DESIGN YOUR LIFE
BLOGRegifting
LINKSApartment Therapy
|
Regifting
The Times didn’t miss a New York minute; they posted a story on Regifting before the wrapping paper even hit the floor this morning. …read more… — Julia Lupton Arranging the Meal with Jean-Louis Flandrin
Food historian Jean-Louis Flandrin may have been catholic in his culinary tastes, but his scholarship was single-minded: the proper ordering of dishes into courses in the classic French meal (with a glance at “English menu sequences” and “Polish Banquets”). …read more… — Julia LuptonFinding My Match
Last Thursday, dazed by the crushing realism of Christmas shopping in New York, I found myself standing in front of a glass case stocked with dozens of stainless steel objects in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Shop—salt shakers, letter openers, garlic crushers, and an amazing tray made by “rumpling” a single flat sheet of gleaming metal into a cratered surface for displaying tapas. …read more… — Ellen LuptonOutliers (by Malcolm Gladwell)
I picked up Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers at an airport bookshop while flying cross country this weekend. I’m teaching bits of Gladwell on cool-hunting in my freshman humanities class this winter, and wanted to taste his latest. …read more… — Julia LuptonKurve, Kone, or Krone?
— Ellen LuptonRon Carlson Writes A Story
I am reading a short book by my colleague, fiction writer Ron Carlson. The book is called Ron Carlson Writes a Story, and it’s directed at aspiring fiction writers. Since I don’t write fiction, maybe I should be reading one of Ron’s novels instead. But I press on anyway. M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans
In exchange for reviewing a Shakespeare manuscript, the University of California Press sent me a box of recent books. On the top of the stack was Joan Reardon’s M. F. K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans, a biographical tribute to America’s greatest food writer. It's a place card! It's a menu!
These place cards are also tiny menus. The graphic is a baked-to-order pie painting by my daughter Hannah. Welcome to the Phatocracy
On Facebook, phatic is king. This is the place for pithy “status updates,” not lengthy confessions or intellectual posing. If writing on your friend’s wall is too big a commitment of verbal resources, try “poking” her. At home with Hannah Woolley
I spent the morning consuming the cook books and conduct manuals of Hannah Woolley 1623-1677). You could call her the Renaissance Martha Stewart — unless, like me, you’re in an historical mood, in which case she’s the Renaissance Mrs. Beeton or the Renaissance Catharine Beecher. Inappropriate
My kids often tsk-tsk when Mom says something “inappropriate,” such as praising the physical attractiveness of Johnny Depp or Barack Obama. “Inappropriate” is the bland, seemingly non-judgmental term they learn at school for demarcating untidy language, behavior, or even thoughts. My friend Laurie Rosenwald has published a new book that will ruffle their neat little feathers. …read more… — Ellen LuptonSupport a small press near you this season
Today a young woman named Laurence Dumortier stopped by my office. A recent graduate in English from Loyola Marymount College, she was seeking advice about Ph.D. programs. But she also runs Cloverfield Press in Los Angeles, where she and a tiny team of book lovers publish small volumes. (Think of it as a microbindery.) …read more… — Julia LuptonFacebook Fictions
I joined Facebook a year ago, but I’ve been a reactive user — accepting the occasional random friend request, and simply ignoring all the features I didn’t understand. …read more… — Julia LuptonClose Reading: Obama
James Wood on the power of the novel and the language of our time. …read more… — Julia LuptonAre you a recessionista?
A recessionista is a fashionista on a really tight budget. She shops the designer racks at Target, looks for deals through shopping clubs, and settles for accessories when the going gets tough. …read more… — Julia LuptonCountertop Oven
My household goes through toasters the way Goldilocks went through bedroom furniture or Henry VIII went through wives. We’ve had toasters that are too big, too small, too fancy, too French, and almost, almost just right. …read more… — Ellen LuptonOprah Nation
In the scenes from Grant Park on Tuesday night, I was most struck by the shots of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. …read more… — Julia LuptonA Palin Halloween
My daughter Hannah announced weeks ago that she was going to be Sarah Palin for Halloween. She’s such a genius, I thought. …read more… — Julia LuptonSeeking Mrs. Polonius
… Mrs. Polonius is a politic housewife; she cultivates a few poisonous plants in her tidy English garden (“just in case”), and the margins of her tapestries are embroidered with inverted phalloi… — Julia LuptonThe Vanguard Party
How Project Runway is revolutionizing America’s children. The Year We Walked to School
This year, we’re walking to school with our kids. It’s only a mile away, a tiny trek through the remaining undeveloped land between our house and the kids’ school. Since our family has opted out of sports, the morning walk scripts some easy exercise into our day. But it’s also a time to talk. Mom and Dad hold court with the kids on the way to school; Mom and Dad actually get to talk to each other on the way back. Cheaper than couples’ counseling! …read more… — Julia LuptonComic Craft
Writing and graphic design are not just parallel activities; they are parasites and hosts for one another. Both strive to eliminate clutter, focus attention, and manipulate structure. Both use words as social glue. …read more… — Ellen LuptonDesign Observance
These paintings by David Schorr, faculty at The Wesleyan University, are careful observations of consumer goods cast out into a zero-gravity space. The intensity of the painting keeps them grounded. — Ellen LuptonSarah Boone's Ironing Board
African American Sarah Boone patented an ironing board design in 1892. Her narrow, folding, padded board sported a thin curved shape that afforded the ironing of sleeves and other fitted clothing from the period. …read more… — Julia LuptonBeth Lipman, Still Lives in Glass
Entitled “After You’re Gone,” this still life by glass blower Beth Lipman is created almost completely out of glass objects, including transparent snails moving in on the leftovers. The installation refracts the opulent decay of Dutch still lives. In Lipman’s art, glass is both metaphor and material, a shimmering reflection of time’s passage. …read more… — Julia LuptonNext American City wins redesign award
As a subscriber to the urbanist zine, Next American City, I was pleased to learn that the journal has won an Ozzie Award from FOLIO for Best Redesign by a Nonprofit. …read more… — Julia LuptonDesign is Communication. Duh.
There’s a common adage among graphic designers that goes, “My mother doesn’t understand what I do.” Some designers have a hard time explaining that when creating a magazine layout, for example, they don’t take the photograph, paint the picture, write the article, or draw the typeface. What they do is organize elements on the page, a lengthy process that largely involves choosing, scaling, cropping, and otherwise adjusting readymade elements. …read more… — Ellen LuptonFile Tabs: The Tip of the Iceberg
I found a nice post by Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders on the history of tabs and index cards. Although medieval monks get some credit for using leather strips to mark manuscripts, page numbering proved more efficient for books. (The dog ear is a kind of DIY tab in reverse.) File cards were introduced by libraries in the nineteenth century. …read more… — Julia LuptonCollage Professor
In the first week of school, my daughter Hannah was asked to write about a childhood picture depicting one of her parents. She instantly chose the photo of Ellen and me that we used as our authors’ photo in DIY KIDS. …read more… — Julia Lupton |