Matthew Anderson

typeverything: Typeverything.com ‘We are all a part of the same...

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:10:59 -0700

Typeverything.com

‘We are all a part of the same thing’ by Dominique Falla for the Positive Posters competition.

motherjones: domybooks: hilarious. thanks mark This. Is....

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:00:32 -0700

domybooks:

hilarious. thanks mark

This. Is. Hilarious.

(For the benefit of those who didn’t immediately laugh: 4’33”)

Photo

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:45:24 -0700

photojojo: Photographer Jessica Eaton makes magical, geometric...

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:33:37 -0700

photojojo:

Photographer Jessica Eaton makes magical, geometric photographs using a 4x5 camera and multiple exposures. We’re in love.

A case of sabotage

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:21:00 -0800

A case of sabotage:

phila:

This morning, as I sat in the back row of the Salt Lake City federal courthouse listening to the opening arguments in Tim DeChristopher’s trial, I couldn’t help but think about the many freedom fighters of the past who have sat stoically behind the defense table watching the judge mete out…

"The arts are not a way of making a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable...."

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 09:09:13 -0800

“The arts are not a way of making a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 2005 (via stef-lee)

I was just thinking about something like this for 350, except...

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:30:20 -0800

I was just thinking about something like this for 350, except rather than rotating the globe randomly, or to match a section of the site, having it ‘rotate’ (in 45 degree increments or so) with the actual earth, matching the side that’s facing the sun.

littlebigdetails:

CNN - Globe perspective rotates relevant to the content of the section and randomly on the homepage.

/via Koen Claes

The facial expressions here are the best. If ever you needed a...

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:12:06 -0800

The facial expressions here are the best. If ever you needed a reason to play an instrument, here it is.

Activate the three artefacts and then leave

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 23:35:00 -0800

It’s hard to explain how this ‘game’ (arthouse game? interactive experience?) makes you feel, but some of the comments from the download page start to get at it:

“I feel slightly less sane after playing it”
“It was peaceful. The game reminded me very much of many dreams I’ve had.”
“…made me feel trapped and claustrophobic more than once. It gave me a peculiar feeling of panic.”
“…reminds me of Hell.”

"[A]bove all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and..."

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 13:37:01 -0800

“[A]bove all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava.”

- Stephen Fry on not minding your language. From the same essay: “In life you have to explain wine. You have to explain cheese. You have to explain love. You can’t, but you have to try, or if not try you have, surely, to be aware of the astonishing fact of them.” (via bobulate)

The 30 steps to mastery

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 09:23:26 -0800

The 30 steps to mastery:

bobulate:

Ben Casnocha extends a two-step process for “How to Draw an Owl” with a few more to proclaim how to achieve mastery:

See also:
How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps

1. Start
2. Keep going.
3. You think you’re starting to get the hang of it.
4. You see someone else’s work and feel undeniable misery.
5. Keep going.
6. Keep going.
7. You feel like maybe, possibly, you kinda got it now.
8. You don’t.
9. Keep going.
10. You ask for someone else’s opinion — their response is standoffish, though polite.
11. Depression.
12. Keep going.
13. Keep going.
14. You ask someone else’s opinion — their response is favorable.
15. They have no idea what they’re talking about.
16. Keep going.
17. You feel semi-kinda favorable and maybe even a little proud of what you can do now.
18. Self-loathing chastisement.
19. Depression
20. Keep going.
21. You ask someone else’s opinion — they respond quite favorably.
22. They’re still wrong.
23. Depression.
24. Keep going though you can’t possibly imagine why.
25. Become restless.
26. Receive some measure of praise from a trustworthy opinion.
27. They’re still fucking wrong (Right?)
28. Keep going just because there’s nothing else to do.
29. Mastery arrives, you mistake it for a gust of wind.
30. Keep. Fucking. Going.

Simple.

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my..."

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 16:16:45 -0800

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

- Maurice Sendak, via Victoria Hannan (via dennetmint)

"The best way to complain is to make things."

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:28:23 -0800

“The best way to complain is to make things.”

