Tag: design

Paperwork

Tackling a massive pile of paperwork means something a little different to Lisa Nilsson.

Six years in the making, the elaborate ‘Grand Jardin’ by Lisa Nilsson pushes the boundaries of paper – Colossal
Taking several years to complete, she paid painstaking attention to the complexities and details of the design, balancing intricate organic shapes with precise geometric patterns, all while preserving the composition’s overall symmetry. “The phases of my creative process—as it progressed from the initial spark of inspiration to settling in to work, to decision-making and problem solving, to finding flow, losing flow and finding it again, to commitment and renewal of commitment—were repeated many times over the six years and within the context of widely varying moods,” she tells Colossal.

Such intricate details.

There are many more wonderful photos of this and other designs (tapestries?) from this series on her website.

Tapis series – Lisa Nilsson
This series of works is a continuation of my exploration of the possibilities of the medium of quilling, a centuries-old craft in which narrow strips of paper are rolled into coils and shaped. In moving beyond my initial inspiration in anatomical subject matter, I have opened up the color palette, textures and shapes that are available to me. I am finding renewed inspiration in the decorative arts, predominantly in Persian rugs, Renaissance book bindings, and Byzantine enamels.

And here’s a link to a wonderful essay she wrote about her practice and how she reacts when people say she must have a lot of patience.

I would wish this on anyone – Dirty Laundry
My work requires a certain kind of attention, as well as a good deal of focus, faith, tenacity, and boatloads of time – but not what I’d call patience. Patience to me implies tedium. There’s an embarrassment of things in life that I experience as tedious, but making my work ain’t on the list.

To my viewers I offer this analogy: It’s like building a puzzle. Once you get rolling you don’t want to quit. The challenge is not in sticking with it, but in walking away when you ought to, your eyes and back are sore, and you know you really should get up to pee or eat or stretch or get back to the rest of your life. But watching this barnyard scene come together is now the most important thing ever. Finishing it will complete you.

It takes some time

Whilst my watch collection may be sadly lacking, my collection of watch-related blog posts is growing nicely. Here’s a wonderfully interactive tutorial from Bartosz Ciechanowski on what’s going on under the dial. Think of it as an update to Hamilton’s explainer from the 1940s.

Mechanical watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski
In the world of modern portable devices, it may be hard to believe that merely a few decades ago the most convenient way to keep track of time was a mechanical watch. Unlike their quartz and smart siblings, mechanical watches can run without using any batteries or other electronic components. Over the course of this article I’ll explain the workings of the mechanism seen in the demonstration below.

It starts off simple enough, with springs and levers, but when the mechanisms get gradually more complex and sophisticated, the explanations and colour-coded diagrams remain relatively easy to follow. It’s quite a long, in-depth read that takes some time to get through, but it’s very cleverly done.

And check out the archives for similar breakdowns — from cameras and colours, to tesseracts and GPS.

Good typography doesn’t just grow on trees, you know

Oh wait, maybe it does.

Occlusion Grotesque – Bjørn Karmann
Occlusion Grotesque is an experimental typeface that is carved into the bark of a tree. As the tree grows, it deforms the letters and outputs new design variations, that are captured annually. The project explores what it means to design with nature and on nature’s terms.

Observing the GANN learning from the tree and reflecting on the way Occlusion Grotesque grew is both fascinating and complex. The changing shape over time really seems to suggest some underlying growth logic, although rationally we know this is not possible with such simple ML models.

To see the typeface in action, head over to Autralian National University’s School of Cybernetics, where they’ve typeset Richard Brautigan’s poem, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

But what if, instead of your own Beech forest in Denmark, you just have some houseplants?

Green-fingered type designer Anna Sing creates a “bouquet” of typefaces inspired by houseplant history – It’s Nice That
With no previous experience in type design, the Texas-based multi-disciplinary designer embarked on a whirlwind 15-week project to make four beautiful typefaces inspired by the history of houseplants.

