Ace Jet 170

No Jacket Required

Secondhand Bookshop loiterers will relate to this:

I was at a nearby National Trust property, mooching around the secondhand bookshop, when I spied a scruffy oddity. A strangely tall volume wrapped in an interesting elk-based photo dust jacket that was topped off with a nasty piece of outline type.

If it wasn't for the unusual format I'd have passed it by but it was poking up, head and shoulders above the other odds and ends. So I did the thing you do – we all do it, don't we? – I slipped its jacket off.

Boy am I glad I did.

Mortices and Markings

I've got this side project on at the moment; a writing project. It's taking me flippin' ages to be honest but it's bringing me into contact with some really interesting people. People I have to interview, about their jobs. So far, I've met a few people in the film industry, a basket maker, a theatre lighting technician, a set designer and last Friday, a joiner working on restoration projects for the National Trust. We met in his workshop. His workshop made of wood, that smells of wood and is full of tools…and wood.

Now you may remember, I have carpentry in my blood. Sawdust runs through my veins. The sight of a vintage Spear & Jackson saw or a handsome flat blade wood plane is enough to make me reach for my beechwood mortice and marking gauge. It's THAT exciting.

Designers, writers, coders; we're all making stuff. We all manipulate materials – either physical or metaphysical – chiselling away at things, dovetailing seperates into connecteds. Sawing things into sections before shaving away layers. Drilling into the undrilled. Finely sanding before waxing and polishing.

Whether it's words, pictures or commands, it's not that different to wood. Not really. It's just less natural, less grown. Manufactured material instead of harvested material. A few more steps away from the natural order of things.

I think the reason why woodwork has prevailing appeal, to me at least, is because of its proximity to nature and our more instinctive side. It's hunter gatherer stuff and once we've grown weary of the glossy mass produced world, the hand made and downright wonky, if I have anything to do with it, tuggs at our hearts.

Tooled Up

You can’t hope to improve, significantly, as a designer by merely practicing design. You’ll get better at Photoshop as you find your way around its hidden depths, your typography might creep forward with exposure to its challenges, you might have a natural grasp of colour, but progress will be slow unless you look further afield for your influences. Latching onto a sage-like mentor of some kind or bathing in the foamy mix of design history are hard to better.

Same goes for writing. Writing in isolation is unlikely to lead you along the twisty-turny, bramble-blocked path that the writer has to follow in order to hone his or her wordsmithery. Better to latch onto a sage-like mentor or bathe in the foamy mix of literary history.

Maybe, even, read a book about writing.

A friend of mine, clearly trying to tell me something, sent me Roy Peter Clarke’s book Writing Tools at Christmas. Never has a book sustained my interest so effectively. Juggling a few volumes on unconnected subjects, my pace through Writing Tools has been gentle. But that’s just heightened my enjoyment. I’ve been taking each chapter, each strategy, slowly. And with each comes a beautifully useful nugget of writing wisdom.

I’m a better writer for reading Writing Tools.

Postcards from the Hedge

There I was, minding my own business, searching the outer reaches of the digital realm for post-1922/pre-now images of Dublin's O'Connell Bridge and where should I find myself? Only on John Hinde's really quite marvellous postcard archive, that's where.

Interpretive design is a great field of work for a graphic designer. By it's nature you're more than likely to be delving into the printed past for artefacts, references or relics. There's almost always some moment in the past (or for that matter, the present) that leads you to some interesting image, design or whatchamacallit.

I'm all over Dublin at the moment: either fighting the damned oppressive British or annoying the intolerant Irish; ousting uncooperative tennents or trembling at the might of those inconsiderate and really quite rude Vikings.

And, as I've mentioned before, it's hard not to get distracted by the other stuff you pass or trip over along the way.

Pot Heads

Back in November 2012 I posted about Faythe Levine and Sam Macon’s book, Sign Painters. It’s a fabulous book, you should probably buy it. But the book was really a mere forerunner, a prelude, to their film of the same name.

The film, like the book, is a celebration of the challenged world of hand-painted signs in the US. As it says on the movie’s website, “What was once a common job has now become a highly specialized trade, a unique craft struggling with technological advances”.

With contributions from some of the trade’s most skilled practitioners and characters, Sign Painters is beautifully filmed and gives brilliant insight into a hidden culture of craft, adversity and precariously balanced paint pots.

The book is superb – the film is even better. You can watch it now online here.