My virtual meeting with Sam has prompted a meandering journey through a few websites dedicated to the stylish presentation of text. I thought I would note the links in one place: first, merely to note the trend; and second because it will aid discussions with colleagues over how to present our own literary content on the fantastic PEN Atlas.
First: Medium is a relatively new site created by Twitter founder Evan Williams. Writers can create beautiful looking stories and essays very quickly. The site has the clean and spacious aesthetic that has become fashionable recently. Design led by the need for readbility and usability on tablets, mobile phones, while also providing a reading experience on desktop and laptop monitors that is easy on the eye. I was delighted that my request for an early-bird account was granted by Medium’s Director of Content, Kate Lee, and I have just uploaded a story to the site to try out the composition features.
You can read ‘Northern Line Lovers‘ on Medium (and if you like the story, please hit the ‘recommend’ button below the text). I think I will post my other ‘Ficciones‘ there at some point. Continue reading
Tag: design (Page 3 of 4)
An Instagrammable photobomb, by theycallmemouse on Flickr.
I have become an avid listener of the Overthinking It podcast. It is a few guys, chatting via Skype from disparate locations in the USA, shooting the breeze about popular culture.
A recent episode (an atypical two-hander between Matthew Wrather and Peter Fenzel) is called ‘Schroedinger’s Instagram’, and discusses in depth the pop-cultural implications of the recent purchase of Instagram by Facebook. In doing so, they cruise by many of the obsessions and diversions of this blog.
- The rise of the ‘selfies‘ (i.e. a digital self-portrait).
- Our obsession with taking our own photographs of events that are being recorded anyway…. event if we are actually taking part in that event (c.f. Malia Obama at the Inauguration, Olympians at their opening ceremony).
- Compulsive documentation, stepping out of a moment in order to photograph it.
Wrather and Fenzel talk a little about party photos and holiday snaps. The way in which people ‘pose’ for ostensibly candid photos has always fascinated me. I know people who make a peace ‘V’ with their fingers, or open their mouths as if the excitement of the moment has overcome them… but then they lapse into a rather glum repose once the flash has fired. They are consciously creating an inaccurate facade for Facebook.
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Leveson Report, printed via Lulu.com. The pretty spectrum of blue hues is an intentional difference from the official version.
The Leveson Report is over two thousand pages long, and is published in four volumes. You can download the forty-two page Executive Summary and the four large PDFs that make up the full report from the National Archives (at the grandly named official-documents.gov.uk doman).
If you want a hard copy of the report, The Stationery Office will charge a whopping £250.
However, there is a cheaper option to get a printed version of the report. I have taken the four PDFs and uploaded them to Lulu.com, the print-on-demand website. Each document (I, II, III, IV) costs around £12, and so (with delivery included) one may obtain the entire report for under £60.
Is this legal? Yes. The Leveson Report carries an Open Government Licence (a variation on a Creative Commons Licence) which states that anyone is free to “copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information”. There is no creator mark-up on the documents (i.e. I do not make any money), so ordering them in this way is analagous to clicking ‘print’ on the PDFs and feeding two-thousand sheets of paper into your office printer!
Why is there such a disparity in price? The answer is colour. The design of the report available via The Stationery Office is printed with a blue spot colour, used in various tints throughout the report. In the cheaper Lulu versions, the content is simply black-and-white.
If you take a stroll down Farringdon Road, from Exmouth Market towards Clerkenwell Green, you will come upon a magnificent sight-line into the City of London. It is not until you reach the Betsey Trotwood and the Free Word Centre that St Paul’s Cathedral emerges on the skyline, but from further up the road, a new landmark is emerging – Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ Shard of Glass, currently under construction.
Since I work at the Free Word Centre, I regularly happen across this view. I often take a quick snap with the camera on my phone. Below is an example that has been filtered through Instagr.am.
A better attempt with an SLR and telephoto lense is on Flickr:
Birth of the Shard by yrstrly on Flickr
I have found that the damp and foggy days when the building emerges from midst are when the Shard looks most interesting. The giant looms on the horizon, and one’s sense of scale is confused and compressed, which reminds me of the famous photograph by the Liverpudlian photographer E. Chambré Hardman, ‘The Birth of the Ark Royal’, taken in 1950.
Photograph of the HMS Ark Royal, taken from the top of Holt Hill in Birkenhead, by Chambré Hardman.
See also the weathered early photographs of Tower Bridge and the Eiffel Tower under construction. Watching The Shard rise, I have a strong sense of being embedded in history. I know that it will become a symbol of London, like Gherkin and Millenium Wheel, or the pointy Transamerica Pyramid in San Fransisco. Watching it grow makes me feel like I am sat inside an iconic, historical image.
Following the stratospherically popular “Its the faded parchment screen print agitprop aesthetic YouTube round-up“, I now present images of a couple of packages that are currently sitting my kitchen work surface. In both cases, the aesthetic is characterised by bold primary colours and muddle of typefaces. Its reminiscent of early mass produced packages, the sort of thing you might find in a corner shop or rural out-post. Its a reaction, I think, against the idea of companies as ‘brands’ that diversify into all manner of products. This aesthetic hints that there’s a good old traditional supply chain here, with a farm and a factory, that is bringing tangible produce to your local independent grocer’s store. Quite misleading, of course, but also delightful.
Quaker JUMBO oats make a lovely porridge
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