Ace Jet 170

Tea but no seas

 

A few weeks ago Michael Hodgson from Ph.D in Santa Monica very generously sent me a pile of stuff he'd picked up in a local thrift shop; numerous copies of the Ford Times, which I'll be posting about over the next couple of weeks; they're really interesting. He also slipped in a copy of their little self-promotional booklet, Terms and Conditions. It's a kind of dictionary, the book explains, "This particular version of the dictionary gathers together 16 years' worth of biases, interests, opinions and obsessions". It's small and beautifully formed.

    

It's a lovely piece of work and so is Michael's letterpress printed business card...

Hanna Hunting

Nick Asbury is trying to track down info on illustrator John Hanna, responsible for these lovely covers. If anyone knows anything, please drop him a line.

Penguin Sci-Fi

James Pardey is building a superb archive of Penguin Science Fiction cover designs. PCS members: watch out for James' articles in The Collector.

Plot Watch: At it

  

Talking of pest control, sordid though it may be, plotters far and wide will be heartened by the sight of ladybird's doing the wild thing...but even for these little fellas, two's company...

Pop (up) Art

   

I was never into the comic book/graphic novel thing. Friends were when I was younger: Steve, who took over from me as studio junior in my first job, was into all the Frank Miller stuff. Super cool and interesting but my mind was on typographical matters. Ten years later it was Mike, my lodger. A superb illustrator but a house-mate from hell; he attempted to indoctrinate me in the super-hero way but again, I was thinking about other things (like how I could get rid of him).

So I'm no aficionado by any stretch of the imagination and have no idea if this X-Men pop-up book would be considered by such to be worthy of interest. All I know is that, on face value, it appears to be ace: Nicely produced with admirable attention to detail; nifty, irregular polygonal shape; ingenious pop-up constructions; and respectful use of original artwork, it would seem. Bought it in England last week for three quid.

Clamentation

It's sad when iconic faces/names from your childhood depart. I was on holiday so missed Freud's death last week and only just found out by accident. If you didn't know him, here's a taster.

Meany

  

Graham from Zoot emailed me yesterday about the Ink Posters project, asking if I might feature their lovely posters here. I said I would but only if I got something back. Nothing big or costly, I wasn't specifically after a freebie. Some photos of them printing the stuff would have been OK; I just wanted to say more than just, "look at these cool posters". To be honest, he caught me at the wrong time and now I think I was a bit of a pain in the arse. Ace Jet's not about advertising other people's stuff really and I don't want to get inundated with requests but every now and then someone emails me about something really ace, like what Graham did yesterday; lovely posters.

So, sorry Graham, I know I wasn't rude or anything and you were equally polite, and I expect we'll be seeing a lot of your beautiful posters around the interweb.

Everyone else, go and have a look; personally, I like the architectural tree.

Found Type Friday #73

   

A return to our old village isn't complete without a bit of Great Central.

Plot Watch: Pond Life

   

Introducing future pest control:

_ 1 pond

_ Miscellaneous plant life

_ 37 tadpoles

It Lives!

The Return of the King.

The Pennine Tower

In 1965 Top Rank Motor Inns operated Forton Services (Lancaster) was the second service station to open on the M6. It's jewel being the once super cool/now considerably shabby Pennine Tower which housed a posh restaurant (with waiters and everything) serving cocktails to drivers so they can relax more at the wheel no doubt. It's still quite a site and a terrible shame that it's no longer used. There's more about it here including details of it's untimely demise.

  

The Old Country

It's been five years since we left my homeland for this annex of the UK and since then we've only been back twice. So it's not surprising then that seeing the old place has a powerful effect on me. To emphasise that effect we wallow in the country by taking the ferry and driving for bloody hours (six to be precise) rather than jumping on a plane just down the road from us and landing an hour or so later within 15 minutes of our final destination. Gluttons for punishment we may be but the rewards are great.

Driving aboard is always exciting, all the more so at dawn; two hours at sea is great fun; disembarking on the other side, in Stranraer, is thrilling; and the open road generously provides amazing fews of a country that while still relatively small, globally speaking, seems so much bigger than our little corner of Ireland. England (and Scotland) is beautiful.

