shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: book art

Morning Linkage (Jan 24)

Transportation

Oooh, this is gonna make some folks cringe. If the point of spend­ing all that trans­porta­tion mon­ey is to cre­ate jobs then maybe we’re not doing the right thing? Bike paths for the win.

Is this the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of the cafe rac­er? A striped down, almost purpose-built bike with out­sider street cred? No. It is a street fight­er — the bike class that has replaced the cafe rac­er as the mad man’s built to suit machine. I have to agree with the com­menters on this one though. The Scoop maybe very pret­ty but it is not as adver­tised on the package.

Yes, I have a seri­ous case of idol wor­ship when it comes to Shiny Kimu­ra. Any­thing I can find that offers an insight into his artis­tic mind is cat­nip. Today’s dose, an inter­view and pho­to set from Paul at Vintagent.

Science

Through­out his­to­ry the sud­den appear­ance and dis­ap­pear­ance of fea­tures and fig­ures in the night sky have been tak­en as por­tents and omens. I can’t wait to see what hap­pens when Betel­geuse goes super nova. The sky will sud­den­ly seem to have a sec­ond sun in it. Could be as ear­ly as, well, like today. Okay 640 years ago but inter­stel­lar tele­graph sys­tem being what it is we won’t know until this evening at the ear­li­est. Or it could be anoth­er mil­lion years or so. Still some­thing to look for­ward to, no?

Art, Images, and Design

It’s Mon­day, I’m in the mood to gut some­thing and leave steam­ing piles of entrails about the place to fright­en and con­fuse the interns…

The first time you see one of these words fold­ed into, or is that out of, a book, you think wow, that’s so cool. About the fifth image you yawn. But still, every­one should get to have the first — oh wow.

Sev­en Irv­ing Penn por­traits. I nev­er tire of Pen­n’s work. No mat­ter how many times I have seen an image it always says some­thing more to me the next time. This Selvedge Yard piece is a nice intro­duc­tion to Pen­n’s work that ends with the artist’s words. “In por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy there is some­thing more pro­found we seek inside a per­son, while being painful­ly aware that a lim­i­ta­tion of our medi­um is that the inside is record­able only so far as it is appar­ent on the outside.’

car­ry on…

Morning Linkage (Dec 16)

Transportation

Electric-Spoofaloo. Tron Angry Birds. ‘Nuff said.

A medi­a­tion on what makes the Nur­bur­gring spe­cial. It’s his­to­ry and it’s cre­ation in an era when rac­ing was about rac­ing and not prod­uct place­ment. Bonus shots of the ear­li­est con­struc­tion work.

Even the track maps had more charm back in the day. Le Mans ’55

Dubious Theories

Spen­cil Bor­chard has at least as cred­i­ble set of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as any of the oth­er freaks out there get­ting air time. Moon gophers indeed.

History

Last year, when I was on walk-about, I drove down the Ohio Riv­er from my home town (Pitts­burgh) to the con­flu­ence with the Mis­sis­sip­pi. There was noth­ing, or damn near noth­ing when I got there. The state park was closed and the road to the point washed out. So I crossed the riv­er and head­ed into Cairo, IL. I did not stop, I did not get out, and I did not take any pic­tures. You can prob­a­bly fig­ure out why by hav­ing a look at this small col­lec­tion of pic­tures tak­en by peo­ple who did stop.

And if you won­der how a once thriv­ing indus­tri­al town could have end­ed up in this state you can spend some time with the Red­dit thread mentioned.

Art, Images, and Design

I like old fash­ioned sil­hou­ettes and I think this updat­ed ver­sion of the cutout sil­hou­ette may just have to find a place on one of my walls. Though I may have to use some oth­er mate­r­i­al for the back­ground as these are a bit twee.

How to make some­one else’s words your own. Tree of Codes is the text of The Street of Croc­o­diles remade. Die cut pages with most of their words stripped away allow a new nar­ra­tive to emerge. Pic­tures, a video of the cre­ator, and can­did reac­tions from read­ers when they open the book. (Yes I bought a copy imme­di­ate­ly after see­ing the vids.)

Animation

You know I love ani­ma­tion but who has the time and resources to get the soft­ware or buy the cam­eras and learn the rou­tines. What if all you need­ed was google docs? Seri­ous­ly, three guys, three days, 450 pages. All google docs.