Cartoon Modern

Amid Amidi’s recently launched companion site to his book “Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation.” In case you missed that one, published two years ago, it’s an illuminating exploration of the mostly forgotten and/or under-appreciated talents that reinvented postwar cartoons as expressions of Modern abstraction. The result is a school of visual rendering that’s remembered with great fondness by many. Also, don’t forget Amidi’s Cartoon Brew, which is also excellent.

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The Grid System

New resource that aims to be “a one stop shop for all designers to learn about grid systems, how to design them and how to use them. The site features links to articles, tools, books as well as templates and other goodies.” Impeccably designed, as is to be expected from Antonio Carusone, who is also the proprietor of AisleOne.

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Screen-printed, Information-graphical Interpretation of “Destroyer’s Rubies”

“The Modern Listener’s Guide brings together the previously disparate worlds of indie-rock and information graphics… The first print in the series is a lyrical and statistical undressing of Destroyer’s 2006 album ‘Destroyer’s Rubies.’” To be honest I’m tiring of info-graphics as a short-cut to credibility for client-less graphic design, but this poster looks attractive enough. What’s more, it doesn’t hurt to call some attention to this really phenomenal album.

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NPR: Brian Eno, “This I Believe”

In general I’m not a fan of the ongoing public radio series “This I Believe,” finding it too precious. And the transcript for this installment from Brian Eno, which extolls the virtues of singing as a socially valuable activity, reads a little more stuffy than suits my taste. But the spoken version of the essay, not to mention the idea, is disarmingly profound:

“When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue…

“So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you.”

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Choosy

imageIt’s so great when a developer creates a piece of software that matches precisely a feature that I’ve been wanting for years. This is the case with George Brocklehurst’s compactly executed and altogether wonderful utility Choosy, for Mac OS X. Once installed, it effectively intercepts your clicks on Web links from non-browser applications — Mail, Word, iChat, whatever — and displays a menu of available browsers that you can ‘send’ the link to.

Incredibly handy for people who use multiple browsers regularly — people like me and you, too, I’m guessing.

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