I have a strange fascination with photos of the ocean, in disorienting views, often with people doing disorienting things. Spatial disorientation is an interesting condition, when you can't perceive up versus down. When a sky is mistaken for an ocean. An even more interesting principle is the horizon line. When two planes of space "intersect". Or when people thought the world just ended at the horizon, because the Earth was flat. So when you combine two confounding things: the Earth looks flat, and the sky looks like the ocean, you get one great mess. And no matter how many ways you flip the ocean sideways or flip a person sideways in a normally oriented ocean, it is always incredibly perplexing. But maybe that's the beauty of them—their ability to confuse people in a very profound way.



1. via blacksheep
2. and of Philippe Ramette

This is a website. For a think tank in Singapore.
Anonymous Pte Ltd.
Why would a website ever need images?
Just kidding. But an all type website works well in this case.

Julie Digs posts these great fashion + syntax/inspiration pairings.
Things always make more sense in relation to something else.

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer.
The next book on my reading list
(for when I'll actually have time).
Foer took his favorite book, Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, and cut out/deleted words to form a new narrative. Each page is die-cut. A perfect example of how form and content are completely married, with one removed the other would fall apart. Rejected by almost all printers it was proposed to, because it was "impossible to make", it was taken on by Visual Editions.

Ink experiments I did for a book project to show the progression of wrestling as a sport—in it's expressionist, exaggerative nature as two opponents mingle, intertwine, float, drop, rise (and repeat). These photos, and the idea were edited out, but it was fun to experiment with ink and different metaphors for wrestling.

A House as a Canvas:

When I lived in the Bay Area, I would drive by this house in Oakland, California once a week for over a year. Over that year it went through various color variations: from white, to a white with splotchy blue patches (reminiscent of the sky), to other blues, to green and yellow combinations. When I moved away, it still hadn't settled into an aesthetic. I wish I had documented it from the beginning—it just took me so long to realize what was going on. The photographs above are taken within a months interval. Sometimes the color would change every week, sometimes it would be more than a month. I was always curious if the owners were slowly (over a years time) deciding on an exterior color for their home, or whether they were just doing color experiments with their house as a canvas. Whatever the case, it was interesting to see the house take on different forms through color.

I've been a long time fan of Anzfer Farms, a workshop/showroom started by Jonathan Anzalone and Joseph Ferriso, in San Francisco. They source reclaimed and washed up/found materials, and re-purpose them into everyday objects. The woods they use have history—often worn and weathered and shaped through experience. This wood, paired with very industrial and artificial elements (glass, electricity, etc) make for interesting objects.

Punctuation as Meaning


The colon is used for the Collins brand identity.
The colon was chosen specifically because of it's meaning...
" The intention of the colon is to create relationships. Of all the marks, the colon is the most social. It introduces ideas, details and key story elements."

The simple, exaggerated colon is effective and thoughtful.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thinking more deeply about punctuation in not only it's form, but in it's functional use in written language, I've been thinking of a mark to symbolize my work. The question mark because it implies curiosity or doubt? Brackets, to separate out context but also to build relationships between what lies between? Or even the comma, as it differentiates items or symbolizes an omission?

For me (for now) I think the slash/solidus best represents my interests.
The slash builds on associations and alternate meanings. It represents a dividing line between concepts and ideas, it promotes duality...

I've always been compelled by the idea of duality, that ideas come in complementary pairs and that one thing exists because the complete opposite also exists.

lightness and weight
positive and negative
being and non-being

In this photographic series, I experiment with the idea of transience (vs. permanence). Trying to capture the impressions and steps I have taken throughout my life to tell a story of what was once there.










/

This sugar packet caught my eye at the coffee shop. Plain white. Simple typography. Sugar. It was so refreshing to see this right next to all the pinks and yellows and blues and oranges of the other packets that were loaded with color, type, and "personality". Branding is all about building a personality, image, and feeling by adding design elements until a visual and emotional quality is achieved. But sometimes it becomes overwhelming or usual. By stripping away everything identifiable to the brand, it becomes an identity in itself. What I appreciate the most about the design is the marketing of the item (sugar) and not the brand (Diamond Crystal Brands). Although maybe not effective in getting it's name out, it's nice to get sugar as Sugar instead of sugar as Artificial Sweetner Brand Name or Raw Sugar Brand Name.

sweet infographic.
via ohcupcakes.

These photos bring me back to the time I was eight, and my dad took us on a long and taxing road trip to Yellowstone National Park. At eight, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a car for 10 hours a day. And when we arrived, everything in sight looked like dead space. Everything still looks like dead space. But that was the beauty of it. Dead, expansive, and dull land, with secret pockets of water. Sometimes air or water would spew out, straight up in the air. The contrast between the stillness of the land with the energy escaping from below was worth the long car ride.

But it wasn't just the contrast of the geysers that made them so beautiful, it was the oddity of their existence. Occurrences happen in nature that we could never dream up. That's why synthetic chemists look to plants for answers to solve problems. Because plants synthesize compounds that man could never think to make. And that's why, whether ingrained from road trips like these, or growing up in a town in California that was hidden in the canyons, I often fall back to nature for inspiration. It exists, in its oddities and color and contrast.

photos via allthemountains.

Titled: Overheard on the Titanic
a newspaper article blacked out to emphasize its meaning
or to form new meaning
via swissmiss.
by Austin Kleon

brian stowell's vinyl collection.
via graphic-exchange
see more here

Because I miss coastal California.
1. monarchs at Pismo Beach
2. Carmel-by-the-Sea

photographs by me.

in

awe

of

traumgedanken (or dream thought)

the book contains a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories...designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. they are connected by threads which tie in with certain key words. The threads visualise the confusion and fragileness of dreams

via of paper and things.
maria fischer.

This is so beautiful. For its simplicity and thought. And the color blue: psychologically it promotes feelings of calm, peacefulness, and productiveness.

But even more, this is done in the likes of Magritte or John Berger by questioning the idea: what is real and what is not. How do humans perceive things—do we believe in what we see or is our perception based off learned occurrences. And in knowing this, how do we design?






And for the sake for beautiful abstract polaroid photography, here's a set about color/shape/form. Instead of capturing the almost spontaneous moments of life that an instant film camera such as the polaroid is so useful for, this artist chooses to use the camera as a means to create something two-dimensional and stripped of context.

see more polaroids here

Sometimes when set out to design, you are trying to capture something. Figuring out what you are trying to capture and communicate is not always easy. Is it a thought, an image, a feeling? Sometimes you have guidelines, sometimes the limit is bound by your own imagination. These "photo-respirations" to me are beautiful and eerie. There is something great about being able to capture life in a simplistic and unique—but magical form. Great design and art push you to think further beyond what you thought was possible. Great design sits and lingers and waits. Great design "breathes light".

"Photo-respiration" series by Tokihiro Sato.