~openculture | Bookmarks (5)

For Christopher Schwarz, American anarchism isn’t “about bombs and leather jackets; it’s about being an independent designer.” It’s about working outside “massive and dehumanizing institutions” (like corporations) and designing beautiful objects that last. He writes: “As a designer of books, tools and furniture, I have zero desire to make things that are intended from the […]

Los Pollos Hermanos, Madrigal Electromotive, Mesa Verde Bank and Trust, Davis & Main: Attorneys at Law—all of these brands come from the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. They also appear in the Fictional Brands Archive, a website dedicated to “fictional brands found in films, series and video games.” Taking the brands seriously as brands, the […]

I doubt I need to list for you the many titles of the 18th century German savant and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but allow me to add one or two that were new to me, at least: color theorist (or phenomenologist of color) and progenitor of abstract expressionism. As a fascinating Booktryst post informs […]

For many, even most of us moderns, the central religious choice is a simple one: adhere to the belief system in which you grew up, or stop adhering to it. But if you survey the variety of religions in the world, the situation no longer seems quite so binary; if you then add the variety […]

In 2013, Penguin released in the UK a series of new covers for five works by George Orwell, including a particularly bold cover design for Orwell’s best-known work, 1984. According to Creative Review, the designer, David Pearson, made it so that the book’s title and Orwell’s name were debossed, then almost completely obscured by black […]