Food for thought“You will learn most things by looking,” he would say, “but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.”
Paul Rand, quoted by Jessica Helfand.

Er Hu – chinese violin

October 29, 2007, 1:36 AM

The erhu is a two-stringed traditional chinese violin, with a much smaller resonating chamber. Watch first a traditional chinese song played in duo with a piano. Lang Lang and his father at Carnegie Hall – “Horse”:

(thanks Toma >:D<)

and now played in a very violin-like way, by Wang Ying (the piece is from Carmen):

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GK Graphics – japanese design since…

October 21, 2007, 10:05 PM

GK Graphics have been doing design for almost 40 years now. Packaging, identities, wayfinding, you name it, they’ve done it.

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(via PingMag)

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Kashiwa Sato – Japan is another planet

, 9:22 PM

This must be it, japanese are aliens. Otherwise they wouldn’t come up with crazy stuff like this, website, work, everything. Very interesting how each photo has its own color-strip presented. Take a look at Kashiwa Sato.

Their eye-popping site:
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and some of their work:
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(via Pingmag)

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Ben Webster – sax

, 5:41 PM

Thanks to Guerrilla Radio, I’ve discovered Ben Webster, a great tenor saxophonist. It goes very well with the rainy autumn, warm, thoughtful, melancholic (reminds me of Cowboy Bebop).

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Ghostco updates

, 4:43 PM

Mathew Woodson (aka Ghostco) updated his site with a few more great looking illustrations, as well as some inside info on his blog. He’s also featured on Juxtapoz.
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"Late dinner"

, 1:32 PM

While Kit was probably enjoying a late dinner, I was fascinated by the ceiling :) (around 4am).

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Those bloody brit designers – part 2

, 4:19 AM

Another british design studio, The Partners (yes, naming doesn’t seem to be a british trait, even Pentagram got its name because Alan Fletcher was reading some ocult books). Nevertheless, their work

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Design Matters says Capsule

, 3:43 AM

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I’ve received this week a lot of design-related books from Amazon. Among them was Design Matters: Logos 01, edited by Capsule, a design firm from Minneapolis, US. I wanted to find more about the book’s writers, since the book was quite good, well-written and with a lot of good examples. No wonder, check out some of Capsule‘s work:

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Those bloody brit designers – part 1

, 2:37 AM

Lately I’ve been looking at more and more british design firms. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that half of Britain’s population must be designers, and a quarter of them excellent ones :P. Take a look at Alexander Design Associates (well, they do design, not naming).

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Thanks Alin.

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About freelancing

October 19, 2007, 12:51 PM

A friend (thanks Flo) showed me this picture and I was delighted to see how well it catches the most important reason why freelancing as a full time job is not tempting (at least for me, at this time in my life). I love the hand-drawn type, goes very well with the subject, as do those cardboard boxes:

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(picture from here)

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