simple

it's important to keep things simple
keeping things simple doesn't mean you avoid the sophisticated, complex or complicated
i'm not sure what i mean by this, but it feels right to me

anyway, i've seen some things lately which have felt the right kind of "simple" to me








all of this, mural at bodega

these dots

this cityscape

this collage

a very smart kind of business card,

glorybox, or proust part 2

while idly wasting time online i found a "make a mosaic of me" thing online

you answer a list of questions (like rsvp or the proust questionnaire) and find pictures you like (suggested to plug your answer into flickr because then you get a weird collection of results, often completely unrelated to you answers which makes it "interesting")

and then you put these into a mosaicking machine

and then you get, well, supposedly: you in all your glory.

okay i give up

have just looked at a blog by a 13 year old girl (unless this is one of the police set-ups, and the blogger is not 13 at all but a bored dyslexic 31 year old who needs a gimmick)
http://tavi-thenewgirlintown.blogspot.com/
it's funny, it's snazzy. i want to be cute as a drowned rat too. and rude to newspaper-people.

the kid herself

snap em up

just lately i've seen a few photo blogs that look at the world from a particular viewpoint

by theme
light + victory are two photographers on either side of the tasman, one in melbourne and surrounds, one in "rural new zealand".

some themes have been "orange", "words" and "three".

by geography
52 suburbs is a odyssey through sydney suburbs, one week one suburb but many photos. more than this, photos are presented as a diptych - the images hum against each other,

glimpses of cabramatta

and cronulla

i find this really special because this is what i try to do with my collages and, i guess, on my blog. a collection of ideas and images which (i hope) shimmy against each other, and produce thoughts and further ideas, rather than just being.

think, laugh, love. these are things i live by. i want to add create, inspire. then i reckon i'll be happy to think my work is done.

listing slightly

sometimes i find it hard to put my ideas or goals in motion

i need to motivate myself

over the years i've tried all sorts of ways

i made those foldy paper answer questions things (google searching tells me they're called chatterboxes or cootie catchers - yuck. i call them foldy paper answer questions things)

i like that the one pictured has "hedonism" as a choice. mine's nicer because it's made of pictures. however, it has no intrinsic use or purpose. it just is. it's an object i enjoyed making.
i also had a reward system going, using laminex colour swatches.

it didn't achieve anything, although i had lots of fun putting it together. deciding on rewards, finding images that matched the rewards

now i'm trying to put a 5 year plan in place. i'm trying not to be too soviet about it, naturally. no gulags or anything. although constructivist design is rather attractive.

and i am trying to introduce colour and various items of stationery as i try and conceptualise my goals and milestones.

i'm going more for thumb-tacks and coloured string, date stamps as well as some posh things, like a 5 year diary from moma
i'm sure good graphics and good design can help! suzy tuxen's lettering

lists can be pretty,

moon garden by mikala dwyer

a crazy world of words and pictures and actions and pictures
a crazy world of words and pictures and actions and pictures

and then there is the crazy world of infografics

showing you the answers to the important questions

like

which is the fastest growing economy?

and

WHO

is

the

biggest
movie
monster?

there are also self-made graphs as part of the mycrocosm project,

of course i'm supposed to do exactly these kinds of graphs to track my blood sugar levels ... things get tricky for me when pretty becomes purposeful
other good infographics i've seen,
an animated red riding hood (oh i forgot how good this was!)

there's a whole world of diversionary, i mean motivational, tactics out there!

and let's not forget Christoph Niemann's wonderful monthly blog, abstract city - this one's about sleep

can't decide

sometimes you have to ask yourself,

markus raetz, in a perpetual & kinetic state of indecision

or you can just wait for the signs ...