at the Ex

Mapping

I am always intrigued by maps, any kind, any purpose. There is something about the density of information and the spidery web of linework... roads and boundaries, topographies and waterways, distances and relationships... that is so functional but also so aesthetically pleasing.

Eastern Telegraph Co System Map

But the potent aspect is the sense of exploration and discovery that it holds. Beyond its literal expression, it is one's own imagination and experience, of past and future movements and discoveries. A map is not about the linear progression of points in time, but it is a soaring aerial tour of what one could see or do or have or know - a diagram of the spatial organization that held and guided a journey or relationship or development.

New (Old) NYC Maps on Google Earth

But of course maps come in many forms and for many reasons. Most recently I came across this simple and striking interactive map and information graphic. How could I not be captivated- maps and graphics and information, together as one. The monochromatic map background of lines and grids is clearly set off by the stark, colorful bars and cubes of statistical information. Fascinating content, as well.

the clothes make the man

 

Your best work must go in the window. And catch the eye of those passing by.

thinking fast

I am intrigued by fast decision makers. Intrigued when they actually present [consistently] great decisions. These people are rare. More often I find myself skeptical. And irritated. Immediately.

And frightened. I am quite a careful decision maker, quite deliberate in my actions and responses. To a fault. But on the other end of the spectrum are those fast talkers/movers/shakers who know the answer before the question has been asked.

And often, the question is not where they begin.

And these people get the first word. Ah, you say, but think of the tortoise, think of the hare. Its only important who gets the last word. Right?

Not so much. The first word can be a total fallacy but it laid the foundation for anything that came next. It takes time and energy to curb the momentum of public opinion once it gets rolling. And if we have to begin our platforms from these stances... well, its possible that we begin light years away from our mark. Relatively speaking. And dependent on your mark, of course.

And this is the state of our politics. Get the first word, make it fast and furious, and you've set the stage. Take the time to deliberate and question and develop your reasoning and you've already lost the race. Because it is a race. And the tortoise has a long life but man, we know how bunnies can breed.

true love cafe

the promise of cherry beach

 

cave of...

"...time loses its contours underground." I saw the Cave of Forgotten Dreams last night, and was blown away. Not so much through Mr. Herzog's expression of the caves (3d!) and the philosophical stance he wages (rather distracting), but simply by the art itself. On their own, these paintings are amazingly beautiful... indeed, reminiscent of Picasso as the film mentions.

chauvet lions

chauvet horses

I think what is striking is how much beauty there can be in something so removed from its creator. We have no idea who or why these were made. Herzog and the archaeologists theorize and extrapolate using a blend of science and soul searching to try to recreate a context for these paintings outside of their literal location, which is just present day France. And the context they are striving for is bigger than any of us can really take on. They are looking for a way for us to know ourselves.

picasso's 'essence' of a bull, left. the second sketch came first.

Because perhaps we haven't changed? We look over the span of time and we see ourselves, a similar hand, a similar eye to create imagery and motion. After Picasso saw the caves at Lascaux he said, in varying ways and many times, 'We have learned nothing. They've invented everything.'

chauvet bulls

 As I said before, the art is beautiful: the strokes are dramatic and emotive, utilizing perspective, shadows and surrealist techniques to generate movement and narrative. It is beyond what I ever assumed of cave art, which I thought was flat and primitive. And supposedly some of it dates thousands of years apart, layers of time. To see the film is visually seductive- the 3D can be rather odd at times but overall it allows for this incredible detail and depth to a landscape that is unearthly to begin with. And yes, it makes you wonder who and why... it humanizes something that we view as science, as animalistic. It reminds us how much we don't know, how much can not be preserved or discovered that would even begin to tell the true story. So we take it as is, using our own eyes and our own stories to reconstruct theirs. We could be so wrong, or so right.

Oh, and you get to see albino alligators in 3D at the end... the mutants that are looking back over the abyss of time. I don't know, ask Herzog. But also beautiful, and unearthly.

text as graphic

Oded Ezer was a find. I was perusing the OCAD book sale over a year ago, keeping my eye open for pretty graphics and colours, or words like modern, design, or Tokyo (yes, I'm easy)...