For those of us who just can’t seem to keep a houseplant alive, Anna prescribes her spiky little Sagauro typeface. Its forms mimic the water-absorbing spines of cacti – the perfect option for people who tend to forget to water their plants.

Then there’s Orkyd, which “grew out of the mystery of the grocery store orchid, the houseplant that is always for sale but rarely seen in the home”. Taking just three days to create, Anna spent hours on the floor of her room tracing the symmetrical forms of blossoms from a “600-something-page encyclopaedia of orchids”. This bold yet whimsical typeface was her favourite to create and has enjoyed well-deserved success, recently being featured in Monotype’s 2022 Type Trends report and a Paloma Wool campaign.

Minting messages of opposition

Time for more Olympics posters. Unlike those from last year’s Paralympics, these are certainly not official.

Badiucao launches NFT collection to protest against China’s human rights record on eve of Beijing Winter Olympics – The Art Newspaper
The dissident artist Badiucao—dubbed the Chinese Banksy—is launching a “protest NFT collection” criticising the Chinese government’s record on human rights ahead of the Winter Olympics in Beijing which begin on 4 February.

Beijing 2022 NFT Collection
The first NFT project from Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, the Beijing 2022 Collection includes five works of art depicting the Chinese government’s oppression of the Tibetan people, the Uyghur genocide, the dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong, the regime’s omnipresent surveillance systems, and lack of transparency surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Glorious Geocities homepage archaeology

Cameron Askin has created a wonderfully giddy collage of the animated GIFs and other mad decorations that completely covered our Geocities homepages back on the 90s. And follow the links to see archived pages care of the WayBack Machine too. I wonder if he used that Geocities Torrent.

A love letter to the Internet of old – Cameron’s World
In an age where we interact primarily with branded and marketed web content, Cameron’s World is a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the Internet. This project recalls the visual aesthetics from an era when it was expected that personal spaces would always be under construction.

I came across this via a recent B3ta newsletter, but this animated tribute to clashing colour schemes and Comic Sans and Times New Roman has been blasting away since 2015, going by the links to all the press about the project Cameron has collected.

Revisit everything wonderful about Geocities with one impeccable website – Fast Company

Travel back in time to the best and weirdest GeoCities sites – Vice

RIP GeoCities: what the internet looked liked before the internet was cool – It’s Nice That

Gaze deeply into this loving tribute to the heyday of Geocities web design – AV Club

Cameron’s World – BoingBoing

Hundreds of Geocities images organized neatly – Hyperallergic

This nostalgia project is keeping GeoCities alive – The Daily Dot

Witness a glorious graveyard of Geocities GIFs – The Next Web

Think today’s internet is weird? Check out this madness from back in the day – Huffington Post

Purple(ish) haze

So Pantone have announced their Colour of the Year for 2022.

Pantone Color of the Year 2022 – Pantone
With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how colour trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.

There’s that M word, again.

Pantone reveals 2022 Color of the Year: Very Peri, a symbol of creativity and the metaverse – ARTnews
According to Pantone, Very Peri’s selection was also a response to a burgeoning sector of the digital sphere in which hues such as this one can be seen with some degree of frequency. Its statement referred to the metaverse, a catch-all phrase for a world in which the boundaries between digital and physical have fully imploded.

Pantone Colour of the Year 2022 is a brand new colour, to reflect our “transformative times”– It’s Nice That
It’s the most colourful time of the year for Pantone, as the company makes inevitable global headlines announcing its Colour of the Year: a tone it believes will define the following year’s visual landscape. For 2022 it’s Very Peri – no, not a saucy orange, all you cheeky Nando’s lovers out there – but a periwinkle blue with violet-red undertones which apparently holds “courageous presence” that “encourages personal inventiveness and creativity,” Pantone says. Not content with any of its thousands of existing hues, Pantone has created this new colour specially for the occasion, symbolic of the societal “transition we are going through”.

