Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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Last Unicorn Art

Last Unicorn concept art, which reminds me I must read Peter S. Beagle’s book now that it’s within an arms reach. It’s there, right there on the shelf. See? I’ve heard that it’s quite good. [Found at Coudal Partners]

Real dead bookshelves

“Dear Lord!” was the first thing that sprung to my mind. It was also the second and third thing I could think of, it kept going like a mantra in a maze. I couldn’t turn it off and no other thoughts were available. On the fiftieth take the world was spinning so fast that I instinctively bellowed out a “what the hell kind of sick person is it that keeps doing this?” Horror, utter mind numbingly horror. I didn’t think it was possible to sink this low but apparently there is no bottom to the inhumanities of humanity. It is as if we’re devolving into barbarians with no regard for art and culture.

Papers thorn out and discarded. Papers that used to have words on them. Papers that one time belonged to books. Books now destroyed, never to be read again. And what for? To be turned into... a bookshelf? I cringe. But then again, I cringe when I see people underline things in their own books. I cringe when they fold the corners in order to remember where they were. I don’t just cringe, I want to go back to the blue room when I hear a book spine crack — soundlessly — as they place the book open with the word down towards the table. This is... I suffer a loss of words.

At first, I thought it was fake books. Wood made to look like it was real, perhaps with a bit of leather to create a classy look. But no. Real books. Real live books where hurt — killed even. Hunted down like sheep. And the worst part? Just as John, I think they look rather nice and cool, even though it is murder of some sort. I just don’t think I would be able to be in the same room as shelf as this. Ever.

Book information up front

The best page in Ben Schott’s Schott’s Original Miscellany is page 152. Mr Schott understands the usefullness of font history, baseline used, what paper the book was printed on and even the points in the dotted tabs (6pt) and the margins of the book itself. This is useful information. Not everyone understands it, but this should be in every book. Perhaps not quite as far as the little snippets of statistics at the bottom of the page, but if included that is allowed as well.

It's the small things

Small things are better and just as important as big when it comes to the building up the ambience of a movie or a tv-show. They’re also more time consuming when you create them. For instance, the brilliant tv-show Spaced has all notes, letters and such things actually written. Even though the viewer might not see it, and if they do it’s very briefly.

The scene which the still above is “stolen” from, Daisy just said that she left Brian a note. They didn’t need to show it, but they did. A handwritten one, with a small bit of tape and a drawing pin. Very small details that in turn adds up and make sure that one finds new things every time one watches it over and over again.

Signs of true despair

-- Oh my God! Mimes!
-- Where? Where?
-- There, the sign. This is one reason to move.
-- Or not to move here at all.
-- Do you know anyone who like mimes? I don’t.
-- Neither do I. Clowns do, I guess.
-- Clowns?
-- Yeah. Mimes prove that clowns isn’t on the bottom of the food-chain. That there is a group that without any doubt is lowest of the low.
-- Oh. Well, clowns are excused as kids laugh at them.
-- They do?
-- Yes.
-- Must be because they don’t show Manne the crazy clown on telly anymore.
-- Probably. You know, people will shun this place now.
-- Put up signs: “Mimes. Stay away.”
-- “Contaminated area.” The army will protect the border and make sure no one enters or leaves.
-- No, the SWAT team will target the building: “Step out of the invisible box or we will breach it.”

Wrong colour

The scientists with far too much spare time have discovered that they made an error when declaring the colour of the universe to be turquoise. It’s beige.

To realise this, you don’t need to have a particular smart brain or even a complicated research process. At least not when one considers how they’ve done it. Here’s a newsflash: if you take lots and lots of colours, from let’s say 200 000 galaxies, and then mix them together, what colour will it end up as? If you’ve not fucked it up totally, it is a 100% certainity that it will be of a brown hue. It will of course depend on how dark colours where used, but it will still be brownish.

Send the scientists back to high school for two weeks or give them a crash course in how to mix colour for a printing press. Sheesh. The ignorance some people display makes me sneeze.

Cut it in lead

I really want someone to give me Whitman as a Type1-font or perhaps even as OpenType the next time it is my birthday. No one will of course, but as they say: “if you’re going to fantasies, you’d better fantasies big.”

Redesign sickness

I told you I was bored, when that mood is upon me things like this is happen. Truth to be told, the whiteness on the borders had started to make me restless. Too much empty spaces, it was as if I’d been imprisoned in an asylum, with only porridge to eat. I don’t like porridge. You see what I struggle against here? Things that remind me of inedible food, but apart from that I mean?