But I'm not going to rattle on about the drive, there's much to blog over the next week or so, I just want to give an ultra-brief synopsis of some (but by all means not all) of the visual highlights of our time over there, just for the record. And they are:

_ Cranes at dawn

_ Lego-Streaker at Lego-Wembley

_ Our lovely friend's converted water tower (that's our room)

_ A child's view of a horse's nostril

_ Duck eggs in nest

_ An untidy turkey chasing stroppy chickens

_ Lovely, lovely (lovely) foamy beer

_ The church we got married in

_ A dead rat on a yellow tarpaulin

      

Fulltron

Cheesecake eaten in Belfast by Nicholas Felton: 1.

So last Thursday we were very privileged to have Nicholas Felton in town for his first UK appearance and an evening of fun and figures at Ulster University, and beyond. The official talk was fascinating: Nicholas took us back to his early days at Rhode Island School of Design and his search for content that he could convert into something interesting. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 came to the rescue with Nicholas cataloguing a whole pile of details and developing systems by which it could be displayed.

Copyright issues came to bear and self-authored gathered-info was needed to further develop the technique. Early experiments included a vintage postcard powered, imaginary road trip across the US manifesting itself as an online map (Playcation) and a Logo Taxonomy in which Nicholas determined that there aren't any logos that use the sea slug as a motif.

 

2004 saw a Feltron Report forerunner and in 2006 Nicholas produced the inspired Valentine Index Worksheet. But of course, it was the Reports (and beyond) we were most interested in so we were shown the early version. The first print version was just given away and NF expressed his surprise at the interest it got. So for the next version production values were increased and small price tag added. Sales went well and that brought us up to the last edition. Then it was on to commissioned info graphics for Metropolis, Print and New York Magazine's Intelligencer and of course Daytum, which seemed to me to be a natural progression from NF's increasing obsessions.

(For some reason my mind was spinning with thoughts of Paul Auster and Nicholson Baker).

One of the most interesting and exciting aspects of the journey (his early search for material, the discovery of data and the subsequent conversion of that data into beautiful graphics) was how all that highly personal work has led Nicholas to real-life, paying commissions and I for one found that very encouraging; unlike many designers who choose a path of self-expression NF has developed something that is unquestionably useful, very cool, extremely beautiful and not just a graphic style.

Questions afterwards centred around the manipulation and privacy of data, and of editorial control. And then after all that, we got boozed up and had dinner.

   

   

It was a great night and it was only made possible thanks to a few very committed parties. So special thanks have to go to Rita and the Creative Entrepreneurs Club for funding the event, to the other Nicklas (ehem, that's Nicklas from Web Standardistas) for taking Nicholas on the Belfast Tour, to UU for the use of the room and to everyone else who helped with sticking up posters, taking the money on the door and for doing the posters in the first place (thank you me...don't mention it).

Oh, and of course, again, big thanks to the star of the show for coming all that way! I hope I got all this right, if I didn't, do let me know.

The Return of Descriptive Geometry with 3D Figures

 

Feeling all diagramatic today, what with the Nicholas Felton talk being this evening. So in honour of his visit it seemed appropriate to post this.

Way back at the very beginning of Ace Jet, in the very first post in fact, I mentioned this Hungarian book, published in 1962 and written/illustrated by Imre Pál. Now it's not going to be my habit to re-post stuff but I was looking through this recently and it occurred to me that I hadn't really done it justice. Still my most prized find, it cost just a few quid at a car book sale but it's absolutely packed with amazing images. Pop on the 3D glasses, still in the pocket at the back, and all manner of geometric dynamism jumps off the page, like some kind of drug-crazed Suprematist art.

The introduction explains that descriptive geometry can teach us: (1) how to represent objects and spatial forms as well as how to imagine and visualise them in space, (2) how to use construction methods for the solution of space problems, and finally (3) that descriptive geometry develops a living, rich and at the same time real perspective ability, an ability to visualise.

More and better images on Flickr.