Christmas in Pixels

Living in a small apartment and traveling during the holidays leaves little opportunity for a real Christmas tree - especially when your tastes are more modern. So instead, *boy had the wonderful idea of creating an economical, low-maintenence likeness of a tree over our "hearth" (a.k.a. the huge silver radiator). We think it turned out quite nicely.

Its a post-it note pixel tree.



And beneath the tree - Chinese newspaper packages, tied up with string.



Of course *boy had it all planned out for us...



And then we both had the idea for the perfect tree topper. It just needed a little support...



Its a modern angel with wings.

Buddha Baby

I promise not to turn this into a baby blog but it is among the more difficult things in the world to resist sharing images like this:

He's my own little Buddha. 

Healthy baby, healthy mama, happy Auntie. Much more right here.

Synthetic Landscapes

Living in the city forces me to live within manufactured landscapes in my everyday life. I am forced to watch planet Earth DVDs to see the natural beauty and phenomena of nature. On rare occasions nature intervenes and wreaks havoc on the city in the form of a heavy white blanket. It merges the well distinguished zones of infrastructure and circulation into a continuous landscape that disregards all humans attempts to organize nature. We can't sweep it away fast enough to remember where we are suppose to walk and drive our cars and cross the street.

As an architect I feel I am constantly trying to blur the definition of the distinct zones because if we can merge the functions we won't need so much space and can reduce our footprint in every way. If we don't need as much space there is a chance we might be closer to "natural" nature. Unfortunately most people don't want to walk in the street or drive on the lawn let alone work in the same zip code they live in. We leave our homes to heat themselves while we go to an empty office that was kept warm all night so we will be comfortable when we get there. I live in the city that is so dense yet everything is separated and distinct. I can't help but think a farmer living and working on a farm is living a much more urban life by layering all of life's needs in one place.

We associate urban life with density and rural life with wide expanses but the opposite may be true. True urban and rural life are not all that different, within a few acres of land both can get everything they need, there are just more or less people around. It is suburban life that is striving to merge the two that is choking nature and pushing the rural and urban conditions further and further apart.

Our dependence on automated transportation as an everyday commonplace is forcing us to travel further and further perpetuating the problem. Industry and consumption blind common sense and skew human existence into a wasteful self perpetuating machine. We are constantly spreading ourselves further and further apart thus the quality of our life, relationships, and by default nature are all suffering. We use technology and consumption to attempt to mend these rifts only to move further away. It is only through the perseverance of nature that we get intermittent reminders of true beauty and the frailty of our existence and shortcomings to understand true human nature and what is necessary.

This post was meant to be a short introduction and photographs of the beautiful work of Tara Donovan but I distracted myself. Another day.

Pink & Grey Stripes

*girl is in Atlanta for the week on photo duty and welcoming her new nephew into her family. Meet Andrew Stephen Knight.
I want to know where I can get a hat like that, he's only been out for a few hours but he looks pretty stylish.

Book Autopsies

I came across these images from artist Brian Dettmer and was absolutely blown away. I'll let the work speak for itself. More on Brian here and here.

Images originally seen on Centripetal Notion.

Adventures in Mind-Molding: What Language Looks Like

Ellen Lupton's says that typography is what language looks like. Wikipedia (not that it is to be trusted) defines typography as "the art and technique of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type...The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing."

Next semester I will be teaching a typography class formerly titled "Computer Typography" - follow up to the sophomore class "Basic Typography" - now titled "Advanced Typography" and open only to graduate students. Long story, short: I was slated to teach sophomores a standard syllabus and am now teaching grad students a syllabi of my own concoction in a class that is the official pilot programme to a possible overhaul of the entire typographic teaching strategy. And it will be the second class I've ever taught. No, I'm not scared (well, not yet).

As a product of a traditional typographic education (using haberules, E-scales and rapidographs to hand-render type) and a designer working in the computer-dominated digital age, I see the huge disconnect between what designers are being taught and what they actually end up producing. There is a misstep somewhere between pen and paper and mouse and keyboard. The beautiful possibilities of working by hand are being suffocated by InDesign's default type settings and a flush-left existence.

As I piece together this experimental syllabi, I am constantly reminding myself that the most important concept I can teach them about type - and all design - is that all tools are relevant. Good designers draw upon any and all weapons they have; but to become a good designer, you must first build your arsenal.

A sneak peak at my ideas to bridge the disconnect between hand and machine.

Images from the fantastic blog ffffound!

More for those who love Typography.

Bacon Cravings

A year from now these should be *girl and my pictures of Bacon but for now they come from here