Factious fonts

An article from Fast Company about Six Fonts that Piss People Off, from Ikea's abandonment of Futura for Verdana in its 2010 catalog, to the Nazis' banning of Fraktur for not being "German" enough, to the continuing vitriol against that most deplorable of typefaces, Comic Sans.

If you've got a MacBook, but you really wanted an iPhone...

I found this slightly freaky Processing game that uses your MacBook's built-in Sudden Motion Sensor (intended to detect jarring movements that could potentially damage your hard drive) as an accelerometer to play the kind of tilting ball puzzle game you'd typically find for your iPhone. If you want to risk your precious, fragile hardware by waving it around manically in the air, this is the game you've been waiting for.

Space Patrol

(Reposted from Bluespace, my academic design blog)

Blog discoveries for July

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

My pet arts

Science, Humanities, Culture:

MadSilence
The Popular Uncanny

Design, Tech, Advertising:

2experts Design

Nude & Erotic Art:

Au carrefour étrange

Characters:

Romantoes

A little says a lot

A stunning collection of minimalist wallpapers at 2experts Design.

Via intenta via Portafolio.

Roads to nowhere

The Map Realm is a collection of maps of fictional countries created by professed "avid map collector and roadgeek" Adrian Leskiw. There are even multiple iterations of the same territories mapped through time, from the seventies into the mid-21st century. Meticulous and absorbing.

Walls of text

A nice roundup of typography wallpapers at Speckyboy Design Magazine. (This one's from design company Parachute.)

Via Portafolio.

Real Photoshop

"As real as it gets," a clever mockup of the Photoshop desktop space by Art Snob Solutions.

Via Drawn!.

Blog discoveries for June

Arts, Humanities, Culture:

PAUVRE PLUME

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

ephemera assemblyman
The Flapper Girl

Fashion:

Easy Fashion
FABULON
Nothing Elegant
The Sartorialist
Urban Style

Design, Tech, Advertising:

Words and Eggs

Art Collections:

the art of memory

Nude & Erotic Art:

THE NAKED IN THE ART

Food:

The Museum of Food Anomalies

Fg is for Franklin Gothic

The Periodic Table of Typefaces by Squidspot.

Via feuilleton.

My God, it's full of sh--

This is the City of Work.





Here you can test yourself at the Human Potential Institute, check out the ideas for sale from the Think Tank on Idea Island, or keep on top of your world with some informative and educational Charts.





The City of Work is the vision of artist and MIT administrative worker Michael Lewy, who uses Powerpoint and architectural modeling software to map out bureaucratic dystopias using the absurd, dehumanizing language of productivity and corporate-speak. The self-absorbed excesses of office-drone culture are often parodied, but Lewy's work eschews the lighthearted comedy of dorky bosses and cubicle antics to instead evoke the more nightmarish prospect of a frightening collective descent into utter senselessness.





The book Chart Sensation gathers all of Lewy's strange graphs and Powerpoint artwork into one delightfully baffling collection, so you can take your time pondering the secrets revealed by illustrative charts like the one below.






Less tongue-in-cheek, unfortunately, is this apparently earnest 27-page design document for PepsiCo's pricey new logo, which was redesigned by branding agency Arnell Group last year at an estimated total cost of hundreds of millions of dollars (over a million for the actual design, plus the cost of replacing all of Pepsi's branded material with the updated logo). When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of Lewy's work.





While most people responded with a collective yawn at the result of that protracted and expensive five-month process, shrugging it off as an Obama logo clone or forming their own mental associations that Pepsi probably didn't intend, Arnell's design document, entitled "Breathtaking", reveals where all that time and money was spent — drawing arcane diagrams to demonstrate the new logo's deep cosmic connections to life, the universe, and everything.





The document was "leaked" from PepsiCo this week, almost certainly intentionally, since it's quickly become the fascination of the blogosphere and provided loads of free publicity for the newly transcendent brand. Bravo. (I refer you to the title of this post, which ought to make sense by now.) The document is indeed hilarious, a true masterwork.





You can read the full thing here.

Via the Consumerist; more from Gawker and Advertising Age.

I am unmoved by Pepsi's breathtaking show of mystical connectedness to divine perfection. When a beverage company takes pains to demonstrate how its brand identity is inextricably linked to Satanic soul trafficking, that is when I become a loyal drinker for life.





Years later this ARG, the first I ever encountered and the only one I ever paid attention to, still inhabits my consciousness, even though the game itself was judged something of a flop. A few of the game's sites still exist, though most seem to have gone — including the travel agency website where you could book trips to destinations like Devil's Island, Valhalla, and Babel, which can only be visited now courtesy of the wayback machine. There was also one that alluded to the demonic significance of the stars, horn, and other elements of the Stella logo, but I can't for the life of me find it. Oh, well...perfection has its price.

Bold illustration

Illustrator Dan McCarthy does a few things very well: trees, power lines, ships, houses, skeletons. At least, these are the things he does repeatedly. More generally, he's a master at bold compositions relying on the interplay between line and negative space, from rigging to cables to twigs to ribs. Not only is there some stellar work on display here, but also a limited selection of very affordable and very beautiful prints for sale.






Creative director Gregori Saavedra is a prolific commercial illustrator whose stark line work replicates the look of photographs run through a trace filter, to beautiful effect. His portfolio also includes a variety of stylish video and other work.

No calendars, please

Earlier this year I wrote about how hard it was to find interesting, stylish, high-quality calendars year after year. Well, I wanted to warn you against showering me in calendar gifts this Christmas, because I found enough to tide me over for a few more years, at least.

Most exiting is the discovery that illustrator Steve Thomas, whose retrofuturistic space travel posters I showed off a while ago, offers a calendar of his shiny space art. I will have one for my wall.







For graphic inspiration, I adore the bold, bright prints in this Paper Source Art Calendar.






Etsy of course has loads of beautiful and unique art calendars, particularly of the postcard desktop variety. I like this charming Jardin Desk Calendar by MagnoliaMoonlight.






And this Objectification II Postcard Desk Calendar by SureAsBlue.






And this Screen Printed Botanical Calendar by annacote.






And this Animals of the Land, Sky, and Sea Desk Calendar by InkDropDesign.






And this Helvetica Typography Calendar by ovendoorowl.






And this Letterpressed and Silkscreened Calendar by ilee.






And this TTV Desk Calendar by ebonypaws.






And this Polaroid Calendar by AliciaBlock.






I'm in love with the stationary company Cavallini & Co., particularly their calendar offerings. They have great vintage art themes like travel, maps, plants, and animals.







I also made a few finds in photography calendars of abandoned places. In the slightly surreal category, there's the beautiful Retrospect Calendar by farhmboy, who explores out-of-the-way locales in his native Michigan.







In more moody ruins, there's the uplifting Abandoned Places Calendar by Richard Rizzo.







Then there's the beautifully photographed tribute to that ever-photogenic ruin, the Eastern State Penitentiary Calendar by 13 Black Cats Designs.







So please...no calendars! Unless you've found some great ones, too.