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An Image

February 20th, 2011

Toni_Morrison
Toni Morrison

Going Around: A Nazi Graphic Standards Manual

February 9th, 2011

nazi-type-cover_525_525
That thing looks eerily similar to the cover of my high school yearbook.

You gotta give it to Steven Heller. Aside from being the most prolific design writer out there, he really does have a knack for mining history and coming up with some seriously mind-fucking artifacts.

We sometimes forget that a lot of the conventions in contemporary graphic design has roots in Modernist thinking which, despite a seemingly positive rationale of making the world a better place, can also be attributed to some of the worst things about our world. Granted, the Nazis simply used apparatuses already in place; The Germans, after all, were at the forefront of early modernist design. But, consider how well they employed their graphic identity. That taken with Goebbels propaganda machine and you might say The Nazis are looking a lot like, say, Apple, Inc. This isn’t to draw comparison to the two but to point out that both Apple and The Nazi’s are utilizing the same techniques of persuasion and communication devised in the early twentieth century. I guess what it points to is the fact that graphic design history, unlike world history or even art history, is relatively tidy and linear. Also, that the efficacy of graphic identity systems can be used for evil.

I’m wondering if there’s a link between the kind of thinking that brought about Third Reich style eugenics and the kind of thinking that brought about The Bauhaus. The Jedi and The Dark Side were essentially using the same magic, no?

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=24358

The Good Life

January 26th, 2011

“The final value of our lives is adverbial, not adjectival—a matter of how we actually lived, not of a label applied to the final result. It is the value of the performance, not anything that is left when the performance is subtracted. It is the value of a brilliant dance or dive when the memories have faded and the ripples died away.”
-”What Is A Good Life” by Ronald Dworkin for NYRB

An Image and Updates

December 18th, 2010

rapmusicisporn

On my hard drive right now is a new design for this site that’s halfway coded. Who knows when I’ll get around to finishing that? For now, look at the brilliant image above. Juxtapositions are always better when there’s rap music involved.

An Image

November 8th, 2010

Bike in the Snow
photo credit

as temperatures drop
i am thinking of commuting
of nights like this
the city and its plums.