Misc 1 - 12

These are scrapbook images that didn't really fit any of the other (admittedly nebulous) categories I've established -- hence the designation "Misc."

Posted by Jeff at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maps & charts 1 - 12

I've always been fascinated by maps, graphs, charts of all kinds -- both for genuine informational purposes as well as purely abstract (and decidedly non-art) imagery. It always amazes me how many different ways statistics can be presented, and how often this presentation is unclear at best or misleading at worst... I remember how excited I was to finally find a copy of Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and then how disappointed I was with how clumsily it was put together. The samples he included were gorgeous and unique, but I swear to god it was occasionally - if not frequently - difficult to connect a caption or passage of text to a specific figure or illustration (obviously a big problem for a book about visual communication.) I could be misremembering my experience reading it, but I doubt it. It's still a beautiful book (as are all of the Tufte volumes I've seen) and worth admiring if you can find a copy.

Many of the images above were taken from scientific magazines and journals (certainly the best source for informational graphics) but of course here they're presented out of context and often without keys or other pertinent details. Apologies to the original makers of the graphics, as well as to the magazines themselves -- but for the most part these pages were assembled with one intention: to fill up space with lines, shapes and colors that I found interesting. If the finished pages "work" as a whole or provide interesting juxtapositions, then that's an added bonus.

The other pictures come from any number of books and periodicals and include old advertisements, instructional manuals, any picture at all where some kind of visual patterning is happening.

Posted by Jeff at 02:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lettering 1 - 8

Here are a few examples of the various typefaces and lettering I've collected for reference and inspiration. I find computer "fonts" uniformly ugly and have instead an enormous respect for the artists and craftsman who used to create all those thousands of subtly different letterforms... It amazes me that many people once made this their entire life's work. I will admit to enjoying the logo and display stuff more, because it seems to allow for more obvious creativity or modifications.

I don't know who (if anybody) is well-regarded in this field today, but I was always impressed with Sean Tejaratchi's incredibly quirky, obviously hand-made specimens at the back of his zine Craphound. I can't tell if these were wholly original or altrerations of existing forms, but they were all delightful and had hilarious names like Cthulu Condensed, Voodoo Katbox, Spench, Feisty McShitty, Regicide and Lumberboy.

Posted by Jeff at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)