— the nice modernist

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Two posts this evening have touched upon some­thing that has been lin­ger­ing in the in the back of my mind for some time:

The first step on the road from thought to web­site is text. Text is the most fun­da­men­tal kind of web con­tent. When web­sites have images, audio, or video, respon­si­ble authors will make sure these things have tex­tual equiv­a­lents. How­ever pale such alter­nate text may be com­pared to the media it rep­re­sents, it’s a base­line. Text is the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of web com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” — Tim Brown, of Nice Web Type, on his new tum­blelog, Mak­ing Nice Web Type.

And,

Typog­ra­phy isn’t just font choice, text arrange­ment and spac­ing, but orga­ni­za­tion of infor­ma­tion (i.e, sys­tems design, not win­dow dress­ing).less than a minute ago via Tweet­Deck

In the last year, this web­site has been pow­ered by Expres­sion Engine, Dru­pal and later, once I found the appro­pri­ate fit, Word­Press. It has been skinned with a hand­ful of pub­licly avail­able free themes — present one included. I will say, I have a great respect for any indi­vid­ual will­ing to put their code out there for free — how­ever, of the themes I have per­son­ally tried, none have focused on what I value most: legibility.

Leg­i­bil­ity is very dear to me because, well, I have dif­fi­culty with that which is near to me.

Sec­ond, though we have all embraced short-​​form com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I’m afraid, gen­er­ally speak­ing, we’re col­lec­tively ignor­ing the value of long-​​form articles.

That said, I felt it was time to do some­thing. I have been work­ing on a Word­Press theme that puts the reader first — if its worth it, I’ll even try and make it pub­lic. My hope is that, once in place, it will allow me to focus on writ­ing longer posts and have them pre­sented in a man­ner that encour­ages you, the viewer, to read them.

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Unapolo­getic, and unabashed, Wally Olins speaks on the brand­ing of nations (Note: .pdf file.):

And the rebrand­ing of France has pro­ceeded spo­rad­i­cally and often vio­lently ever since. Napoleon’s Empire gave way to the restored Bour­bons, who were over­thrown and replaced by a bour­geois Monar­chy, which was fol­lowed by a Sec­ond Repub­lic which turned itself into a Sec­ond Napoleonic Empire. In an attempt to recre­ate the glory of his uncle, the first and incom­pa­ra­bly greater fig­ure, Napoleon III and the Sec­ond Empire went down to humil­i­at­ing defeat by Prus­sia in 1870. By the time the Third Repub­lic emerged from the ashes of the Sec­ond Empire, French politi­cians had become the worlds spe­cial­ists at brand­ing and rebrand­ing the nation.”

And fur­ther draws par­al­lel between the brand strat­egy of nations and businesses:

Busi­nesses have to cre­ate loy­al­ties; loy­al­ties of the work­force, loy­al­ties of sup­pli­ers, loy­al­ties of the com­mu­ni­ties in which they oper­ate, loy­al­ties of investors and loy­al­ties of cus­tomers. In cre­at­ing these loy­al­ties they use very sim­i­lar tech­niques to those of nation builders. They cre­ate myths, spe­cial lan­guages, envi­ron­ments which rein­force loy­al­ties, colours, sym­bols, and quasi-​​historical myths. They even have heroes.”

Here in Alberta, there are ongo­ing con­cerns with pre­sent­ing the province to the world in a pos­i­tive light, some­times con­tro­ver­sial, some­times regarded as expen­sive and ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful. This has resulted in a multi-​​front war of words divided amongst the Provin­cial gov­ern­ment, advo­cacy groups, envi­ron­men­tal stew­ards and the news media.


(Sun­cor Energy upgrader and tail­ings ponds. Fort McMur­ray, AB. Photo by Edward Burtynsky.)

For some, Ed Burtynsky’s aer­ial pho­tos of the tar sands are the only insight into the oper­a­tions hap­pen­ing in our own back yard. Or, they would be if any­one here had paid attention.

The value and impor­tance of the oil sands will make that much harder the choices that Alber­tans and all Cana­di­ans sud­denly face. Canada has now become a major-​​league mer­chant of one of the most desirable—and dirtiest—sources of energy. The money is flow­ing in, and the prof­its are rolling out—good news for stock­hold­ers, the Cana­dian dol­lar and gov­ern­ment coffers.

But there are envi­ron­men­tal and social costs to stuff­ing our pock­ets while the oil speeds south. And Cana­di­ans will have to answer a ques­tion already being asked by many Alber­tans: When does a boom become a bur­den?” —Erin Ander­ssen, Shawn McCarthy and Eric Reg­uly, An empire from a tub of goo, Globe and Mail.

See also: Bet­ter Nation Build­ing Through Design, via Design Observer.

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Built around an alu­minum frame, this Dutch bike fea­tures a single-​​speed, coaster brake, inte­grated solar pow­ered LED head and tal­lights and not much else.

