Inspired by artists – Oscar Niemeyer

If Brazil were a building...with Niemeyer it's all about the flexibility of concrete, the man-made organic shapes. I'm not going to upload tonnes of pictures and images or talk about his life. Instead, here is a list of his works, and here are some things he said:

My work is not about "form follows function," but "form follows beauty" or, even better, "form follows feminine."

Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?

I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete.… This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women.

Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it. I don’t feel particularly important. What we create is not important. We’re very insignificant.

We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it.

art, meJack Dysonarchitecture, art, oscar niemeyerComment
Ten more tips for writers

These ten tips from Richard Ford. He won the Pullitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day (not the one with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum in it, a different one).

1 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.
2 Don't have children.
3 Don't read your reviews.
4 Don't write reviews. (Your judgment's always tainted.)
5 Don't have arguments with your wife in the morning, or late at night.
6 Don't drink and write at the same time.
7 Don't write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)
8 Don't wish ill on your colleagues.
9 Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself.
10 Don't take any shit if you can ­possibly help it.

"When I woke in the dark this morning, my heart pounding like a tom-tom, it seemed to me as though a change were on its way, as if this dreaminess tinged with expectation, which I have felt for some time now, were lifting off of me into the cool tenebrous dawn." - The Sportswriter

UncategorizedJack Dysonwriting tips listComment
Flickr sets from Original-Linkage

Bob Sakoui, that lovely doyen of design, posted this thoroughly nourishing collection of some of his favourite Flickr sets at Original-Linkage:

There are many great flickr collections out there and they do make for great inspiration, so here are a few varied old and new sets that you may have missed...
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Type Specimen Books by type foundries pre WW2. Collections by Henning Krause.
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Here's a pretty good collection of matchbox cover designs.
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Worth flicking through ABCVerlag's design book pool.
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1960’s and 1970’s Scandinavian logo collection by Oliver Tomas
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Here's a super graphic design collection from Insect 54.
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Many gems to be found in Acejet170's flickr collection.
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A collection of modernist design by Alphanumeric.
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More classic design collections from Ellen McFadden.
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Another nice design collection including scans of The Barbican brand guides by Ajones87.
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A ton of type at Typofile's flickr sets.
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Also worth looking at the Typography and Lettering pool flickr set.
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An extensive collection of Found Type.
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Another pool of Vintage Type
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A big selection of vintage logos taken from a 1970’s book called ‘World of Logotypes’.
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A collection of assorted graphics by Stéphane Massa-Bidal.
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Avant guarde and great, sets from 9000.
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Today, Aisleone blog, brings to our attention another rather nice flickr set of vintage ads, which you can see here.
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Vintage imagery and type to be found in Agence Eureka's sets.
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More vintage imagery fromThe Vintage Collective.
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Another rather large and unusual collection of vintage ads by Gatochy.
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Lovely set of typewriter ribbon case designs from Uppercase.
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Of course there are a few more great flickr sites out there, but these should keep you happy for at least the weekend!

Enjoy!

UncategorizedJack Dysonbob sakoui photo flickr listComment
Steven Seagal is being sued for sexual assault, trafficking

TMZ broke the story in the first place.

  • Someone should tell him that no one is Above the Law (1987)
  • He was Born to Raise Hell (2010)
  • She is clearly Out for Justice (1991)
  • Poor girl must have felt Submerged (2005)
  • I'm suprised the taxi driver wasn’t Pistol Whipped (2008)
  • This civil suit is a form of Urban Justice (2007)
  • She sure hit the Kill Switch (2008) on him
  • Steven's sexual appetite is certainly Hard to Kill (1990)
  • She made an Executive Decision (1996) taking that job
  • Perhaps Steven had a Fire Down Below (1997) that only she could quench
  • He's clearly A Dangerous Man (2009)
  • I wonder if he showed her The Belly of the Beast (2003)
  • All the paparazzi outside his house must make him feel Under Siege (1992)

(Half from YouMightFindYourself, the rest are mine)
  

UncategorizedJack Dysonstupid listComment
PIXELS

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxX_bVluflo&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
One for the 8-bit old school.

