Archive for September, 2007

Another sort of Richter-y one. It takes forever for the R to come

O. M. G. It's going to be a cold day in hell when I finally have time to pore over these, but, i will be waiting with a scarf and a cocoa and my spectacles.

nice one, neil. Interesting way to get a general and coyly incomplete view of the planar shape of a city.

Grand set of equally grand typefaces from the past year. So many of these are so very good.

via someone a long time ago. probably neil.

Seems to jibe with Barthes' ideas about the establishment of myth-structure in the modern era - that repetition on a mass scale perpetuates belief until that belief is instantiated unconsciously and no longer even recognized as such.

The idea of a slide rule thingy to be able to tell when it's safe to leave the bomb shelter makes me a little bit squirelly.

Sagmeister's charm seems to me to lie in his tenacious devotion to high-concept design and execution. See here how he's made it possible and even interesting, for a building's shape(s) to also be its logo. See also, of course, that poster.

The site also has a number of other galleries of clouds of interest.

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
by Rebecca Solnit

"...They flocked to see the Diorama imitating a nearby church they could have visited in actuality for free. This is one of the great enigmas of modern life: why the representation of a thing can fascinate those who would ignore the original."

What I would call an impressionist biography of Muybridge—with as much attention given to the background of things he experienced only indirectly as those which were of primary importance. Solnit succeeds in conveying the rapidity and importance of technological changes in Muybridge's lifetime and his role in those changes, as well as telling tangential but much more interesting stories along the way. Her tendency towards the lyric occasionally undermines her arguments by making them seem too flippant and insubstantial, but overall, the depth of thought given to her subject(s) is rewarding even when it may seem unwarranted.

Making lights and rocks look lyrical.

Can't believe I haven't linked to this before, but today would be the appropriate day for it, I guess. To my mind the single most resonant and wrenching response to the September 11th attacks.

Excellent, though sort of needlesslay flash-heavy interface for hearing/seeing the golden record sent out with the Voyager. Amazing: "Johnny B. Goode" is on there. via kio.

This looks like a potentially useful addition to the design tool library. Sort of wish someone would turn it into a firefox extension.

"We’ll stay inside til somebody finds us / do whatever the TV tells us"