We were inspired by the good old-​​fashioned Dutch bike,” explains the 28-​​year old Dutch designer Sjo­erd Smit, “we stripped the bike from whims that can only break or cause frus­tra­tion and added inno­va­tion and style”.

The VANMOOF is a thor­oughly mod­ern town bike, and looks noth­ing like the old stads­fi­ets my Old Opa would have built at our fac­tory, (though that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing!) It cer­tainly res­onates with me: I sus­pect cycling is in my blood.

VANMOOF promises a new model every six months, and this is a firm I’ll con­tinue to watch.

Update: Portland-​​based, Specialized-​​owned, Globe Bicy­cles looks to have a small, but grow­ing col­lec­tion of prac­ti­cal and not-​​so-​​practical mod­els for sale. More inter­est­ing than their offer­ing, how­ever, is the run­ning com­men­tary on factory-​​built/​imported bicy­cles vs. locally built by a skilled frame­builder in the post com­ments at the NAU blog. (via Luke Dorny/​@luxuryluke.)

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Two exam­ples of a superb four-​​colour screen­print in progress by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes design stu­dio. Many of his prints are for sale, in lim­ited runs, in his online shop.

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Good design is hon­est. Good design is thor­ough to the last detail. Good design is as lit­tle design as pos­si­ble. [Dieter Rams]

There is a brief, but impor­tant list of peo­ple that I would credit for my love of design, art and archi­tec­ture. Indi­vid­u­als who’s guid­ance and men­tor­ship was and is invalu­able: my Oma and Opa, painter and pho­tog­ra­pher, respec­tively; my father, the engi­neer and pho­tog­ra­pher; Pat Dowie, pho­tog­ra­pher and print­maker; and Jacqui McFar­land, inte­rior and graphic designer. The rest, whom I’ve only known in books, pho­tographs, and occa­sional con­sumer pur­chases include John Paw­son, Jonathan Ive, and Dieter Rams. These indi­vid­u­als, seen and unseen, have col­lec­tively devel­oped my aes­thetic world­view, and I carry them with me every day.

All the more excit­ing then that Rams and Ive, among many oth­ers, are included in the list of per­son­al­i­ties fea­tured in Gary Hustwit’s lat­est film, Objec­ti­fied, which debuted at SXSW, a cou­ple weeks ago. I eagerly antic­i­pate an announce­ment of a screen­ing here in Calgary.

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Print­ing as a voca­tion attracts many young and women, because it offers real oppor­tu­ni­ties for steady work, good pay and advancement.

Job secu­rity, sta­ble earn­ings. Sounds good. Per­haps you’d like to cross-​​train on a Lino­type machine.

For the record, I think about this line of edu­ca­tion every day.

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Robin Hood Gardens. Photo by Flickr user joseph_beuys_hat. Used under Creative Commons non-commercial license.

(Robin Hood Gar­dens. Photo by Flickr user joseph_​beuys_​hat.)

While Paris pon­ders it’s future, Lon­don is exam­in­ing it’s past, seek­ing the destruc­tion of a bru­tal­ist mod­ern hous­ing com­plex, designed by Ali­son and Peter Smith­son in the 1960s.

My first view of Robin Hood Gar­dens was from across a busy road­way. The com­plex is sur­rounded by a ring of for­bid­ding con­crete walls tilted out­ward to block out noise. Just beyond this ring, ramps lead to under­ground park­ing, form­ing a kind of moat between the build­ings and the street. The facades are in decrepit shape. Even on a rare sunny Lon­don day the project’s famous con­crete walk­ways, which the Smith­sons called “streets in the air,” look gray and melan­choly. The rows of con­crete mul­lions, a play on Mies van der Rohe’s steel I-​​beams, give the façade the aura of a medieval fortification.

Inside, ten­ants of Robin Hood Gar­dens ride claus­tro­pho­bic ele­va­tors to reach their apart­ments. When the ele­va­tors break down, they climb a dank, air­less stair­well. A bar­rier that runs up the cen­ter of the stair­case makes it impos­si­ble to see what’s around the cor­ner, so you worry that you are about to get mugged each time you reach a land­ing. The expe­ri­ence only rein­forces the iso­la­tion of the mostly poor immi­grants who live here. [Nico­lai Ouroussoff/​New York Times]

Com­plaints of esca­lat­ing crime and neglect have placed this par­tic­u­lar devel­op­ment on watch as liv­ing con­di­tions degrade. An easy solu­tion is to blame the build­ing—to uproot the com­mu­nity and replace and renew. These solu­tions over­look the root cause in favour of the quick-​​fix, leav­ing in place the exist­ing prob­lems over­laid on a newer, shinier infrastructure—or the sys­tem­atic dis­place­ment of the exist­ing com­mu­nity via the process of gentrification.

