Goodbye, Ladybug

Ladybug in doorway.

Today may indeed be the last warm day of 2014, which reminded me of a sunny day last week, when the last of this season's ladybugs seemed to come right out of the woodwork, creating a haze of flying wings when I walked across the lawn. I thought just one or two of them were on the windows outside, not knowing I'd disturb a flood of fluttering bugs that poured out in a steady stream from under the eaves, to sun themselves on the bright yellow panels of the house. 

Ladybug on window screen.

It was one of the more beautiful things I've seen in awhile, and instead of trying to catch it on video or with a photo, I just stood there briefly before running my errands, enjoying the sight of them flying around, flitting here and there on the outside of the house. It was a magical moment that wouldn't have translated onto media anyway, because of their small size, nor would I have captured exactly how it made me feel: light, happy, and free, in the span of a very quick moment, like a ladybug's life lived in just two or three short years. Live free, then die. Not a bad way to go.

Sidewalk Jazz

 

 

The Little Cottage

The smallest cottage in town.

A few weeks ago, I received an email prompt about a new rental property on the market. As soon as I saw the picture, I knew I'd go see it; it looked so wee and small, like the perfect fairy tale cottage from a chidren's fable. The afternoon I went looking for it, I walked in the wrong direction, away from town. A neighbor called out to me as I stood on the sidewalk perplexed. After we talked, I headed back towards town, to the south side that I rarely walk to, near the railroad tracks, because it's in the less prosperous part of town. When I found the house, I thought it was perfectly lovely, though it needs a bit loving care. 

It is indeed a small one bedroom, though my neighbor told me she always thought it would make a nice taxi stand, given its' proximity to the town's railroad station. I see it's future in a much cuter and quainter way: that of the local pie shop, dressed up in brightly appealing candy colors, the trim hand-painted with floral motifs, decorated by the charming lady behind the counter, who shows the townspeople love and care with her crisp, frilly aproned self, briskly dispensing advice and attention along with her expertly made pies, in a feminine counterpoint to the many pubs in town for the men.  

What do you think?

The DNA of Our XYZ: RISD by Design

Natural instincts, and other magical gifts.

Being a RISD grad (pronounced RIZZ-DEE) is like dropping the Harvard bomb into casual conversation at a cocktail party: the music stops with a sudden scratch of a needle across a record (you remember those, right?), like the person opposite you has just spied spinach caught conspicuously between your front teeth, as is now deciding whether or not to tell you the truth about your appearance based on your relatively new, and brief, acquittance. How to proceed? Alarm, dread, surprise, or maybe a kind of slow-creeping dawn of recognition widens their eyes, and those are just the people who know the truth about who we are.

I do not (nor have I ever) resemble a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, just like I don't resemble the stereotypical, movie version of an artiste, or the square-framed, shy, passive-aggressive, arrogant, know-it-all book designer, like your average, working class, boogie-down New Yawker, or your typically self-righteous Catholic girl, though I am, in fact, all of those things: an artist, a book designer, a native New Yorker, a person of faith, and that's just scratching the surface. Like my ethnicity, the story of who I am is not the Dummy Guide to the Self or a CliffNotes version of reality, though I am far from pretentiously complex, nor purposely difficult to pin down, like some pompous hipster living high on the hog in Williamsburg (look it up).

Nature, and also, design.

Through time, I found myself to be exactly who I think I am, and that my experience at RISD was exactly what it was supposed to be: hard, brutally hard, and not something I would ever contemplate doing again, because my purpose was (and is) to go out in the world to share my work and my vision as a leader in the world, and as a woman of the world. It was a "one of a kind" type of thing, just like my time as a student was.

I now see my time there as something akin to the cinematic version of the combined Harry Potter books: a magical sort of place that doesn't actively seek out students (nor should they, because RISD has the lowest acceptance rate in the world), but simply draws to it the beautiful and gifted like another type of magnet, that Sorting Hat of Potter fame. As much as I didn't "fit" in (and who would, at such an extraordinary place?!), I found over time that I am exactly what they wait for at RISD: a type of intellect that can cross barriers, jumping lightly over divides to make previously unseen connections, building almost impossibly beautiful bridges seemingly out of thin air.

Human animals, and other topics of interest.

Because, just like one of my professors admitted, we are this era's Leonardo da Vinci's (and every era's ever after), as we always have been, and we always will be: not easy, not trendy, not "alternative" for the sake of a short term sale, but rather to become enduring, lasting, classic, innovative, a type of forever that's also human and achievable. It's kinda like being the stuff that books are made of: once bound and sewn by hand, then printed on paper by a press with movable type, and now rendered into a computer programming language for the Digital Age. Yeah, like that.  Come, see for yourself.  http://issuu.com/risd/docs/risdxyz_spring2014_final_single_pag#

Revolutions in the making, and other brilliant feats of typesetting.

