Chris Blog: July 2010

Back to my roots

Off to Saskatchewan for a family reunion. Have a good week!

(p.s. Above is a prairie lily, the official flower of Saskatchewan)

Midsummer night's dreaming

A perfect night at Lake Simcoe

(Happy Birthday Anne!)

As I've mentioned before, I absolutely LOVE the Toronto Subway font. Last night, I stumbled upon this excellent (and thorough!) article about its development and implementation over the last 50 years. Above are the original sketches (circa 1960), which mysteriously do not credit an artist...

Reasons you should love this font:

Near-perfect circles for C, G, O, and Q.
Similarity of upper and lower bowls of B.
Near symmetry of E and F along a horizontal midline.
An X that looks like a multiplication sign.
A Futura-like S made of two hooks.
Strokes that tend toward straight lines (even the stem of the distinctive low-waist R) and terminate at right angles.
Spiky corners on M, N, V, and W that descend below the baseline or project above the cap height.

Gaga love

Lady Gaga shows her Pride in Toronto on Sunday night, and the crowd goes wild

(image via Flickr)

Istanbul logos

Three logos that I particularly loved around the streets Istanbul: the official seal, the metro and the logo for European Capital of Culture.

And finally...

These gems were found stacked in an used bookstore in Istanbul. Each one put me back $4 TL (which is less than $3 CDN!) Heavenly!

Istanbul cats

Istanbul design

On fear

"...There are all sorts of minorities, but a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. And, if the minority is somehow invisible...the fear is even greater. And this fear is the reason the minority is persecuted. So, there always is a cause. And the cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People... like us.
Letʼs just talk about fear. Fear, after all, is our real enemy. Fear is taking over our world. Fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. Itʼs how politicians peddle policy and how Madison Avenue sells us things that we donʼt need. Think about it. Fear that weʼre going to be attacked, fear that there are communists lurking around every corner, fear that some little Caribbean country that doesnʼt believe in our way of life poses a threat to us. Fear that black culture may take over the world. Fear of Elvis Presleyʼs hips. Well, maybe that one is a real fear.
Fear that our bad breath might ruin our friendships.
Fear of growing old and being alone.
Fear that weʼre useless and that no one cares what we have to say..."

-from A Single Man, adapted from the novel by Christopher Isherwood and directed by Tom Ford