Cool Stuff On the Internet - Clever Storage, Pencil Sharpening, Skullduggery, Typography Glossary

Here are some sites I found interesting and maybe some of you will too.




This site has a lot of ideas presented in pictures.  I thought this chair and table storage system was pretty clever.  Look carefully if it doesn't make sense right away.  It's very clever.  There are a lot of other interesting ideas on the page. 








Pencil Sharpening doesn't seem like that big a deal, but this site reminds us once again that anything done really well is interesting. Matthew James Taylor is an artist and the graphics in this post are great.

image from Matthew James Taylor

I would note that my daughter has helped me see - as in actually notice it for what it is and not let it pass by as if it were normal - all the minor episodes of violence against women in movies.  Can you name some major or minor films you've seen lately that didn't have at least one scene without a woman being at least hit or otherwise degraded by a man?  Think about it when you watch your next movie.  I tell you all this because there is a pencil sharpener in this post that could be seen as clever in a sick way, but is totally unacceptable. 

This is not a free speech issue.  He has the right to post what he wants.  But I'm just trying to point out the little things that normalize or desensitize us to portrayals of violence against women which leads to the appalling amount of actual violence against women in the US and the world.  And Alaska is one of the leaders in this grim statistic.  Good graphic design, very bad message about women.  Nevertheless, I'm linking there because I think that overall the post is worth seeing and with this message, perhaps some people will start 'seeing' such images for what they are and not accept them casually as we seem to do.

Anamorphic sculptures at Ignant. What does it take to think so that you can do this?  What if our eyes worked this way instead of how they do?  Stuff like this forces us to rethink what we take for granted, something we should do frequently. The artist, Jonty Hurwitz, talks about this sort of work at the link. 

"One of the commenters on Anamorphic  post linked to a West Highland Museum exhibit of Jacobean art which included a similar kind of work which was done this way with good reason:

"After the the Battle of Culloden in 1746, it was treasonable to support the Stuart claim to the throne. When the ladies and servants had left the room after dinner, the loyal friends of Prince Charles would place the tray on the table and raise their glasses in a toast to his likeness reflected in the cylinder (or in a goblet of claret). If there was a danger of interruption and discovery, the device could quickly be dismantled and the tray would appear as a meaningless blur, or be replaced by a similar decoy tray."

 Skull Appreciation Society -  If you created a website with that title, what would you post on it?   Everything skull.  Like this photo of a buffalo skull.

Image from Skull Appreciation Society

How do you make a living off of fonts?  I'm not exactly sure, but the Danish Playtype's website is beautiful a window into a company that apparently does.

Click to enlarge and read clearly