And there was this pretty blue cover with a simple flourish of silver. That pretty blue cover was his Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy. That simple flourish was text.
And opening the book showed it to be full of beautiful, strange projects and photos, and some worthwhile reading as well. I snagged a deal on a lovely book and some inspiring work.


I know typography is not simple, but there is something so beautiful and clean and simple about his work that I am taken. A pure idea and motivation that emerges so gracefully and polished: effortless, natural, as though it was never designed, it just is and always was. part of the magic is that it is not truly text for me. other alphabets always do that for me- text becomes graphic. message is irrelevant. just beautiful.

His ideas are simple, and flawlessly executed. But he has a typography 'laboratory,' where he breaks out of the rigor and exactness of type creation and looks for inspiration from process. Execution may be elegant but the research beforehand is messy, strange, random, curious. I mean, anyone who messes around with typographic dna and infuses sperm with it... I don't know, you have to look for yourself:
typosperma.

And his type models... are beautiful.

rose's

Old Style is on tap at Rose's.  It seems they serve Pacifico as well.

I just really want the Rose sign, with the brick red border... right above my kitchen table, I think. If I had a kitchen table.
Wish I went in, but can't say I did. The suitcase that was rolling with me would have been a nice touch.

a nod from the homeland

they say you can't go home again... and I agree. But actually home is everywhere you look. Which is really nice. And sometimes the triggers are more obvious. Which is even nicer.

I was in Chicago over the weekend, just arrived and found myself stranded for a few hours in the scorching heat. Wandering with a suitcase, wearing jeans and a scarf (?), dehydrated, maybe delirious, but still happy as a clam to be in the mid-west. I stopped in to a bright, open, airy store to enjoy their AC and look at their sweet little toys. Sorry no pictures of their toys, but if you're interested in toys. and art. rotofugi.

But besides AC and toys, the place had a gallery with some great work that happened to be from a hometown favorite. Which I believe is the hometown saying hello. And that felt good.

These were quickly snapped because I felt like a robber. Their work is better than what my camera caught, so I'm only giving you fragments. Check them out. aesthetic apparatus

avante garde

I was more struck by the stamped reds, grainy photos and hard angles of the Avante Garde Art in Everyday Life exhibit than I was by the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of the Renzo Piano addition... I find it refined and striking, a space to uplift: broad, clean planes and vertical lines that transform to something completely voluminous and delicate...

But I get fully immersed in the palette and composition of early modern graphics. And what it says about the time and the designers. I am fascinated by the idea that modernism 'failed.' Its intention was so pure, its expression so restrained and ordered. There was a clarity to space and form that was so very difficult to achieve, but expressed itself as simple. The same held true of the graphic design of the time. And this is part of the magic.

Ladislav Sutnar

Ladislav Sutnar

The exhibit focused on a specific time and place: early 20th century eastern europe, when the Bauhaus and constructivism were emerging. There was this fascinating dichotomy to the work shown- an egalitarian and utilitarian neutrality that is shown in the information graphics and industrial design. And then there was the hugely political work, the anti-regime, pro-worker propaganda of the periodicals and posters. Across all of it though, it was guided by radical notions of equality and accessibility in the new modern times- the socialist collective, mass production, standardization, functionality, rationality: creating a sense of order and understanding through form and function, not icons or ornament.

I am sort of obsessed with this site I came across a few months ago... DISPLAY... "a curated collection of important modern, mid 20th century graphic design books, periodicals and ephemera."

It is rather a black hole if you love the graphics and ideologies of this work and this era. And I do. I think tenets of modernism (broadly casting a net here) speak to so many things in life. Simplicity allows for clarity, contrast allows for awareness, white space lets you breath and absorb, large forms create an anchor, patterns generate a field, a continuity- these are mechanisms of space and design that we respond to, often unknowingly.

