Visual Culture Discussion Guide

Remember these?

See if you can figure out which of these I love, and which of these I hate.

Pay attention to 1:06, please.

And this, you won’t remember, but you should watch it so you can remember it one day. The drummer looks like baby Robb live.

Adorable.

That’s enough for today, I think.

Aesthetic Movement lecture

“What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? Decorative art emphasizes its material; imaginative art annihilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty; a picture annihilates its canvas: it shows nothing of it.” Oscar Wilde from his Lecture to Art Students

“The object of art is to stir the most divined and remote of the chords which make music in our soul.” Oscar Wilde from his Lecture to Art Students

“A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing.” Oscar Wilde from his Lecture to Art Students

1. Art for Art’s sake
2. Influence of Japan and China on design style (Anglo-Japanese)
3. Form over Function vs. Function over Form vs. Function for Form vs. Form for Function?

“No object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty-four hours, what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once.” Oscar Wilde from his Lecture to Art Students

I guess I should start writing again?

Hi friends. It has been a while, huh?

Will this make up for how long I’ve been gone?

I’m pretty sure I contributed at least a third of the video’s 102 views.

Tagline 101

While researching possible products/services to make spec ads for, my CW, Jason, and I came a across Saga Holidays — a company that stands by its tag of “Doing things properly.”

Could anything be better?

Domain

I just purchsed www.leonardsays.com

My original plan was to use the site I already own (www.pearlsandgold.com), but I hate that it reads “Pearl Sand Gold” rather then “Pearls and Gold” (which was taken from an AIH lyric that I love).

So, instead I’ve gone with the title of a Brunettes’ song that reads like it should be a VU song.

leonardsays.com is coming soon-ish.

Stay tuned.

Good things come to those who wait.

Cliches.

P.S. tiffanyweber.com is taken

Post post script, I won’t be weber much longer & tiffanyadams.com is gone as well.

Alas.

Alphabet Blocks

One of my classes this semester is an independent study in typography, for which I’m going to make an alphabet block collection and six alphabet books.

I’ve chosen six different subjects (type, punctuation, textiles, apparel construction, artists, and authors) which I will represent using each letter of the alphabet. For instance, my list for punctuation is:

A:    ampersand
B:   brackets
C:  carat
D:    daggers
E:    em-dash
F:    full-stop
G:    glyph
H:    hyphen
I:   interrobang

etc…

So I’ll represent an ampersand through the letter “a.” I plan to hand render each of the letters and may choose to make them into simple vector images once I’ve completed the project.

Then I’d like to bind each book (and include copy written by Erik) and decoupage each version of every letter onto a different side of alphabet blocks.

Murphy bed

Once upon a time, I lived in a small studio apartment with a murphy bed.

That was almost two years ago.

Crooked

My parents spent two years drawing up plans for the house they retired to in Norhtern Michigan. Being an engineer, my dad would take the plans each time they came back from the architect, and make a scale model of the house out of foam core.

While I visted their home over Christmas a few weeks ago, I noticed one thing that just felt off. There’s a framed photo in one of their guest bathrooms that always looked crooked to me. So each time I passed by, I would adjust it just a little. Finally, I took the photo down on a hunch that the matting was off.

My parents looked at me quizically when I pulled out a ruler and revealed that the matting was 1/16 of an inch too wide in one corner.

Only a dentist