to kids and adults alike. Sometimes in different ways, sometimes in the same ways.
There's a certain sense of wonderment and wish-fulfilment at the heart of my love of superheroes. It has endured, even as my world has expanded to other passions as I've grown up, and even as my taste in comics has slowly spread out to non-superhero comics. Again, Chabon shows that he gets it at the most basic level in Secret Skin, a lyrical, insightful essay for the New Yorker about the whole problem of men in tights. He gets down to the core of it all, the basic idea and how it defies practical reality because it's not about reality. It's about something other than reality, and perhaps closer to it than anything else:
We say "secret identity," and adopt a series of cloaking strategies to preserve it, but what we are actually trying to conceal is a narrative: not who we are but the story of how we got that way — and, by implication, of all that we lacked, and all that we were not, before the spider bit us. Yet our costume conceals nothing, reveals everything: it is our secret skin, exposed and exposing us for all the world to see. Superheroism is a kind of transvestism; our superdrag serves at once to obscure the exterior self that no longer defines us while betraying, with half-unconscious panache, the truth of the story we carry in our hearts, the story of our transformation, of our story's recommencement, of our rebirth into the world of adventure, of story itself.
Oh, hell yes.
]]>Mark, in case you're checking in: I love you man! Happy birthday!
]]>