The test of an invention is the power of an inventor to push it through in the face of staunch — not opposition, but indifference — in society.

Edwin Land

I’m putting together a little presentation for the design team at Humane in a couple weeks about the continued relevance of Polaroid today and connections to what they’re building. Dr. Land’s observation still holds true today — as they've seen, but also as many others have experienced in attempting to bring new ideas into the world. But also sometimes people make products that are simply flawed at a very fundamental level. Ahem, friend.

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I was back at SF MoMA briefly today for a little lunchtime music moment with some colleagues, one of whose partner was DJ’ing in the Devon Turnbull HiFi Listening Room. We were only there for around 30 minutes but I could have stayed all afternoon. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but his musical selections — none of which I remotely recognized (primarily jazz or maybe fusion, I think), were magic in my ears.

This photo was from my last visit, but Twombly’s marks here are equally musical and have an ethereal, ambient quality to them. Big fan.

Footnotes

1. Twombly, Cy. Untitled, 1971. Oil-based house paint and crayon on canvas. 120 × 193-1/2 in. Collection of the SF MoMA. ↩

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Modernism, Inc. is a film about architect and pioneering corporate designer Eliot Noyes which opened recently at the IFC Center in New York which is obviously going to the top of the ‘to watch as soon as possible’ queue.

• “Jess [Collins]’s work moved me because it so vividly exemplified what I love about collage: it’s not something from nothing, but something from something.” Jenny Odell on the magic of collage.
• “Half is a tipping point that we can only measure in hindsight.” Christopher Butler on the state of the current internet. Spoiler: the bots are winning.
• A very enjoyable dive and critical look at improving how we think about what AI actually is. Focusing on intelligence may be entirely the wrong metaphor.
• A new (to me) stripped back take on a personal favorite, Waiting Game by Canadian singer Hannah Georgas, filmed during the Mudtown Music & Arts Festival in 2013.
• “We have no reason to be grateful to those who juggle the thresholds in the name of haphazard innovation.” McLuhan as anti-environmentalist.
• A wild project to control the shutter of a Polaroid pack film camera using an Arduino.
• “Tsundoku” is a Japanese word for the new (unread) books that pile up on our shelves. Never has a word more perfectly captured me.
• Interacting Galaxies Arp 142 (NIRCam and MIRI) — also known as the Penguin, the distorted spiral galaxy at center, and the Egg, the compact elliptical at left. Your weekly dose of amazing new images from the JWST.
• We Need More Than Fewer, Better Things. I’m old enough to remember when we made things to last not just years but decades. Convenience has largely made a great many things disposable with a cost we’re only recently starting to recognize.
• CW&T makes interesting minimalist objects like pens, tape dispensers along with other projects that interest with architecture, product design, and computer science.
• Trying to decide if I love this Apple commercial about privacy or am going to have nightmares because of it. Safari is my go-to browser which is maybe good?
• What we call ourselves does matter more than we might want to believe. Related: Mandy Brown’s timely Knowledge Workers.
• Maripedia — a database of Marimekko patterns and their designers.
• Really can’t wait for Deadpool and Wolverine now.
• The Polaroid Imperfectionism Guide.

I’m back in the Bay Area after a lovely time back in Canada visiting friends and family — and just in time for SF Zine Fest and the excellent opening of the Citizen Printer exhibit at the Letterform Archive featuring the work of national treasure Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. If you’re in the area, do not miss it. And if not, do yourself a solid and pick up the accompanying book.

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Yesterday was an exciting two-fer of events in San Francisco — a trip to the SF Art Book Fair followed by the exhibit opening of Citizen Printer at the Letterform Archive which highlights the work of Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. whose layered, colorful, and politically charged printed work I find directly connects to so many of the things that matter to me — truth, care, empathy, justice, human decency, etc. His approach to pattern and the natural imperfections that come with letterpress printmaking is unlike anyone else, and it was a genuine thrill to finally meet the man (a genuine national treasure) in the flesh.

My dear friend Rachel who joined me for the opening commented that she imagined me like him at that age — which, to me, would be something worthy to strive for.

About These Photos

All photos were captured using the Humane Ai Pin, including the selfie with Amos.

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When we draw a structure by computer, it is connected to our brain. When we draw it by hand, it is connected directly to our heart.

Shigeru Ban

Perhaps not surprisingly, this quote from architect Shigeru Ban hits home for me — not just his philosophy about what computers and modern technology are good at, but also how he thinks about materials, waste, and the eventual end-of-life of manufactured things which (I’d wager) are rarely taken into account. Yet in the grand scheme of such things, we’d be wise to spend meaningful time and effort towards this for the benefit of not just the present, but also the future.

