Month: August 2010

Papergirls

PapergirlGiven my interest in both books and bicycles, here’s a announcement I got from my friend Colleen about her new project, Papergirl:

Papergirl is a new San Francisco community art project with an open call for entries and community distribution by bicycle…. the only limitation for submissions: all artwork must be roll-able as it will eventually find its way into the receiver’s hand by roadside bicycle delivery….Papergirl is prints, drawings, stencils, textiles, and hard work rolled up into an accessible art project. It is mail-art meets old-school delivery system. The project is participatory, non-commercial, and impulsive in which rolled art pieces are distributed by bicycle in the style of American paperboys to random passers-by in the streets of San Francisco for free. Before the work is rolled up and distributed, the work will be exhibited in a non-traditional gallery space.

There’s a similar project in Berlin — see pictures here. And you can follow Papergirl on their blog.

Creative New Uses for Books?

Books as ArtI’ve mentioned Rob Walker’s blog, Murketing, with its series of posts tagged Books: the Idea, a “continuing series of images, and occasionally quoted words, dealing with the idea of books.” My friend Sharon wrote the other day that Walker summarized the blog series in a recent NY Times Sunday magazine column called Creative New Uses for Books, with the intro

In July, Amazon.com announced that, during the previous three months, it sold more e-books than hardback books. This may or may not portend something about the future of the form in which long chunks of text are published. But what about the future of the long chunks of text that have already been published as physical objects with paper pages bound between covers? There are, after all, many such things around.

Sharon was particularly taken by a website Walker mentions, inhabitat.com. And I enjoyed re-reading Books as Furniture by Nicholas Baker (you need to subscribe to the New Yorker to read it online, but as a substitute, the Hoefler & Frere-Jones blog has a nice post on it here.)

The Ballet Font Project

Ballet Font ProjectFirst seen on After Image: The Ballet Font Project “is a tribute to all those kids who were told to sit still and pay attention when, in fact, they just needed to move to think.” The website goes on to say:

Paula was told in first grade she had a learning disability. By sixth grade she was well below her grade’s reading level when one observant teacher recognized her poise and graceful movements. This teacher encouraged Paula to go home and create the alphabet as though she were a ballerina. Paula came back to school the next morning dancing the letters and then sequenced all 26 into a unified performance. By the end of sixth grade she was reading and writing at grade level. The following year Paula earned above-average grades.

See the font and find out more here.

Little Book of Letterpress

lblp.jpgChronicle Books is about to publish Little Book of Letterpress by Charlotte Rivers (called Reinventing Letterpress: Prints by Contemporary Practitioners in the UK). They say:

Thanks to traditional letterpress technique’s popularity in DIY and indie-crafter circles, it’s become the darling of the stationery world with innovative new studios popping up all over the globe, from Texas to Denmark. Little Book of Letterpress is a treasure trove of remarkable work from some of the hottest and coolest letterpress studios working today, including Egg Press and Hello Lucky. Featuring an enlightening history of the craft, explanations of the different types of presses, sneak peeks into the studios, and details about the process of creation, this volume is the epitome of handcrafted hip.

Rock-paper-scissors

My husband got me watching the TV show In Plain Sight with him by convincing me I wanted to see a show set in our new home — New Mexico. On an episode we watched recently, the 2 lead characters played rock-paper-scissors to determine who would have to do something neither wanted to do. I immediately thought that might be a good tool for me — moving and getting our new house in order has been full of chores no one wants to do (who’s going to call the city recycling again because they missed our pickup? Or worse, who’s going to call the manufacturer yet again because the appliance we bought has broken for the Nth time — I finally got them to take it back as a lemon…) I got my husband to agree to the rock-paper-scissors decider game, but then I saw the poster below (here) explaining how to win rock-paper-scissors every time — which I read immediately, and now can’t in all honesty play it with him. (Who knew there were tournaments and world championships!)
And while this post isn’t about book arts, it is about a well designed broadside…

rock paper scissors