Penguin Celebrations series

First, I have to give credit where credit is due: I first read about this series the other day over at Galleycat.

This new “Celebrations” series comprises 36 titles; all of the categories (fiction, biography, etc.) are represented here.

What’s great about these? Nothing, if you plant your feet firmly in the “nostalgia is a disease” camp. Lots, if you value simplicity and elegance in design and typography. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, though, it’s fascinating to read what Penguin’s John Miles says in The Penguin Collectors’ Society’s Penguin by Designers about the original designs that inspired these: “No matter how grand or famous the author the typographic treatment was exactly the same. So Robert Graves got exactly the same treatment as a little-known writer of a crime novel.” That’s an amazing thing to contemplate and speaks to the power of the Penguin brand.




Penguin Celebrations series

QotD Roger Mandel

“Quite broadly, I think of the fine arts as a method by which humans ask the big questions not necessarily knowing the answers, whereas design enables people to create answers quite concretely.  A strength of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design)’s balanced curriculum is that the fine artists help the designers consider the big unanswereable questions as they work on their chairs and buildings, while the designers inform the fine artists about how to make their ineffable expressions tangible. Art’s about more than being creative, it’s about developing a system of thought, by which you can solve complex problems to improve aspects of the world’s concerns.  More concretely, proportion, functionality, texture, and surface beauty are broad design attributes anyone should learn because they enrich visual literacy and acuity. Art education without elements of design is not useful in the end–which is why art teachers have had a hard time justifying to boards of education and parents that the visual arts are important in the curriculum.”ht I.D. magazine, September/October 2007How would you rewrite this paragraph if you replaced “fine arts” with “sciences”?  Talk amongst yourselves.
QotD Roger Mandel

One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dream with the Help of A Simple Office Supply

Design by Kyle Kolker

You might have heard this story: Man trades paperclip for house. More here.

We all should have seen this one coming. And I know from comments left on previous posts that there are some of you out there who question the marketing wisdom of covers with no titles, but I saw three people pick this up from the new paperbacks table, read the spine and then the back cover, and one of them bought it justlikethat.


There’s just no comparing a cover like this with all the other ideas that were probably pitched for this; you’ve got to think that someone, somewhere, still thinks that a photo of the house the guy eventually acquired with title type that looks like twisted red paperclips was the way to go. Thankfully, the person with that idea lost.

Buy this book on Amazon.com
One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dream with the Help of A Simple Office Supply

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor, Part 6,732

If you liked the machine guns for kids in our last old comic book ad here’s a nice companion piece. I had one of these babies when I was young. I could barely breath when I slipped it over my head to play “army”, but its coolness was well worth the near suffocation.


(click for a closer look)

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor, Part 6,732

ASHLEY WOOD’S TELEPHONE LINES

These pictures by illustrator Ashley Wood seem to be a cross between drawing and knife fighting.

Wood is one of those artists whose drawings benefit from controlled accidents. His slashing lines and spattered ink are part skill, part chance and part hydrological experiment. When you work that way, you can’t be too picky about your materials. The reverse side of the above drawing shows how some of Wood’s more fortunate accidents take place on stray scraps of paper:

I like Wood’s work. I like that he seems to draw on every available surface, from the backs of envelopes to waste paper, sometimes taping pages together when his experiment runs out of room.

I find his emphasis on telephone lines in these drawings worth noting for two reasons.

First, they show an important difference between drawing and photography. In most photographs, phone wires are so thin and insubstantial they don’t even show up. They certainly never rise to the important compositional element that Wood has made them here. It takes a human brain to fix upon a physically insignificant element and amplify and distort it into a major part of the drawing.

Second, Wood’s awareness of the telephone lines reveals the care and sensitivity necessary to make a “spontaneous” style effective. Despite the vigorous, almost violent appearance of these drawings, it required a subtle eye to notice a detail like telephone lines and a thoughtful mind to play them up the way Wood has.
ASHLEY WOOD’S TELEPHONE LINES

Reading in the news

One in four U.S. adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday… .

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who had not read any, the usual number read was seven.

“I just get sleepy when I read,” said Richard Bustos, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.

Read the rest:

Poll: 1 in 4 U.S. adults read no books last year (International Herald Tribune)

Related post
American reading habits

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Reading in the news