Born in medieval times. the bookbinder, the GPS and the e-book

I study digital media. I was born in the early 70′. I am a dinosaur. My fellow students are 15+ years younger than me – born in another era, on a different planet. We learn roughly the same things from opposite directions; we each hold an end of the stick, so to speak. But we see everything in different shades. Some things comes naturally to me; they are lost. Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot.

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Flight

At last, the semester is over. The last couple of weeks was immensely stressful, even if I forced myself to take it slowly – think, wee b, think! Use your head! A simple command, but with water leaking in everywhere, keeping head above said was not trivial. I remind myself now and then that this is – in the large context of things – a fart in cosmos. Soon I am off – going to rellies in Denmark, play with kids, eat duck and drink scnapps. Read the rest »

An award for silence

I have been given a peer-award for my blog. Linda, over at The task at hand found me a deserving recipient for the Arte Y Pico award. I am of course honoured. That someone reads what I write is flabbergasting; an award is mystifying. Read the rest »

Pick or guess your favourite font – serifs

Not sure I’d do so well at guessing these fonts myself. I imagine I’d get about half of them right. And which one do I like the best?
It certainly is not number eight….
Go oooon – guess!
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best books – non-fiction

Some of the best non-fiction books I have read. Some of them are not necessarily well written, and would not win prices for excellent language; at least one of them is actually annoying in that respect, but I have included them because the subject is interesting/important. I am sure I have forgotten some, but there you go. Teflon brain.

The art of looking sideways
Alan Fletcher
This is how it looks like inside my head. It a fountain of musings, facts, the odd, solid, and whimsical. It is design, doodles, unfinished thoughts, images, drawings. It is colours, shapes and wisdom. It is a delight and frustration at the same time – if I could show what goes on in my head, this is pretty much it. Read the rest »

best books – fiction

I read a good deal of books, and picking out the best 10 was too difficult, so here is a handful, in no particular order. These I read and re-read over and over. I have probably forgotten some (best non-fiction and best covers coming up later). ..and please do not say the word post-modernism, social realism or stream-of-consciousness. I’ll throw up all over your tie.
Feel free to nominate other books.

The poisonwood bible
Barbra Kingsolver
A stunning story about a bible-bashing missionary, his wife and four daughters, in the last days of Belgian Congo. Impressively, the five women have distinct voices and their common story unfolds in different facets through their different viewpoints. The family and the country disintegrates, and the girls all choose different lives based on those two years in Africa.
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The worst books ever written

Few books deserves a place on the bookshelf of shame, and I’m a little ambivalent about this – should I dignify the biggest drivel I have ever read, or is the best plan to let them die in silence? For artists and authors the worst thing is indiffrence. Hate is at least an emotion too.
But on the other hand: the world should be warned. I have no place for nazi techniques, but burning them will at least keep you warm for a bit. The only good I can see for those books. They should never have been written, never published and never read. These books are drivel, rubbish and the world would be a better place without them. So, as a service, here I present two books you can stay clear of, and consider yourself lucky and a better person for not having read them.

So- without further ado:
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Get out the petrol, bottles, rags and sugar, darling

Bookshops with no books. Torching is too good for them. Never mind air rage, and people going bonkers with automatics at work. Never mind that telly is a dumbing down, and that Idiocracy is one of my favourite films, for all the wrong reasons. It makes me laugh an evil I-have-always-known-people-are-idiots-laugh. Or cry.

Bookshops without books. Somebody should get shot. Somebodies head should roll.

In a corner, behind the massive display of diddle figures, pink pencils, rubber balls, key rings, balloons, wrapping paper, glittering teddy bears, and multi-coloured markers… there’s a small shelf, with a few books. It’s about the size of mine; after I removed 10 boxes and moved here. Read the rest »

Letraset, academics and writing

Went through some old notebooks, boxes and piles of stuff before moving here.. and the in the process found my old, precious Letraset book- it used to be a treasure, and a priced possession. Hands up, all who have done plaka lettering; meticulously drawing up and painting letters on awful quality paper. Thought not. Not a common pasttime, exactly. Art school stuff. Initially flicking past the endless pages of sans serifs, grotesks, helveticas, looking at fonts impossible to draw with silly names, flourishes and elan. Basically, it’s a good deal easier to camouflage mediocre penmanship in a swirly, messy font, than in the grotesks… and we where into art, not geometry!

God, how wrong can you be.

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