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."

sparks & stars

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo. How much does this make you want to hit the road and head for somewhere in the middle of nowhere tonight, to just lay flat on your back and gaze upwards until the early hours? It's a time lapse video of the night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of Milky Way is brightly displayed. Images were taken with a 15mm fisheye lens.

tagged

The New York Stationery Show is under way... here are a some of the wares on offer... mini gift tags by Sesame Letterpress.

everything's okay

Everything's Okay from Natalie Perkins's drawing set.

michael fragstein

I am a big fan of Michael Fragstein's work. Here's a music video he made for the band Hitboutique from Stuttgart. I think you know the song. Michael Born was born in Poland, studied architecture and design in Stuttgart and Lisbon, and co-founded Büro Achter April in Stuttgart.

milan design week 0*9

Dutch design studio Muurbloem decorated the streets of the Tortona area of Milan with sand during the last day of the Milan Furniture Fair to highlight its work in pattern-making and wall art.

For Moooi, the all-women Front Design team digitized a Royal Delft vase with three-dimensional software and distorted it so that it looks like it's blowing away in a gust of wind.

Teresa Sapey Lights Via Monte Napoleone With Her Paper Lantern...

poet laureate

Today Carol Ann Duffy became the first woman poet laureate of Great Britain, and the first openly gay poet laureate. I celebrate this day, and I celebrate her wonderful body of work. I am a better woman myself for having read and digested her words. Here's her poem Valentine:

Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

a case of you...

the closing of a chapter

"The seasons remind me that I must keep changing. and I want to change because it is God's way...I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind is made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once. Life has pressed you and me into a book, too, this tiny chapter we share together...Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was. This is from where the story stems, the stuff of its construction lying at our feet like cut strips of philosophy."
-- Donald Miller

earth hour 09

I'd had the best of intentions to have an Earth Hour hootananny at my place this past Saturday evening, but then decided that my flat still isn't visitor-friendly, seeing as how I have no chairs, no table, and really nowhere for any more than two people to hang out at any one time. I also had visions of knocking over tealights and setting fire to my neighbours bungalows, all in close proximity. Regardless, Earth Hour 2009 went on without us, and my friend Bridget and I did our best, sitting outside with candles lit and copious amounts of wine (my ecological response to most Saturday evenings, admittedly). If you're not familiar with the concept, Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007, and quickly grew into a global observance. More than 1,000 cities in over 80 countries observed Earth Hour 2009 on Saturday March 28th, as homes, office towers and landmarks turned off their lights for an hour starting at 8.30 pm local time to raise awareness about climate change and the threat from rising greenhouse gas emissions. Collected here are a series of before-and-after photographs - which (starting with the second one below) will fade between on and off when clicked. Pretty cool stuff.