Mark Millar interviewing Traves Charest is so great.
Downloaded Ian M. Banks' USE OF WEAPONS on kindle for my travel reading, which I have embarrassingly yet to read. Even more embarrassing is that I haven't read any of The Culture novels, but they've been coming up enough in conversations for the past few years that it is high time.
Been a minute since I busted out the kindle, after having amassed a number of Arab-language paper books at the Cairo Book Fair earlier in the year. Last thing I read on the kindle was Walter Mosley's ARCHIBALD LAWLESS: ANARCHIST AT LARGE, which I really really loved.
#radar #reads
Koshary's kittens have all scurried off to explore the world, save for Tiger, who has decided to make the garden his domain. Curious, because he was the most avoidant of the lot. Now all of a sudden he's become an immensely affectionate little slut.
Amsterdam-based graphic designer Hans Gremmen has created over 400 books. While making these books, a miscellaneous pile kept growing in his studio: notes, sketches, photos, printed matter, screenshots, ephemera, and other breadcrumbs. ‘In Between’ is an attempt to deconstruct and re-organise this pile. The publication is a scrapbook about a hybrid design practice, but also a plea to consider failure as an option.
I would absolutely love to do something similar. I have an unruly amount of scraps, sketches, notes, process stuff, and photographs that I can absolutely see packaged and preserved in a similar way. Perhaps not in one big phonebook of a publication, but maybe an ongoing zine of sorts. A strange and regular rag that collects this stuff would absolutely work, given that such typically discarded material is likely to continue being a byproduct of the kind of work I do. Problem with that format is that it wouldn't sit on the shelf very well. But if each unit was in the hundred-page-range, you can give it a spine and make it work. A print-on-demand model might be a good option for this sort of thing.
Still, just the time it would take to gather this stuff and package it into a coherent and decent-enough design sounds like enough of a daunting sinkhole that I'm not sure I have the time for.
#journal #radar
Ampersound creates audiovisual non-fiction stories with a particular emphasis on the power of sound. Founded by George Lavender, the company develops all of its material by collaborating with actual human creatives, a quality that became central to the company's graphic identity, which I had the pleasure of designing.
Kamilia is a boutique perfume and jewelry brand named in honor of the client’s mother. From its inception, the design process sought to establish a visual identity that would convey the brand’s deeply personal origins while communicating the refined craftsmanship behind its products.
And here's a little tease of my collab with Dominic Boyer for Elon Mag:
It would seem that being exposed to all those dumb toy ads in comicbooks all my life would eventually come in handy after all.
“He who does not read, at 70 years will have lived only one life, his own! He who reads, will have lived 5000 years: He was there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired infinity... Because 'Reading is backward immortality.'” – Umberto Eco
#work #design #quote
There's a bit in Robert Rodriguez's interview with Quentin Tarantino where Tarantino admits to being affected by how much of a commercial flop GRINDHOUSE turned out to be, and goes on to laugh about how Rodriguez doubled down and proceeded to come out with MACHETE and MACHETE KILLS.
Despite publication difficulties faced by THE SOLAR GRID, there's a part of me that would love to follow the Rodriquez method and double down and go on to make a series of short graphic novellas set in the world of THE SOLAR GRID anyway. Because you gotta admit, that would be kinda badass.
And if that doesn't shake away the whole “street-artist of the Egyptian revolution” thing that's become so intertwined with my reputation, I'm not exactly sure what else would.
#radar #journal
The world's first digital nomad: One Planet Journey interviews Steven K. Roberts.
Why Do Tech Bros Always Learn The Wrong Thing From Sci-fi? – Demonitzed on Youtube.
Music is a weapon – Chords and Discords on Youtube.
“Your eyes keep the world at a distance. You can look away from a horror film, you can step back from a painting, you can put down the book, or just close your eyes. But your ears can't do any of that. There's no such thing as earlids.” — Knrad, Chords and Discords.
#radar
Dresden presentation in the can. Accounting taken care of. Laundry done. Inbox 0, RSS 0.
I can now spend the next couple of days tending to house things before boarding my flight with little worry.
From Ahmed Naji's latest:
“There is a legend about Abu Nuwas. He went to a master and asked to be taught. The master told him to go and memorize a thousand lines of poetry. He spent a year doing it, then returned. The master said: 'Good. Now forget them. If you can, you will be a poet.'”
#journal #radar
“I left Egypt alone. A writer with no affiliation to any political organization, wandered astray from my religious and national groups. However, once I arrived in America, this lost all value and meaning, for no sooner had I presented myself at the terminal gates did I not only receive the official government stamp, but left the airport branded with a whorish array of labels that I never got to have a say in choosing nor could make sense of.
“Soon, however, the minutiae of daily life in exile compels one, especially in the field of writing and cultural work, to gradually adapt to those labels invisibly branded on one’s backside. I recall that it was during my first few months in the country that someone asked me a question in which they referred to me as a brown writer —a term I was unfamiliar with at the time — and it was only after I asked for further explanation during which the same person stammered and fumbled to present me with an adequate answer that I finally understood it to be a term directed at writers who did not belong to the white or black race.”
From TAMING THE IMMIGRANT by Ahmed Naji.
“I have found that obedience and conformity in the United States are not strictly enforced or heavily guarded by armed soldiers or prisons, instead they present as a whisper, a sound vibration that crashes into your consciousness where they transform into ants that proceed to slowly and gradually eat away at your insides until they ultimately deform you after which they proceed to build you back up and mold you into what the system determines what you should become.”
#radar
Lords save me from this nonsense.
Many don't know this, but I never went to art school. Much to my misery, I actually ended up in business school (long story). Though not a very good one.
One of things I was most looking forward to upon graduating was pursuing art and design full time and never having to look at anything even remotely close to a ledger ever again.
How naive.
In other news, I keep coming up against hurdles in regard to finding an appropriate publication pathway for the collected edition of THE SOLAR GRID. While almost every editor I send it to does make it a point to acknowledge the book's merits; “a project of immense passion”, “unique”, “graphically sophisticated”, it still gets turned down for one reason or another:
- “Not mainstream enough”, according to one well-positioned agent.
- “Not interested in anything dystopian anymore” said the much-respected editor at a major publishing house.
- “Too big” according to another major publisher.
- “Not quite for us”.
And then there are the few odd correspondences where a publisher would express initial interest and then ghost you. I realize of course that rejection stories aren't cool to divulge unless you have a success story to go with (at which point, rejection stories become extra extra cool), but I don't think of this blog as a space to project any kind of awfully considered persona. I like to say it like it is, likely to my own detriment.
Two more days till I'm off to Dresden and there is just so much to do that I'd rather not have to do.
#journal #tsg
Lots of boring accounting and excel sheets today.
But made a little somethin' somethin' for my special lady, which brought me much joy:
#journal