Geoglyphs

I've just found this funny tool developed by the Department of Design and Image of the University of Barcelona, Faculty of Fine Arts, that allows you to type short texts with live links to Google Maps that are landscape glyphs. "This online app composes alphabetical glyphs found via Google Maps in order to satisfy our wild and atavic instinct to write text for & ever", they assure. They simply call it Typewriter Machine.

You can even try and fetch alphabetical shapes in the maps: Add new geoglyphs.

See above the message that the machine has composed for me.

Read more...

A Farm Photo-Tale

OK, what happens when 1. your family is at a wedding in Sweden, 2. the only thing they ask you to do during their absence is take care of a little farm, and 3. they forgot the camera at home?

It happens the following:

The pony is not happy about me. He informs me: "eight turkeys have escaped from the coop. Look there, behind the fence! I'm pointing at them!"

What the...? Here they are. Shoo, come back home! (Stay together and don't panic, please.)

Instead of a beautiful Swedish bride, the camera is capturing eight rebel turkeys. Are they obeying me?

The turkeys are defeated, but they still draw themselves up. "I have no words to describe their pose" thinks the pony. No, he's not helping me at all, he only fakes it.

But he's adorable, I must admit. His name is Llamp, which means Lightning. No name for the turkeys. Maybe I'll call them Sparkle 1 to 8 from this point forward!

...And a member of the family that didn't forget his mobile phone, said the wedding went very well.

Read more...

The Man Who Knew All The Names Of My City

His family ran a grocery store for many years. It was the most advanced and popular store in the city and they used to sell the products you didn’t find anywhere else. For instance, they provided couscous when there was nobody from North Africa living here.

When his wife died, he closed down the centenarian store and he dedicated his life to drawings. He moved to Paris and he specialized in dancers: he drew their movements, the art itself, and the technique. Then he came back, composed a book with his drawings, and developed ideas for more books. One day, he came to our printing house with a lot of drawings and some texts and he said he needed someone to listen to his stream of ideas about a new book.

This is how I met him. It was a nice break in the routine. We sat at a round table and he started to talk about names, surnames and nicknames. Soon I realised that the book wasn’t that complicated. He only wanted someone to listen to him and to talk with. Although he was very old and seemed weak, his eyes were young and he looked at everything as if he was about to draw it.

One day I told him that I liked his drawings of the ancient gypsies of our city. He did a lot of them to illustrate their funny nicknames in the book. The day after he gave me the original drawing of one of those gypsies. Now that he’s gone and he’s been awarded a posthumous golden medal of the city, one of my mates told me that this drawing may become even more valuable than it was already — but this is impossible.

Update: these are the gypsies he drew.

Read more...

Night. (Almost) Wordless Post

Irma Gruenholz

Noons of dryness find you fed
by the involuntary powers,
nights of insult let you pass
watched by every human love.

W. H. AUDEN, "Lullaby" (excerpt)

Read more...

Typography

If you ask me, typography is the best design ever. Given that I work in a publishing house I should focus on the typographical elements of my blog, but Blogger only allows us to use six different fonts, which is simply heartbreaking. Well, instead of complaining, I will post some links to cool sites related to typography:

Some of the typographic wallpapers that you can download from WebDesigner, a design blog dedicated to bloggers, freelancers, web-developers and designers. Source for the first one: iDesign iPhone.

— Webpage Design for Designers. They gather direct access to resources for designers and quality articles on the topic. Everything is presented in the simplest possible way: when browsing you realize that there's a lot of information, but they've been careful not to confuse the reader. They follow the principle of austerity taken as synonymous with effectiveness.

— Yale Web Style Guide. It's a unique case: they apply the practical criteria that they defend. They outline an ideal site in which the information is neatly gathered and presented to a well-defined user.

— Taking into account the balance between content and design, my preferred blog is Lit Scribbler. It's the best example I know of a blog based solely on the typeface.

Read more...