- James Murphy (via swissmiss)

The Gunnian principles for design critiques

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:06:10 -0800

The Gunnian principles for design critiques:

bobulate:

Dan Saffer tallies what he’s learned about design critiques from watching Tim Gunn of Project Runway. Gunn’s principles for critique seem to be:

• The purpose of a critique is to make the design better.
• Be supportive.
• First, figure out what the designer was trying to accomplish.
• Offer direction, not prescription.
• Humor and metaphor work better than criticism alone.
• Accept multiple styles.
• Know the domain.
• If you don’t understand it, be cautious in critiquing it.
• Don’t take it personally.

These principles are positioned here for brevity, so head over to see them in full at Kicker Studio.

A Love Letter To The San Francisco Giants

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:53:10 -0700

A Love Letter To The San Francisco Giants:

youmightfindyourself:

This is why I’m a Giants fan. This exact moment. Scratch that: this is why I like stupid, grunt grunt sports in general. San Francisco, this very moment.

It’s legitimately a magical time in San Francisco right now. I have the fortune of working approximately two blocks away from AT&T/”For Christsakes, it’s PacBell” Park, and it’s been absolutely surreal. If a unicorn came around the corner and high fived me right now and said, “Go Giants”, I wouldn’t even take an earbud out. I’d just high hoove him right back and point and smile.

For people who don’t understand why people love sports so much, move to a town where this kind of thing might happen, and you’ll get it.

This team has done something to this city that is unreal. It’s even more unreal because this is San Francisco. Home of the polarizing “I hate your district NO I HATE YOUR DISTRICT LET’S MAKE OUT THOUGH BECAUSE WE BOTH LOVE SAN FRANCISCO” landscape. Hipsters hate marina guys. Marina guys hate hipsters. We judge every goddamn thing on the planet that isn’t organic, and then can’t understand why people judge the crap out of us right back (irony alert). I mean…I work down the block from a fucking artisan grilled cheese store. This town is, by no means, indicative of the rest of the American landscape. We’re just weird, and we embrace the living crap out of it.

And right now, everyone is a Giants fan. Everyone. Your grandma. That homeless guy directing you into a wide open parking spot and then expecting you to congratulate him for his non-feat with a dollar. Right now? I’d give him two. Because this town is effing electric.

You know what? To all the people who hate “bandwagon” fans? Let it go. Who cares. You know who you are? You’re the guy who liked the Kings of Leon and then got mad when everyone else did. You’re the guy who said “this band is SO good”, and then when someone said, “hey I agree” you said NO YOU DON’T ONLY I CAN LIKE THEM. That’s silly. Knock it off. Let them in. Buy them a beer, or a kombucha. Whatever it is. I don’t care. Just let this happen and stop Eeyoring the crap out of our unlimited happiness we’re on the brink of.

I love sports for this reason. Every now and then, everyone just stops being so damn frumpy and acts like our city is just a big college. You ever been to a college town that really loves their team a scary amount? Like, Ray Finkel’s Mom amounts? It’s great. You know why? Because everyone is just actually nice to each other. You have a common bond. And whether or not it’s a bond that is contingent upon a guy throwing a ball or waving a wooden stick, it’s an awesome bond.

I love this time. I find myself smiling at people when I buy coffee. I see my friends who bicker over ridiculous crap calling each other and inviting each other to hang out. I see strangers hugging because a guy from the Dominican Republic is hitting sac fly’s. Marina guys are wearing the same goddamn t-shirt hipster guys are wearing. HOW CAN YOU NOT BOTTLE THIS MOMENT UP? We’re in a vacuum. Enjoy it.

I have grown up with the Giants. My brother and I spend half of our “that’s so adorable that they are ACTUALLY best friends” time talking to each other about them; it genuinely brings us together. It’s in the blood of my family, and I was taught from a very young age to bring a blanket to the ‘stick because it’s never a comfortable temperature in this city. My mother and father brought our family together with this ridiculous game. If you never lived here or you’re just getting on the bandwagon? Let me be your creepy metaphorical father and open the front door and hand you a beer. Welcome. We love you, too.

So fear the Just for Men beard. Embrace the fact that every woman in town is in love with the good guy (THAT NEVER HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE). Embrace the fact that we have a pitcher that resembles one of the greatest characters in film history, one Mitch Kramer (he even smokes pot…how San Francisco is that?). Embrace it.