Perhaps not as calming as in previous years. And not that far off 2018’s. But at least it’s not this horrid colour.

World’s “ugliest” Pantone colour 448C is being used to deter smokers – It’s Nice That
Over 1,000 smokers took part in seven studies to choose the most unappealing colour, which resulted in Pantone 448C — named opaque couché — being chosen for its association with dirt and tar.

It’s such a strange concept, this Colour of the Year. Is it supposed to be an award or something? Is this colour cheaper to buy this year? We’ll probably never see this colour again, after this.

At least it’s just the one colour this time, not like last year.

Pantone picks two colors of the year, and they’re complete opposites – Fast Company
Alone, a gray would be stagnant and depressing, while a yellow would be overly ebullient. Together, Pantone argues, the pair is meant to be both optimistic and thoughtful. “[Illuminating] is definitely an aspirational color, no question,” says Eiseman. “But I think with the solidity of the gray . . . when you juxtapose those colors against each other, the concept is clear, ‘Here’s what we’re hoping for. And this is the solid grounding to get us there.’”

Do you want a bag for that?

Remember Aaron Thompson, the Carry a Bag Man? Here’s another high street historian.

A celebration of the humble paper bag – The Guardian
Graphic designer Tim Sumner was introduced to the idea of paper bags as a cultural artefact a decade ago by his tutor at the University of Central Lancashire. “I’ve since amassed over 1,000 bags of my own from around the world.” Now he plans to showcase his collection – the largest in the world, he thinks – in a book, To Have and to Hold, which he’s funding on Kickstarter. “The bag designs document not just social history, but the rise and fall of our high street and changes in culture and fashion.”

If you think paper bags are mundane, Tim Sumner asks you to think again – It’s Nice That
It’s not news that we’ve all become rather consumption-obsessed these days; we must buy the latest and greatest of everything. Tim wants to reflect on our “relatively recent consumer past, social history and the changes in our visual culture”. As a designer, he says that he can’t help but enjoy looking through the archive: “The bags are very nostalgic to everyone, not just designers. They are a smorgasbord of typography, colour, patterns, and illustration spanning over 100 years.” The archive includes recognisable identities from places including Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason, The British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as lesser-known and perhaps even more rich designs like “a hand-crafted design that has been created by the local green-grocer”.

Ephemera from a buy-gone era?

What makes a classic?

Are all these articles I’m sharing about covers of books, rather than the books themselves, making me look a little shallow? So it goes.

How Penguin’s Modern Classics dared us to judge a book by its cover – The Guardian
“From the beginning, built into the DNA of Penguin, has been this idea that the books need to be beautifully designed,” [says Henry Eliot, author of The Penguin Modern Classics Book]. “If anything has characterised the Penguin design ethos, it’s a kind of elegant simplicity – there’s something deceptively simple about a Penguin cover. It takes a huge amount of work to put them together.” […]

More unsettling is the work of Hungarian-born French cartoonist André Francois. Eliot singles out his cover of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, “where each eye of the face is made up of a mouth with another set of eyes. It’s just such a scary, striking image. It reminds me of Escher or one of Borges’s short stories – there’s something queasy and vertiginous about it.”

Faking it

Handwriting can be bold and mad, or beautifully meaningless, but always personal and genuine, right? Designer Jon Hicks wanted to convert his dad’s “distinctive architect’s handwriting” into its own typeface.

Bryan Font – Hicks
There were several stylistic choices my dad made in his handwriting that were vital to reproduce in the font. For example, the shape of the lowercase T altered depending on whether it was written cursively or on its own.

It’s very cool, though the motivation behind it could be seen as a little … morbid?

I’ve had a focus for getting this font ready, as I wanted to use it on the Order of Service for his funeral.

That reminded me a little of Bobby McIlvaine’s diary and the desire to hold on to something handwritten by a lost loved one. Except that this Order of Service has been kind of faked — you don’t write your own, surely?

Anyway, here’s another.

