smiley, emoji

The city of Düsseldorf, which I unfortunately know nothing about aside from a sizable Japanese community and an art and design heritage, crowded amid the megapoli of the North Rhein, will be adopting the electronic shorthand :D, big grins, as its new symbol. That’s clever how the colon reflects the umlaut and I think that this will be a way of attracting attention and spurring interest in the city. The logo won’t replace any of the city’s historic arms and flags but I’m sure will become a fast and more recognizable association. With this new happy branding, I wonder if Düsseldorf be starting a trend. Can you think of any punctuation, emoticons that might convey, right away a place’s character or at least present a challenge to think of anything else?

coming home at all hours and in all colours

Wikipedia’s English portal features among its newest content a classic picture book (with full text and illustrated plates) on optical and afterimage phenomena, by JH Brown called Spectropia, or, surprising spectral illusions showing ghosts everywhere and of any colour. It is a very carefully crafted study of the eye and optics and the tricks that one’s senses can play. The author was concerned with the parlour cult of séances that was sweeping Victorian England, and he hoped that if young children were exposed to the scientific explanation of phantasmagorical imagery, they might later be less likely to fall for charlatans or make impulsive decisions driven by fear or superstition. The work is beautifully presented and executed and the motive behind it, sweeping away some of the cobwebs of the brain, is pretty neat too. I wonder if there ever was a trend in publishing to dispel or disabuse what might be other grand illusions of our programming and the artists who prey on them.

birds of a feather

PfRC has decided to branch out, at least for a dance or two, into social networking and try doing the Twitter. I like to follow this service for developing news stories, and it seems some people are doing neat and creative things with the profiles, announcements and happenings. I think I am generally too verbose to limit myself to 140 characters, but it might be a good extension tool nonetheless. I was impressed how one’s website is scoured right away and suggests connections with perhaps other kindred spirits.

I feel like I am getting into this one with the backing of some research and study and a more sophisticated grammar in terms of privacy and transparency and the consequences of too much exposure. Although there may just be shades of separation and a grand coalition of unholy allegiance closer just out of view, there does not seem to be the same untooled emphasis on prodding and prying and implicating ones friends and interests that’s found elsewhere. We’ll give this thing a try, so stayed tuned on both channels

capricorn or ex cathedra

The Pope recently published a biography of the early years of the historical personage of Jesus of Nazareth. Most of the focus and controversy concerning this book are on a couple of lines, where the Pope sides with the bulk of scholars and historians and says that the date and setting of the Nativity are probably wrong and the customs that have developed have lost the real dates and circumstances to history.

I am sure that the Pope says a lot of other things in his book and I think I would enjoy reading it, and it is an important distinction that the Pope is not speaking ex cathedra, pronouncing doctrine or the Church’s official stance, but is rather writing as a private academic. The sensational headlines miss those few lines and are instead making it seem that Catholics ought to disapprove of Christmas trees and crèches. The year of Jesus’ birth may have been miscalculated or strategically positioned by an determined monk and the timing of the celebration, with all the trappings, may have been a substantial appeasement to standing traditions to ease holiday-substitution, but customs have become more than that and carry their own force of belief.

I don’t think the Pope would disagree, and the basis and rationale for the character of the celebration may be more subtle and a far more abiding mystery than mere politics, diplomacy or commerce. Though the administrative loss of a proper ruling planet for Scorpios seemed to garner more discontent, this focus and controversy (substantively, I think) though visible and timely I think withers in comparison with another potentially disenchanting demotion by a previous papacy: the downgrading of Saint George. The martyr and dragon-slayer lost his pivotal spot on the calendar since his veneration is in part based on said dragon, which makes the saint’s existence a bit suspect. Considering all the places, traditions and families that claim his patronage, I can well imagine some people were upset to lose this symbol and protector. Yet, no one dropped the convention or honours or took up a saint with more reliable credentials because of this, and instead maybe the meaning and regard became stronger for diminution.

uncanny valley or listening-post

As if the bad economy, crowds and the potential for violence were not reason enough to keep one out of the stores, a business magazine reports on a development that may well become standard for traditional retail outlets—retrofitting mannequins, which are always creepy even when not cursed or endowed with a positronic brain, with bionic eyes and ears to spy and eavesdrop on customers and conduct market research in the field. Trade spokespeople were predictably ebullient about the cyborg mannequins’ ability to collect shopper demographics and find new prospects, brick-and-mortar establishments feeling at a disadvantage to on-line sales for not having customers’ hearts (buying habits) worn on their sleeves and hope the silent sentinels can gather new insights about effective displays and the influences that ultimately wins over one purchase over another at the rack or in the dressing room.

ninjutsu

A few days ago, the BBC featured a sad, disenchanting but informative little article covering yet another position made redundant by modern times: the ninja.

The grand masters of the two surviving clans have decided that while students may still learn ninja skills, neither will appoint a successor and will both be the last of a long legacy of agents for espionage, sabotage and field apothecaries retained in the service of samurais and shoguns. These feudal warlords have been outmoded, too, and I think no one morns that loss, though it is a little distressing to see such bailiwicks and traditions pass on. Though I suspect I am mistaken, I’d like to think maybe that the publicized disappearance of the ninja is not their coup de grâce but rather their cover story to allow the true ninjas to recede further into the shadows, indulging everything that one has seen in the movies.

ink trap

A very talented and prolific letter-smith crafted a typeface called DK-Viareggio, an Italianate Art Deco font that perfectly captures the lettering style on this classic poster for Carnival time. I was looking for something like this for quite some time, because although there is a good range of period fonts, it’s hard to match or contrast designs for their width, weight and slope with standard issue scripts to create something approaching authentic. Most signage and graphic arts was a unique, hand-rendered production with geometry peculiar to the artist, and it’s pretty neat that someone took the time to extrapolate a whole alphabet out of this one occasion.

What other vanity writing would you like to see turned into a font? I wonder how well a computer routine alone could handle scanning and fleshing out a whole character set from a few letters on a particular billboard or book cover and what that might mean in terms of classification and finding ones font when each is pulled from an individual source.  Of course, typesetting, casting a certain flow, is another challenge and achievement entirely.

bankster or the man who sold the world

I heard the song The Complete Banker for the first time just the other day as an interstitial piece during a radio interview with no less than a former World Bank employee, turned charitable advisor and gadfly to neo-colonialists. I had initially pegged it as a much older tune, somewhat reminiscent of a David Bowie song, for its bouncy rhythm and Thatcher references. Having not had the benefit of growing up exposed to quite few classic English ballads, the occasional, surprising work does pop up from time to time. The song, however, is part of a larger legacy of more recent songwriting by a band called The Divine Comedy and is from their 2010 album. It remains quite a good hymn for our times.