army man with cool new issuu gadget page viewer!!!

Following the also quite smart Picasa webalbum of the army man scans here is an even cooler thing. I absolutely LOVE Issuu. I have been searching for a page flip code souce for hours and hours (and found several) untill I found Issuu. It's free, it's gorgeous and smart and web 2.0 savvy (share, share, share). This is how to do it. Design smart web apps.
Expect to see me using this for the publication of some interactive sketchbooks (reason why I was searching).

talking about magazines... Army Man scans

oh yeah...
Talking about magazines (and genius writers like Gossage). There is one serious hiatus in the "best of" list that I just have to mention here.
It is of course "Army Man - America's Only Magazine" (even the title and subtitle are thè best ever).
This must be the funniest magazine ever. I found out about this magazine when the believer (the number 2 on my list, naah #1) issued a facsimile of the much sought after #1 issue.
Editor George Meyer (read a brilliant profile from...again a favourite magazine, the New Yorker here) is called the funniest man on eart and I believe there is a lot of truth to that claim.

Because I am such a generous man I will post scans of Army man's pages here. I came across them years ago and have treasured them on my harddisk (I moved them with each new one). Thanks for the guy that did the scanning then, unfortunately I do not know a a name or a link. Too bad the pics aren't bigger (the old days?). What I did was print them and try to read them and memorize them.
Do as I did and give this as a gift to yourself and your offspring.
Favourite? Ask Uncle Trivia.

army man scans

Send me yr goddamn manuscripts. Cut me in on yr freak-beams. I'll print anything.

Also on the list in the list mentioned in the previous post "fuck you / a magazine of the arts.
Here's the blahblah (the picture above tells it all me thinks)

Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts

Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. (1962-1965). Thirteen issues, considered one of the most influential underground magazine of the early Sixties. Started by Ed Sanders--Beat poet, Fugs band member, and proprietor of the underground Peace Eye Bookshop--Fuck You was a deliberately provocative mimeographed journal, at first emphasizing poetry and later expanding to include other writing. Each issue is illustrated with line drawings by Sanders.

Contributors included Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg (also of the Fugs), Carol Bergé, John Wieners, Andy Warhol, Ray Bremser, Lenore Kandel, Charles Olson, Joel Oppenheimer, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Julian Beck, Frank O'Hara, Leroi Jones, Diane DiPrima, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Robert Kelly, Judith Malina, Carl Solomon, Gregory Corso, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Gilbert Sorrentino, and many others--a virtual "who's who" of avant garde poetry in the Sixties.

I wish I could get my hands on a copy of this. I love underground magazines and especially ones where the editor note says: "Send me yr goddamn manuscripts. Cut me in on yr freak-beams. I'll print anything."

There is a vol 1 issue 2 listed on abebooks for the slight amount of $1400,- How counterculture babyboomers devour their own children.

the best magazines ever

Best of lists are always a highly dubious claim, but they make for an interesting read. This article lists the 50 best (*Smartest, Prettiest, Coolest, Funniest, Most Influential, Most Necessary, Most Important, Most Essential, etc.) magazines of "all times" and at least some of my favourite magazines are on the list (and period correct).

Howard Gossage

this is a site dedicated to the life and works of advertising genius Howard Gossage (1917-1969) The socrates of San Fransisco.
He did some truly brilliant, disruptive and highly onconventional ads. The guy's a true legend and inspiration.
Here's an article on how he is still relevant, to online advertising (indeed, indeed, strange times).
be sure to read the copy below. It is of the highest quality; monty python would be proud (though I realize prosumers don't read anymore.)

Among the many quotes that are worth being cut in stone and driven through the big glass facades of ad agencies are his : "Advertising: A multibillion dollar hammer pounding a ten cent thumbtack." and "You don't have to bruise an elephant all over to kill him. One shot in the right place will do."
He also had some refreshing approaches to the "consumer" and target audiences:
"I don't know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody." and:
"To ask consumers how they like ads is like asking a galley slave what he thinks of his job calisthenics-wise."




This is an ad for Fina.
and one for eagle shirtmakers.


and quantas.



thanks to addbuzz and ciadvertising
I did not mean to steal officer, just to borrow..

CIA handbook on overthrowing the Nicaraguan government

the mirror world of the worldwide web sure is a strange place. the "original" image, the real world, is (obviously) even weirder (since it has ubstance instead of pixels).
On Flickr I found scanned in pages of a CIA manual to overthrow a government (apparantly the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in this case). It is a fascinating studies in civil disobedience. One should come late to work (or call in sick), hide and damage tools, spread rumours, make false hotel reservations, threaten the boss by telephone, disable cars ,make molotov cocktails.
There are also more clumsy tips (it he above weren't clumsy enough); spill liquids on documents, cut and perforate the upholstery of vehicles (what the hell for? you already put dirt in the gastank on page 9).
My favourite is; "plant flowers on State Farms" pure poetry.

