Past and Present — An excerpt from Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig by Steve Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen at Design Observer*:
Lustig’s designs fluidly shift from past to present. For his early “experimental” work he built upon an armature of old technologies… and techniques…, which evolved through new technologies… into unprecedented styles… Toward the end of his life, his typography turned into a playful amalgam of vintage letters composed in contemporary layouts with vibrant colors. In “Personal Notes,” he wrote, “As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between past and present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves.”
The Authentic — Chuck Klosterman, author most recently of Eating the Dinosaur, profiles Jonathan F., author of Freedom, for GQ Magazine:
It’s a present-day problem: There’s just no escaping the larger, omnipresent puzzle of “reality.” Even when people read fiction, they want to know what’s real. But this, it seems, is not Franzen’s concern. He disintegrates the issue with one sentence.
“Here’s the thing about inauthentic people,” he says on the train, speaking in the abstract. “Inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.”
Telling Stories — Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on interactive storytelling:
The ability to write communally and interactively with computers is nothing new… Digital tools for collaborative writing date back twenty or thirty years. And yet interactive storytelling has never taken off. The hypertext novel in particular turned out to be a total flop. When we read stories, we still read ones written by authors. The reason for the failure of interactive storytelling has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with stories.
Footnotes — Part one of a long interview with journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco, author most recently of the remarkable Footnotes in Gaza, at Art Threat (via Drawn):
[T]he biggest influence on me journalistically speaking has been George Orwell. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book Road to Wigan Pier, but Orwell spent time in the industrial areas of Britain during the depression and took a room with a miner, lived with miners. He went down into the mine shaft with the miners. His ability to go to these places and really look at things from a ground level, that was impressive to me. And for other reasons too: because he was so dedicated to his work, and he felt that his work was sort of bigger than himself as a human being. I appreciated that dedication.
Part two will run on Monday apparently…
And finally… Superhero WikiLeaks:
(Thanks Shawn)
*Born Modern is published by Chronicle Books and is distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books.