Category: visual

• Stars are just like us! / They wear cool barettes in san francisco, tip, visual · Aug 14, 03:08

  The classiest fam in Hollywood loves Mara’s barrettes; this time Violet rocks them. Nice. Buy em here, and pass it on.

• Caught in the act! / Jennifer Garner wears Greenaway in san francisco, tip, visual · Aug 8, 22:05

  File this one under: Holy crap. It has come to the attention of the tabloid-reading world that Jennifer Garner was seen wearing red barrettes! But, wait, there’s more. A certain barrett-making friend of ours made them. By hand. In San Francisco.

  This is from Just Jared, and I must say: If the blog really is just [...]

• Seek and ye shall find / Enlightenment helmet in ideas, inside art, visual · Aug 8, 12:14

  I could use one of these right about now. Via these geniuses.

• RFK funeral train / A breaking up in inside art, photo, visual · Jun 10, 20:29

  The New York Times recently ran some photos that were taken from the train carrying Bobby Kennedy’s body between Washington to New York. The photos themselves are amazing documents of a nation in mourning, people from all walks of life lining the tracks, holding signs, saluting or just watching, but they’re also beautiful — saturated [...]

• Dismissed as chance / Chip Kidd’s New York Times in photo, visual · May 9, 20:56

  Chicago. A man is about to get on a routine flight. Suddenly he pauses and decides to walk away. He doesn’t know why. An hour later the plane goes down in flames. It’s dismissed as chance … Britain. A woman has an image of a black mountain that’s moving, with children underneath it. Two hours [...]

• Flickr / Okay, I take it all back. in flickr, photo, visual, web · May 7, 18:11

  See, I criticize Flickr, and then this thing comes along to demonstrate once and for all its inherent goodness. No Flickr stylez or post-processing necessary. Via Sorry I Missed Your Party and BuzzFeed.

• The Flickr style / Ugh in flickr, ixd, photo, visual, web · May 7, 01:16

  It’s hard to ignore the fact that Flickr promotes a distinct style of photography; I say “promotes” because Flickr’s “Explore” tab displays photos that are deemed “interesting” by Flickr’s “interestingness” algorithm, and the photos in this area are generally characterized by what many are now calling “Flickr style.” This is shorthand for “extensively post-processed” — [...]

• Andrei Tarkovsky’s family polaroids in cinema, lit, visual · May 4, 17:05

  Back when the Berkeley Public Library was the hub of my social universe, I spent a lot of time in its video room — in the mid-90’s, it occupied a little corner of the basement — working my way through its extensive collection of foreign VHS movies. I had plenty of time on my hands, [...]

• Books / Pelican covers in inside art, lit, visual, web · Apr 16, 02:03

  things magazine has amassed an incredible index of Pelican book covers from the 1930s through the 80s. The one above is from 1968. Check it.

• Luxe life / Animal drawings at the Fairmont in inside art, san francisco, visual · Jan 26, 02:24

  Last Friday night was just another night in the penthouse of the Fairmont Hotel for Mara and I. We relaxed in seal-skin robes, shuffled around in baby polar bear ear fur slippers, snorted the finest powdered snow leopard pancreas, fed Kobe beef to the pigeons who delivered the New York Times piecemeal in tiny scrolls [...]

• Philly / A few minutes at Space 1026 in inside art, urban, visual · Nov 4, 20:00

  I was in Philadelphia last Thursday evening, and I discovered that I was staying near Space 1026, a studio/gallery near downtown. Some artists from 1026 had some cool work in a show at Yerba Buena a while ago, I walked over and spent a few minutes walking around as the residents were setting up for [...]

• Photos / Found on FFFFOUND in photo, tip, visual, web · Oct 3, 00:37

  Some great stuff on FFFFOUND, a social bookmarking service for images. It’s in private beta, and I’ll be curious how they maintain the current, continual high quality, as in images like this …

  Like this stuff by Andrei Robu.

  Via kottke.

• Lit / No room for anything but the old verities in lit, visual · Sep 26, 20:53

  The NYT book blog Paper Cuts recently published a nice entry about William Faulkner’s late-in-life visit to West Point. It reminded me of one of my favorite moments from the (apparently out-of-print) Faulkner Reader: his acceptance speech for the 1949 Nobel Prize.
  Reading it again this afternoon, this portion of his speech seems especially timely and [...]