Creating a handwritten font for Culture Amp – UX Collective
If you think about your own handwriting, there are always letters that you customise and (whether consciously or subconsciously) have become distinctly yours. I remember that era in school where many of my friends customised their handwriting with little love heart or open circle dots on their i’s ….ah simpler times. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about little quirks that come from the way you hold your pen badly (as I am notorious for) or because you the way you learnt to construct a letter was backwards. Those are what moves handwriting from feeling like anybody’s to yours. That’s what this typeface needed.

Judging a book by its 32 covers

After looking at collections of books all with the same cover, here’s news of a single book with a collection of covers.

Dave Eggers’ latest novel has 32 book covers, with even more on the way – PRINT Magazine
Never one to shy away from pushing boundaries, Eggers teamed up with art director Sunra Thompson for the project, who discovered that the dust jacket printer they were using could run several cover designs on one sheet of paper at once, providing the means to print dozens of different versions at the same time. Thompson decided to exploit this printing feature, enlisting a boatload of artists to design a completely new version of The Every cover, thanks to connections made by Noah Lang from the San Francisco gallery Electric Works.

It’s safe to say that Dave Egger is not a fan of Amazon.

You won’t find the hardcover of Dave Eggers’s next novel on Amazon – The New York Times
“I don’t like bullies,” Eggers wrote in an email. “Amazon has been kicking sand in the face of independent bookstores for decades now.”

The novel follows a former forest ranger and tech skeptic, Delaney Wells, as she tries to take down a dangerous monopoly from the inside: a company called The Every, formed when the world’s most powerful e-commerce site merged with the biggest social media company/search engine.

“One of the themes of the book is the power of monopolies to dictate our choices, so it seemed a good opportunity to push back a bit against the monopoly, Amazon, that currently rules the book world,” he said. “So we started looking into how feasible it would be to make the hardcover available only through independent bookstores. Turns out it is very, very hard.”

Ubiquitous book design

Noticed something blobby these days? (No, not that one.)

Behold, the book blob – PRINT Magazine
This design trend, well into its third or fourth year in the major publishing houses, has attracted plenty of nicknames and attendant discourse online—culture critic Jeva Lange calls it “blobs of suggestive colors,” while writer Alana Pockros calls it the “unicorn frappuccino cover,” and New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka once referred to it on Twitter as “the Zombie Formalism of book covers.”

As the article goes on to say, spotting such trends in book cover design is far from breaking news.

Why do so many book covers look the same? Blame Getty Images – Eye on Design
This summer, Morrison, who goes by Caustic Cover Critic at his @Unwise_Trousers Twitter account, posted a collage of 20 Fog Men on 20 book covers. They comprised but one subset of a folder on his computer, titled, “One Image, Many Covers.” Over a few mid-June days, he emptied that folder all over Twitter, drawing the attention of authors, designers, and readers alike. Among the members of the One Image Many Covers All-Star Team: Some askew knees (three covers); a 1933 George Hoyningen-Huene photograph of model Toto Koopman in evening wear (eight covers); a woman expressing despair on the prairie (10 covers); a spectral, Victorian-ish lass toting an empty birdcage (10 covers); a top-hatted man lurking in the middle distance alongside a wrought iron fence (nine covers); a naked woman asleep on gravel (11).

That was from 2019, this next article is from 2015.

Why do so many of this year’s book covers have the same design style? – Slate
But lately, another cover design trend has been popping up on this summer’s crop of beach reads: the flat woman. Inspired by the “flat design” that’s become standard on the Web, these covers take on a minimalist style characterized by bright colors, simple layouts, and lots of white space. Several different designers and publishers have used this approach on hardcovers and paperbacks alike, especially those aiming for the upmarket-but-still-commercial-fiction-for-ladies sweet spot.

And this one’s from 2008.

Chick lit cover girls, without heads – Gawker
On one hand, we can understand obscuring the faces—it’s less specific and makes the female protagonist easier to project oneself onto. (It’s probably been focus-grouped to death.) On the other hand—they look weird when put all together in a gallery, don’t they?

