traveling with the ghost: ??? (Yan Zhixiong)

Banknote patterns fascinate me. I can get lost for hours in all the details, seeing how the patterns fit together, how the lettering works, the tiny security ‘flaws’ - they’re amazing. Central to banknote designs are Guilloche patterns, which can be created mechanically with a geometric lathe, or more likely these days, mathematically.

via Guilloches | The Ministry of Type

Being an Automattician and all, I’ll be attending WordCamp this Saturday the 16th.

As lorelle mentions, there are also quite a bit of wonderful treats surrounding WordCamp, like a WordPress Genuis Bar and a WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt!

I’m extra excited to go, since somehow, they missed it, and are allowing me to present! There are going to be some really amazing speakers, like: Jane Wells, Andy Skelton, Andy Peatling, Alan Levine, Tantek Çelik, Noel Jackson, Joseph Scott, Lloyd Budd, Mark Jaquith, Stephen O’Grady, Jeremy Clarke, Aaron Brazell, Sam Bauers, Will Norris, Liz Danzico, Chris Lea, Tom Coates, Chuck Lewis, Stephan Spencer, Steve Souders, and more!!!!

Since FFFFound seems to be a closed community and my chances of ever joining are slim to none, I’m going to post my own FFFFound images here.

modelcouture: Magdalena Frackowiak“Sortilège” Numero #

“The red icon on your iPhone or iPod touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were rich enough to afford this. It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.”

via wrongdistance.com

• I’m now on a plane headed for the pacific rim. You will not see me or hear from me for 6 days.
• Dean blogs!
• Stefan Sagmeister is my hero. His TED talk was great. His book “Things I have learned in my so far,” is amazing. Here’s an article about him.
• I got married. It was the happiest day of my life. Pictures are forthcoming.
• I got a new job. I’m extremely honored. I’ll explain more, when I’m not busy sipping coconut juice and eating fresh pineapple while the natives give me hot stone massages.
• Draplin vs. USA I can’t explain how close I feel to these words. I mutter this stuff every day.

Eve Duhamel

No.57 | N 36°13’48.5“ W 116°47’09.2“, Bad Water, Death Valley, California, USA, 2006

2008 Design Trends from WebDesignerWall [via Matt]

• What does your garbage can of failed motivations look like?
• I hope Ze Frank writes a book some day.
• John Dyer growing every type of beard.

• [via Secret Experiment]

• 
• Design Is In The Details

• 
  Advanced Beauty from mate on Vimeo.

  I found this somewhere and can not remember where. I’m sorry.

• Timoni is a super talented designer. Watch out.
• I can not wait till Spore comes out, until then, checkout the Creature Creator!
• The Ampersand Masters Thesis
• The live Firefox 3 download counter.

[via Snowball's blog]

Which eventually led to you coming up with a technique that’s pretty much paved the way for all the D.J.’s and turntablists to come. What did you feel like the first time you were able to make it work? 
When I first did it, I called up Disco B and EZ Mike, and I was like, “Listen, I got something, I got something.” And when they came down, they were like “What the fuck is this?” And I was like, “Watch what I’m doing, ya’ll, please watch what I’m doing.” But they just could not grasp it. I went on to doing it in different parks. I figured if I was playing the hardest, best part of these different genres of music I would have people on the ceiling, but people were just like “What the fuck are you doing?” I went home and I cried, cried, cried, cried. Nobody got it! I tried to go to different clubs, get on for five or ten minutes, and I heard excuses like “My boss will fire me, I hear you ruin records, I can’t let you touch my stuff.” It was just ridicule after ridicule after ridicule. I was a geek for a long time. [Laughs.]

[via TMN]

I love getting font foundry emails.

FontFont recently sent me one with these two gems (oldies but goodies):

Ayres Royal

New Standard

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

[via stephen henault]

This is the most profound marketing I’ve ever seen for a book.

