Mutatoes

Rubber Johnny meets his botanical cousins.
Mutatoes is a project by Berlin based artist Uli Westphal. It is a "collection of non-standard fruits, roots and vegetables found at Berlins Super-and Farmers Markets. Uli's project serves to document and archive these last survivors of biological variety". While you are at it, don't forget to check out his other works.

via the one and only swissmiss.

Things They Carry

A simple, nice and very reflective effort.

A flickr photo pool on the things one carry around.
Out of many American pockets and satchels, I suppose, but a must see nonetheless. Participate if you carry around anything that the west did not put in your pockets.

Check it out if you won't get tired of seeing Moleskine diaries, iPhones, iPods, MotoRazrs and Lamys.

Peter Mendelsund

Peter Mendelsund is also (with reference to Chip Kidd who was featured earlier) a book designer with Knopf. I dont know if he sits next to Kidd's cabin. You could also read this interview to know him better, if that'll ease your life any bit.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface

A brilliant essay by none other than Michael Bierut. Would make up for the entire time you would have spent cursing bad typo plus the time you spent trying to do something about it and couldn't.

Pourquoi?

A small (not really, its 20 mts) video with around 15 not-so-small graphic designers like Paula Scher, Michael Bierut, Chipp Kidd, Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore doing the talking.

Click here.

Conversations

A routine, to-nowhere-in-particular walk of two people and an ageing dog on a leash came to a gradual end yesterday. Since the appropriate reasons for why they started it is not known, the reasons why it ended is irrelevant, though it would be useful to remember that it had been three years since it started.

The two, a man and a woman to be more specific (however, in the beginning of it, they had not quite stopped being a boy and a girl) had followed the artless and beautiful habit without giving much thought about why they were doing it and hence, were regular. The dog only made things easier for them by pretending to be aloof. It kept as much distance as the leash would let and always sniffed for something that she never seemed to find.

They never held each other’s hands or anything, not only because this isn’t a silly romantic story, but also since something like that would have been an affirmative act of mutual affection and they were just walking a dog. In fact, they never talked, most of the time they were thinking different things to themselves. Like the boy (lets call him that) was wondering what could it be that the dog was sniffing about and the girl (since the man is a boy) was feeling that it was abnormal that a road was taking a turn, taking all that trod on it along, when it could have run straight. But between their thoughts it looked as if they were having conversations, few and random, and were even careful not to break them while crossing the road. People believed they were deaf and couldn't talk. I don't think so. It might sound strange that after three years of companionship, they didn’t have things to talk about, but if you think again it is only normal that they are like this since, as I told earlier, they weren’t exactly perambulating but only walking a dog and it didn’t require them to talk about something that would have made long conversations.



The dog wasn’t particularly excited about the strolls, which is not to say that it didn’t enjoy them. It was aging, and was starting to find contentment in things that did not usually make animals happy, let alone humans. So, had it even known about its part in this underdeveloped state of things, there was nothing it could have done. It was after all, a dog; though with two people depending on her for the turn of fate, it is indeed difficult to agree with this fact. 



Lets come back to what happened yesterday.

After crossing the same roads and running out of footpaths like the other days and before it was time for the dog to turn around and for them to follow suit, the two stopped for no apparent reason (nobody knows it how it happened for sure since as the sight of two people pausing between walking is not unusual enough to be worthy of our precious attention).
And the dog, feeling the leash tighten for the first time, stopped too and turned back to find two of them standing, suggestive of nothing since they weren’t even looking at each other. 



They realised what was going on much later. And knowing them it would have happened separately at different points when their respective thoughts broke as thoughts often do. 
It was a while till they finally looked at each other, only as an effort to make sense of what was happening. Everything seemed to come back to the way it used to be and it looked as if they’ll start back only to come tomorrow, but nothing happened. The dog was glad to actually notice the sights around for the first time. It seemed to forget about her incomplete search and felt the warmth of a fading evening in its eyes.



The man and the woman tried to talk, but, as usual, no words came out. They tried to go back to their respective thoughts, but it remained as elusive as what the dog was searching for. He tried to remember who had stopped first, while she noticed the silence around them. It was probably then that they realised that there was nothing left to be said. The dog showed no hurry and was sitting, careful still to leave enough distance, and looked away at everything moving, jiggling its ears to shoo the illusive flies buzzing around its head.




---

Of a meek last chance given to pair of dry mouths

vow!

Visuals of the World is the longest inspirational website in the world and it calls for designers to upload their work to make it longer as they intend to get into the Guinness Book of Records soon.

Current lenght of the website is 155 meters!

Japanese Motion Graphics

A motion graphic creator's file with DVD "Japanese Motion Graphic Creators" was released on February from BNN Inc., featuring the expanding whole Japanese motion expression such as PV, CM, VJ, web, animation, art and documentary.

