From the pages of my notebooks - Ideas that got the chop.

I notice that when I work I  concentrate on solving small problems to the detriment of the bigger picture. I work on elements of the riddle but not the answer.

For example, when I draw I solve the form of one part of a scene where others will describe that part in a line or two inside many others. My drawing will sit, centred and small, on a blank page when others roughly fill the page right to every edge. When I write I assemble vignettes and hints together but rarely scenes. When working on a logo I might resolve the curves on a single letterform on a logo that is not the solution to the job.

Its hard to know if this is a disability or an advantage. We are all drawn to bigger works but love smaller parts. We will sit and watch Spartacus enthusiastically but will also remember only lines Happy Gilmore.

“I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast”

“You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?”

There is an architectural theory that buildings are built to last in times of upheaval, in more prosperous times the aim is to build big and fast.
Around here the facades are crumbling as the world re-adjusts.

…but this was Dublin in the 1980s. It wasn’t strictly a recession. It just was.

I went to school through streets filled with gaps but my mind was far away.

I have wanted to do a series of imagined spaces from a recession-depressed viewpoint, based on this.

Type sketches

As of yet this is not strictly speaking a lost cause. It is still in (almost) development.

The idea is to reduce ink and paper use by creating a lingua franca of fonts, to be supplied on all computers. It may be ugly, but the idea is the key. It is for in-house proofs and prints where beauty is not called for, just efficiency. Since I first began work on this, others have had the same idea, and got the job done, most notably John Maeda and Spranq. Where this differs is in discarding parts of the font itself, including shaving off curves, condensing, cutting some horizontals and even some verticals. It is harshly geometric and could be used to save paint on naval inscriptions down to tiny legal notices. As I said though, its not beautiful.

…to understand why “Hell is Full of Our Souls”