collapse and delight

collapse and delight http://collapseanddelight.com Most recent posts at collapse and delight posterous.com Sun, 08 May 2011 11:05:54 -0700 the grandes dames http://collapseanddelight.com/the-grandes-dames http://collapseanddelight.com/the-grandes-dames

Via Nowness, truly delightful.

Iris Apfel has long been one of my heroes, but I just recently stuck a photo of her -- resplendent in red and turqouise -- in my closet as a daily reminder not only to have fun getting dressed and to (attempt to) embrace color, but to have the guts to age gracefully. Here she's surrounded by others doing the same.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:59:47 -0800 can you even believe how pretty this marc jacobs collection is? http://collapseanddelight.com/can-you-even-believe-how-pretty-this-marc-jac http://collapseanddelight.com/can-you-even-believe-how-pretty-this-marc-jac

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:26:05 -0700 san francisco mapped in literary quotes http://collapseanddelight.com/san-francisco-mapped-in-literary-quotes http://collapseanddelight.com/san-francisco-mapped-in-literary-quotes

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So charming. By Ian Huebert for the Chronicle, via @RonCharles.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:09:00 -0700 Julius Shulman, RIP http://collapseanddelight.com/julius-shulman-rip http://collapseanddelight.com/julius-shulman-rip

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You may not know Julius Shulman’s name, but I guarantee you know at least a few of his architectural photos. I’m very sorry to hear that he died last night, at the age of 98.

Thanks to @DesignObserver for the link to this trailer for a new documentary of his life and work. He was also interviewed for the Dwell Design Leader series.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:20:00 -0700 the prettiest mid-century ad i’d never seen http://collapseanddelight.com/the-prettiest-mid-century-ad-id-never-seen http://collapseanddelight.com/the-prettiest-mid-century-ad-id-never-seen

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Two of the most popular things these days are Mad Men and ephemera, so it’s not surprising that mid-century advertising is all over the web. I spent a bunch of time a week ago looking at Container Corporation of America ads from the early 20th century, which were a steady source of inspiration for me when I was in design school. I’ll post more on them separately, but then mid-week Carin Berger was tweeting about Herbert Bayer ads (separate from his work on the CCA series). And then toward the end of the week, Sandra Gulland emailed me about this list of 50 great vintage ads, which included the one above. I’ve never seen this before and have no idea who created it, but I would like a poster-sized version to hang on the wall so I can stare at it all day long.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:21:00 -0700 the compelling life stories of common objects http://collapseanddelight.com/the-compelling-life-stories-of-common-objects http://collapseanddelight.com/the-compelling-life-stories-of-common-objects

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Earlier this morning, I was lying in bed listening to the sounds of the Sunday morning pundits wafting in from the other room. Eventually some senator or other was asked by George Stephanopoulos whether he thinks Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed for the Supreme Court. He said of course and began to rattle off the many reasons why she should be, one of which was her — brace yourself — “compelling life story.” I have no opinion on Sotomayor, but I am increasingly irritated by our need for public figures to have Compelling Life Stories along with — or even instead of — actual job qualifications. This, after all, is how Sarah Palin found herself in line for the Vice Presidency. (Although, no matter how many times I’ve heard her praised first and foremost for it, I can’t find a single compelling thing about her particular life story.)

It seems inarguable to me that we, as a nation, are problematically motivated by stories we are told or, perhaps moreso, that we tell ourselves. Just look at the rabid consumerism that has led us into this economic crisis — largely an act of trying to rewrite our own life stories. We, the people, are living lives we can’t afford in an attempt to measure up to other people’s stories (other people who themselves often can’t afford the life they're living). While I don’t exclude myself from this by any means, it’s one of my favorite reading subjects.

So I was interested just now to read about a rather fascinating experiment called Significant Objects. It’s the brainchild of Joshua Glenn (Taking Things Seriously) and Rob Walker (Buying In): “Our question was this: Can stories, even fictional ones, transform insignificant objects into significant ones? If so, how to measure this qualitative transformation?”

They’ve picked up a bunch of thrift store trinkets and enlisted a group of talented, well-known writers (from Stewart O’Nan to Kurt Andersen) to invent short histories for those trinkets. They’re posting the trinkets and stories on eBay and seeing what they sell for as compared to the price they paid. Unsurprisingly, a compelling life story can really boost the auction price of an unexceptional doodad. Especially one that gets 15 minutes of fame on BoingBoing.

And that’s what this really comes down to. The compelling story these things are benefiting from isn’t the made-up history itself — none of this is being done blind. The benefit is that they’re part of a larger project, one that has garnered the involvement of people whose names you know, one you read about at some hip website. And if you buy one of the objects involved in that project, you become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you.

