Johanna Bashford

Cardbonmade.com

http://www.carbonmade.com/portfolios/editorial-design


Portfolio showcase website. some really interesting editorial/ publication design portfolios out there.

worlds largest vending machine

BP

I really like what Landor did to redesign the BP brand, establishing its identity with global presence.

Typography Workshop

typeworkshop.com

I've just found a website which deals with teaching the wonders and woe's of Type design. Here are a few sketches of whats on the website, its really good fun to look at.

Update!

Its been ages since I've posted anything on this blog, I feel as though I should really have kept this going since the end of term but I've been fairly distracted by other things! So anyway, I've been learning Dreamweaver these past few weeks because a) i want to be good at it & b) I've always had an interest in web design. What baffles me about Dreamweaver is that now that its not just used as a web design tool but its kind of another InDesign, where you draw upon elements you create in Flash and Aftereffects to enhance the capabilities in Dreamweaver.

Its a great piece of software, there's so much to remember and I wouldn't have had a clue if it wasn't for this book I'm using... Dreamweaver for dummies. I'm about halfway... Hoping to have something to show when I get back in September.

also, the type museum in london is shut... this is going to cause problems for my diss research... doh!!! If anyone reading this was hoping to visit it aswell... well... you can't.

Over & Out.

Agamben

A while ago Agamben was invited to teach a seminar at NYU, but then canceled because he didn't agree with the new measures of being fingerprinted when entering the United States. Biopolitical tattooing, as he calls it. He wrote an explanation of his decision in Le Monde, encouraging European colleagues to follow his example, and stayed where he was. Agamben is practicing his idea of potentiality - having the power to do, or, as in this case, very well not to do something; and while refusal can be a political act in itself it seems that here it is incomplete. For what his decision inevitably entails is that he will never lecture in the United States again.

Not only is this result in nobody's interest (except the administration's, who should be delighted that their measures work so effectively in keeping, if not alleged terrorists, then at least dissenters and critical theorists under control and out of the country), but it does little to reinstate Agamben's potentiality either. He still doesn't get to do what he initially wanted, and should, do - lecture. This, he accepts as an unappealing necessity.

The more radical move would have been to do what he did, choose not to go and make his position clear, but then find a way of by-passing those restrictions. In this case for instance quite simply instead of being physically present and having to undergo the procedures holding a video-conference lecture. That way he still has a chance to articulate his concerns but furthermore uses available means' (in this case technology's) potential to assist radical, critical, creative activity. And crucially it is precisely this form of appearance (the ghostly appearance) that can allow Agamben to make, or rather perform, his statement and politics anew every single time he becomes quasi-present in a space in the US. In the way he chose to act he only got to make it once.