c. billadeau

Another piece from the “Things That Make My Eyes Tingle In Delight” file:

Michael Paukner’s work is part esoteric infographics, part vintage poster art, all parts incredible.

more via flickr

Slow Moscow from Andrey Stvolinsky on Vimeo.

A sweet video! Also, anything that uses Kilimanjaro is automatically more sweet. I spent hours trying to figure out what song was being used in some Bacardi commercial a while back, because I knew the tune but couldn’t place the ‘who’. Turns out it was Lobby.

By Nick Derington for Robert Ashley’s A Life Well Wasted.

(via Offworld)

Ever since I got into them, I’ve always gone to Dreamhaven for my comic books. It’s a little place in Minneapolis owned by a guy named Greg Ketter who’s been running the place for over thirty years now. I can’t always afford full cover price of every trade paperback, but he has a great collection of second-hand sci-fi/fantasy books and usually has some of those small things that are hard to find.

It’s starting to show its age, though. Greg recently moved the store to a smaller, more out-of-the-way location due to shrinking business. I do rather miss the old darkly-lit location that smelled like years of buildup of old books, but that’s neither here nor there. One of the largest indicators of his struggle with his business was also the fact that he, for the first time, has begun to run the store solo. It’s worrisome, that.

I don’t know Greg personally, but the times that I’ve needed advice or help, he’s always the one to ask. He’s a very decent guy, always happy to make special orders for books. The sort that deserves nothing but good business. Despite me not even being friends with the guy or anything, I have this overwhelming loyalty to the store for some reason. Perhaps because I love small, independent bookstores, which smell strongly of old paper and nostalgia and entice me to spend hours just wandering the shelves, picking up books, and feeling the weight of history in my hands. In comparison, I’m in and out of a Barnes & Noble in like two minutes. Sterile, corporate environments of today’s booksellers do nothing to keep me inside and keep me loyal.

So anyway, this recent post Greg made really depresses me–mostly because I know there’s little I can do about it. It’s one thing, working for a retail chain like I do that can take thousand-dollar losses without batting an eye; it’s another thing entirely to take complete advantage of a guy and his one-man business.

I don’t know what it is lately, but a combination of experiences this summer, being back on campus, and the frustrations at work have amounted to a renewed lack of faith in humanity. This is not helping. You people should be ashamed.

Spent a couple of weeks debating whether or not I really wanted to do this thing, but I finally decided to join The Sketchbook Project.

It’s run by the Art House Co-op. For a mere $18, you get a Moleskine notebook to fill with images surrounding a theme that they randomly assign to you. And it’s open to absolutely everyone who wants to join up.

The best part about this is not doing the sketchbook itself, but the aftermath–they’re going on tour, but each sketchbook has a little barcode on the back so they can be rented and examined on site like a little artist library! Quite exciting.

In order to keep myself motivated on this thing, I’ll probably be posting scans of pages here as it goes on. I only have until December 1st, afterall… it’s gonna be tough, but I WILL SUCEED.

I’ll put on my political hat for a second here–okay, hang on. Gotta go dig it out from under the bed–um–er–maybe it’s in the closet instead–no wait–okay–here!

/pat pat pat cough pat

Okay. So in this collaboration between the folks at Thought Bubble and John Green, one of the more clear, concise discussions I’ve heard surrounding the health care reform–all done with sweet, sweet motion graphics.

Both informative and pretty.

The argument is very general and it leaves out a lot of the nitty-gritty details, but that’s what makes this work, honestly. Too many people are getting hung up on those tiny details, both real and orchestrated (death panels, anyone?) and forget about the larger picture–that change is inevitable. The system may not change now; this system may not change for years and years. But change is not an “if”; it’s a “when”.

And that’s about as preachy as I’m gonna get here. So say bye bye to the nice people, political hat!

So my school’s mailing list just kindly reminded me that Chip Kidd is speaking at my school on Wednesday. Cue MASSIVE FREAKOUT.

If you’ve never heard of the guy, chances are that you have him on your bookshelf. He is, in short, a brilliant graphic designer with his design work all over publications and has pretty much single-handedly reinvented commerical book design as we know it–as well as being an incredibly intelligent writer, to boot.

link: Good Is Dead.

Oh sweet jesus, it’s that time of year again: Top Shelf Comix is having its annual $3 Sale and the pickings are damn good this year.

“To celebrate the debut of THE SURROGATES on iTunes, as well as the theatrical release of the SURROGATES on September 25th — from now thru Friday September 25th (the opening day of the film!) — Top Shelf is having a giant $3 graphic novel web sale. Below you’ll find over 100 graphic novels and comics on sale — with 55+ titles marked down to just $3 (!) and 45 other titles slashed! All we ask is that you hit a $30 minimum on sale and/or non-sale items (before shipping). It’s a great opportunity to load up on all those graphic novels you’ve wanted to try, but just never got around to picking up. Get ‘em while supplies last, and be sure to visit iTunes as well to download The Surrogates for your iPhone!”

Included in this sale are markdowns on The Surrogates volumes and I am eyeing that nice price on From Hell because I realized I actually don’t own a copy of that. I am also particularily pleased to see a lot of Jeffery Brown here, which I will be snapping up, no doubt. Though normally I try to pick up ten comics here by artists I am not familiar with every year, but that may or may not be because I blindly trust that everything Top Shelf puts out is awesome. (It’s true, though.)

PS, other books from this haul I would recommend include Dear Julia, by Brian Biggs and That Salty Air by MCADian Tim Sievert.

From the artist’s portfolio:

“In ‘Habitat Machines’ David Trautrimas’ photo based architecture explores the construct of home with a series of residential buildings born of everyday objects. From Art Deco coffee pots to the Constructivist grid pattern on an old bathroom scale, Trautrimas searches for source materials which allude to a greater architectural doctrine usually unnoticed in these machines. Then, by dramatic distortion of scale and context, elements of these objects are meticulously re-assembled into strikingly original structures that are paradoxically familiar by virtue of their origins.”

In English: he makes neat stuff.

A classmate told me today that everything they ever needed to know about anything could be found on Wikipedia. She said she wrote college term papers based entirely on the information she found there and didn’t bother to double-check any of the sources.

And while I like Wikipedia and the idea of an ever-evolving encyclopedia, there is something incredibly sad and lazy and horrendously American about all of this.

Case in point: here’s an example from the Works Process Administration page. Jaded me believes that most high schoolers don’t even know what the WPA is, let alone what is glaringly wrong with this paragraph here:

“Total expenditures on WPA projects through June 1941, totaled approximately $11.4 billion. Over $4 billion was spent on highway, road, and street projects; more than $1 billion on public buildings, including the iconic Dock Street Theatre in Charleston, the towering Brightman Institute of Mental Health off the rocky Northern California coast, and the Timberline Lodge on Oregon’s Mt. Hood; more than $1 billion on publicly owned or operated utilities; and another $1 billion on welfare projects, including sewing projects for women, the distribution of surplus commodities and school lunch projects. One construction project was the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, the bridges of which were each designed as architecturally unique.”

Does anything strike you as particularily…odd?

No?

A quick Google of all the places mentioned would tell you that one of these places is, quite actually, fictional. Made up. Doesn’t exist.

I wonder how many ninth graders have worked the Brightman into their history class Depression-era papers by now. Mr. Bricker, you’re making history–in more ways than one!