So when someone says they really like your funky ashtray, you have a compelling story to tell.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:24:00 -0700 how @CarinBerger changed my twitter process http://collapseanddelight.com/how-carinberger-changed-my-twitter-process http://collapseanddelight.com/how-carinberger-changed-my-twitter-process

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Here's my Twitter process: before getting out of bed, I do a quick check via Tweetie, where I “favorite” (forgive me) anything I want to come back to. Once at my desk, I launch TweetDeck and catch up with the interim posts. Then I call up my Favorites and go through the morning’s additions — clicking, replying, and retweeting as appropriate.

Once in awhile, I call up the site on ye olde web, where I have the PowerTwitter extension to Firefox installed. I love PowerTwitter for several reasons, number one being the inline images. I’m a visual person and also a time-strapped person, and when I look at PowerTwitter, I get an image-enriched version of my tweetstream. I see Twitpics and YouTube videos and all sorts of things I wouldn’t have seen without having to click each and every link, and there are way too many great links for me to be able to click even half of them. (Here’s a mind-blower I would have missed this morning had it not been right there in front of me.) So a trip to PowerTwitter is a little treat, doled out carefully.

Enter @CarinBerger, who recently followed me and I instantly followed her back. Carin is a designer and illustrator, currently in Kyoto (check her blog for regular photos from there), and she is always on about something — vintage Japanese illustrations, Dadaist collages, Geisha hairdos. And as you can see from those links, she doesn’t talk about it: she posts images. Lots and lots of images. So now every morning, as a new part of my routine, I call up the website and go directly to her profile, where PowerTwitter lays out for me whatever amazing stream of images she’s posted since the previous day.

My current book project is not design-related and contains not a single photo, and I’ve been feeling cut off from the flood of images that is usually the biggest part of my daily worklife, so Carin is helping to keep me sane. But she is also demonstrating what a rich medium Twitter can be. Given their troubles with porn spammers and server overload, I understand why Twitter won’t make inline images a native feature, but it’s incredible what a different experience it creates. If you know anyone else who’s making imagery an integral part of their stream (as opposed to linking out, like most people do) please let me know! I want more and more and more.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:19:00 -0700 beautiful south-of-spain timelapse http://collapseanddelight.com/beautiful-south-of-spain-timelapse http://collapseanddelight.com/beautiful-south-of-spain-timelapse

File under: things I wish I knew how to do.

One of these days ....

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:35:00 -0700 wanning’s cane http://collapseanddelight.com/wannings-cane http://collapseanddelight.com/wannings-cane

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—from “Her Boss” by Willa Cather

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:19:00 -0700 polaroids, at Lens and at home http://collapseanddelight.com/polaroids-at-lens-and-at-home http://collapseanddelight.com/polaroids-at-lens-and-at-home

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The crowdsourced Polaroid gallery at Lens is fun to click through and highly recommended. I have the analog equivalent on our hallway wall — a grid of images taken over the course of several years with various JoyCams. Landscapes, family and friends, adventures, sand sculptures, still lives, party detritus, a sweet cat since deceased. The hole is for an image that never turned up when we moved to this house. My favorite of them all, it’s of a taxidermied moose in a cage, along a roadside somewhere on the way to the desert. Maybe it’ll turn up next time we move.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:32:00 -0700 a trip around oliver sacks’ desk http://collapseanddelight.com/a-trip-around-oliver-sacks-desk http://collapseanddelight.com/a-trip-around-oliver-sacks-desk

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Seed has an interactive exploration of Oliver Sacks’ desk, and although there’s no indication of this (apart from it having been labeled, Workbench) I’m hoping it’s the first in a series.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:20:40 -0700 gay talese: save the tailors! http://collapseanddelight.com/gay-talese-save-the-tailors http://collapseanddelight.com/gay-talese-save-the-tailors

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:46:00 -0700 Eero Saarinen, hopelessly unromantic http://collapseanddelight.com/eero-saarinen-hopelessly-unromantic http://collapseanddelight.com/eero-saarinen-hopelessly-unromantic

My friend Gina recently linked to this marvelous collection of illustrated letters, which I marked for future reference. When I finally went to look at it just now, I was bowled over by the presence of a love note (I guess you’d call it) — on office stationery — from Eero Saarinen. Complete with slanty writing and a 3D heart. All my illusions would be officially shattered were it not for the fact that the note is almost distressingly unromantic and the heart is offset by a sketch of the Michigan Music School. Between that and the repeated misspelling of WOR[K]ED, it’s somehow endeared him to me further.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Tue, 19 May 2009 17:59:00 -0700 valerie finnis’ garden people http://collapseanddelight.com/valerie-finnis-garden-people http://collapseanddelight.com/valerie-finnis-garden-people