During some blurry years from 2003 to 2006, I attended The School of Visual Arts, for photography. It was an amazing time in my life. Unfortunately, it caused me to stop blogging and start being an assistant to a fashion photographer who was repped by Avedon’s former agent, and then started a retouching company with said photographer. Too many parties, a few nervous breakdowns, and enough beautiful models to make a man die happy later, and here I am; finally realizing that beauty is usually just skin deep, and doing what I love, designing things. (I’m still an insane fashion fanatic. I openly admit to buying Vogue Italia. I have a mid-90s fashion magazine collection that rivals many.)

During my stint at “Art School,” all the freshmen would usually get really into one of the classic photographers, Avedon, Cindy Sherman, etc. Cartier-Bresson was one of the most referenced. For what he calls “The Decisive Moment.”

“There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative,” he said. “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Henri Cartier Bresson

Today I ran across a lego reproduction of one of Bresson’s most infamous photos “Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare.” Pictured side by side below:

The Lego™ rendition is genius. But, the original, is a classic, if not a tale in itself. The photography, is said to have been staged. He still clicked the shutter, but only after many tries. Or so goes the legend.

If that’s true…

Henri wasn’t just a photographer, but an brilliant self-marketer. He created a “brand” around himself. He built upon this idea of “Henri” being in the right place at the right time, all the time. People thought and still do think, he was truly a photographic GENIUS.

Cartier-Bresson knew his audience. He was a masterful photographer, but beyond that, he truly understood what his audience wanted. They wanted to believe in magic and coincidence and fate. He gave it to them. Maybe, even if it was decisively.

[picture of lego guy via clusterflock via coudal]

She’s on “the Facebook” now.

She’s also got this ridiculous video for Wanderlust.

Her graphic designer is a king at modern typography, hence his domain name: http://www.moderntypography.com/

What does Björk not do to the nines?

Captioning Sucks! is a microsite about captioning, and why it sucks!

Joe Clark approached me to design and build the site. His request: “garish and vulgar.” So, eight6 went to town.

It was an odd request, and an awkwardly challenging one. Aside from wrangling with Comic Sans and coming out victorious, I got to play around with some alpha-transparency and I think the result is pretty interesting. This site was one of my favorites to design… It’s not every day you get to do this kind of work! And now, I can finally say, “I got a client to use Comic Sans!”

I want to point out, that this is the kind of stuff I really enjoy and one of the main reasons I started eight6. We don’t just want to design, we want to move the world forward through design. (Yeah, it sounds corny.) Captioning Sucks! is a perfect example of balancing graphical conventions and implementing contextual design. It’s vulgar appearance helps emphasize the importance of the project’s goals.

Go find out why Captioning Sucks!

I met Hugh MacLeod at SXSW for the first time–it felt like meeting a long-lost cousin. He’s such an absolutely awesome dude, on paper and in person.

I’ve been reading gapingvoid for ever. I don’t think I would have survived NYC without the backlog of cartoons Hugh has put online.

Hugh drew me this card, that will be cherished forever. Frame is on its way.

Hugh, thank you my friend!

BTW, be sure to check out this post over at Hugh’s site. He’s great.

My company, eight6 is going to match up to $1000 worth of bets, to buy a ton of books for underprivileged kids.

I love good causes. And, this one is fun! Get on over to the Making Book page and place your bets. Skip the casino, and gamble to buy books for kids!

From coudal:

Each bet costs $10 and all the money bet will go to First Book, “a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books.”

“If you try to probe, I’ll lie to you. Seventy-five percent of what I say in interviews is false. I’m like a hen protecting her eggs. I cannot talk. I must protect my work. Introspection is bad for me. I’m a medium, not an orator. Like certain oriental and Christian mystics, I think the ’self’ is a kind of enemy. My work is what enables me to come out of myself. I like what I do, not what I am…Do you know the best service anyone could render to art? Destroy all biographies. Only art can explain the life of a man - and not the contrary.”

- Orson Welles, 1962.

via James M. Graham - Photography: The Road To Xanadu