It is no secret that I love My University, and how could I not? This time it took me to meet one of the most important graphistes of the past century (may I also say philosopher?) and I got to spend the whole day learning from him and his philosophy. It was one of the best experiences in my career so far.
Sooner than I had anticipated I managed to take my boys to Paris. Fed by an obsession with dubious pixar films and high speed trains I got them all excited and it totally paid off.
The TGV does go really fast.
The Eiffel Tower was explored, on foot, somebody’s acrophobia notwithstanding.
Le Jardin d’acclimatation. A lovely trap once the kids discover the rides and bumper cars.
The metropolitain was explored intensively, more than any landmark. We also got around by bus a lot, so the kids could grasp how big a city can be.
On our way to the Citè des Enfants, inside the Citè des Sciences.
After a few hours there the kids were so whacked that we even managed to make them sleep in the late afternoon and go out for dinner together. Thumbs up!
We stayed at someones apartment via airbnb and it was a great experience: not expensive, very flexible, and with a child’s bedroom full of toys.
The kids ate: Sushi, Thai, Lebanese and uncountable pains-au-chocolat. As did we.
The main reason for our trip was to celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday. It included delicious food, tamarind margaritas, and around 100 relatives.
Here is she, in amazing shape, with all her granddaughters. (note: her locks are her natural colour. She’s never died her hair)
First stop of our autumn vacation: Valle de Bravo. It’s a super cool town. I lived there when I was 9 until I was 11. (I mostly hated it back then)
The boys got to meet their cousin Lucas. I really miss my cousins and the fact that over here my kids will never have cousins makes me kind of sad.
Mexico is great. It’s fun and alive.
The highlights of Valle de Bravo include its lovely lake and shingled roofs (fun fact: this lake provides the best part of Mexico City’s water supply).
We got to go sailing with my lovely aunt and amazing uncle.
I miss sailing so much! And I also miss being able to prop my kids up on a random stranger’s quad with impunity.
Olympic Steeplechase 3000. Please! That’s nothing, compared with what life threw at me this summer. But I’ve been winning, so far. (fingers crossed).
Things done this summer, more or less chronologically:
1.Took the kids to the lake:
2.Took the kids on a hike, by myself, they both walked for 1 hour both ways. Heroes.
3.Made a couch! Here’s the frame once I finished it. Now it’s all set and it’s great.More pics to follow.
4.Got accepted into university for an amazing Master’s Degree
5.Attended a lovely wedding (Santi wasn’t having it)
6.Avoided widowhood (recommended).
Michele’s bill of health isn’t clear yet and we’re keeping our fingers crossed. I never thought a broken leg could become so bloody dangerous (see: thrombosis).
7.Made sushi with Nahoko.
8.Travelled to London during the Olympic Games, and I haven’t a single photo because I also managed to trash my iphone the day before leaving.
9.Got a deferred entry for said Master’s Degree: YAY, we’re going next year!
I got there on Saturday. It was hot and crowded, as always. I went on the terrace of the Galleries Lafayette to take it all in. I walked and walked. And walked. I didn’t take many photos because I was carrying my iPhone as only camera and had flat batteries more often than not. Also, I was focusing on enjoying every second without thinking about blogging about things or having photos to reminisce over.
After much walking and, my favorite, going around the city by bus, I got to the hostel where I and the rest of my class were staying. It was seriously horrendous but at least I could have oysters a couple of times with the money saved in clean bedding and private bathrooms with soap and towels. When everyone finally arrived, we set out to grab a bite and have some fun. We went to Parc de la Villette. We ended up drinking cheap beers outside a popular club called Point Ephemere. I loved the name.
The next morning I woke up very early, too early. And if there’s something I positively hate is waiting around for people to be ready, so I just got dressed and set out to discover the city. I love walking in Paris because I have so fond memories of the place that it’s one madelaine after the other. I would have loved to have breakfast at Angelina, but I thought spending 30 euros on a coffee and some pastries was immoral. But I stole a picture of their lovely window and macarons. I walked along Rue de Rivoli all the way to Marais, where we had appointment to visit the Beaubourg. Learned that Sunday mornings in Paris are pretty quiet. Only many many runners in the streets.
At the beaubourg there was a cool Matisse exhibition that had me thinking a lot about design and the design process: you know how Matisse used to make several variations on a same painting and how when you design something you have to try little variations until you nail the right mix of details?
There was also a nice temporary exhibition about generative design. I love this stuff. And I love the possibilities we have nowadays. Also, Processing. There was a light installation similar to mine, though, modestly not as stunning.
After that, I walked everyone to the Falafel triangle. We wanted to go to L’as du falafel but it was closed, so we went to Chez Hanna and we loved it. Also, street musicians.
From there, we walked to Bastille and wandered around. We walked to the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, and from there to Notre Dame and finally to the Rive gauche. We walked from St. Michel to Odeon and then we ended up at the Jardins de Luxembourg to have beers and laughs. It was fun. And I’d never been to the Senate and the gardens and wow.
After that we had dinner. I had oysters, one of my favorite treats in Paris. Then, since it was only midnight, we walked from Montparnasse to Champ du Mars and it may be trite but the tour Eiffel is always quite breathtaking, esp. at night when it’s lit.
The next morning was Grand Palais and Palais de Tokyo, and the weather couldn’t have been more amazing. Look at that sky.
The Palais de Tokyo is full of modern conceptual art, video installations, some very disturbing things and other very inspiring ones. I fully recommend it. I stayed there for something like 4 hours, and then I went nearby to my favourite Lebanese restaurant, Noura.
