Archive of Styles – A delve into Tallone Press’ collection of typefaces, absolutely stunning. Real care has gone into the beautiful photography and detailed captions – there’s an education to be found here. This is the one link that is guaranteed to eat into your busy day and linger majestically in your tabs for weeks. Above, Semplicità by Alessandro Butti (1928) and Neon by Giulio Da Milano (1935), just the tip of the iceberg.
Everyone’s a copywriter, right? – Fab post by Clare Barry on professional writing, and why there’s a lot more to it than slavishly following the grammatical dogma they taught you at school. “Virginia Woolf had a beautiful habit of swapping the narrative perspective mid paragraph. Jane Austen used double negatives. Charles Dickens was the king of run-on sentences — and E.E. Cummings didn’t give a flying cockatoo what you thought about capitalisation. That man capitalised whatever word he damned-well pleased. Or didn’t. Don’t get me started on Hemingway, whose grammar was a mix of playful creativity and 46% malt whisky.”
Cereal offers – An impressively comprehensive collection of UK cereal toys and promotions, going all the way back to the 1920s. Lots of forgotten memories to be found here, plus lots of ephemeral design weirdness. The Weetabix page will make you want to watch This Is England.
James Paul Jones – Lecture in Progress talk to Head of Zeus art director Jones about designing books, walking spaniels, standing at desks and pushing past terrible.
Foragers of the foreshore – Mudlarking is one of those obscure interests I’ve found myself vicariously drawn to thanks to twitter, so I’m really excited about this forthcoming (and far too fleeting) exhibition, unearthing the history of London through items recovered from the Thames. One day I might actually get my feet muddy and have a lark myself.
Archimodels – It’s a blog of architectural models. This is all you need to know.
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Library tourism – Austin Kleon on the joys of visiting libraries everywhere he goes. Kind of related: haircut tourism.
Symbolikon – Interesting new project on Kickstarter: a library of 600+ ethnographic glyphs from around the world redesigned in a consistent and modern style. Would be interesting to see a new emojian language emerge, based on a hybrid of Aztec/Celt/Maori/etcetera symbolism.
Kenneth Roman – David Fincher’s Mindhunter is back in a couple of weeks, so I’m doing another lap of the first season. The research, design and sfx that have gone into realising its period setting is so spot on, it’s easy to take for granted – so it’s great that designer Roman has shared this hoard of everything you missed, such as travel posters, prison pamphlets, kitchen tiles and airline seat fabric.
Graphic Design Play Book – Sophie Cure and Aurélien Farina’s new book looks like a fantastic way for young’ns to explore the basic principles of graphic design. One problem, as noted in this Creative Boom review: it’s almost too pretty to mess up.
Down the river – Love this photo series by Adrian Skenderovic, looking down at tourist boats on the Seine. Weddings, jacuzzis, mariachis – all life is here.
When corporate lobbies started to look like museum galleries – Some great photos accompanying this New Yorker article by Jeff Giles. Would love to see it expanded into a book. Reminds me that York is home to one of the most bonkers pieces of lobby-art: the Hiscox building has a 12-metre Soviet rocket in the middle of it, rather ominously pointing up towards a skylight. Nobody knows why.