Any jerk with photoshop and internet can go out and plaster designer title in his card (cough, me!, cough), but it takes a real man to design something with a grace and decency. That’s David Berman message in a nutshell. Right? Err, hopefully… But anyhoo, this book has a thought provoking message with ideas and execution that is worthy to take some space on every designer bookshelf. Check it out mate.
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Meet Mountain Sleep, your new best friend and one of myriad reasons why getting pawned by Techies in DOTA pub feel much less painful this days. Mountain Sleep is full of spirit, easier than Arcade Fire, and works brilliantly on your ear. A brisk doses of 30 minutes listening them on daily basis will guarantee you a smarter day, a more relaxed shoulder and calmer heart beating (yes, they literally have “Beat Your Heartbeat” track). Listen to them, and you’ll sucking wind in no time.
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Once in a while, some musician would take a lazy nap, dream about an absurd thing, wake up, and said “fuck that, I’m gonna make this thing”. They would change their musical taste so dramatically, that you dont recognize their face anymore. That’s what I thought was happened when Sufjan made The Age of Ad – a cocktail of guitar from 80’s, electronic strum, and repeated “boy, we can do much more together” chorus. I don’t know what Sufjan smoke prior to this album, but I’m sure that it was a good stuff. This Age of Adz, this is delicious but not pretentious album.
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WARNING! ONLY WATCH THIS TALK IF YOU ARE SUPER AWESOME GAMER.
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Two words. Bloody awesome. So pardon me to become a lazy bastard and cut my usual cheesy crap this time. First, click the link below and press play. Then click here. You’re welcome.
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Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack is a wonder that singed by 32 years old sexy lady and a bunch of sixth-graders. It sounds mischief, funny, sweet, and raw without being pretentious. It’s a warm remainder that there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life.
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Efterklang proof that resistant doesn’t have to be futile. With Magic Chairs, the indie band are finally embraced more listener without leaving their orchestration and experimental nature. The album itself are literally extravagant and complex, and most of their composed music are not symmetrically aligned. You can hear Sting somewhere, you can catch a glimpse of Sigur Rós or the falsetto of Chris Martin, but with a way that no one except Efterklang can do it. It gives a sense of being “in a festival of sounds”, something so cool that I’m pretty much happy to share it with you.
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When I took an English course a few years ago, I manage to convinced one of my professor to lend me one of her holy book to me, forever. The title is Mastering Writing Essentials, written by Andrew & Gina Macdonald. One of the quotation from the book that nailed in my mind ever since is “Simply Waiting for inspiration about a topic is too passive - a writer writes to make something happen!”. But the thing is in creative world when you don’t have a good inspiration, you are pretty much screwed - writer even have came up with their own term on this, they called it as “a writer block”. The worst part is there’s a lot of pressure from anywhere that most of the times make you feel depressed and unhappy. In this TED talk, Gilbert offer a new way for creative people to compromise with their own demon. That great art doesn’t need to be scaring and self centered. That maybe we all borrow something divine and all we have to do is doing our part.
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When you wrote a piece of music that Coldplay gladly embraced in their Viva La Vida album, you must be doing something right. The Insides album is Hopkins third masterpiece, which resembled very much with his 2 previous album (well duh, they are from the same musician). The music sounds like the music you’d hear when you go into The Lovely Bones when Susie Salmon already died and she goes into in-between world where everything so eerily out of the world and the last thing that happens in your mind is to escape from it. My favorite track are Wire, Vessel and Small Memory (the last one can make you feel extremely melancholy no matter how cold and calculated crocodile you are). Check it out gentlemen, it would make you grow soft.
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Honestly, the core of the Rushmore is evolving around a 15 year old asshole named Max Fischer who are the king of extracurricular things in some private school. The guy is obviously nuts (and short). Later he would encounter Miss Cross, a new teacher, and face a tough situation where he must choose between friendship or love - something that he managed to do with a complete mess and total failure. The prose of the movie is so dense with allusions and semisensical stream of consciousness that I really think you should become a slight bizarre human being to be able to enjoy the humour - a quality that I have in abundance.
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My love story started a few years ago when I’m assigned to make an article about post-rock movement in Oto Café, Jogja. I came early that day and choose the best possible seat to watch the concert. A few minutes later, there are this 2 guys and 1 girl that asked whether they could sit together with me. I said no problem, and we have some nice conversation. It was a great time. They were so humble and smart, that they even offer me some beers! Bloody sweet merlin. An hour later, they excuse me; left the seat then goes into the backstage. After a while, they come out in the stage and totally blown up the audience. It was the best performance of the night. Later I’ve found that they are Individual Life, a Jogjakarta native band that quite renowned in the post-rock scene. After that night, I’m always going whenever I heard they are going to perform. They doesn’t make any album yet (something that I guess down to the fact that they were busy with another project, such as Armada Racun), but they are so good that until now, I’ve heard their 2 song titled “Paripurna” and “Lalu-Lalang” combined for 769 times. I’ll patiently wait them to do their full debut album, but in the mean time, I suggest you to hear their song at myspace. It’s a great material.
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Finding for a good typhoraphy book in Indonesia has become a ruddy unnecessarily complicated task. For some years, I’ve been looking north, east, south and west with a little luck. But after thousand and thousand years of searching and searching, I’m feeling a bit at peace now. Font & Tipografi by Surianto Rustan prove that you don’t always have to mulling over Amazon to get a fine typography book. The book cover very broad subject (a little bit too broad for my liking), but it intense. It kicks into a high-gear mode from start to finish and constantly slap my face with a new knowledge. With it very reasonable price, there’s no doubt that this book is a total steal.