A different kind of dark web

It’s a topic I’ve mentioned before, but here’s another round-up of the ways web design can be quite manipulative.

The rise of dark web design: how sites manipulate you into clicking – The Conversation
Dark design has proven to be an incredibly effective way of encouraging web users to part with their time, money and privacy. This in turn has established “dark patterns”, or sets of practices designers know they can use to manipulate web users. They’re difficult to spot, but they’re increasingly prevalent in the websites and apps we use every day, creating products that are manipulative by design, much like the persistent, ever-present pop-ups we’re forced to close when we visit a new website.

How dark patterns trick you online – Nerdwriter1: YouTube
Some of the responsibility’s on us, but some is on design too. And it’s not the fault of the designers; they’re just doing what they’re tasked to do, knowing full well that if they don’t, others will. As Brignull says, our best defence against the dark patterns is to be aware of them and shame the companies who utilise them.

For more info on the different types, here’s a direct, non-sneaky, no-nonsense link to Harry Brignull’s website.

Water music

After its test launch in August, Livio De Marchi’s floating violin headed off down the canals of Venice, like something from a Bosch Parade.

A giant violin floats down Venice’s Grand Canal – The New York Times
The craft, called “Noah’s Violin,” set sail accompanied by an escort of gondolas, and in no time a small flotilla of motorboats, water taxis and traditional flat-bottomed Venetian sandoli joined the violin as it glided from city hall, near the Rialto Bridge, to the ancient Customs House across from Piazza San Marco, about an hour’s ride. […]

It was mostly smooth sailing, though De Marchi mumbled anxiously whenever the prow (the neck of the violin) veered too sharply to one side or other. But even though the musicians played standing up (barefoot for a better grip), they scarcely missed a note. At one point the score for the viola flew off the music stand and into the water, but it was quickly recovered.

As is often the case in Italy, the real hitches along with way were bureaucratic. “We were told we needed a vehicle registration plate, but officials didn’t know how to classify it,” said Mario Bullo, a carpenter in the consortium. At first, they were issued the same plates given to rafts. “But the traffic police objected, saying that’s not a raft, it’s a violin,” he said with a shrug.

Il violino di Noè – Bach BWV 1043, adagio – Angelica Faccani: YouTube
A fragment from Bach’s two violins concerto adagio played in Venice at the inauguration of Livio de Marchi’s ‘Noah’s Violin’.

They were playing Vivaldi, a Venice native, but perhaps Handel would have been appropriate too?

The web’s not what it used to be

So says this article from The New York Times — way back in 2001.

Exploration of World Wide Web tilts from eclectic to mudane – The New York Times
The new utilitarian view of the Web marks a disappointment for cultural critics who see the medium as fundamentally more democratic than traditional radio, television and newspapers, because the barriers to entry are so low. The Web was supposed to subvert corporate domination of culture by giving a global soapbox — or printing press or television station — to anyone with a computer and a modem. While plenty of people do publish their personal musings and pictures of their babies, new data shows that for many people, the Web has become an electronic routine.

It certainly looks different these days, as this tongue-in-cheek recreation shows.

How I experience the web today

But there are still glimpses of the old web out there, if you know what URL to type — or mistype.

gail.com
Q: Why isn’t there any content here? Can’t you at least throw up a picture of your cat for the Internet to check out?
A: Sorry, I have a cat, but she’s pretty unexciting by Internet standards. As for why there is very little content here, we wanted to keep the server’s attack surface as small as possible to keep it safe.

Q: Interested in selling gail.com?
A: Sorry, no.

Q: How did you manage to get gail.com?
A: My husband registered it as a birthday gift back in 1996.

Q: How many times a day is this page visited?
A: In 2020 this page received a total of 5,950,012 hits, which is an average of 16,257 per day. Looking at just unique hits, we received a total of 1,295,284, for an average of 3,539 unique hits per day. Occasionally, we get Twitter-bombed and may get several tens of thousands of visitors a day. As an example, on July 21st 2020 we received 109,316 hits.

