BENDING THE RULES

A smart and striking series of posters by the young UK designer, Mike White.  The center crease is meant to facilitate installation in the corner of a room or on the outside edge of a wall.

NO JOKE

Say this about Barack Obama:  even Conservatives find him inspirational. How else to explain this mysterious poster of Obama-as-Joker, Heath Ledger style, which has been popping up in L.A. over the last few weeks, with nary a sign of its origins? Anonymity, of course, is often the point of subversive art, but who ever associated Conservatives with the decidedly counter-cultural genre of guerilla art?  Never mind the shaky grasp of socialist ideology; or the dubious analogy between socialism and the anarchist Joker, of all cartoon characters; or the vaguely disturbing ‘blackface’ invocation.  Here is that rare piece of Republican propaganda which, visually-speaking, manages to grasp the concept of less being more.

LOOKING DOWN

August 5.  Scenes from an afternoon walk in Soho, nose to the ground. 

LIGHTS OUT

Words don’t always come easily for creative people.  Charles Gwathmey was that rare architect whose facility with language matched his creative output.  He died this week, and the first thought that sprung to mind was a lecture I’d attended 15 or so years ago, in which he addressed his most famous work–this startlingly refined, cedar-clad house on eastern Long Island–designed for his parents while still in his ’20s.  The house in Amagansett made Gwathmey a star, but it was the words he used to describe how he’d arrived at such an exceptional quality of space that would forever alter my notions of what a house was meant to be.

FREE VERSE

I like everything about this photo:  the cleanness of the stenciled poetry against concrete, the criss-crossing steel of the bridge above, the greenery rising from urban decay.  The confessional verse of the street poet Jerm IX, though, takes center stage.

MANUAL LABOR

This is really quite something, this instructional typewriter manual from bygone days. The elegant color palette, the graphically sophisticated illustrations, the exceptional attention to white space: if manuals looked this good today, mine wouldn’t end up in the recycle bin.  

GOOD WORKS

One, in a series of pro bono public service announcements in poster form–designed for high schools–by the Massachusetts design firm Alphabetica. 

HAND CUFF

If tattoos were temporary, I wouldn’t mind wearing this for a few days. Found it on FFFFound.

GRAPHIC DEPICTION

   

The German graphic designer Nicolaz Groll has produced a seemingly endless array of truly beautiful black-on-cream patterns.

D PLUS

Ah, to be in the Canary Islands, hanging about with this “D.”  And attending the Tenerife Design Festival somewhere in between.