Angels from different angles

Thanks to "The Book of Mormon," (the show, not necessarily the religious tract itself), I've heard a few people discuss angels and the term "angelology." Back in the day (OK, 1990), I thought Sophy Burnham, author of A Book of Angels, had made up the term. But, lo! Avi Steinberg,brilliant young scholar and writer and author of Running the Books, used the term when revealing his next project (which will involve The Book of Mormon and much, much more.

Ben Wiseman's clever date-stamped portrait on his illustration and design for Running the Books's jacket is wickedly witty and a heavenly concept.


On the other hand—and oxymoronically—the jackets and covers for many of the angels books—Burnham's as well as the me-too tomes sport jackets and covers with less-celestial concepts.


For lovers of angelology or angels themselves, Burnham, the woman who put angels-in-publishing on a modern map, discusses her belief in angels with Penguin, the company that has taken over Burnham's angel tomes from Ballantine Books. Burnham and Steinberg come at angels from opposite religious traditions. Having read Burnham's books (while designing them), I look forward to reading Steinberg's next book, and perhaps even The Book of Mormon to get a sense of that angel named Moroni.

Nice layers

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage really uses layers well in their logo.

Added bonus: the animation and links that radiate from the logo on their website is a smart extension of the idea.

You had featured layouts from one of the Pews in your Layout Essentials book...are they related entities?

Materiality

When I first heard an architecturally-trained designer use the word "materiality," I thought I'd never be in a position to be so wonderfully academic. Well, book jackets and covers now epitomize materiality.

I'm not the first to note this. As content goes digital, the packaging gets much more physical, tactile, dimensional. Barbara DeWilde's brilliant (shown in an un-brilliant snap) jacket for The Troubled Man nods to the furniture of hot metal typesetting. Sagmeister Inc's packaging for World Changing is bee-yootifully embossed, varnished, and whiz-banged.

A stroll through the New York Book show the other night revealed embroidered covers, heat transfers on basswood, and silk-screened transparent acetate covers revealing printed and embossed cloth covers. Pretty tactile. Lovely, too.


Bindings/jackets/covers aren't alone in their materiality—or lack thereof. Codes is masterpiece of diecutting, with a credit for the paper design.

Cheers!

Outside of an office park somewhere outside London, there is this:

Depending on your worldview it is either an uplifting goal, or a demoralizing co-opt of an idea that is, in itself, an oxymoron. You decide.

P.S. I'm pretty sure they've used Bell Centennial, designed by Matthew Carter for use in the phone book. A lot more people are using that lately. The tipoff is those little cutouts where the Ns diagonal stroke joins the stems.

And P.P.S. I'm told by a British friend that Chiswick is pronounced "chissick", with a silent W. I was also told that Chiswick is very "swish".

50 things someone else knows

Maybe the answer to your question could be one of the 50 reasons not to date a graphic designer (via Lori Kent). I think I'm guilty of a lot of them...my favorite is number 47.

"Hands" No Discount

Last night, at a uPenn event, a tech or business (?) graduate from the class of 2009 did two very smart things: 1. Noticing that both of us were orbiting outside of various tight conversation pods, he introduced himself. 2. Learning that I'm a designer, he asked, "What is the one thing people don't know about what you do?" What a clever question. I plan to steal it for future events.

Over the din,* I shouted that designers assess, plan, and communicate beyond making something look pretty. I shrieked that people don't know that it's best to collaborate with designers instead of use them as a pair of hands.

My answer needs polishing. It's a good reminder to always have an "elevator speech," especially in gatherings with elevated noise level—and a reminder to learn to project the voice.

What is one thing that people don't know about what you do?

The Information

Sounds like The Donald, eh? The March 20, 2011 issue of The New York Times Book Review had a review of The Information. A History, by James Gleick. Geoffrey Nunberg's review includes some great, well, information from Gleick's book (bold callouts are mine):

In a series of chapters, Gleick recounts oft-told tales about the invention of writing systems and the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary along with the stories of lesser-known structures of coding and communication. In the late 18th century, long before Samuel Morse, for example, the Chappe brothers of France invented the first "telegraph" in the form of a network of hundreds of towers topped by semaphore arms with which the government could relay messages from Paris to Bordeaux in less than a day, weather permitting. One French deputy described the Chappes' ingenious signaling system as one of the great inventions of history, along with the compass, printing, and gunpowder. And once the Chappes' optical telegraph had been replaced by the more democratic and versatile electric version, frugal customerrs hit on the similarly ingenious expedient of using economical abbreviations for common messages, like "gmlet" for "give my love to" —texting avant la lettre.

LOL!
Is that cool or what?