Here is a round-up for the July Suggest a Show.
benthams_head, the Warren Buffett announcement seems to be drawing a lot of attention to philanthropy. We would have to weigh in with something unique. Can private organizations solve the world’s problems? What does it say that the Gates Foundation has budget on par with that of the United Nations?
hurley, your comment about contractors reminded us of a tangentially related premise for a show. During our discussion on The War Tapes, we picked up on the image of Iraq as “the Convoy War,” with vulnerable soldiers ushering supplies between heavily fortified bases. On the other hand, this may be a way to go back to New Orleans. Further suggestions for either thread would be welcome.
katejlogan and January O’Neil, you are preaching to the choir about the insatiable American appetite and the inacessible Dream. We aren’t sure where we could go during a show, though. We followed this thread and we agree with it, but this is a topic we hear a lot about. Help us make it more specific.
Stilgar, we love ice cream, too, but we aren’t going to do a show (if for no other reason than that Mary can’t stand people eating on air).
Beth Ritter-Guth, we are intrigued by the possibility of open access in scientific research. Your suggestion has us wondering, is the process adaptable? Is the entrepreneurial spirit necessary?
rahbuhbuh, we appreciate your enthusiasm for typography, and some of us share it. Are you going to the conference? We’d love to get some reporting out of you. What makes people obsessed with typography?
Keep posting your suggestions on the July Suggeset a Show thread.
RE: “Stilgar, we love ice cream, too, but we aren’t going to do a show (if for no other reason than that Mary can’t stand people eating on air).”
can’t agree with Mary more
…in your ear, on air!
the worst thing about eating is the sound that it makes
put it through a mike and I, for one, will lose my appetite
Typecon: yes, I’ll be attending
Reporting: Sure, how? If not me, I could easily gather or suggest (more) articulate people to weigh in.
Type obsession: during college graphic design courses, got hooked on the blend of draftsmenship and artistry required for lettering (drawing words rather than typesetting).
Varying roots and flavors of friends and colleagues’ type obsession: Movie buff drooling during inventive opening title sequences. Ex-painter who considers type “the most pure form of drawing” (abstract, just black and white). Organization and stystems-minded people chanting “it’s not a good looking letter, it’s a good looking set of letters working together to form…” Online forums to see who can ‘name that font’ the fastest. Calligraphers who grew up liking old maps and illuminated manuscripts. Computer programmers coding software to approximate the filigree of a calligrapher’s handwork, the contextual “if/then” pulleys and levers behind the scenes. Moms collecting fonts for scrapbooking. Someone publishing a book of typographic tattoos. Web designer finding best fonts for screen reading. High Modernist aesthetes who eschew ornamentation, relying on minimal type as art. Photographers snapping away images of old fading signs. and so on…
People who make it. People who use it. People who commission it. People who pay for or steal fonts, knowingly or unwittingly. People who just appreciate it from the side. Explaining that it’s impossible to just “read” anything anymore without investigation into the image of the word. History of printing/publishing. Multilingual advertising. As art, tool, history, business.
other notes of interest:
“Delete!” project in Vienna, where for two weeks all advertising and signs along Neubaugasse were ‘delettered’ with bright yellow.
http://www.steinbrener-dempf.com/
http://dativ.at/fotos/panoramas/neubaugasse.html
Type Radio: a Dutch project, audio interviews with type and graphic designers:
http://www.typeradio.org/loudblog/index.php
as funny or hideously boring as can be expected from a big group of fanatic interviews without a lot of editing. Initiated by these guys, who do lots of untraditional type projects with students:
http://www.typeworkshop.com/index.php?id1=workshops
For me, I’m just curious if my peers around the country and world are concerned about the same things I am? Am I all alone in my concern or is there a large group of people with similar concerns who aren’t baby boomers? While money is always a concern, I”m more concerned about the quality of life my children have when our public spaces are disappearing, children can’t play outside without constant adult supervision (or if they are, you could get social services called on you), the lack of quality in the food supply, and so on… My concerns are less economical and more focused on how differently we raise our children now, because of forces it seems we have little control over. What I have witnessed is when people feel they have less control, the turn inward to an area they can control. This is why I think we see personal playgrounds in back yards, etc… I’m not sure if that helps focus this potential topic or what your requirements are for shows. All of the guests that have been suggested around this topic could add to the entire conversation.
Where is the show suggestion thread for August?
When you set one up please post this on it:
Someone that the phrase “true believers.” I wonder if they know the origin of the phrase.
Usually people apply it to people whose belief they abhor. They need to be reminded that strictly speaking a “true believer” is any one who believes in something very strongly without; believes emotionally rather than rationally. This is true of people who belong to political or religious cults such as fascists, communists, or extreme religious cults. This is what Eric Hoffer who wrote a book by that title in the 1960′s had in mind.
However, a true believer can also apply to someone who believes in something otherwise praiseworthy such as Gandhi. It could even apply to people who are otherwise rational and even geniuses such as Bertrand Russell, or Noam Chomsky who when they write about issues they are no more competent to pass judgment on than you or me. Needless to say people who follow these people are also true believers.
I wonder if the phrase hasn’t lost all meaning today given that its being used merely as a form of insult?
The same is probably true of terms such as “right” or “left” since they seem to denote merely someone who holds a position that the speaker hates.
I for one have been called a leftist by people who hate the left and a right winger by people who hate see themselves on the left.
I believe it would be useful to have a program about the use of terms such as “TRUE BELIEVER, LEFTIST, RIGHTIST, ETC.”
What do you think, Brendon?
Typecon came and went, I’m still recovering from talking about letters for a weekend straight. One thing worth noting: the Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA ( http://www.museumofprinting.org/index.html ) needs help getting back in the black. The largest collection of original type drawings in this hemisphere and literal tons of historic presses is at risk.
They presented interesting ideas on how we preserve our written and printed culture, but rarely the methods and devices which produced them. We must recognize the limitations of stone carving to admire hand writing, and so on through Gutenburg, moveable metal type, photo, then digital technologies for context. Learned such things as Linotype manufacturing presses out of Brooklyn was in charge of printing more than half of what was read all over the world in the early 20th century. Puts a different perspective on the quakes of “monopoly” we hear about with operating systems or coffee today.
The Printing Museum suggests another problem: how will museums of any subject change to accomodate digital media? Paper is ephemeral enough, but bits and streams of code are so easily deleted or lost. It takes no new technology to observe a book printed in the 1800s. To view anything digital from the 80s requires compatible hardware. But we throw all of that away in a series of upgrades and short-lived experimental formats.