Footnotes

Ban, Shigeru. Design Q&A: Shigeru Ban, Kazam! Magazine (Eames Institute), 2024.

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On the basis of what just transpired in the US, the word escape all of a sudden takes on an even greater sense of relevance and urgency, especially for what may happen next.

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I’m curious to see how close to the original graphic novel this animated adaptation of The Watchmen ends up being compared to the original film, and also how far away Chapter 2 is from release.

• “The ear is simply present to the world” …and more from an except of Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being.
• The Peace of Wild Things written and read by Wendell Berry, a poetry film animated by Charlotte Ager & Katy Wang. Your moment of zen for this issue.
• Very much into these artist series poster stamps from Martin Venezky and the Portland Stamp Company featuring his experimental, generative photography.
• Did you know Phil Collins was in another band back in the day besides Genesis? Brand X was a mostly instrumental jazz-fusion rock band. And so to F…, does feature some vocals from ‘ol Phil though. Bonus: a complete take with Phil’s solo band in 1982.
• Intuit takes the top position for the worst mass layoff handling in tech, throwing 1800 people under the “underperforming” bus. If you know anything about life inside a tech company, performance can have less to do with the person and more with their team, management, or some combination of such things making their decision to label these people as “underperforming” quite evil.
• I don’t need a new code editor, but maybe also I do? The open-source CodeEdit looks like it’s worth putting through the paces since TextMate feels like it’s on life support.
• It’s helpful when the use of a technology can be related to something we can instinctively understand or relate to — like the cost of posting to Instagram.
• Speaking of that particular app, I find myself inclined to no longer share visual work there and nodding along with Christoph Rauscher about feeding Meta's AI since there’s no option to Opt Out in the US.
• Mandy, on point as ever with thoughts on the lie-as-promise of Laborsaving.
• A good definition and thorough explanation of the difference between the web we have and one possible future in the small web that’s worth striving for.
• I don’t make the rules but Thinking in Triplicate from Erika Hall is required reading for all you designers. How is this from 2018 and I’ve only just read it myself?
• If you want a not-so-fun read, let’s just say this could be preparation for one “misinterpretation” or “miscalculation” in a post-November election future.
• Open Design Docs looks like a handy resource for designers/managers.
• Why have only one Craig when you can have 2Craigs? One serving daily.
• Severance is finally coming back, but not until January 2025.
• Shut up, I'm not crying, you're crying… Michael J. Fox. Amazing.
• Decode Unicode. A handy resource.

I guess I took last week off somewhat unintentionally, but I’m on vacation so I’m giving myself a pass. This installment comes to you from the east end of Toronto on a sunny and hot summer day.

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A return to Toronto in the summer rarely ends without a brief visit to the University of Toronto campus and a stop at this landmark sculpture by artist William McElcheran outside the J.M. Kelly Library. There’s something that’s comforting to come back and see Marshall and Joyce still there, and to stop at St. Basil’s Catholic Church which happens to hold a particular special place for me despite not being particularly religious.

I think it might be because many of those depicted each have helped me see or find something in myself or in understanding the world that keeps me going no matter how impossible things can sometimes feel.

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It’s always nice to be back home in Ontario (oppressive summer heat and humidity notwithstanding) and especially to spend some time with my brother-in-law Andrew in the library and with our shared extended family.

I recently donated my last unopened copy of the McLuhan DEW Line card deck¹ (shown in the second photo) to the Letterform Archive, and so the timing of being back in town works out well to grab a couple more to keep on hand in California. It’s also a treat to see the latest additions to the library and poke around other unexplored volumes from the library’s thousands of books.

Footnotes

1. The DEW Line card deck was a bonus included with one of the issues of the McLuhan DEW Line newsletter published around 1969 and is considered a precursor to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies which similarly contains brief aphorisms to help readers shift their perspective to new ways of solving problems or getting un-stuck. ↩

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The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He doesn’t comment.

Ezra Pound

Indeed, the book cover (and posters and some, but not all advertisements too) are prime examples of what poet Ezra Pound called a “luminous detail”: a bright spot, in a crowded cultural field, that enables us to see the world in a fresh way.’” That is, if we pause long enough to ponder what they’re trying to say to us.

Footnotes

Mendelsund, Peter and Alworth, David J.. The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature, Ten Speed Press, 2010. p255.

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