I’ve had a new platen press (the pre­vi­ous one burnt down in 1977) and a Kor­rex proof­ing press for a while now (see Proof­ing press upstairs). There is also quite a bit of type and every­thing else I need to start work; but I still haven’t printed any­thing. Mean­while, as reminder and inspi­ra­tion, here is a lovely video from the US show­ing busi­ness cards being printed on a platen press.

Kee­gan Mee­gan Press & Bindery from :::: MAGNETIC ARCHIVES :::: kiva on Vimeo.

Tilt­Shift pho­tos make every pic­ture look like a scene from a toy train cat­a­logue. As the iPhone will not take really good “real” pho­tographs, I pre­fer to apply effects like Tilt­Shift, even with an app that fakes the effect by apply­ing arti­fi­cial focus to over-saturated images. At least that gen­er­ates cool-looking pic­tures for on-screen use. This one shows the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

Some­body has taken the trou­ble and uploaded some extra mate­r­ial from the Hel­vetica DVD to You Tube:

Novem­ber in Berlin doesn’t look so bad when it’s turned into a toy town, cour­tesy tilt/shift pho­tog­ra­phy.

All this twit­ter­ing has taken all my atten­tion away from my blog. Per­haps using the Word­press edi­tor on the iPhone will encour­age me to once again prop­erly pub­lish my obser­va­tions, find­ings and interventions.

What sur­prised me most was the amount of pub­lic sculp­tures in the city. And some at an amaz­ing scale. This one, 10 sto­ries high, cov­ers up a vent from the Metro, as we learnt from our taxi driver.

This sub­ject is so impor­tant that peo­ple are mak­ing movies about it. This is an inter­view with me by Stephen Coles from FontShop about Type­kit, the new ser­vice for web­de­sign­ers.

Font­Cast #5 — Web­fonts Week: Erik Spiek­er­mann from FontShop on Vimeo.

Metal shut­ters in front of shop win­dows are hardly ever pretty. Espe­cially not when the shop seems to be closed for­ever. I have no idea whether these three let­ters have any mean­ing, but they were purpose-designed for the site, with their hor­i­zon­tal shad­ing painted into the grooves of the cor­ru­gated shut­ters. Apoc­ryphal design at its best.

Hotel hall­ways are long by neces­sity and not meant to be places to spend time in. Look­ing out from the lift door all you nor­mally see are the signs with the room num­bers on them. Often barely leg­i­ble and hardly ever designed in the typo­graphic sense. The Sher­a­ton in Bozen, resp. Bolzano, seems to have thought about this sit­u­a­tion and came up with this still-life. Many small LEDs remind us of the bright lights used by hotels near rail­ways sta­tions in order to attract pass­ing trav­ellers. Not exactly lit­er­a­ture, but more than the usual thought­less­ness extended to tem­porar­ily home­less guests.

The iPhone is not a cam­era, it just has a cheap plas­tic lens, a chip and some mem­ory ded­i­cated to cap­tur­ing and stor­ing image data. There are no adjust­ments pos­si­ble, all you do is raise the phone in front of you, push the but­ton and hope that some­thing some­where might be in focus. Now and again, even this prim­i­tive set-up catches more than mere objects, but a mood or a feel­ing. At 7am one morn­ing in Ams­ter­dam I noticed how no boats had been on the Heren­gracht, leav­ing the water untouched and as still as a pond. It made me get off my bike and take one of those quick snaps, with­out con­sid­er­ing expo­sure time, aper­ture or focus.