Ace Jet 170

eethography

James on the amassblog has said, pretty much, everything I was going to say about ee. For me it was reading Dark Angels recently that made me think about my desire and failure to appreciate poetry. And in particular the orthographers favourite. James has a much more valuable volume on his shelf; mine is a modest Faber & Faber edition from the 60s. Nevertheless, it's letterpressed characters and pulpy paper are a pleasure to scrutinize even if the broken words are lost on my under-educated brain. (0/10 Must try harder).

Chicken Watch #26: Chicken in a basket

 

Day 587: Well, a box actually. For the second time in as many months there's a chicken down. Different birds, different afflictions; the first was fixed with every parent's essential survival kit component Calpol; the current patient is recovering in the house, feasting on porridge.

Many Happy Return

Very lovely postcards from Asbury & Asbury, written and designed to mark the return to prominence of the Macclesfield Barnaby Festival. Much more about it on their blog.

 

 

Peak

Not sure how widespread the trend is but here at least secondhand bookshops seem to be becoming a staple, and have to say extremely welcome, National Trust feature. Castle Ward's bookshop is in the courtyard, along with the sadly stocked cafe, fun-for-kids abandoned tractor and quality-fancy-goods-packed gift shop. The bookshop had an amazing and beautiful set of geographical encyclopedias, going for a song really but still beyond my modest book-budget. Thankfully, there was a handful of thriftily priced King Penguins on hand to comfort me. Insider dealings to follow.

Impression

Found another GTF-designed Globe Theatre programme. Same story as the other one.

 

Harder Better Faster Stronger

No design credit, and some might claim to understand why, but I think there's an unsung hero at work on this sublimely balanced cover from 1976. Take that finger, for example (photo-credited to John Hybert by the way); positioned one third in. Now, you're telling me that's by accident?

Oh, and then there's this (totally unrelated, but equally heroic):

Twiggy

Since we were there camping earlier in the year, Castle Ward has had serious pulling power. That weekend was as close to perfect as I can remember. Last weekend we were back, just for the day. To play, picnic and collect post-winter twigs with organical appendages.

 

Undesign

Nothing special really. Only it is. The chances are, if you're in the UK, you've got your new Colorplan book from GF Smith. It's simple. It's lovely. And it works.

Discerning Japanese #4

Mad Man

I read John Simmons' book Dark Angels (How writing releases creativity at work) immediately after his talk the other week. It's an excellent book and I emerged out of it full of ideas. Practice was one of them and one way John suggests you do that is to keep a diary. Nothing ground-breaking there but during the course of writing the book, he realised that that was one thing he'd never done, so tried it. Me to. Perhaps 'diary' isn't quite right. What I'm doing is using a Moleskine diary as a place to write something every day. Not necessarily something specifically diarific, just something. And so far, I've really enjoyed the discipline of having to write something every day. So far, while I don't claim these writings rival Hemingway, I think I've managed to avoid writing a load of old shite.

This snippet from Dark Angels has nothing really to do with any of that but with the next episode of Mad Men approaching fast I thought I'd share, as Simmons did in his book to illustrate how learning from other writers is vital, this excerpt, originally written in 1955, from The Unpublished David Ogilvy.