• 100 Northern California Hiking Trails in lit, outdoors, the ancient past, visual · Sep 18, 22:09

  I stumbled upon a treasure trove of old outdoors books at Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, Idaho this weekend; this one’s from 1970.

  The cover ultimately doesn’t make much difference, but I like this one.

  If only hiking through sun cups like these was as serene and lovely as the photo implies. Also, the introductory text instructs [...]

• Baseball cards / 1960 Topps in baseball, the ancient past, visual · Sep 12, 20:43

  Like lots of stuff, they really don’t make baseball cards like they used to. Halftone action thumbnail! Alternating colors in the player names! Don Drysdale’s coif!

• Clare Rojas at Gallery Paule Anglim in inside art, san francisco, visual · Sep 7, 03:12

  Lots of intriguing stuff at Clare Rojas’s opening at Gallery Paule Anglim tonight. Woodland creatures, naked dudes in tai chi poses, an excellent video of Peggy Honeywell playing a slow sad song at a raging frat party filled with beer bongs and keg stands, Amaze, Barry McGee, and much, much more. Worth it.

  I call this [...]

• Foto / Modernity in Central Europe in inside art, reviews, visual · Sep 5, 19:20

  When I was in Washington DC last month, I saw an incredible show at the National Gallery called Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945. As you may have guessed by the title, the show is photography-oriented, but it’s more than that: It’s a story about photography craft, and the way that European photographers bent, broke [...]

• Cuban cashola in the ancient past, visual · Sep 5, 01:03

  Fidel doing what he does best: Moving the crowd.

  I traveled to Cuba 10 years ago this summer, and I unearthed this 10-peso note when I moved earlier this summer. Coincidence, or a sign that I should return sometime soon?
  When I was there, the official exchange rate was one American dollar to one Cuban peso, [...]

• Absolutely, positively time for a new wallet in visual · Jun 18, 21:09

  Years ago, I tried to make a wallet out of a Fedex Tyvek envelope, based on instructions from the inaugural issue of Readymade magazine. I liked the idea of a super-slim wallet that was (a) really cheap without seeming (b) totally cheapskate. The problem was, as simple as it seemed, making the thing involved a [...]

• Google street-view meets new apartment in san francisco, tech, visual · May 29, 19:52

  Mara and I just moved into the Lower Haight earlier this month, and Google just released a new Maps feature — Street View — that has a picture of our place. If I weren’t writing about this, I’d be speechless. Wow.

  Our place is the yellow two-story walk-up that is bustin out of the top of [...]

• Must-see movies / Killer of Sheep in cinema, inside art, tip, visual · May 23, 21:18

  A moment from a beautiful, riveting scene in Killer of Sheep. Photo: Milestone Films.
  Killer of Sheep is director Charles Burnett’s account of life in the LA neighborhood of Watts in the early 1970’s. It began life as his senior thesis at UCLA film school and until recently it was never seen outside art houses and [...]

• Rachell Sumpter / Ethereal, still, and strange in inside art, visual · May 22, 20:22

  Rachell Sumpter, Argonauts. From her collection at the Richard Heller Gallery.
  Her stuff reminds me of lots of other artists I like — Evah Fan and some aspects of Julianna Bright, for two. Maybe it’s something about the West Coast, but they’re all simple and light at first glance, but also deeply still, and it’s a [...]

• Warriors / Drama, elevation, a posterization, terrible officiating in basketball, san francisco, visual · May 17, 20:52

  The Warriors playoff ride is over, the Jazz’s ride will come to an end sometime in the next week or so, but Baron’s dunk over Kirilenko will live on FOREVER. Let’s just sit back and appreciate it for a minute. (It’s much better live).

  Baron elevates and elevates; he begins his leap before Kirilenko and is [...]

• NYC subway maps / The great debate of 2007 in ixd, urban, visual · Apr 27, 18:56

  A graphic designer named Eddie Jabbour has proposed an alternative design for NYC subway maps. The New York Times wrote about it last week, and since then blogs have been blowing up over it. 37 signals evaluated it, and applauds the effort to increase usability at the expense of geographic accuracy: “Subway map readers want [...]

• Information art / Typographic map of London in inside art, visual · Apr 24, 19:54

  This amazing typographic map, cheekily called “London’s Kerning,” was designed by NB: Studio, a London graphic design concern. It’s a pretty excellent demonstration of type’s ability to communicate size, shape, relationship, the list goes on. I also love the homage (via typeface) to the London A-Z, an indispensable companion, interpreter and guide for any navigator [...]