my first complete font collection in three years, commodity, is now available through thirstype. enjoy!
more treats to come soon. i’ve been working on something fantastically trashy.
automaton is a trashy little alphabet i started for the backstreet boys’ 2000 world tour. i never finished it because, well, why?
now i have a reason. automaton allows you to use complex ligatures (see image above) as you type with no extra effort. this works in windows 2000, windows XP, and Mac OS X. (possibly Mac OS 9, but i’m not sure). all you need to do is use an OpenType aware application.
automaton is also free. it comes in uppercase, numbers, and ligatures. no lowercase, no punctuation. bon appetit.
(this downlaod has been disabled. sorry.)
graphic design has tradtionally (meaning “in the decades since instant typography was invented”) had to defend its purpose to its customer base. technological improvements consistently erode the amount of technical skill necessary to produce a reasonably not-awful piece of visual design. if a client has never worked with a trained designer, there’s always a certain look on the face in that first meeting. that look says, “prove to me you’re not bilking me for the fifty bucks an hour you say you’re worth.”
now there’s a simple way to prove how easy it is to be a terrible designer. many thanks to the authors for further ammunition in new business meetings. now if i could only get my mitts on copies of art explosion and type twister, my new biz meetings would be ten times easier…
helvetica versus arial. literally.
“That’s one reason why we started The Downtown Costume Institute. Stupid families from stupid places throwing out brilliant art made by brilliant people after they died.”
“When Madame died for example, her family came from some god-forsaken American toilet and raped her appartment. They threw out everything. Sixty something years of magic gone in an instant! They refused to believe that Madame was gay (and dressed in drag). The Metropolitan Museum begged for those costumes (as did a lot of other people). The family would just hang up. This has happened so many times. It’s heartbreaking.”
this is magnificent news. i’ve wondered for so many years what happens to the costumes and makeup designs from club folk who’ve passed on (or stopped going out). and of course: they take care of their own. i shoulda known.
wanted: cinderella. duties: front end, back end, sweeping ashes from fireplace, preparing meals, pretending you give a damn about our teensy little company. leave your ego in the dirt.
it seems not everyone enjoyed matthew barney’s cremaster cycle as much as i did.
su and i were actually talking about this last night before sleep, and i asserted that i thought the conceptual artists killed themselves by removing craft from their work.
i’ve always thought that artists occupy a grey space in the social heirarchy—somewhere in between tradesmen and the wealthier bureaucratic classes. craft lends them the air of the tradesman, idea lends them the (traditionally-assumed) intellect of the elite. in this way, the artist transcends class boundary.
barney, to my mind, occupies that space in a thoroughly twenty-first century way: his work speaks to me more of managerial process than personal craft. but any managerial figure knows: making someone—especially a lot of someones—make something wonderful in concert with anyone else is a miracle of craftsmanship in and of itself.
and on top of all that…his work is beautiful in an extremely visceral way. the audience can clearly see his hand in the work as a sculptor, photographer, and visual designer…which sets him completely apart from conceptual art (which wanted to make “pretty” a dirty word). so, um, what were you bitching about..?
SWF seeks SWM into heavy bondage, humiliation, discipline, possibly piss. details here.
according to this image, shot on july 26, i am morphing into andy bell as i grow older. oy.
further proof:
god.
the lady to my left (no, my left) is kari childs, who was the first friend i made in chicago…literally the day i moved here on july 5, 1994. kari was the one bright spot in an otherwise terrifying day. she’s now the proud mama of three girls, two of them identical twins. poor thing’s doomed to a life of busy phone lines and dripping delicates in the bathroom for the next sixteen years. this is the first photo taken of us together since 1996.
everyone remember the hazzards’ “gay boyfriend?”
it’s a biting little piece of commentary satirizing the heaps of denial and codependency a fag hag must pile upon herself to simply exist at a rudimentary level. it’s also totally totally completely cute. well…they’ve redone it. welcome to your new dance floor anthem. the differences are a scream.
(from my own gay boyfriend: “if you play that one more time, i’m going to make you listen to stromkern.” fair’s fair. have a listen for me, folks. i’m not risking it.)
” “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
