REBIRTH

Here’s an appropriately galvanizing year-end declaration–found on a recent birthday card.

RING OF FIRE

A design junkie’s dream (and a fireman’s nightmare, I suspect), this is an ethanol-fueled fireplace designed to roll about your house to suit your warming needs.  Roll Fire may be anxiety-inducing, yes…but oh, those irresistible curves.

CONCRETE POETRY

Recent words and some nice photos from the Canadian street poet Jerm IX. Now, if he’d only make his way to New York.

THINKING AHEAD

Practical, economical, planet friendly, and texturally interesting, the lowly rubber stamp has recently found favor amongst designers. Australian designer, Felix Lobelius, who has the added benefit of a great studio name, nicely demonstrates why.

2 GOOD

Proposed mark for a Tommy Hilfiger/Thierry Henry campaign from the Dutch communications studio, Matte.

CUTTING WORDS

Lovely rendering and cut-out composition by Erik Marinovich.

ON A HIGH

Experiments in Surrealism from New York-based photographer, John Clang.

THEN & NOW

Words have power because of what they mean, of course, but also because of how they look.  Painters have used words for visual effect since George Braque stenciled the word BAL or BACH (we can’t be sure which came first) onto the surface of two cubist oil paintings in the autumn of 1911, forevermore framing the argument for what constitutes high versus low, or refined art versus commercial fare.

Braque could scarcely have imagined the work of Ed Ruscha, who was both a graphic designer and a painter, and didn’t bother himself much with labels.  For Ruscha, words and the picture plane are nothing without each other. To love the turn of a phrase, to love the painted surface, and to love both the subversive and visual power of language is to find it impossible to turn away from a work like NOW, one of my all-time favorite Ruscha compositions.  I tried looking away when I first saw it in person years ago. Couldn’t do it then; can’t do it now.

EX-MAS

Too late for Christmas past, perhaps, but definitely an object of desire for 2010, Austrian designer, Matthias Lehr’s X-Mas-Tree-Stand might actually induce me to get a live tree again.  Made of wood from Black Forest fir trees and stainless steel tubing, it neatly folds for storage, too boot.

RE-SAIL

Mark Weaver’s visual reinterpretation of Moby Dick, in poster form.