not knowing is most intimate

Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"

Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."

Dizang said, "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"

Fayan said, "I don't know."

Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."

Days With My Father

A record lovingly kept by Phillip Toledano. Beautiful.

Last time I was in London I made the usual pilgrimage to Magma Books on Clerkenwell Road. They had these really great postcard sets by Yellow Owl Workshop. A set of (4) designs, screen printed by hand on recycled cover stock, presented in a matchbook-style cover. I highly coveted the Analog set (above), but resisted the urge...

yeah

the road is hers

Amylin Loglisci is an artist and photographer with wanderlust.

When she's not on the road, she can be found in her home town of Istanbul.

now this topic is the only thing

Reza Abedini is a highly acclaimed Iranian designer and professor of graphic design and visual culture at Tehran University. Not enough good things can be said about the work that he does. A couple of years ago Reza edited the book, New Visual Culture of Modern Iran.

"I have been thinking about graphic design and visual identity for some years and its relevance to Persian graphic design. Now this topic is the only thing that keeps my mind busy. I have studied different ways and solutions for modern adaptations of Persian type and typography. I also studied Persian visual traditions and painting. But most important for me are Persian type and typography. I think Persian type has been almost ruined over the past years, although it has a glorious history. I hope I will be able to discover ways to use the Persian script in graphic design in the best possible way and bring it back to its glorious days and height. I believe that is the only way Persian graphic design can find its own true identity." -- Reza Abedini

hedi slimane

Just stumbled across this photograph by Hedi Slimane and it stopped me in my tracks. And if you don't already, know about him.

buddhist tendencies

My friend Robert is an architect and teaches architecture. He recently set his students the task of designing a structure for 'a buddhist with modern tendencies' - an assignment that kind of caught my fancy. Being more of a decorator than a designer, I'd be up for taking a shot at the interior/exterior, even though it's oh so difficult to avoid some of the cliches that are often associated with the practise. Needless to say, the materials would be eco-friendly and the home self-sustainable, incorporating recycled surfaces.

1. Corrugated apartment block 2. Suspended fireplace 3. Tiled hole in the wall 4. Girl cave 5. Outdoor bath tub 6. Bare plaster walls 7. Maui chairs by Terry Dwan for Riva 1920 8. Indoor shower with mosaic Bisazza tiles 9. Outdoor bath tub 10. Lamper Head in South Devon 11. Padded couch 12. Grass tiling 13. Stockholm Kallbadhus* 14. Love Changes Everything 15. Shaker weave & joints

*Stockholm Kallbadhus is a proposal for a public outdoor bath which is completely passive, iconic and sustainable (and located in the central harbour of the city).

Gocco art print by Orange Beautiful on Etsy.

1. Found sketch 2. Necklace by Elva Fields 3. YSL cuff

4. Brigitte Bardot & Jane Birkin

“Do not ask yourself what the world needs;

ask yourself what makes you come alive.

And then go and do that.

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman

A Woman's appetite is twice that of a man's;

her sexual desire, four times;

her intelligence, eight times."

~ Sanskrit Proverb

when the night comes

matchbook art

diving alongside

Polaroid art by Meghan Colson, currently studying studio art and advertising at Michigan State University.

look closer

Keri Smith's How To Be An Explorer Of The World

ka-boom

Never give a pretty girl a hand grenade...

Posted on For The Love Of Type ~ work for the Print Matters exhibition. A little bit of Hoefler Text Italic, ten illustrations and 3 hours worth of hand-sewn binding, it folds into a neat 150mm x 150mm book.

rark!

From Mrs Eaves' blog For The Love Of Type...

we the people

I love the letterpress print States United by Gregory at beauchamping on Etsy, who says: "Originally this project was titled Heartland. Then States United. Then Heartland. States United. Heartland. States United. Heartland. And finally...States United. Although i suppose it could also be called 'We The People,' because when I look at it now, I see faces in Alabama, Illinois, Wisconsin and a few other states."

Ray Nichols at Lead Graffiti in Delaware printed them from a
copperplate on his Vandercook flatbed press.

and i walked

Am coveting Rob Ryan's And I Walked tape on etsy.

the impossible project

T H E B A D N E W S

Production of analog Instant Film stopped in June 2008, closing the factories in Mexico (Instant Packfilm production) and the Netherlands (Instant Integral production). Next month, the last batch of Polaroid film will pass its use-by date and the era of instant Polaroid photography, one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, will draw to a close. To mark the film’s final use-by, or expiration, date, Polaroid: Exp 09.10.09 at the Atlas Gallery in London brings together artists as diverse as the Hungarian-born fashion photographer and photojournalist André Kertész and the provocative Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, as well as a number of contemporary British artists, including Marc Quinn, commissioned specially for the show (October 9 to November 28, at the Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, London W1).

