segunda-feira, 27 de dezembro de 2010

The science of magazine design

I found this through The Simpleton and Stack magazine (but the text below came from the Eye magazine blog).

Stack America’s infographic explores the fundamentals of art direction


Few people outside the hothouse world of magazine production realise what a difficult and intellectually demanding job editorial art direction can be, so we are deeply grateful to Eye contributor Andrew Losowsky (of Stack America) for this carefully researched chart by Richard Turley and his team (Rob and Kenton) at Bloomberg Business Week.

It’s an essential guide for freelances, salaried drudges and students alike, with practical advice on ‘Visual Problem Solving’ and a handy Glossary.

Not to mention detailed analysis of some key differences between editors and designers.



segunda-feira, 18 de outubro de 2010

Dream thinking


Felix Vallotton - laid down woman sleeping, 1899 
The dream is fundamentally nothing more than a special form of our thinking,
which is made possible by the conditions of the sleeping state. It is the dream-work which produces this form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming -         the only explanation of its singularity.
Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter 6

terça-feira, 17 de agosto de 2010

Times + Baskerville + Holmes

The Derby Mercury newspaper of 1817

But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening halfpenny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimaux.








The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, 
though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue.

The Hound of the Baskervilles | Chapter IV

segunda-feira, 12 de julho de 2010

Seeing



It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

segunda-feira, 17 de maio de 2010

Audience as fiction


Drawing by Walter Ong from The Walter J. Ong Collection

Whereas the spoken word is part of present actuality, the written word normally is not. The writer, in isolation, constructs a role for his "audience" to play, and readers fictionalize themselves to correspond to the author's projection. The way readers fictionalize themselves shifts throughout literary history: Chaucer, Lyly, Nashe, Hemingway, and others furnish cases in point.

All writing, from scientific monograph to history, epistolary correspondence, and diary writing, fictionalizes its readers.

In oral performance, too, some fictionalizing of audience occurs, but in the live interaction between narrator and audience there is an existential relationship as well: the oral narrator modifies his story in accord with the real-not imagined-fatigue, enthusiasm, or other reactions of his listeners. Fictionalizing of audiences correlates with the use of masks or personae marking human communication generally, even with oneself. Lovers try to strip off all masks, and oral communication in a context of love can reduce masks to a minimum. In written communication and, a fortiori, print the masks are less removable.
from Walter Ong´s famous text, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction" (PMLA, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), JSOR)