“In the 60’s I became very much interested in grid systems and digital systems. In 1965 I saw the first digital typesetters, and the result was horrible. Then I came to the idea to make another system of alphabet. I called it the New Alphabet. This is a six point Garamond from the digitized period. If you have it twice as big the basic idea is still there, but the whole shape changes, and this is what I couldn’t stand for. So I did “Let me do a typeface with only 90° angles and 45° roundings”. I published it, and I said “This is a theory. This is the way of thinking, and typeface designers should design along this line of thinking”. It made me travel all around the world to give lectures on it.”. (Wim Crouwel)

Wim Crouwel: Proposal for a New Alphabet. From Helvetica (2007), by Gary Hustwit.
Above : New Alphabet font, by Matt McInerney, sample.

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“In folklore the tanuki is a bit like the plump, comical brother of the fox, equally prone to mischief and shape-changing and the deception of humans. It seems to have a hedonistic bent, constantly on the prowl for saké, food, and women, and is known to disguise worthless leaves as money to obtain those things. It also seems quite good at turning itself into inanimate objects.”.

The Tanuki.
From The Obakemono Project, “a Gaijin’s Guide to the Fantastic Folk Monsters of Japan.”.

I sit on this wall and wait for you who ever you are where ever you may be I’ve been sitting on this wall since I was 17 years old just waiting for you just praying for you who ever you are where ever you may be to find me I shall sit on this wall for the rest of my life if need to be (Andre Jordan, And I wait for you)

A beautiful revolution. By Andre Jordan, illustrator.

Above: Astronaut boy.

“In the mid 1990s we began to ask friends, students and acquaintances to sketch how they see the passage of time.”.

“Surprisingly, most of them drew something immediately and without giving it much though, as if they always knew what the shape of time looked like.”.
Visualizing Time. A research project by Camilla Torna for Icastic.
Above: “How time goes by. Looking ahead, looking back. Inside the boat, the present.”, detail.
(Courtesy of Camilla Torna)

“There exists a tale, handed down from times long ago, of two travelers on a pilgrimage. Hungry and tired from a long day’s journey, they come to a small, impoverished, medieval village, where they decide to rest by the side of the road.”. (The Stone Soup Legend)

Above: Anais Vaugelade, cover for the picture book Une soupe au caillou (A stone soup).

“It is unfair to judge Art Frahm by these illustrations.”.

“But the falling-panty theme is a staple of his work.”.

Art Frahm: a study of the effects of celery on loose elastic.
From The Institute of Official Cheer by James Lileks.
Above: O-Oh! (1950).

“The Codex Seraphinianus (Luigi Serafini, 1978) appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an incomprehensible (at least for us) alphabetic writing.”. (from Wikipedia)

Above: a detail of the book, from the Codex set on Flickr.

The trap exists for the fish.
Once you have the fish, you forget the trap.
The words exist for the meaning.
Once you have the meaning,
you forget the words.

“14-year-old Maya survives a terrible train accident only to find herself in a strange world where people, places, and souls are made of paper.
Now, hunted and alone, she has 11 days to find the bodies, reconstruct the accident, and return home.”.

Paper Eleven. A clone.manga project by Daniel Kim.

Pessimism

“Borrow money from a pessimist, they don’t expect it back”

“Photoshop an image and and use it as the basis for a demotivational poster.”.

Demotivational Posters, from Worth1000.com.
Life is like golf.