Meanwhile #136

1 — George Eksts’ new book Reverses is a wonderfully alternative look at the V&A’s collection of works on paper, showing the marks, damage, fragments of sketches, notes and remnants of reuse found of the other side of the art.

2 — One for the graph paper enthusiasts, artist Nicole Patel creates beautiful minimal grid patterns of thread on canvas, vellum, marble and other materials.

3 — A particularly great Book Covers of Note this month from The Casual Optimist. Personal favourites: Suzanne Dean’s cover for An Yu’s Ghost Music and John Gall’s for Charles Simic’s No Land in Sight. Also, good to see the Ominous Blob trend shows no sign of abating.

4 — Despite being the most common birth defect in the world, general awareness of congenital heart disease is low. The CHD-4 drum machine was created in a collaboration between audiovisual designer Love Hultén and teenage engineering to highlight the issue. Functioning as a modular synthesizer, it produces rhythms made using the electrocardiograms of four children with different heart defects.

5 — Austin Kleon on one of his favourite tools: the thirty day challenge. Something small, every day, can turn into something big. I plan to spend the next thirty days indecisively pondering what thing to do for the following thirty days.

6 — The BBC handbook came out annually from 1928 to 1987 and were illustrated by the most prestigious artists of the day – often creating stimulating and daring covers. These are quite lovely, especially the rather chaotic pre-branding ones.

7 — Let’s community! As well as comments on individual editions Meanwhile (just down there … see?), the rather nice Substack app has a chat feature. Subscribers can get involved in whatever discussions fall out of my head. I’ve started an AMA on there, so dive in if you desperately want to know my favourite ice cream flavour.