I couldn’t pretend any more. I’m not one of those sans-serif people, so when I used Trebuchet it felt as if I was living a lie. Trival matters to most people, but not to me. That was how it started, and then just like a falling elevator it just passed on by the floors al the way to the bottom. Bottom = redesign.

It didn’t even have time to grow on me. It’s kind of sad really. Tissue?

(If you use IE, just pretend that the dashed line consists of dots. It look much better then, even if you’re limited to mental editing.)

Inspiration can come from utter crap

I was bored today. Bored. Boooored. At first I didn’t know what to do, so I turned on the telly. Bad move, Sunset Beach. If there was a hell, not even Satan would want to touch those involved in that piece of shit out of fear of getting “dirty”.

I had not other choice than to turn it of again. The screen was infected and needed to be cleaned. Instead I picked up and cintinued reading Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography and right there and then I decided to draw a typeface. It won’t be the greatest gift to mankind, but hopefully it will be better than the horrible Helvetica. (Not that it will be a sans-serif though, I like them a little bit more pointy truth to be told.)

(The crap in the title refer to Sunset Beach, not Eric Gill’s book.)

Numbers

I question the occurance of uppercase numbers that almost every font uses. How hard can it be? I want lowercase as they go much better to written texts than their taller kin. This is important, and would do alot to improve the screen readability.

My kind of watch

This is the future. Some science-blokes at Bristol U and HP Research Laboratories have “discovered” and developed a wristwatch. With a gps that locates pubs. If you feel like it you could use voice command to ask it to find the way to that and that pub.

I want one. Badly.

Under the New Roman Dictatorship

What is the matter with all these crappy guidelines — wrong word to use since you’re required to follow it to the letter — for essays? Sure, it’s good that they exist and all, but some of these things they say is just plain wrong. Take this one for example: “Everything should be set in Times New Roman.” (Except, perhaps, for the Macies. But I didn’t ask as I do my work under Windows. Yes, I know. Bad me.)

The thing is this that I don’t like Times New Roman. I can’t leave aside my pet peeves with the typeface, such that in wide columns it lumps together, it isn’t clear enough for good readability. Aside from this, it has its uses. In multi-column newspaper-like environment it’s rather good. But I just don’t like it anyway. Stanley Morison had some good thoughts behind it, but I think he failed with what he set out to do.

I feel that it is inferior to other, much clearer typefaces that actually look good no matter where it is used. But never mind that. As always, the lowest common denominator rules and the minorities are punished for the faults of the masses. To use a metaphor: instead of closing a shotgun wound properly, they hand out bandaid — preferably with Donald Duck-images. Or in these days, the Power Rangers, but that is not important.

I realise that educating the masses about typographic importance might be dead on arrival. Still, that doesn’t explain why we who actually care and know the whys-and-whynots shouldn’t chose for ourselves. Not all people believe that MS Comic Sans is a good font.

A standard with no choices to be made is not good at all, it leaves no place for personal thoughts, growth and expression. Give the masses some fonts to choose from, and the rest of us to our own devices.

(Oh boy, do I come off as an elitist bastard or what?)

In the good old days...

They showed a small program on BBC Prime entitled Gizmos — or something like that — just recently. Marvellous. Old, archive shows about the wonders of technology. Old, dated technology. Just the way it should be and just as I like it.

The Laundromat was bizarre; with well-designed booths and big boxes where the clothes came out, draped in transparent plastic on coat hangers. It was big and looked impressive. It had huge overtones of automation, even though in reality, almost everything behind was done with the skilful hands of the employees. The future looked more stylish and impressive in the past I think, instead of everything just have to be smaller.

The only problem was that the show was soaked in a happy-fifties filter. I can’t stand the never-so-happy housewives and all the smiling faces. It strikes a cord somewhere inside, which probably makes me the ideal viewer for Pleasantville.

Can you say "phonemics"?

For some reason I needed time to go through what I did today. While other people did whatever they normaly do in the morning, such as per chance surfing around or listening to music, I was not so lucky.

Instead I sat in a bizarre booth doing pronouncing-exercises. Transparent glass in front of me and at both sides two red and not at all funky Maplewood “walls”. On my head I had these goofy-looking headphones with a mic which where connected to the equally goofy-looking tape recorder that was in front of me on the table. If a button had been pressed down, a red light flashed until you pressed stop. But then, the light next to the stop-button started to flash and well... You get my point.

The whole thing radiated seventies. The wood and plastic felt seventies. It probably, dare I say it, was built some time during the seventies. I wished I’d had a camera to immortalize the moment, but sadly I don’t own one.

My God, I want to own one of those booths and hook it up to the phone.