Codex Seraphinianus, originally published in 1981, is an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world, created by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and written in a strange, generally unintelligible alphabet. (…)

The book is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. It has been compared to the Voynich manuscript,[3] “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, and the works of M.C. Escher[6] and Hieronymus Bosch. (…)

In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles held on 12 May 2009, Serafini stated that there is no meaning hidden behind the script of the Codex, which is asemic; that his own experience in writing it was closely similar to automatic writing; and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey to the reader is the sensation that children feel in front of books they cannot yet understand, although they see that their writing does make sense for grown-ups.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Thanks to Adam John Williams }

{ Barneys New York logo by Chermayeff & Geismar | “Barney’s” was a long-established New York institution known for medium-priced clothing for men and boys. When the ownership decided to upgrade to a high-fashion, high-priced emporium for women’s as well as men’s wear, an elegant new logo was developed. By eliminating the apostrophe, adding the words New York, and using a classic typestyle, the store’s graphic and verbal identity was transformed. | Chermayeff & Geismar | more }

{ Anton Repponen / iOS’ 86 }

‘I don’t see Airbnb being a sustainable business in the long run.’ Pause ‘Want to go to their party later?’

{ Overheard at SXSW | Continue reading }

related { SXSW 2012: Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator? }

How did the gender symbols originate in biology? What do ♀ and ♂ actually stand for?

The answer starts in antiquity, when planets and gods were almost synonymous.

{ Byte Size Biology | Continue reading }

{ Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates indoor clouds. | Thanks Samantha }

{ Ryou has crafted a series of food storage contraptions that counter the hidden, black box technology of the refrigerator by relying on “traditional oral knowledge [that] has been accumulated from experience.” | Architizer | Continue reading }

{ 1 | 2 }

{ The New Inquiry Magazine, a monthly collection of essays and featured content, organized around a common theme and illustrated by Imp Kerr | Read more | Subscribe }

What’s happened to depictions of nature in children’s picture books?

A group of researchers led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist J. Allen Williams Jr. studied the winners of the American Library Association’s prestigious Caldecott Medal between 1938 (the year the prize was first awarded) through 2008. They looked at more than 8,000 images in the 296 volumes, and found decreasing depictions of nature and animals. (…)

Specifically, they find images of built and natural environments were “almost equally likely to be present” in books published from the late 1930s through the 1960s. But in the  mid-1970s, illustrations of the built environment started to increase in number, while there were fewer and fewer featuring the natural environment.

{ Care2 | Continue reading }

{ Ben Alper }

{ 1. Peter Holzhauer | 2 }

Danilo is the only person allowed to cut my hair, really. He’s just the most magical, amazing human being. He’s on the whole Rooney Mara thing—he created her look for Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

{ Michelle Harper, Brand Consultant | Continue reading }

{ 1. Brooke Nipar | 2. Melvin Moti }

{ Prada Marfa is a permanently installed sculpture by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, situated 2.3 km (1.4 miles) northwest of Valentine, Texas. Designed to resemble a Prada store, the building is made of “adobe bricks, plaster, paint, glass pane, aluminum frame, MDF, and carpet.” The installation’s door is nonfunctional. On the front of the structure there are two large windows displaying actual Prada wares, shoes and handbags, picked out and provided by Miuccia Prada herself from the fall/winter 2005 collection; Prada allowed Elmgreen and Dragset to use the Prada trademark for this work. A few days after Prada Marfa was officially revealed, the installation was vandalized. The building was broken into and all of its contents (six handbags and 14 right footed shoes) were stolen, and the word “Dumb” and the phrase “Dum Dum” were spray painted on the sides of the structure. The sculpture was quickly repaired, repainted, and restocked. The new Prada purses do not have bottoms and instead hide parts of a security system that alerts authorities if the bags are moved. | Wikipedia }

{ Moai are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. The 887 statues’ production and transportation is considered a remarkable creative and physical feat. The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tons; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons. | Easter Island Statue Project | Wikipedia }

{ 1 | 2 }