Entries Tagged 'Story and design' ↓

Note to Chris Carter, director of “The X-Files: I Want To Believe”:

If you want us to believe your movie is really happening in West Virginia, you should probably visit it once, or maybe look it up on Google. The Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia look nothing like The Rockies in British Columbia, where you filmed your movie. Thank you.

Billy Connolly (pictured) plays convicted pedophile and psychic Father Joseph Crissman. Behind Connolly are mountains that are obviously not West Virginia.

Maybe Carter figures pedophiles live only in Appalachia?

Stop animation is the hardest and the coolest. HT: 37signals.

Just thought this was pretty awesome.

[youtube FExqG6LdWHU]

(I saw this on someone else’s blog a while back. I’ll gladly give a hat tip if you tell me!)

My family loves me. They buys me some books.

I got “My Life for Yours: A Walk Through the Christian Home” by Douglas Wilson from my sister.

My dear wife got me the following books:

• “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape”
• “Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream”
• “The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community”
• “Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories About the ‘Great Good Places’ at the Heart of Our Communities”

And then, with cash from my mom and my dad, I bought … another book! Yes, it’s “City Comforts: How To Build an Urban Village,” which I blogged about earlier. (Only one copy so far, David.)

So that’s six books on one birthday. Pretty sweet.

Plus! My dear children pooled their money and bought a typeface for me for that new project of mine: Corpa Gothic Light.

Thanks for being so thoughtful, everyone.

I am a typography nerd. I love the look of different alphabets set in different faces. It’s incredible how much personality and art can be carried by a certain typeface.An online journal called Typographica has just posted its favorite fonts of the past year, and there’s not a dog in the bunch. I can’t choose a favorite, but Palatino Sans (pictured above) intrigued me because I’m quite familiar and fond of the original Palatino, a graceful serif font.

Other fonts in the list that caught my eye are Guardian, Milo and especially Estilo — but I have been in a sans-serif mood lately.

“Less napkins,” Starbucks? How about less grammatical errors?

The napkin should say, “Fewer napkins,” as my nine-year-old easily figured out. That’s because you can count napkins. If you can’t count it, you say less: Less coffee. If you can count it, you say fewer: Fewer coffee cups.

How many editors and designers proofed these napkins before they were printed?

I’ve been on a real book-buying binge lately.

I picked up a couple of book at the John Piper sale last week — “When I Don’t Desire God” and “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.”

My wife just found a used copy of “The Rise of the Creative Class” for me.

I picked up “Heaven Is Not My Home” not too long ago and a new copy of “Against Christianity” still sits on my shelf, beckoning me.

But now I know I must buy one more book, a book I’ve been wanting to read for years. It’s called “City Comforts” by David Sucher, and I’ve been reading his City Comforts blog for a long time. (It’s in my blogroll to the right.)

You can go to this order form to read the descriptions of the titles, but here are the first three:

• How to Build an Urban Village: Why the urban village is appealing, and its three key architectural patterns.
• Bumping into People: The city is a place to bump into, to

Well, the guys at AB417 were kind enough to let me join their societal think tank, so of course I had to pony up a 2,000-word essay for the new newsletter.

The essay, In Defense of Fake Authenticity, is now live on the AB417 web site.

My essay is a response of sorts to a post on Scott Greider’s blog in which he criticizes a local Uno’s Pizzaria for looking like an old urban building but actually being a new suburban building.

I agree with Scott’s concerns, but offer a different perspective:

But I contend there is something real behind this fake authenticity, something that I’d say is good and decent. And those who want to preserve and recapture our city’s downtown as a place of destination and a true city center should look to this fake authenticity as a source of hope.

You can read the essay here.

This is from the cover of the MacMall catalog I got in the mail this week:

I know catalog editors may not be math wizards, but they should at least have a grasp of subtraction.

It’s … Dramatic Chipmunk!

Hat tip: Zach Klein