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.

Thanks Bob.

I just recently met Alix Soubiran and she’s not only a delightful person but she’s also a fantastic artist. Go check out all her patron saints and animal circus’s.

I was going to wait about a week to get to this, but I couldn’t wait.

Stephen Elliott’s been circulating pre-release copies of his new book, a true-crime memoir, as sort of a DIY marketing buzz generator. The gist is you email Stephen, ask him if you can read his book, convince him that you’re a real person, he mails you the book and you have a week to finish it, then you mail it to someone else. Sounds like a really cool idea, no? I thought so too, so I emailed him. He sent me the book and I’m reading it right now and I’m pretty blown away by it so far. But this isn’t a review of the contents inside the book.

(Disclaimer: This is kind of a soft edge image that’s supposed to be used for wheat pasting I think. It was the highest res image I could find. You get the idea. I’ll post a sharper one next week.)

The cover graphic for The Adderall Diaries has all the elements that make a stop-you-in-your-tracks image. Loss, abandonment and confusion are conveyed with a few colors, a few layers and a healthy dose of taste. What else do you need to know? Simple, beautiful, creative. Well done.

P.S. The project is still going on if you want to read the book. Click the link above or right here if you’re lazy. Highly recommended.

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Mexico City recording artist Natalia Lafourcade just release her latest album entitled Hu Hu Hu. Dear friend Cara made the masks and the dress Lafourcade wears on the cover. Cara worked really hard on these and I’m very proud of her!

The masks are also featured in the video Azul (dudes won’t let me embed). The video is kinda whack (why are these twentysomethings acting like seven-year-olds?), but I think the masks are cool, they show up at the end. Congrats Cara!