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Tag: gerd arntz

Something for the Weekend

Mark Lamster on Gerd Arntz, designer of the Isotype pictographs, at Design Observer.

A new book on Arntz — Gerd Arntz: Graphic Designer — has just been published by Dutch publisher 010. A preview of the book can be seen here. (And, yes, my Twitter avatar is a Gerd Arntz Isotype. #nerd)

Barnes & Noble: The Last, Best Hope for American Bookselling? — Editor Edward Nawotka in Publishing Perspectives:

B&N still has enough consolidated power to “make” books. Its buying power makes it indispensable to publishers who need advance orders to justify print runs and the various other knock on effects that entails. They are providing –- via their Nook device –- the biggest rival to Amazon’s e-reader hegemony. And, let’s face it, if they –- along with Borders -– disappeared, how many communities would suddenly be underserved or not served at all? This is the reason small towns lobby B&N to open stores in their community: people are now, like it or not, accustomed to the selection available at big box retailers. True, perhaps half of those who shop at B&N’s aren’t there for the books, but what better chance is there to entice a not-so-avid reader into picking up a book?

The Man with Two Brains — Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist talks about his book The Master and His Emissary with Natasha Mitchell for ABC radio show All in the Mind:

[T]he idea was that the brain was like a machine that carried out certain functions, and because there were two hemispheres there was twice as much computing power as it were, but we would compartmentalise things. So there was a story that language was in the left hemisphere, reason was in the left hemisphere and something like creativity and emotion were in the right hemisphere. That’s a complete and utter….misconception of things. Every single brain function is carried out by both hemispheres. Reason and emotion and imagination depend on the coming together of what both hemispheres contribute. So that particular dichotomy is incredibly unhelpful and misleading and I keep trying to steer away from it, but there is still, nonetheless, fairly obviously a dichotomy.

(If, like me, you completely missed this book when it was published, author A.C. Grayling reviewed it for the Literary Review).

Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers of The Heads of State interviewed at From the Desks Of

And finally…

The Gamification of Everything — NPR’s On The Media looks at the future of gaming and creating social change through game design:

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Something for the Weekend, April 17th, 2009


Isotype — Gerd Arntz’s amazing pictograms and visual signs for the visual language Isotype at the beautifully designed The Gerd Arntz Web Archive (pictured above).

Jacket(s) — Much as I admire Chip Kidd’s book covers, most of them are just too familiar to re-post here. But I hadn’t seen this ingeniously layered design for Kenzo Kitakata’s Ashes before even though it was published by Vertical in 2003 (pictured above). Seeing it all laid out, it’s really hard to begrudge Mr. Kidd’s reputation for awesomeness.

We like to be part of something — Nick Harkaway on connections:

A paper book has a history. Somewhere, at some time, an author wrote it all down, printed it out, gave it to an editor, who also worked over it. The book was typeset – yes, on a computer, these days, but still — and finally pressed and packaged and distributed. There is a chain of physical events which leads from me to you. With old editions, it’s even more direct. With signed ones, it’s a handshake. We like to connect. And digital books feel as if they’re trapped behind glass. The book is in the machine, and we can’t open the cover and touch the pages.

Black, white and read all overCreative Review looks at Faber & Faber‘s new editions of 20th Century poetry. The books feature specially commissioned woodcut and linocut cover illustrations.  The new editions are part of the Faber’s 80th anniversary celebrations. You can see more of the cover images at designer Miriam Rosenbloom’s design:related page.

The Disappointment Brokers — I going to go out on a limb and say this is another must-read for book-industry types from Poets & Writers — Literary agents Anna Stein, Jim Rutman, Maria Massie, and Peter Steinberg have a fascinating conversation about their profession and the state of the industry:

here’s the silver lining: [The industry’s] unhealthy enough that it’s an exciting time. It’s broken enough that publishers and agents and everyone has to change. Everyone has to rethink what they’re doing. So we have a group responsibility, and an opportunity, in a way that the industry has probably never seen before.

The Legacy of ModernismSpiegel Online celebrates 90 years of Bauhaus (via @PD_Smith).

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