Sharpie Al
Charlotte Alice Overton-Hart, or just Sharpie Al.
Champion of ageing and the old, and the experience and wisdom of older people, inspired by my 92-year-old gran, Nancy.
People are my favourite vintage. Amazing greys.
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“Rhythm is deep and it touches us in ways that we don’t understand. We know that language used rhythmically has some kind of power to delight, to...
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CREATIVE IDEASNew and creative ideas happen all the time. By definition they are unique and different. However, with new ideas you never know if...
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Delicatessen with love – portraits of grandmothers around the world alongside their specialty dishes by Italian photographer Gabrielle...
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PlayThere are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and...
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“Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived...”
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“Though I am an old man, I am a young gardener”— Thomas Jefferson - To be ever learning is the key to life.
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Typeverything.com
Verse by Cory Say.
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Typeverything.com - DelVal Botany Mailer by @danielgblackman.
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“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in...
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44 posts tagged words
This week I’ve been commissioned to bake up a storm for the 4th Annual Clean Conference. The recipe I settled on was a classic gingerbread with a Clean Change twist.
Baked goods in honour of improved communications? Yes please.
(Of course if you’re after food for thought without the calories, just go to the conference)..
Leaves become most beautiful
When they’re about to die
When they’re about to fall from trees
When they’re about to dry up.
Regina Spektor
Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (1974) is the foolproof cure for writer’s block for two reasons. First, you have to abandon your workstation and second, you have to look at the world. In one practical exercise on observing a street, Perec instructs:
Note down what you can see. Anything worthy of note going on. Do you know how to see what’s worthy of note? Is there anything that strikes you?
Nothing strikes you. You don’t know how to see.
Poems in the Waiting Room offer a spot of light relief from the usual didactic reading matter of the doctor’s waiting room. Look out for these peppermint poems next time you go to see your GP.
Lyrical tonic. No prescription required.
Calling all word nerds.
Whatever your preposition, get yourself up, down, or along to the Words Words Words concept store in Selfridges, and have a go on the Word-A-Coaster - a collaboration between It’s Nice That and Stewdio.
Quite the wordgasm.
Whether or not they do so intentionally, brands tap into conceptual resources we all share. If they weren’t universal, we wouldn’t “get” the message.
In the people are plants metaphor, humans can be seen as the part of the plant that grows, withers then dies. Psalm 103 says it like this, “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone”. The Diesel ad above expresses the exact same people are plants concept, visually.
Once you start metaphor spotting, you’ll see them growing everywhere.
My school English teacher gave me this book, because he thought I would find it useful. Dr Hopley was never wrong: I still refer to it.
This time of year there are a lot of canapés doing the rounds: in supermarket freezer aisles, on billboards, maybe an actual tray or two at real-life parties. Who can say, for sure?
Anyhow, these palate pleasers (more like appetite teasers) often remind me of this superb descriptive passage from Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual. Not the canapés in their finest hour, but the detritus the following morning.
And here’s the writing exercise: make a note of all the edibles, drinkables, disposables and anything else of note around you this new year (either during the party or the morning after), then dig out your scribblings in twenty years time to see how dated all your party snacks have become. You think not? Two words: prawn cocktail.
Since starting my graphic design course I’ve been encouraged to sketch ideas for projects, and ideas in general. I bought a pack of Sharpies and have been keeping a note of ideas, thoughts, and quotes. None too much *actual* sketching thus far. Words are my pictures, mostly.