We had a free afternoon, so I walked and walked and walked, and I would have loved to go to a Hammam and spend 4 hours getting my skin scrubbed, but alas, the place I wanted to go to had a swimsuit policy and I didn’t feel like spending money for one when I have a dozen at home. So I got a haircut. It was nice to sit down for a while, have my hair washed and my scalp massaged and my iphone charged.
That last evening we all went for a customary climb Montmartre and here I am with my awesome new hair.
It was great and I can’t wait to be back in Paris, preferably with my husband this time.
After 7 years I managed to go back to Berlin, and I had a perfect excuse to do it. The Typo conference is one of those things that the cool kids go to, all the designers and typographic heroes, including those whose fault it is that I got into this mess in the first place. So I indulged in a long weekend of design talks and I’m really lucky I could do it—I blame my amazing husband. Ok, here are some pictures:
As I left Thursday morning from Innsbruck Airport. SNOW!
The house der Kulturen der Welt, where the conference took place.
One of the first talks I attended, from Yves Peters, Belgium’s finest dancer and typography writer. Open Type features + Scripts = type porn. Also, made me think I have to redesign this blog which has looked like this since 2007.
Ruedi Baur, you might remember when I went to Paris to shoot this video here. Well, he’s the one who made me fall in love with the universe of wayfinding systems. His stuff is astonishing.
“Less with the necessary needless. Less with the necessary imperfection. Less with the necessary complexity”.
This was a superposter designed by Michael Schirner to promote the use of condoms in the times of the HIV epidemic. His talk was about art and design in advertising. It was entertaining but I’m always a bit uneasy about the boundaries between design, art and advertising.
One of my favorite talks of the conference was by 2 of my typographic heroes, Paul van der Laan and Erik van Blockland and it was about the super fun TypeCooker. A random set of parameters to apply in drawing a font. Therapeutic and it really made the creative juices flow free. We were invited to hand in our drawings, which were then discussed on stage. I was so excited and I took a video of their critique of my monospaced-slab-serif-no-descenders-short-ascenders-flared-stems-one-ligature font. [I had *such* a great time drawing this, I will definitely develop it into something, perhaps my new uauage logo? yes, probably that]
I also won this jar of tipp ex and I was proud as a peacock.
The main theme of the conference was sustainability and there were some very inspiring things out there:
Ahhhh probably the best of the whole conference was this presentation by Andy Altman of Why Not Associates, about the Comedy Carpet Project in Blackpool (do yourself a favor and watch the video) which had the audience laughing hard and also clapping a lot. For me it was the whole new level of typesetting that was truly inspiring. And the saucy british humor.
[...] the Comedy Carpet is a celebration of British comedy on an extraordinary scale. The carpet gives visual form to jokes, songs and catchphrases dating from the early days of variety to the present. Sited in front of Blackpool Tower, the 2,200m² work of art contains over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete, pushing the boundaries of public art and typography to their limits. Why Not Associates co-founder Andy Altmann will present the sometimes not so funny story of the five year journey that led to it’s creation.
type setting. Like, really.
Matthew Butterick aka Typography for Lawyers did a great talk, in true American TV-preacher style about web typography, and though it was slightly OTT it was inspiring because it was about life and one’s expectations and hard work as much as it was about web fonts. And now I really have to redesign this shoddy blog.
Lupi Asensio and Martin Lorenz of Twopoints.net showcased their work, and it was interesting to see how with potatoes, egg and onion you can either get tortilla de patata or kartoffelpuffer, all depending on the process you use, and how design is all about the process. I loved this design for the Helsinki Design Lab based on the idea of the common denominator (concept which, 6 years prior, Ruedi Baur used at the Beaubourg), and how they took inspiration for a visual identity of a somethingsomething in Jordan from the walls of common flatbed trucks in Amman.
I didn’t get to see much of berlin this time around and I have to say that DIN platz should’ve been Futura platz.
The closing talk of the conference was by Jessica Hische, who is a force of nature and in spite of her borderline annoying ultra american-ness, one cannot help but love her. And what she does is done with such passion and dedication it’s truly inspiring.
We visited the Design school in Zurich, and it was pretty cool.
yeah, that’s right.
The Design museum is in the same building. Note to self: open a design museum in my University.
Rainy Zurich.
The Freitag shop. You know, bags and wallets made with old truck tarps. Very hipster. The building is as you can see, a series of containers stacked on top of each other. The view at the top is quite something, if you don’t mind the wobbly.
At the Museum Bellerive, on the lakeside, we saw an exhibition about perfumes.
Taking photos was not allowed, but I couldn’t resist and took a clandestine one of this wall of miniature perfume bottles.
Last week I went on a short trip to Winterthur and Zurich to visit a couple of exhibitions and do some reckless shopping (note to husband: just kidding). The Gewerbemuseum (trade and craft museum) in Winterthur is currently showing a very nice collection of glass objects, in perfect timing with my semester project.
Here are some of my faves:
How amazing are these carafes made of old bottles?
Ittala glasses. Make my heart skip a beat. I want them all.
This lamp is made of glass rocks and LEDs.
This lamp is one I could commit to.
These bowls are made of glass and their handles are made of climbing rope. I like the champagne bucket.
The color of these? Amazing.
Glass panes and objects made from them. I want the panes in my house instead of curtains.
If you happen to be in the area, it’s totally worth it.