T H E G O O D N E W S

The Impossible Project has been founded with the concrete aim to re-invent and re-start production of analog integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras. It has acquired the complete film production equipment in Enschede (NL) from Polaroid, has signed a 10-year lease agreement on the factory building (see above), and has engaged the most experienced team of Integral Film experts worldwide. The Impossible mission is to develop a new product with new characteristics, consisting of new optimised components, produced with a streamlined modern setup. An innovative and fresh analog material, sold under a new brand name that perfectly will match the global re-positioning of Integral Films.

altered text

Twice a year students from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) exhibit their final projects. Student Alex Kauffman chose a passage from All the King's Men and then systematically cut out all but one letter from the printed page, leaving it behind wherever it appeared. He then repeated this with the same passage across many more pages for each letter and symbol. The full story behind the process can be read here.

different strokes...

Letter Cult have posted their Best of 2009... so far... including some incredible work by Adam Garcia, Andy Smith & Will Bryant, and Enkeling.

the romanticist

I have eaten beef stew with silent, shabby men in cheap eateries and fingered the last two pennies in my pocket with anger and irony … I have dined most sumptuously in a spacious Park Avenue home, duck brought forth in silver dishes by a butler … I have seen $.10 movies on Times Square, seated in the first row of the balcony in shirtsleeves, smoking and laughing … under a lashing rain and gale, I have gazed at the angry mid-Atlantic for a moment, pausing in my labours … I have stood on a Liverpool street corner in the middle of a drowsy afternoon and cursed the cobbles because the pubs had closed … I have made love to women in Canada, Washington, D.C., Nova Scotia, England, Greenland, New York City, Maryland and New England … I have lain drunk in the gutter of a street … I climbed a mountain in Greenland and gazed down on the slim ribbon of Ikatek Fjord … I have toiled in the sun on construction jobs from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Alexandria, Virginia … I have attended cocktail parties in New York City penthouses … I have worked in mills … I have worked in garages … I have sold door to door … I have worked as a reporter on a newspaper … I have starved in a cheap urine-smelling room in Hartford, CT … I have dated actresses, models and social workers … I have brawled in streets, in bar entrances and in cafeterias … I have heard great symphonies and been transported … I have walked the streets, a lonely U.S. Navy gob and sought women … I have languished in hospitals and shuffled cards in melancholy abstraction … I have written reams and reams of writings … and through it all, I have always been restless, unhappy and seeking new horizons. What shall I do?

~ Jack Kerouac, The Romanticist, September 1943 (photograph Harry Benson, Berlin Kiss)

typos

Opening this Thursday at the Electrik Sheep Gallery (which is a brilliant gallery, by the way), in the cold northern city of Newcastle, is a show by typographer Seb Lester. If you like raw talent then you’ll love his work. Prints also available online at Seb's website.

breathtaking

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

best invite ever

I'm taking it as a sign. Not only does this give hope and meaning to a very traditional, non-traditional girl like myself... but they also just happened to get married on my birthday. Printed by the fine folks at Kayrock in Williamsburg. Double-click, enlarge, read and enjoy...

for burma

Burma from marusa on Vimeo.

Burma VJ

(photo: Ed Fraiman)

Burma is the largest country in Southeast Asia. It is just south of China and is also known as the Union of Mayanmar. Burma is currently ruled by a military regime led by senior general Than Shwe, the head of state who governs the country through violence, suppression fear. The co-founder of Myanmar's main opposition party - the National League for Democracy (NLD) - is Aung San Suu Kyi, who has endured unofficial detention, house arrest and restrictions on her movement since 1989. She is one of the country's best-known political figures and campaigners for human rights, and numerous organizations - including Amnesty International - have appealed for her release continually. In September 25, 2007 over 5,000 monks lead a non-violent protest in Yangon. The military responded by opening fire on the crowd. A new documentary called Burma VJ covered this protest from the ground up. The people of burma continue to fight oppression despite the military stronghold. It is important that people around the world understand what is happening in Burma and put pressure on their governments to call for aid and intervention. This is not a trendy cause. This is a human cause. Please support Burma VJ, which is out in theatres this month.

so there

New Math by Craig Damrauer.

starlings at eastbourne pier

Feist's cover of one of my all-time favorite songs:
Lover's Spit by Broken Social Scene.

alice stevenson

Love this print Sensory Perception by Alice Stevenson. Alice graduated from the University of Brighton Illustration program in 2005. Since then she's been working as a freelance illustrator for folks such as Faber & Faber, Puffin, the G2 section of The Guardian and the Time Out Guides.

sigh...

Let's Get Lost by Shaun Sundholm.

Shaun says "This project is the firstborn child conceived from a life-long love affair with photography and typography. The photo series was shot at an abandoned (and rumored to be haunted) ranch in central Oregon and the type was inspired by my early days as a screen-printer. These pieces complete the sentences that the pictures and the words could never quite say on their own."