“After my shift at JcPenny, I would anxiously unstrap the various audio recorders and pinhole cameras inside my car in the parking lot. When the audio recorder jammed, or the video signal encountered interference and recorded only snow, I would feel my identy pivot on these failed results. In those moments I felt a crisis of identity. Was I really an artist, working in social intervention while critiquing the aesthetics and economic models of portraiture, or was I a minimum wage worker at an ailing suburban mall?”

An Artist Goes Undercover at a JC Penney Portrait Studio

Art from people who aren't artists, randomly culled from a wealth of video game-related patents.

Context-Free Patent Art

Interest groups that support this bill gave 8.1 times as much as interest groups that oppose this bill

Stop Online Piracy Act - Vote: Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. | Total Campaign Contributions | MapLight - Money and Politics

Tote your Thinkpad and port your Apple in style with our custom TRON-inspired laptop bag tutorial. With a little soldering and sewing skills you can have your own light up satchel, sure to impress geeky friends. So grab your sewing needle and soldering iron and follow along

Make A TRON Bag - How to use EL (Electro Luminescent) Wire

Hiding in the shadows between the colors we see everyday are weird, impossible shades, colors that you shouldn't be able to see and generally don't...unless you know how. Here's a simple guide to seeing impossible and imaginary colors.nullnull

Train yourself to see impossible colors

WIM, a beautifully designed book for all ages, presents 65 pen and ink drawings with whimsical names, whose upside can also be their downside and whose downside can also be their upside. With no front and no back, no up and no down, this book invites viewers of all ages to participate in light hearted visual adventures of the human spirit. In the 1970’s, when he created these drawings, Roman wrote: “ . . . the treasures of the spirit within us tend to be encumbered with objects, things, and everyday business. To enter one’s imagination, to play, to delight in the gift of the human spirit – these free activities break through that prison and nurture the quality of human life. Through these drawings I have attempted to enter that imagining mode in the life of the spirit and to evoke some of its treasures for those who view them. . . .”

Dedicated to Fred Rogers who noted that “the child is in me still, but sometimes not so still. . .” these drawings will appeal to children of all ages including those of us in our golden years.

WIM: The Upsidedown Book

Over forty years ago, Theodore S. Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, began work on a book. Per usual, he had assistants working with him, one of whom managed the project. For reasons noted below, he put the manuscript aside. Then, in 1983, he reconsidered it when his former employee sent it to him for a long-lost look.

It consists of nineteen handwritten and drawn pages, the first seven of which are completely in the hand of Dr. Seuss. The remaining pages are mostly written by an assistant with corrections and doodles by Dr. Seuss, some taped on.
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BOOKTRYST: Lost, Unpublished Dr. Seuss Manuscript Surfaces

In the middle of Gotham, our family of 66 sans serifs, there is a hushed but surprising moment: a fraction whose numerator has a serif. So important was this detail that we decided to offer it as an option for all the other fractions, a decision that ultimately required more than 400 new drawings. Why?

As you'll read below, it's something that we added because we felt it mattered. Even if it helped only a small number of designers solve a subtle and esoteric problem, we couldn't rest knowing that an unsettling typographic moment might otherwise lie in wait. We've always believed that a good typeface is the product of thousands of decisions like these, so we invite you to join us on a behind-the-scenes look at some of the invisible details that go into every font from H&FJ.

H&FJ Fonts: Finishing Touches

Last week, I blogged about the bizarre decision taken by several US newspapers to reject an edition of Wiley Miller's cartoon strip Non Sequitur, which made a joke about the extent of the fear of publishing depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. The joke was that publishers are now so worried that they won't even publish something which hints at depicting Muhammad, even if it doesn't actually depict him. The editors of "upwards of 20" papers responded by refusing to publish the cartoon.

The reason I return to the story is that MediaWatchWatch now have a copy of the cartoon, which I've reproduced here (you might need to click on it for a larger version). Are you offended? There's a giraffe licking a woman's ice cream, so I apologise in advance to ice cream and hygiene lovers.

By all means leave your best suggestions for why this cartoon is offensive in the comments below.

New Humanist (Rationalist Association) - discussing humanism, rationalism, atheism and free thought

woah.

YouTube - amazing light projection