The book is alive. The book is paper, it’s print, it’s digital, it’s online, it’s on your phone, it’s in your purse, it’s under your pillow. The book is everywhere. The book is changing. What will we design next? We’ll keep designing the book, we’ll keep reinventing what it is, find new ways to read, new ways to write, new ways to publish, new ways to spread information.”
via @_mkimball
Today is Friday the 13th, a date that has come to be lucky for me. It’s the perfect day to shrug off superstitions and embrace a whole lot of color.
1. Santa Marta via Oh Joy!; 2. Rainbow umbrella via Victoria Pater
3. Daily drop cap by Jessica Hische; 4. Super epic cake by Hula Seventy
5. Impromptu rainbow via Swiss Miss; 6. Pantone calendar via Materialiste
Put the words down, don’t obsess over them, just effusively spill them down onto the page. Then step away—for an hour, a day, a week, whatever you need. And then edit. Edit like crazy. Be hard on words and yourself and make it better. And when you think you’re finished, edit it one more time.”
I’m reading Moby-Dick for the first time, and it’s obvious how much Melville loved words and playing with language.
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”
So I think it’s fantastic that librarian Matt Kish is in the process of illustrating passages from each page of his edition. Drawing at the rate of one page a day, that’s 552 illustrations—all using found paper like maps, schematics, tables, and repair guides. The results are simply amazing.
Page 074 : I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay — that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to.
Page 109 : I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.
Read more about the project on Matt’s blog, and view the drawings he’s done so far on his website.
If it exploded in my mind and something came to me, I wrote it. I never thought about it. I don’t believe in thinking about stories; I believe in doing them. . . . Everything I do is passionate. . . . It’s all from the heart. All my stories are me.”
Poor writing often is a simple form of obfuscation, and copy editors beat the drum for clear writing. Everyone benefits when we understand each other.”
– Mark Allen, Editors fight the good fight for clear communication
These cupcakes are the creation of typographer Gemma O’Brien, aka Mrs Eaves, and they feature Mr Eaves XL Sans Ultra Italic. Seeing a beautiful type on chocolate frosting reminds me that I need to play around with fondant sometime (and make more cupcakes).
More typographical inspiration from Mrs Eaves:
Blog: for the love of type
Twitter: @mrseaves
YouTube: TYPO Berlin 2009 and Write here, right now
I don’t know what bookstore I was in when I first came across the illustrated version of The Elements of Style, but I know I was with Pam, and I know I dragged her over to the display so I could show her the artwork inside.
So I was thrilled to read The 99 Percent’s interview with the talent behind all that loveliness, Maira Kalman. In “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Kalman talks about how she became an artist, what inspires her, and her latest project. But I especially love what she has to say about the art of storytelling in relation to her illustrations:
I think everything I do is narrative, but it’s not just a story, it’s a movie – a movie of my life. And usually I’m trying to put too much information in one image. But because I thought that I would be a writer, and that’s how I started out – as a writer and not as an artist – then when I decided to start drawing, it was going to be narrative. It’s things that are from my life, and things I’ve seen, and things I’ve seen in books. It’s always telling stories.”
