better matters

Ellsworth Kelly, Meschers, 1951

Last week in my typography class, our teacher showed us slides of Ellsworth Kelly’s work as some inspiration for our typographic portraits. It was fitting, as I’d been looking at Sol LeWitt earlier in the day for some of the same. The mid-century minimalists really did have a wonderful grasp on space, tension, color, and layout, some of the most important things in graphic design.

I’m struggling a bit in my typography class - the whimsy and creativity I desire is just not there. There is nothing magical happening. I’ve written over and over in my margins Stop Designing Start Playing Stop Designing Start Playing and it’s gotten a bit better in the last week, but nothing stellar.

Without further ado, a few examples by Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, and Josef Albers (for my own inspiration, and maybe for you too.)

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A short list of a few items that capture my heart: small bookshops with artful books, small galleries that show the work of illustrators, and pen & ink drawings.

Analogue Books, in Edinburgh, is made up of all three. It’s been around since 2001 selling limited edition artist books and zines and also staging exhibitions of charming artists such as Nigel Peake and Lizzy Stewart. Be still, my heart!

Not surprisingly, they are friends with Tiny Showcase, who had an exhibition there recently. Transatlantic illustration love.

Wait, what am I doing? I can’t deny that I love clothing and I can’t deny that I’m not (along with Hannah) totally obsessed with Australian label Secret Squirrel’s Winter 2010 line. She looks so put together and easy breezy and classic. At one point in my life (now), I’m really going to want to be able to look put together. We’re getting up there in years.

Today, thanks to my handy blazer, 3 different people said I looked put together. I think this is the first time that has ever happened.

Also, watch this cat video. It is possibly the best thing I have ever seen and I have said that a lot:

Even though I am antsy right now, and entertaining thoughts of running away, from time to time I look at all the real estate listings of houses in my neighborhood to see if there are any that are better than mine.

There aren’t.

Tiny Showcase released a special print tonight by Josh Keyes, who has been a favorite of mine for some time thanks to his animalia work (and my surprise encounter with it.) He has such a delicate and classy way of making a beautiful, yet political, statement so I’m happy to support Tiny Showcase (always supporting good artists) who are making as many prints as there are sold in the next week to give $15 per print to Partners in Health. (Within the first 20 minutes of the print going on sale, plus all the pre-orders from the people on the mailing list, they’ve already raised over $10,000.)

If I ever saw my downstairs bathroom, this print would go there. Instead, I think it’s going to have to go in the kitchen. My Rachell Sumpter print is going to have to make some room for it.

Sometimes nothing needs to be said. Art by Sara Broski.

I’ve been looking around the internet for a little typographic inspiration and I found these whimsical alphabet houses by Mike Perry, author of the wonderful Hand Job: A Catalog of Type and generally amazing illustrator/designer.

Beach House’s Teen Dream. I  fell in love with them by the middle of the first song. Do yourself a favor this overcast day and listen to the whole thing on NPR’s First Listen.

Enjoy, and join me at The Cedar on April 4 when they play. It will be warm-ish! We can bike there together.

Today I woke up on the farm to the sound of a pig eagerly searching for his oats, or corn, or whatever it is pigs like to eat. The snorting sound was distant as my eyes warmed to the sunlight, then became louder. In fact, I was not on the farm, I was in my bed, and the pig was in my bed, and the pig was actually just my tabby cat burrowing into the covers next to me. I grabbed his nose and said, “Oh, your little snout.”

Let’s leap to things I love this Friday. Amelia leaves tomorrow and I’m going to try to be as positive as a parrot (?) today.

What a paper trail I’ve followed: via The Casual Optimist via the Caustic Cover Critic (and I only link these stops because they are both good blogs) until we reach the work of Michael Sula:

Vintage is another publisher that seems to really take its cover art seriously. If you visit Sula’s website, you see he’s done a lot of work for them.

A funny (trust me, it’s soo funny) story about cover art:

These covers are also published by Vintage. When I first started going to Half-Price Books, I saw these everywhere and I did not think they were attractive at all. In fact, I kind of hated them. But since these versions were the versions of Carver and Gaitskill that were available, I bought them, and I learned to love them. I took gambles on authors I’d never heard of because they were published with these covers. My thought process was if they were in such good company, surely they were worth reading. And there you go: absolute cover success. They were easily identifiable in rows of boxes filled with unsorted books. I sought them out, found them, and bought them.

One more cover for you: The Mr. Palomar cover reminds me of a beauty that I spotted across a bookstore several weeks ago. It’s designed by the legendary Milton Glaser.

Mmmmyes.