PV, CM are commonly used abbreviations in Japan for Promotional Video(Music Videos) and Commercial Message(Advertisements).
via SHIFT

Rodchenko

A bit of Constructivism since we were with Milton Glaser a while ago.

Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian graphic designer, photographer and artist and is considered to be one of the founders of constructivism. Shown are the covers designed by Rodchenko for LEF, which was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts, an association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. The design on the left was used till the journal was renamed as Novyi (New) LEF in 1927, shown on the right.

If in case you want to see more, this flickr page has a great collection of various posters classified commendably into various countries, eras and movements. I'm still scouting Flickr for people who have put the network into respectful use, and revealing my ignorance about the same, the number is surprisingly high.

Kidd and the Master

A must read. Chip Kidd interviews Milton Glaser.

Chipp Kidd

All these while I was waiting for a good reason to put a post about him in here. Not that all those book covers he designed weren't reasons good enough, but you know, I felt that an occasion of sorts is coming. And here it is. Chip Kidd was recently declared the winner in the Communications Design section of this year’s National Design Awards presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, which honours the best of American design since 2000. Kidd, a finalist in 2006, has been creating book jackets and covers for the publishing house Alfred A. Knopf for twenty years. His commonly found designs are 'Kafka on the Shore' (Murakami) and Osamu Tezuka's 'Buddha'-the comic series. Seen here is a part of the cover for 'Dry' by Augusten Burroughs.

Err..

Here's what happens when you put a printer in front of a painting for too long. It realises it's just a machine and there's more to life. Seems like they have more to offer than what we ask.

The Missed Caller

Ring. And as you casually glance at the screen of your phone, you are jolted into a ride of your past associations with the caller whose name you find displayed after a relatively long period. As it rings, you think of the moment's peace he has shattered, wonder if you should pick the call or not, and again ponder over the possible reasons why he has chosen to end the infrequency—a clairvoyant agreement by both parties, having understood that it is best if both are left alone. You tell yourself that it is greatly unfair since the caller, beyond doubt, wants to catch you abrupt and defenseless. Coward. You can choose not to pick the call at all. Choose between the multiple lies at leisure and return the call, when you are 'prepared' for a conversation, or the lack of it. But the self-respect and bravery that you have painfully developed asks you to answer the call because you know even he wouldn't be expecting you to, on the first hand.

"Hello", you say,instead of "Hello?" and win round one. But your devices are tested as the other side takes a little too long to answer, and the same throat which helped you make the addressing a little heavy, goes dry, in a moment.

There is silence again, and it helps you gather back your courage since the other person doesn't seem to be keen on exploiting his advantage. Is this a moment of some emotional cognizance or of deep contemplation? You are confused again. Though it blurs the image you have built of your caller, you still feel the discomfort of the likely conversation about things past, and tell yourself that if it were you, you wouldn't have bothered to call ever, helping another contact in your phone fade into the oblivion when you clean up the list or change the cell phone or SIM for that matter. But look at him.

Now you know the silence is too prolonged to fall under any of the comprehensible situations. And now you say, "Hello?", making it obvious that you have other business to attend to— yet another victory.

But then you realise, you are not talking to him, there is no conversation, just noises, of an abandoned street? You are talking to 'something' else, not an entity but something vast and omnipresent. Now, the situation seem more familiar or graspable, so to say. You are caught in this flux of thoughts memories and snapshots before you understand where you stand–At the mercy of silly gadgets, which can not think and still get the better of you. You think about the days when you used to be proud of the fact that your name starts with the first alphabet. And before throwing your phone onto something soft accompanied by that imperative swearword, you think of the caller, walking somewhere, the last thing on his mind being you, unaware of the pressed button of his cellphone inside one of his pockets.

And its subsequent thoughts

It doen't matter.
I'm here still.

The Moment...

Am I fucked or not.

This is not an hour of mere, ephemeral curiosity but that of confrontation—of an existence of lying to oneself, of comfortable and nonsensical conclusions about life and my ways of going about it. Of unhealthy hours trying to convince a hundred people whose faces you don't even remember.

It matters because I believe (Or am i lying to myself again?) the fifteen minutes in front of me as I am writing this, 'could' change my life for good or otherwise.

But there's a hidden layer of events unfolding around me as I do this. Things that I would secretly put away to help you focus your sympathies on me, who is sitting with a slicker-than-Almighty and shining MacBook Pro inside one of the swanky and air-conditioned Coffee bars (in Delhi, for all those wondering about the noise in the background) sipping a foaming cup of of cold coffee and Brownie.

I am worrying if I would ever be out of this hell.
I would know in fifteen minutes now.

Its pretty hot outside.