Q: Why is your website so popular? Are you one of those famous people that no one knows why they’re famous?
A: No, I’m not famous. It seems likely that most visitors simply mistype gmail.com and end up visiting gail.com by mistake.

For curiousity’s sake, I right-clicked to ‘view page source’ of this anachronistic little website and was rewarded with this little comment, hence the header image of this post.

Quirky, hand-written html is something I definitely miss from the old web.

“To challenge with optimism”

An additional Olympic item to mark today’s opening of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

Goo Choki Par designs official poster for the Paralympics demonstrating Para-athletic power – It’s Nice That
The design studio aimed to convey the idea that “passion cannot be stopped,” claiming that “passion is the hope of humanity that has always been passed on through the ages.” Although GCP were commissioned to create the official poster, the team went on to create all the posters for each of the 22 sports in the games, including canoeing, equestrian, and judo.

The concept was “Unity in Diversity” and this is reflected in the fusion of materials used to create the posters. “Geometric shapes are used to simplify the appeal of the competition,” says Kent Iitaka, “and to more symbolically express the moment when the body is full of power.” Brushes, pencils, and airbrushes were used in order to express speedy movement of athletes and the powerful competition space with passion.

The studio honed in on the dynamism of wheelchairs and artificial limbs alongside the power of sound produced by the athletes’ movements. As Iitaka puts it, “The various charms of parasports, such as the sensibilities of athletes who have been sharpened in the dark, of competitions held in a world without vision, are firmly established in one graphic for each competition.” The posters on black backgrounds are used to demonstrate a competition that includes a blind class – “It expresses the presence of a player who emerges powerfully even in the darkness with his eyes closed.”

Watch the numbers

For things that can cost so much money, you wouldn’t think anyone would want to cut corners…

The case for better watch typography – HODINKEE
[O]nly a small and decreasing number of watchmakers go to the trouble of creating custom lettering for their dials. More often, watch brands use off-the-rack fonts that are squished and squeezed onto the dial’s limited real estate. Patek Philippe, for example, has used ITC American Typewriter and Arial on its high-end watches. French brand Bell & Ross deploys the playful 1980 typeface Isonorm for the numerals on many of its timepieces. Rolex uses a slightly modified version of Garamond for its logo. And Audemars Piguet has replaced the custom lettering on its watches with a stretched version of Times Roman.

That watchmakers use typefaces originally created for word processing, signage, and newspapers highlights a central paradox of watch design: These tiny machines hide their most elegant solutions under layers of complexity, while one of the most visible components – typography – is often an afterthought.

Of course, it’s not all like that.

Our favourite uses of typography in watches – A Collected Man
Good typography should be almost unnoticeable. Blending seamlessly into the rest of the design, it should tell you everything you need to know, without you being aware of it. Despite the many restrictions that are applied to dial layout, the creativity that can be seen in typography across horology is quite staggering. To put it simply, typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible and appealing when displayed. As the dial is the main point of interaction with a watch, it is arguably one of its most important parts, and certainly one that can produce the most emotion. This is why typeface can play such a vital, yet subtle, role in how we experience and feel about a certain piece.

A rather unexpected instance of a brand using a completely different typeface for just one model is the Patek Philippe 5212A weekly calendar. Perhaps designed to reflect the singularity of the rarely seen complication, this reference was printed with a handwritten typeface that, when studied, almost looks shaky. While this could appear like a mistake at first, it was revealed that the typeface was in fact chosen by their design team to “recall an epoch in the not too distant past when notes were still written by hand in paper diaries.”

Here’s more on that “handwritten” watch.

Complications Ref. 5212A-001 Stainless Steel – Patek Philippe
Patek Philippe introduces a new complication to its calendar watches: the weekly calendar, a semi-integrated mechanism displaying the current week number, in addition to the day and date. A particularly useful feature for the modern businessman.