Jane Jacobs describes the urban renewal of Man­hat­tan in the 1950s:

Well what was get­ting imme­di­ately under my skin was this mad spree of decep­tions and van­dal­ism and waste that was called urban renewal. And the way it had been adopted like a fad and peo­ple were so mind­less about it and so dis­hon­est about what was being done. That’s what ticked me off, because I was work­ing for an archi­tec­tural mag­a­zine and I saw all this first hand and I saw how the most awful things were being excused. […]

They could jus­tify it because urban renewal was a greater good, so they would bare false wit­ness for this greater good. Why was this a greater good? Every­body knew it because slums are bad. But this isn’t a slum. Oh well. You know, the whole thing. They didn’t care how things worked any­more. That was part of it. That was part of what was mak­ing me so angry. Also they didn’t seem to care what part truth and untruths had in these things. That’s part of how things work. And do you care about it. [Jane Jacobs, inter­viewed by Jim Kun­stler, Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine 03/​2001]

The sys­tem­atic era­sure of Mod­ernism in favour of the style du jour, the process of which fos­ters the cre­ation of a new com­mu­nity of dias­pora, is far from the most cor­rect solu­tion to the prob­lems of Robin Hood Gar­dens. I beg you remem­ber the count­less exam­ples world­wide where mod­ernism thrives, and draw your own conclusions.

Simon Fraser University. Photo by Flickr user devlyn. Used under Creative Commons non-commercial license.

(Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity. Photo by Flickr user dev­lyn.)

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BMW is work­ing with South African artist Robin Rhode to pro­mote the BMW brand, the Z4 Road­ster, and osten­si­bly Rhode’s own work with another instal­la­tion of their long-​​running part­ner­ship with the arts via it’s BMW Art Cars program.

Rhode has pre­vi­ously come to light when Nike SB took heavy ‘inspi­ra­tion’ from his pieces as the basis of a series of adver­tis­ments fea­tur­ing Paul Rodriguez.

His work with BMW on the sur­face appears to be a long stretch from his foun­da­tion as a per­for­mance artist, in many cases being site-​​specific. In ‘Leak’ (2000), Rhode refenced Duchamp’s ready­made ‘Foun­tain’ (1917) by uri­nat­ing on a hand-​​drawn uri­nal inscribed on the wall of Cape Town’s South African National Gallery. Fur­ther:

Rhode’s visual and con­cep­tual alpha­bet is built around issues of desire, loss, and dis­lo­ca­tion in a cap­i­tal­ist world while also acknowl­edg­ing the spe­cific indig­ni­ties of grow­ing up “col­ored” in for­merly apartheid South Africa. For instance, Park Bench (2000) was a life-​​size draw­ing of said object on the wall of the Par­lia­ment build­ing in Cape Town, in an area that used to be off-​​limits to all but white South Africans. Dressed in dark, hooded cloth­ing asso­ci­ated with trouble-​​making youths, Rhode then pro­ceeded to loi­ter around his bench and was even­tu­ally arrested for defam­ing state prop­erty. [–Walker Art]

It would seem to me BMW wants des­per­ately to iden­tify with Rhode’s rebel­lious streak. I see that more to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the BMW of old, rather than the newer, softer BMW, but being a BMW vin­tage fan (and owner), I sus­pect I’m a bit biased.

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Type sample by Luciano Perondi.

Type sample by Luciano Perondi.

Regard­ing the design of char­ac­ters, I believe it is espe­cially essen­tial to do so by hand, where one can observe the cal­li­graphic char­ac­ter. […Work­ing dig­i­tally] lim­its of the very vision of the designer. In any case I believe that the design of char­ac­ters is a com­plex issue and should be [evo­lu­tion­ary, so as] not to over-​​design. In design­ing courses I choose a spe­cific topic, but very wide and with just a mod­er­ate amount of restric­tions and para­me­ters to be met, because vio­lat­ing the rules is eas­ier than cre­at­ing alone, and the most orig­i­nal fol­low the oppo­site path. [–Trans­la­tion via Google, with some cleanup. Orig­i­nal.]

I’ve spent the evening search­ing and turned up very lit­tle English-​​language infor­ma­tion on this face, much less exam­ples in use. Com­mis­sioned by the Uni­ver­sità Iuav di Venezia, and designed by Luciano Per­ondi in 2004 for use in Venice’s wayfind­ing sys­tems, it’s not read­ily appar­ent to me if this face was ever actively used for way­far­ing in the pub­lic realm. That said, I’m awfully enam­oured with Min­io­type‘s char­ac­ter at large sizes, and sur­pris­ingly del­i­cate grace when set small.

We think of signs–the task is to bring a per­son from one place to another but can be [visu­ally] very strong, even evoca­tive. Per­haps we need to reas­sure the user of a dan­ger, or sim­ply make them feel com­fort­able in an ele­gant place. [These are] mes­sages that are not attrib­ut­able solely to writ­ing, but also to a form of rhetoric of another type; a sec­ond level of read­ing. [–As before.]

I may be late to the party, but I’m will­ing to sug­gest Luciano Per­ondi, and his type­faces, just gained a new fan.

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