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One of my new favorite blogs, the understated Lark About, posted a bunch of photos by Valerie Finnis (RIP), who, as it happens, I just recently learned about via a feature in The World of Interiors. The Lark About post referenced this, where there’s some discussion of the images as well as the tasty fact that there’s a book of them: Garden People. Shame about the cover, but I’m hoping the interior will live up to the promise of Finnis’ photos.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 17 May 2009 16:17:00 -0700 the joy of slow photography http://collapseanddelight.com/the-joy-of-slow-photography http://collapseanddelight.com/the-joy-of-slow-photography

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There's a new photography blog at the Times, called Lens. There are only a few posts so far, so there's no judging it on content at this stage of the game, but it gets high marks for presentation. The navigation is really beautifully done, and there's a full-screen mode and blah blah blah. Go play with it and see.

But what caught my interest was the short essay from Fred Conrad, whose beautiful photo is above, about what it means to shoot on large-format film in the digital age. I love everything he has to say about it, and this will sound silly but it ties in with my admiration for the ToyCamera app. I've linked before, elsewhere and surreptitiously, to this interview with the creator of the app. If you haven't seen it, it's worth reading. I'm one of those people who really mourn the death of Polaroid "instant" film. I was a devotee (particularly of the horizontal version that was resuscitated, for a time, for use in the JoyCam). The best thing about Polaroid film was that it wasn't instant — you had to wait for it. You took your shot, you waited to see what you got, and then maybe you shot again. But you were never frivolous about shooting when you were using Polaroid film. You thought about what you were doing and made every shot count, because you were always aware of the small number of shots per package of film, and the relatively high cost of each.

Until I read that interview with the ToyCamera creator, I hadn't really thought about how the functionality of it was fueling my attachment. ToyCamera re-crops your shot, asks for your approval, then (somewhat) randomly applies a filter from its bag of tricks. You wait while it processes and only then do you see what you got and ask yourself if you want to shoot another. It's a completely different experience from the woefully uneventful act of shooting with a digital camera.

I don't wave my iPhone around while I'm waiting for the image to appear, like we all did with Polaroids, but I am often tempted to stick it in my pocket while it does its thing.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Thu, 14 May 2009 10:53:12 -0700 neutra on paper http://collapseanddelight.com/neutra-on-paper http://collapseanddelight.com/neutra-on-paper

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If I get to LA between now and September 6th, I'll be stopping by the Central Library to see their exhibit of Richard Neutra's drawings. There's a nice review of the show at The Moment, but frustratingly few images.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Mon, 11 May 2009 09:29:00 -0700 grey gardens: the book http://collapseanddelight.com/grey-gardens-the-book http://collapseanddelight.com/grey-gardens-the-book

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It’s really sort of surprising (and I posted a bit about this at Readerville last week) that this book didn’t exist until now. I’ve only seen it, so far, in PDF form, but it combines photos, contact sheets, ads and notices, photographs, correspondence and transcripts into one bound document of the documentary. I particularly love the letter from an indignant viewer sent “THRU: Rogert (sic) Ebert, Film Critic.”

I can’t stop looking at it.

There’s a ton of great Grey Gardens-related video at YouTube, including the 1975 trailer for the documentary, the preview of the new HBO movie and the unforgettable “revolutionary costume” scene from the original.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sun, 10 May 2009 21:31:00 -0700 walt whitman then and (sort of) now http://collapseanddelight.com/walt-whitman-then-and-sort-of-now http://collapseanddelight.com/walt-whitman-then-and-sort-of-now

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I’ve been promoting this all over, but I’m a big fan of the blog A Journey Round My Skull and got a kick out of this week’s post Poets Ranked by Beard Weight — not least because it contains the exquisite photo of Whitman (sporting a “Hibernator”) seen above. Coincidentally, I’ve just been directed to this charming video of a Whitman impersonator, from a new TV show about books debuting this week:

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Mon, 04 May 2009 11:21:00 -0700 “The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.” http://collapseanddelight.com/the-belief-that-ones-own-view-of-reality-is-t http://collapseanddelight.com/the-belief-that-ones-own-view-of-reality-is-t

—Paul Watzlawick (via @rebeccawalker)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer Sat, 02 May 2009 18:10:00 -0700 rainy day garden gallery http://collapseanddelight.com/rainy-day-garden-gallery-0 http://collapseanddelight.com/rainy-day-garden-gallery-0

Two things I love: the garden on a rainy day, and the ToyCamera app for iPhone.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/26207/twitter_copy.jpg http://posterous.com/users/KzJbGXgKrv Karen Templer kt Karen Templer