Kiss the Sky

Hot, hazy day with clouds.

I've always loved looking up at the sky; not the moon, not the stars, but the clouds. It remains the essence of summer to me: gazing up at the fluffy, white clouds floating by on a warm day, with a slight breeze playing among the treetops, laying on a soft, rich field of grass under the protective canopy of a big, shade tree.

Bright sky above, darkness below.

When I'm in yoga class and the teacher asks us to meditate on some generic "happy" place (like a beach or a garden), I turn my head to look up at the tall windows that frame the tops of the trees outside and the blue sky behind them, because I'm already in one of my favorite happy places: a beautiful library. Or I think of the park right across the street, or maybe if I really want to stretch it, the park that I walk to sometimes that's several blocks away. 

Sky framed by trees.

Some big leap, I know. But it tells me that I don't have to look far or search hard for beauty, because it's always near me, and if it's not right under my feet like a patch of grass, then I can always look to the sky. It's funny that when I occasionally get pulled into a heated debate by someone who is disordered, they typically try to poke holes in that seemingly airtight defense called "perspective", something I've studied at length and in depth, and to them I always reply in the language of my constants: water is wet, and the sky is blue. 

Above, reflected below.

Except when it isn't, but then again, I also know about a thousand shades of gray, because I've studied that landscape a thousand times, too. It tends to be bring about an end rather quickly. Any questions? No? Color me not surprised, at all.

The end of day.

Nature: Bronzed and Glowing

Where are the leprechauns?!

I had an interesting week (as usual), which included walking among a profusion of huge mushrooms in a local park, grown overlarge thanks to springs' watery bounty, picking up a few beautiful objects for my personal perusal (now part of my natural collection), and having an animal encounter of the closest kind. Let's begin, shall we?

Hmm...maybe behind these toadstools?

First up: a absolutely shining, beautiful collection of perfectly bronzed mushrooms, flourishing in the springtime sun and remaining rather unmolested by human disturbance. It looked like a leprechaun's fairy tale home, or maybe the tiny abodes of some quick and unseen sprites, hiding behind a stand of trees and looking at me from afar.

Whoa! The is one HUGE mushroom!

A few specimens were of the largest kind that I can't remember seeing before, and which I'm attributing to our rather profuse rainfall. I dabbled in mycology last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/mushrooms.html), but concluded (after closely examining a few specimens on my mom's kitchen table), that foraging for cooking would be best done under the watchful eyes of an experienced, licensed guide. I don't want a bad trip, the worst trip being my untimely death, but I did really want to keep a few.

Hey! Who took a bite?

The other plants grew with equal veracity, as this fairy circle attests to. I mean, honestly, those fairies need to be less obvious when creating their homes with secret entrances growing in the ground.

A rather obvious fairy circle. Can you see it?

For scale, I got a picture of a fly resting on the trunk of one such monstrous 'shroom. Good Lord! Look at it! The next day, sadly, it was gone, harvested by a braver soul than me, surely. I hope it tasted good, or at least provided some fun and harmless recreational amusement.

For scale: fly on "Mushroom Monster".

Another beauty is this perfect robin's eggshell, so unique in it's representation of a color that we still refer to it as "Eggshell Blue", or "Robin's Eggshell Blue", as the shelves at your local paint store will surely attest to: a classic, timeless color.

A robin's eggshell at my fingertips.

While at the park, I took a rest after practicing some tai chi, when I noticed some motion below. Aha! An inchworm! Why, hello there "Inchie". It's the season for them to come out, releasing strands into the air, looking for something (or someone) to attach itself to.

Hard to capture on camera!

I played with it for awhile, picking it up on a stick, trying to capture an image for you to see. The funniest part was a trick of light that produced a halo effect around my new, tiny friend, not unlike those cute lil alien critters from that YA special The Host, by you-know-who (think Twilight series....shudder).

Glowy inchworm. Friend or alien foe?!

Another bronzed beauty in my path was the perfect leaf, shined by nature to a luster and sheen that a human would be hard pressed to capture on their own. So inspiring! As always, such beauty awaits us in the world, for all of us to see, for free.

Bronzed beauty.

