Meanwhile #062
Dystopia is now a commodity.
This is an old edition of Meanwhile from an inferior, more simian newsletter platform that has unhelpfully severed all the hyperlinks. It’s included here in the archive simply for sake of completeness.
Better business through scifi. The likes of Visa, Ford, Pepsi, Samsung, and NATO are paying science fiction writers to imagine tomorrow's world for them. Dystopia is now a commodity.
Reith. The BBC have designed and are rolling out their own typeface, BBC Reith. Check out Mark Ovenden's excellent documentary Two Types: The Face of Britain, which traces the lineage of Johnston, Gill Sans and Reith, and shows how the fundamentals of evolution apply to type design and tittles.
Pastaprint. Artist Leslie Watts has been experimenting with printing using a pasta maker. Fantastic idea. More things need to be created using things that weren't designed to create such things.
NvS. I chatted to the hosts of splendid design podcast North v South about how to talk about design, the technical aspects of setting up a weekly show and how to score pies out of ten.
The making of the McSweeney's generation. Did the once-humble project of writer and designer Dave Eggers transform the aesthetic preferences of an entire generation?
Worldbuilding. Quite wonderful Instagram account of Bellerby and Co Globemakers. Just hundreds of pictures of beautiful people making globes. More delightful and calming than you'd imagine.
Re:collection. An online archive of Australian graphic design, with a focus on work created between 1960 and 1990. So much great work here, presented rather nicely.
So you want to be a writer? “The first sentence of every novel should be: ‘Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.’” … and other essential tips for aspiring novelists.
The Visual History of Type. Luke Tonge reviews Paul McNeil's shelf-worryingly enormous new book. Looks like this might become a studio essential.
The Great Dismal. "I find it ominous how seldom today we see the phrase 'the 22nd century'." – William Gibson has some thoughts on our cultural obsession with dystopia. I need a drink.
That is all.
