How I Learned To Stop Worrying

.

My friend Janice reminded me of this title sequence. So classic – I love the different ways the handwritten titles are stacked.

Type Raw

.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that it's free.
Chad always finds the coolest shit on the www.

Sticks & Circles

Just a quick endorsement of the most recent new incarnation of Interview magazine, art directed by M/M (Paris). You kind of have to see a few issues before you can decide what you think, and now that I've seen a few, I think the new design is really good [somewhat irritating youngsters on both covers notwithstanding].

The typography feels very formal and there's a strong grid throughout, but the handwritten titles break things up and give the feature openers a more carefree feel.

There are also interesting uses of the grid. People who don't design magazines might take this stuff for granted or think it's not a big deal, but to me a spread like this (above) is really refreshing.

The photography and styling throughout Interview are right up there with that of any top fashion magazine.

It's a little smutty too – as it should be, being a magazine that attempts to embody the spirit of lower Manhattan.

I like this ongoing feature, wherein they ask notable people to send in their cell phone photos from around the world.

Left: I like how they do the table of contents. This is not an easy thing to do well. Right: The back page of each issue features a clip from a back issue (here, Matt Dillon at 15). Interview's website also has an extensive archive.

There are great one-pagers throughout as well.

I've featured Interview many times on the blog, which is maybe a little strange, but it was largely responsible for forming my ideas about what a magazine should be when I was a kid. I am still obsessed with magazines – I still get excited to open the mailbox – and I'm glad that Interview is still a great way to stay up on new music, movies, art, etc., all for only $12 a year.

...
In other magazine news:

Did you know that Google Books has every back issue of New York magazine archived online?

Not to mention Popular Mechanics. And Jet.

S words

Hmmm... I'm not sure about this album cover.

I like the various elements (color, type, car, styling...even the sword is okay), but something about the light-gray background bothers me. Looking forward to the album though – it's in stores March 3rd.

Neko Case People Got A Lotta Nerve mp3 (via Anti-)

More info here.

---
An addendum:
I highly recommend reading this great piece on Neko Case in The New York Times Magazine. It's an incredibly morbid thing to note, but just about anyone who grew up in the Northwest around the same time as me will identify with her comments on the inspiration for one of the new songs:

“It’s based on the Green River killer,” she says. “When I was a kid in Tacoma, we were all scared all the time. I actually carried a knife to school with me. The ‘you’ in the song is one of his victims. They were all prostitutes, but we didn’t know that. They could have been anybody; they could have been us.”

Man, I remember that feeling – I was scared too as a little kid, even knowing that the victims were all women. Such a strange thing to grow up with. I wonder if the sword on the album cover references the knife she carried. Anyway, it all makes me look forward to hearing the rest of the record.

A Frontier Story

.
At Rachel Comey's Fall/Winter 2008 show earlier this year (held at the venerable Salmagundi Club), she showed some shoes with handwriting painted on the platforms—book titles like Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and if I remember correctly there was some Ouija board and Houdini stuff on there too.

For the special Northwest edition, sold only at Totokaelo and Impulse (36th North at Fremont Ave) I suggested using the title of Carol Ryrie Brink's 1935 book Caddie Woodlawn: A Frontier Story – and here they are. I love it when a plan comes together.

I should mention that Carol Ryrie Brink (1895–1981) was a resident of Moscow, Idaho, where Emily grew up. I remember a Caddie Woodlawn craze when I was in elementary school and Emily has a nice old copy:

Ryrie Brink wrote a bunch of other books but the only one I've read is Buffalo Coat (1944), which Emily bought me a few years back:

I highly recommend it for young and old dudes and ladies alike, as it is just a good old intrigue-filled pioneer story about the early days of Moscow.

I think some of Carol Ryrie Brink's books are still in print but you can also search for them at abebooks.com.

Writer's Block

Two flyers I got today that I like, both hand-written: