Hi! Back at my mom’s house. The semester almost killed me, it had be against the wall and my energy bar was down to a mere 3%, but I have returned and I am roughly ten thousand times more powerful as a result. Ditto all my friends; it was true trial by fire for reals.

But anyway yeah, I got some sleep at my mom’s and whatnot; I’m headed to New York for the requisite New Years’ nonsense. I keep meaning to synopsize it all meaningfully here, writing little summaries in my head while I walk around here getting coffee and feeding the cats, etcetera, but I can’t remember any of it. So until I get my shit together, here’s my rework of “losing my edge” from like a year and a half ago, and now it’s dedicated to all those entering Doug Scott’s “History of Graphic Design” class this spring. Fuck yes. Happy chanukkah, motherfuckers!

-fish

yeah I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
the kids
are coming up from behind

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to the kids
from yale
and from sciarch

but I was there

I was there in 1898
I was there at the first punchcutting of aksidenz-grotesk

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to the kids
whose footsteps I hear
when they pin up their work

I’m losing my edge
to the internet seekers
who can tell me
every draftsman
from every good firm
from 1962 to 1978

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge
to all the kids
in tokyo and berlin
to the art school brooklynites
with little moleskines
and borrowed nostalgia for unbuilt saint petersburg

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge

but I was there

I was there
I was there

I’m losing my edge
I’m losing my edge

I can hear the footsteps
every night at the computer

but I was there
I was there in 1975 at the first publication of the push pin graphic
I was working on the kerning, with much patience
I was there when martin venezky started up his first firm
I said “don’t do it that way, you’ll never make a dime”
I was there
I was the first guy showing lot/ek
to the deconstructivists
I showed ‘em at cooper union
everybody thought it was crazy
we all know, I was there

I was there

I’ve never been wrong
I used to work at phaidon
I saw everything before everyone
I was there at weimar with johannes itten
I was there at the GSD during great debate between christopher alexander and peter eisenman
I woke up face on the keyboard after final GSAPP crits in 1997

but I’m losing my edge
to bettter looking people
with better ideas
and more talent
who are actually really really nice

I’m losing my edge

I heard you have a bookshelf with every good book
every great poster by tschischold
all the modernist hits
all of the archigram maquettes
I heard you have a test print of every mike cina poster on epson semimatte
I heard you have an autographed copy of every koolhaas book from 75, 89, 98
I heard you have an online scan archive of every good art nouveau lithograph
and another flat file from de stijl

I hear you are buying a drafting table
and a bone folder
and throwing your computer out the window
because you want to make something real
you want to make a gehry coffetable book

I hear that you and your firm have sold your CAD workstations and bought powerbooks
I hear that you and your firm have sold your powerbooks and bought CAD workstations

I hear that everybody that you know is more relevant that everybody that I know

max bill, griffo, jenson, OMA, louis sullivan, HHR, milt glaiser, cecil balmond and arup, SOM, kusama, bonnard, gordon matta-clark, widen and kennedy, superbad, didot, ogilvy, paul rand, richard neutra, agfa monotype, josef albers, herzog and demuron, skolos/wedell, bucky fuller, taki 183, jeremy bernstien, john maeda, banksy, bodoni, richard meier, jessica helfland, designers republic, dave eggers, moholy-nagy, mies van der rohe (LESS IS MORE!), rafael vinoly, sanford kwinter, fontshop, LARS MUELLER PUBLISHERS!! gregor schneider, mutabor, mariko mori, die gestalen verlag
font bureau
art deco
karel martens
karel martens
karel martens
karel martens

we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want
we all know what you really want

what is that?

Blech, I’m sick. People were coughing and hacking all last week up in the studio, so I should have seen that shit coming. Smoking 10 metric tons of cigarettes did not help, but what was I supposed to do? There was no better way to commune with my studiomates new and old. So I don’t regret it. I am cramming claratin and vitamins and yerba mate and lots of other healthy shit down my throat, to compensate, and it’s sort of working.

Taught my first “computer class” today. Not only do I get to be the studio-wide tech support monkey, but I also get to teach undergrads how to use adobe CS and whatnot. I got the “advanced” section, too, which actually means about 33% of them are actuallly “advanced”, 33% sort of know some shit, and the remaining portion are, erm, “not advanced”. or thereabouts. We shall see how that goes… 10am monday mornings, fuck yeah.

It sucked, too, cuz I was having all sorts of fantastic dreams, like where I crashed my helicopter in the Venetian canal and then had to break into an airport and sell my highly advanced techno-umbrella for a secret boarding pass, shit like that. Maybe that was just the benadryl fucking with me but hey.

Anyway. As promised, more shit from the past:

Big poster map remix of Italo Calvino’s A Sign In Space.

BABYMAN 2000.

My bookshelf as of last January.

… OK yeah. Now to make a “mind map” for tomorrow, FUN!! Indeeeeeed.

-fish

Due to my hillarious academic loop-de-loops, I have to do another “first-year review” next thursday. For the most part, this is retarded, cuz I’ve been here two years, and if they didn’t want me around I would certainly know it by now. But it’s also kind of cool, cuz I get to exhume all sorts of old work and parade around the few interesting chestnuts. Like this timeline concept map thing I made for a process book:

Click for the whole shebang. Taken from this document.

… I think I’ll post more random shit over the next few days, whilst I sift through it all. Why not?? Hey hey.

In other news, this is what we’re doing over here, cuz school hasn’t really started and we’re all a bunch of alcoholics, it would seem. Indeed. So yeah more crap soon! Yeah.

-fish

I just imported my old movabletype archive, with all types of posts spanning a large chunk of my life, going back to august 2000, across multiple CMS architectures and several continents. it’s mostly drivel and all the links are busted, but at least it’s vaguely organized into three eras: the eatshit.diaryland.com era, the secret-floating-textbox hand-rolled-XML-format-based-CMS super minimalist era, and the looks-just-like-this-version but-coded-with-html-tables-not-CSS also-slightly-more-orange and-with-movable-type-2.66666 era.

I do not know why I did this but there you go. someday, I’ll read through it all, but not today, cuz I have school shit. all the images and most of the links are busted; that will be fixed, I am sure, at some point in time that most likely resides firmly in the future.

yes!

-fish