For those among you (whoever the hell that is :)) who are looking for tips and tricks to overthrow a government (americans among you?) without making your hands dirty, here are the things you always wanted to know about CIA methods but were afraid to imagine.
As funny as this is, it makes you wonder what the hell those people in the pentagon think they're doing. Now and again...
Whoooo if al quaida were to come across this manual. I have often wondered what it would be like if terrorism was exterted in a more daily, less spectacular mode. It would certainly scare the shit out of me.
Then again, they don't scare me nearly as bad as the guys at work in the agency.
as Hunter 'd say "it never got weird enough for me".
If the book is real that is.

Paris, may 1968, poster gallery

Here is a small gallery of posters that were made in 1968 during the french student protests. Here is another, and another. Some of these posters still look vital although most have become iconic (and thus a bit "safe" because of their vernacular hipness and worth). A style had been set though and a lot of current protest art can at least learn something from the clean and "sec" language, both textually and visually.

more Lou dorfsman and link to Typogabor

Pages from a book on Lou dorfsman and CBS scanned in are here.
Many many thanks to typogabor! (Peter Gabor, a brilliant "typographe")
His site has a tremendous collection of other books on typography and graphic design.Among which are books on Neville Brody (not my thing, but still) and by Hermann Zapf
mjummy!

Lou Dorfsman and the gastrotypographicalassemblage

I found this post on the I Live Typography blog. A more complete piece is here on the AIGA site.
Both deal with a great piece of typographic art by Lou dorfsman (bio here) that goes by the name of the Gastrotypographicalassemblage. Apparantly this piece was made for the cafetaria in the CBS bulding in the sixties and took six years in the making. He worked with John Alcorn and the great Herb Lubalin, who did brilliant stuff like this:



Footage of this work and a restoration project can be found on flickr here.
It sure looks delicious. I also love the photo's of the "making of" which is actually a restauration process. The big letters look like loafs of bread. The organization that does the noble work is called the center for design study.

the global village

This site archives images of people from round the globe and shows our "sameness". This sameness has a very american focus, but I don't mind.

many same is an archive of universal sameness –
as observed through the internet.

in isolation from their original context images acquire new meaning. similarity is amplified while any inherent significance or value is diminished. ultimately the viewer is prompted to re-interpret the message, placing new cultural, aesthetic and emotional qualities upon it.

as a publication tool the Internet has facilitated an unprecedented accumulation of privately owned images, which are for the most part freely accessible. this constitutes a vast repository of the ‘everyday’ that provides a unique perspective of minute social and cultural phenomena.

A good idea. And some nice image galleries. I especially like windowseat, leaning tower from the kodak moments section (although the idea is stolen from Martin Parr) golden arches and jesus saves.

directness (to be continued)

Print is not dead. It just smells funny

Check out the photoset on flickr of an exhibtion called Radar Eyes: A Survey of Hallucinogenic Printmaking that took place in Chicago from 7-22 march. Of course the usual gibberish of line and color vomit and random "droodle style" artwork is well represented, but soem works suceed in making me hopefull for the future of printmaking.
I am gladly adding to this, in the spirit of my posting on Haight Ashbury (the book is long finished, it was great and inspiring) that (well made) psychedlic art is not dead either. Indeed it just smells funny, but that's the whole purpose. By the way; bad psychedlic art has never died aswell and will probably be around to amuse cockroaches that survived a nuclear holocaust.

Robert Kennedy's Funeral train by Paul Fusco

On june 8 1968 Robert Kennedy's body was transported in a funeral train to it's final resting place. He had been shot three days earlier in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. Here's the whole story.
I came across this story because of a stunning series of photographs by Paul Fusco.
I think the images are truly moving, both literaly and figurely.
I was especially touched by this image.
I think it is one of the best photographs I know. Both chilling, compassionate and intriguing. Epic is also a word. Who needs words though with images like this.
By the way there are also some video interviews with Paul Fusco on the site.



and here's another brilliant photo.


By the way I hope the copyrightholder for who I have the greatest respect won't mind me showing these treasures to those who were not aware they existed, like myself.

and another cool huge pixel art world

here. nice and big.

world's tallest virtual building

coool building.

prairie schooner

all you Chris Ware hunters out there: The Prairie Schooner, a quarterly of fiction (and more), features a cover by Mister Ware.
Looks good. Too bad the jpg is so small. hey don't feel the need to mention him in the credits. One point less for this magazine, which looks nice enough. I also love the title.
Unfortunately there's no information on international shipping...

Dan Nadels' Comic Visionairies

Dan Nadel, who is a faculty member of Parsons school for design illustration department, wrote a good book about unknown comic visionaries. In this interesting interview that appears on the website of the ComicsJournal he talsk about the book and some of the comic artists that appear in it.
Among those artist is a fellow named Charles Forbell who I didn't know. Nadel points out that the panel lay-out and the inventive way of telling graphic stories is a predecessor to the likes of Chris Ware.
The picture below proves this to be the case.