A world of icons, not alphabets
Reviving a dead language is not normally a recommended practice in communications: road signs in Latin (say, NON DEXTER VICISSIM instead of “No Right Turn”) are certain to cause more accidents than not, and billboards written in runic Old Norse…
Remembering el payador perseguido
The picture above is a striking and beautiful tribute to Atahualpa Yupanqui, one of the most prominent Argentinian folk musicians of the 20th century. Yupanqui was persecuted by the government of Juan Perón for his Communist Party membership–his 1972 book…
Interesting and ambitious
Worth checking out: ZAM, a high-energy magazine about Africa with a cheeky sense of style, some great art direction, and a focus on the continent’s most interesting and ambitious designers, artists, musicians, and writers. Published in the Netherlands, with editorial…
Irish eyes aren’t smiling
One of the archetypal title sequences in television produced in the British Isles is comprised of shots of a 1930s automobile trundling up and down the gravel-paved roads of the Yorkshire Dales in the BBC’s long-running adaptation of James Herriot’s…
Sinuosity, undulation, and joy
Organizations typically put a lot of work into the development of their logos, the hoped-for ubiquity of which drives their designers to incorporate as many distinct brand values and moods as possible into the final image. Investments in this process…
The social Noguchi
Before social media made staying in touch with acquaintances on a mass scale a trivially easy exercise, human beings had to do sordid-sounding things like “meeting for drinks” and “working together” in order to achieve the same end. For all…