Last, but not least, is the beautiful and also obvious to spot wild onion, which grows alongside a bevy of other edible beauties, like wild garlic, other types of onions and shoots, wild grapes, small sour crabapples, you name it. There's so much to harvest around here, that I'm glad I still remember my country ramblings as a kid; the familiar alongside the extraordinary, a type of every day magic that I realize is so rare, I'm still awed by it as an adult.

Wild onion.

I hope your week is as fruitful as mine, even if it's "just" the humble country walk. You never what (or who) you may find out there in the world. Happy Trails to you!

Me? I gotta have park.

Type: Movies, Mad Men, and Lemonade Stands

The "Mysterious Mr. Moto", in an American kind of Chinese.

Today's post is a set of shots I've been collecting over the past few weeks, so I decided to post them in one, big, fat, font post. Yay! 
The first example comes to you via the Movies! channel, courtesy of the classic movie Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938), with Peter Lorre. I'm a sucker for cheesy pseudo-Asian fonts, especially authentically retro ones like these, redolent of a white guy made up in poorly drawn Chinese eye makeup; it fools no one. A fine specimen of typecasting gone wrong, and cultural appropriation. Please to enjoy!

Uh oh. "Devil's Island". That sounds bad, in a good way.

The map is cartography perfection, though. Nothing wrong or off here. A gorgeous movie opener, overall.

Good advice!

The next type sample comes off the back of a coupon I clipped, now expired, and then flipped over to reveal this gem of a tagline from your friendly neighborhood advertiser. Sage advice, indeed.

Organic is just good all around, type included.

This fontography sample came to me from the fridge one fine morning, friendly and inviting, with the perfect cheerful "Good Morning, Sunshine!" message facing me from the back of a hastily placed half and half carton sitting on the top shelf. It really is a beautiful piece of typesetting, a complete type block set right, and it's interesting, too. That's how you do "inviting" and "pretty" with black display type: it's a gorgeous piece of work on it's own that also fits the artwork just so. The former (M)ad Man in me is pleased. I'm not alone in my cause for good, healthy products, and you can see that the designer cared enough to take the time to craft a package the consumer can enjoy and also feel proud of, through an organic purchase that can feel unjustly costly at times. Nice job!

Classic Americana: the homemade lemonade stand sign, now discarded on the sidewalk, like a kid's dreams about money and enterprise

Like a children's toy abandoned in a yard, this discarded lemonade sign I saw on the sidewalk one afternoon took me back to my own childhood in the country, boringly slow and stingy when it came to money and Scout badges. We never earned enough to justify the time we spent on our pursuit, because there's one car every hour or so on Hudson Valley back roads, which is a good lesson in of itself. It served me and my brother's well when we entered the supposedly hallowed and sacred halls of Big Business in the Big Apple, which is actually our second home, thanks to our very own "Mad Man", our Dad (shhh...don't tell anyone our big "secret"). We don't waste time, because time is a commodity you can't buy or get back once it's gone, like your health. Clever, right?

The infamous Saul Bass, in movies now and forever.

I grabbed my fine, photo-taking device when this famous Saul Bass opener flashed across the t.v. screen, again from the classic movie channel. It's simply one of the best graphics I've ever seen in my life, and you should see it very, very soon. Google Anatomy of a Murder, and be dazzled. It's a humbling piece of art because it really is perfect: on posters and packaging, as motion art, as a set of static images, and a shining example of the power a great graphic has: simple and unforgettable.

"Bye bye", translated into jazz hands and Oscar worthy graphics.

Many a graphic design student feels awe seeing it for the first time, which is why I'm so glad I was technically an Illustration major while at R.I.S.D.: "flawless" can be so very daunting to a youngster taking it all in, trying to learn and keep up at the same time you're desperate to figure it all out: how can I be an artist? What is my style? Will I ever be capable of doing something like that? Dare I hope and dream, even with hours of studio time and practice? What about all that money spent? IS it (and am I) worth it?! We didn't know what awaited us in the world or how it comes together for us as designers, thinkers, intellectuals, and dreamers, and that's a scarier prospect than any business meeting could ever be, on any given day of the week.

The oft-avoided bestseller (for obvious reasons), but the book is set well.

Finally, here's a nicely done chapter opener, something I don't often do as a book designer and art director, because covers are huge, colorful and expensive marketing pieces that take up most of my time, but I appreciate their quiet strength when I see them just the same. When I do find myself in a position that affords me the time to typeset a page that goes with my cover design, I relish it for the synchronicity I so often don't find in business, because of the conflicting production schedules we have in trade publishing. Sigh....oh, well.

Design is hope made visible.

 That's it for now. See ya next time. Y'all come back now, ya here?