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Are you single and wishing that you can find the one? Are you confused about what to expect from an early crush? Are you hesitate to make a commitment with a certain fine speciment of type? Or are you not satisfied with your current relationship? Don’t worry, Erik Spiekermann, the cupid of typefaces would give you some solid advice on dating with type. The book is free (you can find it in fontshop), and it’s beatifully designed on black, white and yellow color.
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Do you remember the cool teacher at high school who lets you eat and drink in class, answer your mobile durring lessons, and not wear proper uniform? Jeremy Keith is that kind of cool teacher. He’ll give you a good laugh along this book - you’ll find some absurd title like “THE SCHISM: WHATWG TF?” pops up anywhere on the page. But he doesn’t do that for the sake of laughing. Indeed this book is just about the bread and butter thing in HTML5, the essential things for us, the web designer. The kind of book that deserve some space in your bookshelf.
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The CSS3 For Web Designer is a trap. Write by brilliant front-end Dan Cederholm and published by a highly respected bunch of dude who hang out once in a while in coffee shop and discuss how to make things getting better for you in screen. The CSS3 For A Web Designer is a trap, but it’s kind of trap that every web designer would happy to fall into.
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Vignelli is the old guard in a world of design. He has this legendary status among his peer from decades of experience and achievement. And like the Bauhaus, Vignelli has a vast range of skills, from product making, printing, to screen design. This multidimensional skill is come from his understanding beyond design scope. The comprehension that design in the end is a problem solver. To quote him in his book : “we have to shift through colors, textures, typefaces, images and gradually built a vocabulary to express our solutions on a given problem”.
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If Dan Ariely is the Sherlock Holmes of behavioral economics, than Malcolm Gladwell is the Christopher Nolan of non-fiction book. In this book, Gladwell try to explain some little interesting things that most of us don’t notice, such as why some people panic and the other just stunned, why Ron Popei could sell you literally anything or what the dog saw. He will guide you to a his mazing story then would try to make you think and choose to conclude it yourself rather than shoving the believe into your brain. For a person with hopelessly messy hair, he has done a quite smooth silky job in doing so. A truly master of plot.
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The Bauhaus Pack is much more than meeting the eyes. Yes the packaging is sexy, yes you’ll get a gorgeous set of card to play with, and yes it smells really good too. But it is much more than that. It is a museum and also revelation to the iconic Bauhaus design. A kind of book you would read when you want to enjoy your train trip (assuming that there’s no hottie sit in front of you).
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I always has this weird notion that What is Typography is The Matrix of typography.What is typography? How it happened? How much like it? Was it the same cat? That kind sort of questions are bombarded in my head as I travel around the book. Of course, there are some common rules, but it’s just a trigger to explore the reasoning behind the rule. A trigger that would transcendence you from a mere mortal anonymous human with no girlfriend into an almighty chosen one typographer.
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Most of people have that first “aha” moment in their life story. And this book is my “aha” moment with type. If you want to start learn about typography, you’ll want to start with this one. It serve as some quick resource on typography course, without being too shallow and technical. Even if you don’t want to learn about typography, you’ll want one anyway for pleasuring your eyes.
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Found this book when I browsing around Periples last year. Honestly I don’t really care about the content, but alas, the design of the book is hands down one of the most beautiful that I ever see. The grid system, the color choice and typography. It’s one kind of the book that really meet your eyes.
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Do not, under any circumstance, pretend that you know everything about someone and his economic motive. You won’t. Those sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic thing is completely rubbish. Hence, that’s why there’s a bajikizillion book outside there that tried to explain human behavior and still failed to deliver. Predictably Irrational is one of those book that really stands in the crowd. Ariely has that non-scientist persona that would make you feel ease and excited with his scientific approach. His uncanny ability to explain a not so simple theory to average human brain make me dub him as the Sherlock Holmes of behavioral economics studies.
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I’m pretty sure that every student who ever run college newspaper will idolize GM in some point of their lives - and yes, that would includes me. He has that knack of making you feel in awe even when you don’t know what the bloody hell is he blabbing about. Inside this book you’ll find hand picked essays from GM writings published between 1968 and 2002. The essay originally written in Indonesia, but Jennifer Lindsay already done an admirable job in translating it (it’s not an easy feat, since GM renowned for skillful manipulation of Indonesia vocabulary). But the nuance and intricacies is there and retained, and ready to subtly melt every mind who read it.
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First of all, I want you to be clear that this book is not written by the guy who buy the whole airlines in Inception, ‘kay? But I think this Ken Watanabe is equally great guy. He explain every fundamental concept and tools for rational decision making here. You might be irritated by the nature of the book (back in Japan - it was originally intended for children). But it just a little fluff, the rest are the important thing. This is the kind of book that you should take seriously, because here you’re gonna find a thing that is very precious in your day to day life. A good answers.
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You just read The Elements of Typographic Style, and you don’t understand any single thing Bringhurst write between page 143-178. If that’s the case, “Making and Breaking the Grid” is your only redemption. It explains grid in well, less mathematical way compared to The Elements of Typographic Scale. And it’s not hurt that it added some bonuses too: There are a lot of visual example that you can steal from it.
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So you want everyone to think you’re some sort of typographer genius even though you have no idea what’s the different between 3 period and ellipsis? Don’t worry, the ownership of this single book can solve most of your problem. Those who desire to be seem like an typography expert despite their complete lack of knowledge need to buy only one thing: The Elements of Typographic Style. You spend less than a pair of shoes and you got this bad boy. This book, in fact, is de facto holy book of typography: bring it anywhere, flash it to desired person in 1 or 2 seconds and your target will refer you to the “guy who’s good with type.” Little did they know that you use Comic Sans for your CV.
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