PIXELS is Patrick Jean's latest short film, shot on location in New York. If you're on FB, you'll have to click here to watch it. Best viewed as large as your connection will go.

Written, directed by : Patrick Jean
Director of Photograhy : Matias Boucard
SFX by Patrick Jean and guests
Produced by One More Production

UncategorizedJack Dysonmusic videoComment
Self-Esteem vs. Self-Respect

Theodore Dalrymple (not his real name) is one of my favourite writers. Utterly rational and fascinating on his recurring themes of ignorance, poverty and so on, he shows without telling and sermonises without preaching, allowing readers to understand what he's trying to say rather than being bombastic and repetitive. Here's the first half of a piece he wrote for In Character. Read the full thing here, it's good.

With the coyness of someone revealing a bizarre sexual taste, my patients would often say to me, "Doctor, I think I'm suffering from low self-esteem." This, they believed, was at the root of their problem, whatever it was, for there is hardly any undesirable behavior or experience that has not been attributed, in the press and on the air, in books and in private conversations, to low self-esteem, from eating too much to mass murder.

Self-esteem is, of course, a term in the modern lexicon of psychobabble, and psychobabble is itself the verbal expression of self-absorption without self-examination. The former is a pleasurable vice, the latter a painful discipline. An accomplished psychobabbler can talk for hours about himself without revealing anything.

Insofar as self-esteem has a meaning, it is the appreciation of one's own worth and importance. That it is a concept of some cultural resonance is demonstrated by the fact that an Internet search I conducted brought up 14,500,000 sites, only slightly fewer than the U.S. Constitution and four times as many as "fortitude."

When people speak of their low self-esteem, they imply two things: first, that it is a physiological fact, rather like low hemoglobin, and second, that they have a right to more of it. What they seek, if you like, is a transfusion of self-esteem, given (curiously enough) by others; and once they have it, the quality of their lives will improve as the night succeeds the day. For the record, I never had a patient who complained of having too much self-esteem, and who therefore asked for a reduction. Self-esteem, it appears, is like money or health: you can't have too much of it.

Self-esteemists, if I may so call those who are concerned with the levels of their own self-esteem, believe that it is something to which they have a right. If they don't have self-esteem in sufficient quantity to bring about a perfectly happy life, their fundamental rights are being violated. They feel aggrieved and let down by others rather than by themselves; they ascribe their lack of rightful self-esteem to the carping, and unjustified, criticism of parents, teachers, spouses, and colleagues.

The twin qualities leading to self-esteem are (an allegedly) just appreciation of one's own importance and of one's own worth. Neither importance nor worth, however, are qualities to be found in nature without an appraising mind; it is the appraising mind that confers them upon their object.

Read the full article here.

UncategorizedJack DysonwritingComment
So the iPad’s cool and everything, but…

...who remembers the Psion Organiser?

My old French teacher Mr Johnston (a.k.a. Doss Boss) had a Psion II. He used it as a ridiculously large and clunky Filofax. It was better than the Psion I mainly because it had two lines of text to display rather than just one (with only 16 characters). There was quite a kerfuffle when he upgraded it to 32k of RAM. It had one game on it, which was like worms on two lines. It also had a handy slide-off cover to protect it, which was actually slightly curved instead of all pointy - a big change in the aesthetic that made it look less like a calculator. What else...the letters were arranged alphabetically rather than QWERTY, and it cost £139 new.

Awesome vintage advert here.

UncategorizedJack Dysonretro writingComment
Scientific American gets an iPad makeover

Based on their great Mag+ concept unveiled late last year, Bonnier and BERG have developed a really nice looking iPad version of Popular Science. No page-turning business...you swipe left/right to page through stories and then scroll to read through single stories.
Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

What amazes me is that you don't feel like you're using a website, or even that you're using an e-reader on a new tablet device -- which, technically, is what it is. It feels like you're reading a magazine.
(Via)

UncategorizedJack DysondesignComment