Hanging stones and drifting boxes.
Hello, hello. So the big news: I managed to escape to London for a day. Have to go down and refill the tanks every now and then. Thanks to some very intense and regimented planning, I managed to fit in a lot of art: the recently made-over National Portrait Gallery; the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery; the World Photography Awards at Somerset House; and Richard Serra’s six large drawings at David Zwirner. But the highlight of the day was this errant cardboard box that slowly and flamboyantly drifted down James Street to the delight of everyone.
In between all that frolicking about, I did manage to grab something to eat at the fantastic Lina Stores on Greek Street – sat next to Ruth Bloody Wilson. I was very cool about this, of course. I pushed the boundaries of nonchalance so far I think she actually ended up being starstruck by me.
Back in the real world of the internet, I got a little bit lost in the Rural Indexing Project, photographically documenting the architecture of America. Fascinating to see the buildings grouped by tags – I had no idea there were a number of uniform Post Office designs, for example.
Only a few days left for Unit Editions/Volume’s Anita Klinz monograph Seeking Beauty to hit its funding target. It looks absolutely lovely, but at fifty quid a pop, I can see why it might be some way off. I would imagine students/young designers are a huge section of the target readership for this sort of book, and that price tag is a heck of a barrier, but it now seems like the norm. There’s definitely a market for smaller, simpler design books at a lower price point.
I’ve finally switched to Chrome, and a big thank you to Alex for recommending the Control Panel for Twitter extension. It’s basically resets the design and usability back ten years – which is of course a very good thing.
… and then I immediately went a bit viral with a dumb bit of photoshopping. Kind of tangentially related: “Planet of the Apes” Goes to a ’70s Mall, an excellent find from the LIFE archive.
Hanging Stones, a five hour circular walk of abandoned buildings in the North York Moors, all housing Andy Goldsworthy artworks. Yes please.
Elsewhere across the newslettiverse: Animation Obsessive on how Ghost in the Shell was deliberately engineered for western audiences; Owen D. Pomery examines a particularly fine Tintin spread; Nick Asbury launched his new book The Road to Hell.
And finally a quick affiliate plug for Freeagent, without which my business would pretty much collapse into a void of unutterable fiscal despair. With this here link you get a 30-day free trial plus 10% off your subscription, which is nice.
That is all.
This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.
Header photo courtesy the author.