Beyond Words

I realize this video project from Facebook's Creative Director Ji Lee is making the rounds everywhere, but yes, it is that good. You can see the stills of his visual puns at his website, Please enjoy. Or, get the print edition. This time the book is just as good as the film.
:: Thanks Nici!

Moss Poetry

After the previous fern post below, I can't think of a better segue than moss lettering. This enviromental graffiti is the handwork of Anna Garforth who plants poetry around the urban landscape of London. The final artwork below is to spell out Grow beyond what you know with each word planted in a different location.

:: Photos above Via Crosshatchling and BumBumBum. The Photo below via Webponce.

Flash Card Memory

I like to think that this English card game from 1878 heralded the development of the flash card. Not that kind of flash card, but the kind used for teaching spelling and math to young children. This set, featuring animals, may not be your typical flash cards, but they were an effective teaching device at the time. There were 11 sets of cards, each featuring a lead card with a picture of an animal: a cat, cow, ass, fox, goat, hare, horse, lion, pig or rat. The other cards in the set spell out the name of the animal with some elaborately illustrated letterforms. A point system was awarded to players for identifying the letters and spelling the words correctly.
      A few years back, I was delighted to discover I still owned a set of flash cards circa 1960, and the font of choice was Futura. I happily discovered them tucked inside a handmade envelope alongside some sappy Valentine cards I saved from my 1st grade classmates. These contemporary flash cards are not nearly as nice as the Victorian card game above, but they stirred some fun memories of "Fun with Phonics" and learning how to spell and read. They are now my flashback cards—for people who have trouble remembering—especially the 60s.




:: 19th century card game via the Victoria & Albert Museum. Flashback cards
courtesy the Letterology Archives.

Fork it Over

:: From the Library of Congress.

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry from smjwt on Vimeo.

You can view a better quality version of Forgetfulness and watch many more shorts of Billy Collins animated poetry here—each animated by a different artist. Collins poetry together with the animation of Julian Grey of Head Gear is enough to brighten any day! Thanks Sam!

Suitable for Framing

A Fornasetti scarf belonging to Jane Audas who keeps the wonderful blog, Shelf Appeal. Jane believes Piero Fornasetti designed the rebus artwork for Jacqmar in the 1940s or 50s. It's much too nice to wear so she mounted it on unbleached calico and framed it for her bedroom wall. Read Jane's account of the scarf here.

Text Patterns

When I first caught sight of the artwork below by Czech artist and poet Jiří Kolář (1914-2002), it reminded me of the growth rings in a tree. It is actually a collage he made of blackletter text in 1966. Although Kolář died nearly 10 years ago, he is still considered one of Czechoslovakia's most significant fine artists and poets of the latter half of the last century. Below are 2 other Kolář collage artworks from the same 2010 Prague exhibit. 

Taken by Greg Mullinex at a 2010 exhibit of Kolář's work in Prague. Thanks for sharing Greg!

Spreading the Love

My former student Hiroko Ebizaki, has produced this design to honor Japan's agonizing struggle for recovery. She is living in Seattle now and claims her family and friends at her home in Japan are safe, but exhausted and frightened. We all share with her the heartbreak and hope that relief comes to them very quickly.

Letters of Content

Table of Contents title of an 1860s compendium of music sheets.

From the Letterology Archives.

Typewriter Textiles

I find the textural artwork of Linda Hutchins very compelling. Perhaps it is because of my typewriter love, but beyond this, the translucence and the texture her repetitive words create on a white field of tracing paper and gampi tissue paper is simply gorgeous. Hutchins is a Portland, Oregon based artist who works in a variety of media including organza thread, steel, wire and even bread. Her typewriter work reminds me of a woven cloth of words, which should come as no surprise as she has a background in weaving and software engineering. 

