— Unused composition for a recent book cover. Particularly happy with the balance of colours on this one; very … springy.
— James Henry recently tweeted “all books would be improved by having maps at the front, particularly literary novels because it would be funny” – and I couldn’t agree more. All books. Publishers, if you need some inspiration, the jpg jumble sale that is Fulltable has a great collection of cartographic endpapers from the last century, or there’s this massive collection of 40s/50s Dell Mapbacks.
— Plenty to explore in the Arabic Design Archive. No idea what it is exactly, but this Mostafa Hussein cover from 1977 is fabulous.
— “Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods! They must be allowed to do bad work! They must be allowed to get in a mess!” – from a 1969 clip of art critic David Sylvester, recently resurfaced by Austin Kleon. Heck, let’s illuminate those bad periods! I would love to see an exhibition of crap art by great artists – shoddy attempts at feet, wonky horses, perspectives gone awry.
— Gorgeous illustrations by Eleanor Crow. Big fan of her shopfronts of London series, especially the James Smith Umbrella Shop, one of the smashingest buildings in a city of smashing buildings.
— Putting the fun in funicular! Why the mysterious love affair between video games and giant diagonal elevators may begin with Akira. Doesn’t everything?
— On Terry Pratchett and cover art as deterrent, from Sian Clifford’s excellent newsletter. Josh Kirby’s paintings were a big draw for me when I first discovered Pratchett as a kid, but looking back now I can see how some of the leaning into fantasy visual tropes is … troublesome.
— “Like caves carved not from bedrock but out of Bedrock. … The slot canyons that were Studio Gang’s inspiration are equally smooth, as well as variegated in color. The undifferentiated surface is also oddly scale-less, like a child’s papier-mâché model of a volcano.” Alexandra Lange reviews New York’s new $465 million, 230,000-square-foot Gilder Center.
— Hoogspanning! Dutch safety posters are intense. [Warning: this is a 50 Watts link, so you might as well say goodbye to the rest of your day now.]