Archive for October, 2008
by Anthony Burrill whose “trademark technique is direct communication.”
Whenever I think of the letter “C” (which I do a lot and it is almost always prompted by 3 & 4 year olds) this song pops into my head.
Classic Tree Blocks. “These exquisitely hand cut branch blocks are made from trees that have fallen due to natural causes – Tree Blocks are designed to inspire creativity.
22 free form pieces come in precision-cut 2-cm. length increments (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 cm.) with large disks and bridges to support successful building and early math and metric system learning.”
Thank You Svea for sharing these with me. I have seen them in action and would recommend that every family/ preschool have a set or two. If you have the right tools at home it could be fun to make a bunch of your own.
This alphabet, created by Daniel Adolph, is gracious yet fierce. “H” is my favorite.
via Visual Culture and Visual Evasion
photo via designspotter.com
“Last September, thousands of people all over Seoul collected 1.7 million pieces of discarded plastic in order to create the “Happy Happy” Plastic Stadium, possibly the world’s biggest plastic art installation. The eerily named Godsome, a Korean public art and design company, spearheaded the project to transform the gigantic Jamsil Sports Complex into an enormous eco art installation. The work was presented for the Seoul Design Olympiad 2008, which is actually being held at the Jamsil. But is the stadium-sized plastic art installation the biggest ever created? Only the compilers of the Guinness Book of World Records can say for certain.
And they’ve been already contacted by the city of Seoul in hopes of obtaining a listing. Whether or not it’s the absolute biggest, there’s no denying that the Happy Happy is impressive—it took 3,600 people, 488 dump trucks, 40 days, and some 1,763,360 pieces of plastic to create. By garbage art standards, that’s downright massive. Even retail chains and banks around the city pitched in and offered collection centers at their locations. The work was designed by the installation artist Choi Jeong-hwa.
The Seoul Design Olympiad 2008 is currently underway—it’s held from Oct. 10 through Oct. 30.”
via treehugger.com
“From Anteaters to Zebras, each letter of the alphabet is paired with a detail of the animal along with the upper and lowercase letters. The backs of the cards show a silhouette of the full animal and an interesting fact about its unique feature. For example, did you know, rabbits can see behind them without even turning their heads? Illustrations are by Mark Fisher.”
Available to order online at Bob’s Your Uncle
via Visual Culture
I ordered this book from my local bookstore three weeks ago and I am happy to report that I picked it up today — it is even more beautiful in real life.
Wave — “In this evocative wordless book, internationally acclaimed artist Suzy Lee tells the story of a little girl’s day at the beach. Stunning in their simplicity, Lee’s illustrations, in just two shades of watercolor, create a vibrant story full of joy and laughter.
Suzy Lee’s books have been published and exhibited worldwide. She wrote and illustrated The Black Bird, Mirror, La Revanche des Lapins, and Alice in Wonderland. Born in Seoul, Korea, she currently lives and works in Singapore.”
A conversation between Suzy Lee and Chronicle Books.
Fabula is a project about the design of bilingual web-based story-books for children. “Fabula includes partners in Ireland, Spain, Holland and in the UK at the University of Brighton. Our co-partner at Reading is the Reading and Language Information Centre. The project brings together expertise in language learning, translation, human computer interaction and design for screens.
The Fabula typeface: One of the responsibilities of the Fabula team in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication was to design the screen font for the presentation of Fabula story books on screen. In defining the criteria for this font we took into account the range of characters needed as well as stylistic qualities.
Character set:The range of characters available in the font must display all the Fabula languages: Basque, Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Frisian, Irish, Spanish and Welsh. Some of these languages, notably Welsh, have characters that do not exist in standard fonts: y and w with a circumflex accent in both small letter and capital forms.
Stylistic qualities:We thought it important that the typeface had the following visual attributes
* long ascender nd descenders to help identify the shape of the words
* an informal ?feel
* a clear distinction between characters that might be easily confused
* avoidance of quirky or unusual characters shapes.
The Fabula typeface was designed by Vincent Connare, an MA student in the Department 1999-2000. He has designed a number of typefaces for Microsoft, including Comic Sans.
The font uses the alternative infant g, but not the corresponding infant a. This is because we were keen to make as much differentiation as possible between the sometimes confused a and o.
The font has long ascenders and descenders, and has the informal, friendly feel the Fabula team considers appropriate. It contains all the accented characters necessary for all the Fabula languages.”
Books really do Change Lives!