No matter what happens, San Francisco, embrace it. This is why we like sports. Because they are ridiculous, and they make people really happy when we’d usually just bide the time complaining about what we don’t like about each other.

Embrace it, San Francisco. This is why we like each other. Right now.

Fear the goddamn beard.

Photo

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:05:05 -0700

Where Does the Time Go?

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:35:00 -0700

Where Does the Time Go?:

viafrank:

Time flows, but which way? This quarter I’m teaching an information design class, and my students and I were having a conversation yesterday about the ways time can be visually represented. The answer, predictably, is a timeline.

A hand raised in the back. “Do cultures that read right-to-left have time move the same way?” Uh, er, um, uhhhh. And so, a dutiful student went to research and shared the results. From the delightfully titled Can mirror-reading reverse the flow of time?

in cultures with left-to-right orthography (e.g., English-speaking cultures) time appears to flow rightward, but in cultures with right-to-left orthography (e.g., Arabic-speaking cultures) time flows leftward.

I started to imagine a world where my time biases were reversed. Timelines went right to left, the hands on the clock moved counter-clockwise, the giant ball on New Year’s Day would move up to count down. Yesterday would be to my right, I’d feel uncomfortable with a photo where the person was walking left-to-right instead of right-to-left, and all the faces of movie stars would be framed on the opposite side of the screen. My calendar would have Sunday on the right. This flip-horizontal world exists, and we, this Western culture, are that bizarro world to someone else.

So if time marches on, what are the marching orders? Does time really move in a line? What if we both have it wrong? Who is on which side of the mirror?

But, what if we both have it right? What if it is not a mirror, but rather, glass? I suppose time will tell.

The IKEA effect

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:30:53 -0700

The IKEA effect:

bobulate:

Research shows there’s a relationship between labor and affection. Dan Ariely explains the IKEA effect:

You build something and you fall in love with it. When marketers do sell you a product, their theory is about preference fit. You like pink and I like orange and I like this a little higher and everyone knows their preference. That’s important. But I think the more important issue is not the preference fit but the investment in the product. Say you like orange and pink. Imagine that in one universe you found shoes that are orange and pink and in other you had to invest five minutes of effort and attention and care to choose the exact shades. What we show is that when you’ve invested into it, you would appreciate them more and you would think about them more. You might talk about them more, you might be more likely to buy them again from the same vendor, your connection would be much higher. It takes very little investment to make something your own. … It’s sometimes surprising how little that is.

From Swedish furniture to cake mix, when you set up products for others, with some assembly required, you might just enhance the commitment. Reasons that I kept my first IKEA desk for nearly two decades now fall into place.

"I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the..."

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:56:25 -0700

“I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive.”

- Patton Oswalt (via viafrank)

Bobulate: An algebra of self-reliance

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:02:54 -0700

Bobulate: An algebra of self-reliance:

Over homework, I’d become enraged with my parents, my father in particular, as I’d sit at the kitchen table. “How do you spell XX?” I would ask. “Look it up,” he would reply in stride, continuing to put away dishes, not even glancing in my direction. @#&!%! As if he didn’t know! Off I would go to the dictionary (I remember not which, as at that time, I knew only of The Dictionary) to look up the word. This research repeated many evenings for most of my childhood. I was a stubborn child and continued to ask. He was a principled man and continued with the imperative.

These early moments of wonder (really of frustration first) formed a pattern, the methods surrounding wonder and pathways for answer-finding. They too led to a pattern of independence that was discernible, an algebra of self-reliance, that was easy to sense each time it started to emerge in other places.
Algebras of self-reliance
The lookup wasn’t simply about the word at all, it was the physical movement that was solely instigated by and completed by me. A formula that required me to be here, then there, then here again. The chemistry of stimulation.

I can’t help but mention Twyla Tharp, from whom I borrowed the title, on rituals of self-reliance:

My morning workout ritual is the most basic form of self-reliance; it reminds me that, when all else fails, I can at least depend on myself. It’s my algebra of self-reliance: I depend on my body in order to work, and I am more productive if my body is strong. My daily workout is a part of my preparation for work.