I believe we seek to know, to align, to orient ourselves in space and time, in message or intention. But when necessary, we should be jarred, unsettled, made aware through contrast and confusion, a break in order, a call for attention and response. Modernism required input, an external influence to soften its edges and impart meaning. We are all capable of responding to pure form, space, colour... but to make it our own, to take the uniform and standardized, the pure modern expressions and adapt them to life, we must not only react but act on it. It takes effort to take place oneself in the modern space... a reciprocal feed.

missing you

wearing your heart on your city...

patriotism

Ex-pats sometimes give their home country a bad review. Fair enough, they left it by their own doing so they must have had their reasons. But I cringe when I hear these wise folks so easily dismiss or simplify what my/their/our country is or is not. So quick to say they aren't one of 'them.'  I am hesitant to jump on this train because, well, I most definitely am one of them (and so are they... and it made them into the super smart person they are today). 

In honor of the crazy and absurd, brilliant and ambitious, adolescent and headstrong, frustrating and ridiculous, idealistic and striving country I still call home... take a look and listen to THIS (from the good folks at GOOD).

Top comment sums it up. I would like to add that there are varying shades of good, mediocre and sorta bad in there too. 

 Some highlights:

on miming

Then she 'peeled a mandarin orange.' Literally that's what she did: She had a glass bowl of oranges to her left and another bowl for the peels to her right- so went the setup- in fact, nothing was there. She proceeded to pick up one imaginary orange, then slowly peel it, pop pieces into her mouth, and spit out the pulp one section at a time, finally disposing of the skin-wrapped residue into the right-hand bowl when she'd eaten the entire fruit. She repeated this maneuver again and again. In so many words, it doesn't sound much, but I swear, just watching her do this for ten or twenty minutes- she and I kept up a running conversation the whole while, almost without a second thought- I felt the reality of everything around me being siphoned away.

 

“Seems you’re quite talented,” I said.

“Oh, this is nothing. Talent’s not involved. It’s not a question of making yourself believe there is an orange there. You have to forget there isn’t one. That’s all.”                    from Burning Bridges, Haruki Murakami

                                   image via the selby

so difficult to find a good orange

the daily commute on foot. and the perfect orange. like a sunrise.

out with the old

"The idea that our possessions reflect the passing of time is hardly a new concept." -Deyan Sudjic

I love the businesses that line most of Toronto's streets... everywhere I look is a relic of a time past, holding on by a thread, somehow managing to stay in business selling old vacuum cleaners and stoves from the 90's- warehouse liquidations are bread and butter here.

But some go even further back, stuffing their stores with decades old mass-produced housewares and obsolete technologies that they don't seem aware are actually obsolete. Still selling cheap though. A new generation is raiding their grandparents' house for this stuff or sadly buying it at Urban Outfitters. Old-school is hip, of course... someone should tell them.

Note the guy's reflection in the window... he was a bit unsure of me taking photos of his merchandise but I said I liked his sign and that seemed to satisfy him.

I have so much nostalgia and love for this type of stuff. But nostalgia only... I don't want to deck out my house in it unless it pre-dates me- for some reason then it enters the realm of good design again.
But if its got a double cassette deck or a squeaky joystick, then all of the sudden I'm playing Atari in my Rainbow Brite pyjamas or dramatically gagging as my sisters spray Aquanet in our tiny bathroom.

"Possessions that stayed with us for decades could be understood as mirroring our own experiences of time passing. Now our relationships with objects seem so much emptier. The allure of a product is created and sold on the basis of a look that does not survive physical contact... desire fades long before an object grows old... Each new generation is superseded so fast that there is never time to develop a relationship between owner and object."

Desire. Obsolescence. Nostalgia. Desire.

Note the spelling on color.

If you're a lover of things, or intrigued by things, or if you own many things, or throw out a lot of things, then I recommend The Language of Things. Deyan Sudjic gets it right in so many ways, so many times. I read him for his down to earth criticisms- he joins theory with solid street level awareness... taking it all in and objectively calling out the dualities that are everywhere, spinning out of control... and sometimes shaking his head at himself as well. 

Believe me, he'll be popping up on here rather often.