Tuesday at Galapagos

Fri 24 Jul 200902:55 PM

Just a quick appearance note: next Tuesday evening, 28 Jul, I’ll be speaking at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. The event is part of Galapagos’ Career Camp, a five-part series running through mid-September that brings together New York City-area professionals (employed or otherwise) for networking, discussion, and brief lectures (conveniently, drinks will be available at the cash bar, too). Also onstage will be my frequent partner-in-crime Liz Danzico, up-and-coming design technologist extraordinaire Erin Sparling and — last minute addition! — the amazing designer Jason Santa Maria. It’s going to be fun! Tickets are just US$5 and are sure to go quickly, so register right away here at this link.

Funny Pages

Wed 22 Jul 200910:08 AM

Last gasps for a dying medium: as the printed newspaper’s future looks increasingly precarious, some noble — but not necessarily game-changing — attempts are being made to revisit its former glory. This summer two different projects have ambitions to resurrect the long suffering funny pages, i.e., newspaper comic strips printed in a broadsheet (or broadsheet-esque) format. Even as newspapers seem to be continually shrinking, whether in page count or in the actual dimension of their pages, these comics are making efforts to look big.

Magazine by Ill Studio

Fri 17 Jul 200906:29 PM

Just a very quick post: I can’t stop looking at these shots of Ill Studio’s design and art direction for Magazine Issue 47. The muted yet sumptuous tone of the photography, the generous yet judicious use of white space, and the exquisite yet unfussy typography is really something to aspire to. Amazing.

Drawing Power at The Times

Wed 15 Jul 200903:00 PM

Sketchbook Obsession at The New York Times

A Good Day’s Busy Work

Wed 15 Jul 200912:37 AM

Here’s a rant. Thanks to the power of randomness and that old ‘my ears were burning’ sensation, I somehow happened across a comment on a blog the other day in which my Twitter habits were called into question. The remarks, which were about me only in part, contend that “although [Khoi] hasn’t Twittered in months (again), he’d be worth following if he ever embraces the medium.” Well.

First of all, I’m flattered, really, that anyone considers what I have to say interesting enough in any medium to lament my absence from it, which is one way I interpret what this commenter meant. However, my other interpretation goes a little something like this: “Khoi is not keeping up with his busy work. Tsk. Tsk.”

Minimalism, Michael Mann and Miami Vice

Fri 10 Jul 200912:46 AM

The Living Room Problem

Mon 6 Jul 200909:11 PM

I’ve been trying to think if there’s ever been a consumer experience that’s quite as much of a mess as watching video at home is today. What was once so simple now seems inordinately, hopelessly complex. The old paradigm of simply buying a television set, attaching an antenna or a coaxial cable and turning it on seems like a ritual from a lost epoch, something far less evolved humans settled for in order to enjoy scraps of primitive entertainment. In these more sophisticated, digitally-enhanced times, the living room has become a mess.

Now, watching television requires a complex orchestration of sources, devices, meta-systems, cables, asset management and general confusion. Currently in my living room, I have a veritable cat’s cradle of a setup, including two DVD players, a home theater system, a secondary speaker system, an Apple TV, a MacBook, and a putative ‘universal remote’ that nevertheless fails to obviate the many additional remote controls that linger on the coffee table. (Yes, there’s a lot of redundancy there, but sadly there’s some kind of resigned argument for all of it.).

Typography in Doubt

Mon 29 Jun 200909:13 PM

Over the weekend, resigned to the couch while fighting a cold, I watched John Patrick Shanley’s movie adaptation of his own play, “Doubt.” It’s a truly superb piece of dramaturgy that’s gripping and not a little depressing, to be honest. But it’s also sure to reward any viewing, so thought-provoking and thoughtful are the plot and dialog throughout the movie’s 104-minute running time. That includes the movie’s beautifully simple titles, too. In fact, the titles of this film are so effective, they reminded me of how rare a thing is truly intelligent, rewarding typography.

These titles are not flashy at all, just quietly authoritative in their evocation of tradition and faith and understated in their suggestion of betrayal and suspicion. Though I can’t identify the typeface unequivocally, it’s almost certainly some variant of Cheltenham, a handsome serif face designed at the end of the 19th century by Bertram Goodhue.