I love that, “the modern businessman” indeed. Like this one, you mean? But anyway, it’s not occurred to me until now that, for these watchmakers, typography is more numerical than alphabetical.

Breguet numerals – Breguet
Some Breguet watches display the distinctive numerals that A.- L. Breguet designed. Although he himself was no calligraphist, Breguet’s Arabic numerals show his flair for combining function with elegance. Still used today, particularly on watches with enamel dials, Breguet numerals first appeared before the French Revolution when they shared the dial with tiny stars to mark the minutes and stylised fleur-de-lys at five-minute intervals. By 1790 they had assumed their definitive form.

You can see these Breguet numerals on the Dubuis watch above, as well as the Patek Philippe in the header image. But manufacturing limitations also play their part in watch typography. Have a look at these 4s.

Decimal fonts – Fonts by Hoefler&Co.
Watch lettering is printed through tampography, a technique in which ink is transferred first from an engraved plate to a spongy, dumpling-shaped silicone pad, and from there onto the convex dial of a watch. To reproduce clearly, a letterform needs to overcome the natural tendencies of liquid ink or enamel held in suspension: tiny serifs at the ends of strokes can create a larger coastline, to help prevent liquid from withdrawing due to surface tension; wide apexes on characters like 4 and A eliminate the acute angles where liquid tends to pool.

Hence that flat top 4. I hadn’t noticed them before, but they’re everywhere.

David and Alexandre-Gustave

David Hockney, national (and local) treasure. Even just silently flipping through his sketchbook is a calming joy.

David Hockney shows us his sketch book, page by page – Open Culture
Though filled up the previous year, the artist’s sketchbook depicts a quiet world of domestic spaces and unpeopled outdoor scenes that will look oddly familiar to many viewing it after 2020.

He’s not without his share of critics, though.

‘Brilliant’ or totally phoned in? David Hockney’s new design for the London Tube is sparking merciless mockery online – Artnet News
To be fair, Hockney reportedly made the illustration for free. And no one actually thinks he forgot to leave room for the “s.” In reality, he probably made the piece on his iPad, perhaps between rounds of Fruit Ninja, one hand on the tablet, the other pinching a lit cigarette. He was likely trying to instill in the design the same sense of childlike hope that has underscored much of his recent work, such as his 116 new spring-themed iPad paintings opening this month at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

Eddy Frankel, Time Out’s art and culture editor, has the correct response, I think.

Mind the Gap: why Hockney’s Piccadilly Line roundel uproar signifies a deepening disconnect between art and the public – It’s Nice that
So how did an 80-year-old with an iPad manage to cause uproar? Because the government is cutting 50 per cent of funding to higher level arts education in the UK. Because kids aren’t taken around museums, because they’re not taught about why cubism matters, or why a urinal can be art.

The temptation is to blame everyday people for not getting Hockney, when the truth is that this is the result of years and years of arts education being shoved into the background and decimated through an endless, attritional cultural war. The education secretary Gavin Williamson just said: “The record number of people taking up science and engineering demonstrates that many are already starting to pivot away from dead-end courses that leave young people with nothing but debt.”

He’s genuinely gleeful about people not studying art. That’s what it means to the people in power, and that heinous attitude trickles down through every facet of society.

Someone makes a thing for the public, some like it, others really don’t — same old story.

Plea – Futility Closet
Are we going to allow all this beauty and tradition to be profaned? Is Paris now to be associated with the grotesque and mercantile imagination of a machine builder, to be defaced and disgraced? Even the commercial Americans would not want this Eiffel Tower which is, without any doubt, a dishonor to Paris. We all know this, everyone says it, everyone is deeply troubled by it. We, the Committee, are but a faint echo of universal sentiment, which is so legitimately outraged. When foreign visitors come to our universal exposition, they will cry out in astonishment, ‘What!? Is this the atrocity that the French present to us as the representative of their vaunted national taste?’