What do you think of when you think of the word scouring? I imagine myself on a horse drawn covered wagon with fifteen mustangs pulling me, galloping wildly, leather straps and buckles jostling and snapping and clanging, each horses eyes open frighteningly wide showing the little sliver of white, saliva ribboning from their mouths, my one hand on the reins, the other shielding the sun from my eyes, looking out across the desert landscape rapidly coming towards me then disappearing, wind thundering in my ears, hollering through a dry and cracked throat at the horses, “H-yaw! H-yaw!“, looking for someone. A fugitive, a doctor, a law man. Someone who holds my life and the lives of others in their hands.
I learned a couple years ago during a game of Scatagories that it really means “to rub hard especially with a rough material for cleansing.”
It also means “to suffer from diarrhea or dysentery” but that’s not really the point. I was scouring the internet this morning, in only one sense of the word, looking for a good book cover for this weeks BBCDW and basically getting a little depressed at the amount of bullshit out there. Then, in my darkest hour, this little diamond popped out of the rough.
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer turns the Faust legend on it’s ear as a man who’s sold his soul to learn the secrets of raising the dead now tries to win it back from the Devil by getting 100 people to commit their souls to be damned. Sounds like it might run the risk of either being some lame-ass genre bullshit or it could be really awesome.
The woodcut skeleton dude, the black and white with a splash of blood red, it all evokes a healthy dose of deliciously evil fun. Well done, nameless Double Day designer.
Dear friend and fashion guru Jen O’Malley unveiled a new bunch of headbands this week. Dunno of she’s selling them yet (UPDATE: She is!) but if you’ve got a special lady in your life this would make a pretty sweet gift. And if you are a special lady you might wanna get your hands on one before one shows up on the noggin of Bat for Lashes or Joanna Newsome and by then you’re behind the fashion curve. Which is undoubtedly a fate worse than death.
Even though they failed to contact the expert on the subject, an interesting round-up/discussion/highlight on the subject of book cover designs over at The Rumpus pointed me in the direction of Julie Orringer’s collection
I like photos that tell stories. Ones that perfectly freeze a moment in time when things are about about to change. Or ones that at least capture a certain mood. Accomplish that and you’re a good photographer. Throw that photo on the cover of a book and you should win awards. Or at least a blog post.
Something I’ve been obsessing over lately in the visual arts realm is the ability to capture subtle gesture. Sedat Girgin’s illustrations are sometimes a little scratchy for my tastes, but he’s got a knack for showing a character’s tiny movements in a single frame. Kind of reminds me of the Triplets of Bellville and this:
Dunno if any of the remaining Chicagoans who read this blog (close to 60 of you!) are still interested in buying books, zines and other shit for weirdos. But if you are, I would reccomend heading on down to Golden Age on the lower west side-ish area. I ain’t never been there, looks like they opened right when I left. But the place looks dope. If you go you should take some pictures and talk to the peeps who run the place and maintian an overall interest in the operation of brick-and-motar art/book/art book stores.
I like watching people make things. Doesn’t really matter what it is. Cars, food, origami, furniture. Anything. As long as it’s someone who’s dedicated to their craft. I like to see passion manifested. Modern Alchemy is a short documentary on this subject. Coulda done without the overdubbed sound effects. Kinda makes it a bit clumsy upon second viewing. No matter, though. Give this one a watch if you’re looking to spend six and a half minutes wisely. These guys look like they enjoy the shit out of their jobs.
A couple of covers jumped out at me this week so instead of stockpiling the blog entries I’m passing the info-tainment onto you!
Methland by Nick Reding is a dissection of the image of small town America as the wholesome, honest, backbone of the country and the reality of the situation: a slow decomposition over the past three decades from that brawny image to a struggling community deteriorating due to transitioning agriculture business and little-to-no employment. All of which has left our much-revered small town America vunerable to a cancer called methamphetamine.
I’m usually not a fan of gritty, textured fonts. Most of the time it’s overkill, like trying to hard to convey a seedy world. Most of the time a gaunt, liberally spaced font could get the job done with a little more subtlety. But for some reason it works on this cover. Perhaps because that’s just what you expect to see when you think about meth. And you can never go wrong using a big juicy photo. In this instance, the sun setting on our pre-concieved notions of what small town America means.
And on the flip side we have The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner. Ever wonder if the next plane you’re getting on will get hijacked by a terrorist? If that person that sneezed in the elevator was infected with swine flu? If Kim Jong Il is mere moments away from pressing “the button”? Daniel Gardner doesn’t. Instead he wonders why we have these irrational fears. What causes us to make snap judgments that more or less do nothing but cause us more pain and suffering than before we even heard about theses percieved threats? Gardner supposes that it has to do with the way our hunter-gatherer brains react to threats to our well being and how we can learn to overcome these false worries and lead a braver life.
The road-cone orange and the simple, tiny iconography do a good job of approaching these subjects of fear with a pair of tweezers and a mganifying glass. As if they are nothing to be afraid of, but something to put under a microscope. Not only an enticing cover, but also adiquately suggestive of the material and an excellent execution of the thesis of the book. Well done, nameless Penguin designer.
Behold, Mexico City photographer Jaime Martinez. Gorgeous photographs of gorgeous people. Be sure to check out the animated .gif work in the 2009 section. They will momentarily transport you to another world. Well done, Jamie.
In people-stealing-my-ideas news, Vancouver BC web designer Andrew Lindstrom has posted 45 beautifully designed book covers. Some pretty inspiring entries. Where are you finding these Andrew? I don’t know if you saw last week’s BBCDW but I’m kind of drowning in bullshit over here.
When not wasting away the golden days of his young life looking at stupid shit on the Internet, Chris Heavener publishes a biannual lit and arts magazine called Annalemma. It features short stories, essays, art, and photography. You should take a long, hard look at yourself and consider subscribing.