Mangling Type

I've always enjoyed the work of artists who use alternative printing methods. The lowly potato print even makes me smile. British installation artist Emily Smith has used old ironing technology for printing the word Remember in her work titled Nothing is Forgotten. She improvised an old mangle iron to print onto a braille paper roll by attaching rubber letters to the platen (or so I call it in this case). My mother used to iron linens with an old electric Ironrite mangle iron. Now you find Ironrites on Facebook and in art museums. If anyone still has one of these, it might be fun to use it to experiment with heat transferred images of some kind. I once met a potter who used an Ironrite mangle for rolling out sheets of clay.

Say it Like You Mean it

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Poem by Taylor Mali.

Welcome Mat

Beautiful tiled floor in the entrance hall of an abandoned factory in Prague from the late 19th century. SALVE means hail or (in this case) welcome in latin. It would be a welcome sight to see these tiles permanently preserved.
:: Another great image from photographer/designer Goran Patlejch.

Stereo

Really great logo on an Echo Stereo 1112A, a combination radio record player. Made by Tesla, Czechoslovakia in the early 60s. As seen in an exhibit at the Technical Museum in Brno, Czech Republic by photographer|designer, Goran Patlejch from Prague. He claims it was more prominent than the manufacturer's own signature.

Brit Lit

The New York Times reported in the most recent Sunday travel section on the literary town of Norwich England—a Getaway for Book Lovers. Included was an image and brief mention of the abandoned electrical plant which had been painted with the text of Sir Thomas More's 16th C Utopia. A further search directed me to British artist Rory Macbeth who painted the entire building's facade word for word. These are not short line lengths mind you. Each line of text appears to continually wrap around the entire building so the reader would have to circle round and round just to read it all. I'm sure he wasn't concerned with readability or optimal line lengths, but I have to wonder how many times he had to move his ladder while he painted the dang building. Note to self: visit Norwich someday.

Another interesting work of Macbeth's is his reinterpretation of the Bible. Using proprietary software he rearranges the Bible's text into alphabetical order and then printed it in an edition of 300. According to Michael over at Book Patrol, there are 313 exclamation marks, 56 uses of the word slaughters and 86 instances of the word ass. Who knew? This is also a great piece of data visualization that creates some nice text patterns.














::The above photo of Macbeth painting the building is by Sarah Morley.
::Other photos of Macbeth's Norwich is work from Daniel Weir's photostream.

Essay on Sculpture

Concrete poetry by Carl Andre. This appeared in the November 1965 issue of Art in America.
::Via Airform

Primitive Spellcheck Device

Built to Chill

Ephemeral ice typography by Vancouver BC artist, Nicole Dextras who takes words to the frozen North and exposes them to the cold elements. Over time, guess what? They melt and disappear, just like the ephemeral words vanish into thin air as we speak them. The photographs at least freeze the words in time and insulate them from the elements. Each 7' tall letter is created with wooden forms and they are transported to locations and set out on frozen rivers or lakes. Holes were augered into the 2 to 4' deep ice and water pumped into the forms. Words are left to freeze and the wooden forms are later released to reveal the fragile and frozen letters of ice. According to Dextras, "Legacy refers to the landscape as being the heritage of the inhabitants of this (Yukon) region. The gold that was found here a hundred years ago is what attracted people to come to this remote area. Now the inherited legacy of this pristine landscape is theirs to protect and pass on." Other installations include smaller frozen words with tints of color which fade with time. You can see a video of one of Dextra's icy word installations here and view photos of her Frozen Typography here.

How Do You Raed?

Winner of the 2004 D&AD Writing For Design Award, this poster from Lippa Pearce Design (now part of Pentagram partners) explains how our barin sees wrods rehatr tahn ivinidaul leertts when we raed. Maybe this explains why I am such a slow raedre.

The 9 Word Story Contest

I'm usually not big on promoting contests, but this one sounds like fun. Arcade, a local Northwest independent architecture and design magazine, is doing a fundraising campaign and asking people to send in their 9 word stories about design. That is shorter than a haiku folks so this be a challenge! Get writing and editing and you too could win a one week trip to Mexico. Let's hope it's not Juarez! Deadline for entering is September 30th. Voting is by people's choice. Enter here today!