Obey the fatty text
Here are some hyperlinks.
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.
The era of statement wallpaper and fatty text – an interesting (and rather contentious) look at how book design has acclimatised to the physical/digital realm of social media, with covers serving multiple purposes at wildly different scales. Just how much influence do the influencers have?
Hold the front page – endpaper enthusiasts are falling in love behind the covers. Which sounds more sordid than it is. Expect much marbling.
Train as an architect, work as a book designer – Elaine Ramos discovered that sometimes studying the wrong subject in school can lead to the right career. Can totally relate to this. (By the way, as with all Eye on Design posts, leave the tab open for a few days for added freakiness.)
280 degrees of design – 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.
The secret ska history of that weird levitating businessman emoji – nobody knows what it’s for, but at least we now know it’s to do with The Specials (who have a new album out today, something well worth levitating over).
Women in red – rather shockingly, only 17.6% of the biographical articles on Wikipedia are about women. This project aims to turn those red links blue. I’ve never edited anything on there before, but this looks like a great excuse to change that.
To all the introductions I’ve loved before – Michael Chabon on the front matter, back matter, intros, outs, forewords, afterwords and prefaces that he treasures most.
About about – agonising over writing about yourself in the first … third … no, first person.
The Putter – lovely short film about the craft of making scissors. In a round about kind of way, makes me want to listen to Echo and the Bunnymen.
The layers of motherhood – Annie Wang has been taking a periodic photo of herself and her son over the past eighteen years, each time with the previous photo in the background. The time tunnel effect is rather wonderful and now I wish I’d read about this six years ago.
Contact – thanks to a chance tumble down a photographic rabbit hole on Pinterest, I’ve become a tad obsessed with contact sheets. A great example of artists showing the work being the work. The Tina Turner one in particular would make a wonderful poster.
The Look of the Book – Forthcoming book covering book covers from book coverer Peter Mendelsund and David Alworth; “a comprehensive and heavily illustrated exploration of the meaning, history, value, mechanics and future of the book cover”. Yes please.
Why four-panel comics now dominate our screens – Always found it interesting how culture is shaped by its containers, whether it’s the capacity of a CD, the optimum number of films that can be screened in one day, or the viewing window of a social media app. All art goes a square phase sooner or later – this week, it’s comics.
Collection and collaborations – Looking forward to this event at the wonderful St Bride Library, celebrating their collection with a series of collaborations between designers, artists, writers, illustrators and musicians. Expect to come home with an armful of posters.
When your work is also the hobby – In which I rage at the expression “work/life balance” and then contemplate becoming a Viking.
The Hand Lettering Toolkit – Loz Ives (aka Idle Letters) has put together a fantastic collection of Procreate brushes for anyone who enjoys putting pen to glass, full of stipples, prickles and straggles.
The Face – It’s back. So far it’s nothing but a newsletter signup page, but still, it’s back.
Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition – Opening very soon. Did anyone else notice the Design Museum in Into the Spider-Verse? You know, the steps behind Miles when he gets his hand stuck in Gwen’s hair? No? Did I just imagine that?
SET – The non-profit group turning disused buildings into artists’ studios. Lots of arguments for and against this sort of thing, but I think it’s mostly fabulous. Artists are like gentrification colonists, terraforming and caffeinating the urban wasteland.
Float – It’s that old saying, you wait years for a a feature-length documentary about the ultra-competitive sport of elite, stunningly-designed indoor model airplanes to come along and then eventually one does.
To Keep the Sun Alive – Simon & Schuster’s Donna Cheng talks to Spine about designing the cover for Rabeah Ghaffari’s new novel.
ColouriseSG – This deep learning colouriser prototype, originally designed for restoring old Singaporean photos, is a lot of fun. It’s not perfect, and certainly won’t put professional colourists out of the job, but there’s an undeniable emotional kick when you see a bit of colour suddenly appear in old family photos.
Werner Herzog on reading and writing – “Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it.”
That is all.
