danacapybara

I’m really into these two Sekai no Owari albums — musically and conceptually.

There is a mix of Japanese and English songs across both. Combined, there’s probably a solid album-ful of English lyrics. Can we just talk about how big of a feat it is to write this much music in English? 

It’s common for Scandinavian/German bands to put out complete albums in English (which is already kind of a Germanic language), but the linguistic gap is so much bigger from CJK to English. And to do that with lyrics is deserving of an accolade. 

I also love the cover designs. I’m not gonna give it an AD’s crit, so just… look at it. 

I think the typeface choice also works really well, but it’s been bugging me for WEEKS because I can’t ID the font. 

It’s got kind of a ’70s feel to it, which is how I started looking very closely at Windsor. 

But that’s not really it. The feel of the typeface is sorta the right era, but the bowls and the R’s arm are different. 

Weirdly, the ’70s were a time when typefaces from a half-century prior — or even older — were popular (Cooper Black, for example, was designed in the ’20s). So Windsor is no exception (designed in 1905).

After going through Identifont, WhatTheFont, and just browsing typefaces by era, I still can’t nail down the typeface. 

There were two top candidates: Romana (the R’s stem and the O are similar, but the bowls are all wrong)

… and Newsbreaker JNL (bowls and the O are similar, but the R’s stem is wrong). 

It’s possible that it’s a custom typeface (if so, then omg who did it??), and maybe it’s not even a whole typeface, just those half-dozen capital letters. But I don’t know how likely it is that this band or their AD would commission something custom.

Ah, it’s driving me nuts!

I finished all 366 episodes (!!) of Bleach. 

Behind the scenes video

A few take aways:

1. It’s Marc Jacobs leading this campaign. 

I only know about him/his work because he made these really cute flat shoes that are ALL RODENT THEMED. Sorry, but rats are never depicted as cute, so yeah I jumped on this and looked thoroughly at this Marc Jacobs character. There’s a sense of playfulness, and color, that makes it feel fresh, that’s also present here for Louis Vuitton. I dunno, that’s my pedestrian opinion.

2. He said he used pairs to emphasize the idea of repetition.

So simple but so perfect because the pairs are often mis-matched twins. Just a little variation here and there. Ah, so good.

Excuse me, while I go down this very necessary rabbit hole and post a record of it here for future reference.

Saw this illustration on YKBX’s site, and my first two thoughts were:

1) The shoes are weird. Feels like he wouldn’t have chosen those…

2) Huh, the checkered dress reminds me of Louis Vuitton, specifcally:

Well, it’s because Louis Vuitton designed the outfit for the Vocaloid Opera character, pointy shoes and all!

It’s this guy doing the amazing album art. I love his work so much! 

Books / Short Fiction / Poetry

The Feather Thief [1]

Tales of Miyazawa Kenji

“Apple Thieves” by Beverley Bie Brahic

“Color and Light” by Sally Rooney

“The Starlet Apartments” by Jonathan Lethem

“All Rivers” by Amos Oz

Long reads / Articles / Poems [2]

Death-Cap Mushrooms Are Spreading Across North America by Craig Childs

When Tulips Kill by Maryn McKenna

Telling by Oliver Sacks

The Robot Caravan by Jill Lepore

The Island Song by Jiayang Fan

To the Letter by Mary Norris

A Night at the Museum by Jake Halpern [2]

I purchased this book as a gift and ended up giving it to myself. So good! Mix of natural history, museum heist, and child prodigy possibly turned greedy thief.

The headlines of these articles may differ online versus their packaged digital editions

OK, I guess I love stories of heists. Like the Feather Thief, this one is also based on real life, but set in France and overlaps the fine art world.

Here’s a little sidebar to an app I loved: Texture. Since 2016, I’ve been paying for monthly access to hundreds of magazines as well as their entire digital archive. Through it, I was able to devour articles and long reads (and eventually a lot of fiction when The New Yorker became available to my subscription tier). My Texture subscription largely floated my reading habits.

Many of the magazines are presented as they are in print, and a fair amount are special digital editions (with scrolling and animation). It was a great resource for editorial design and how publications tackled interactive design for content. 

June [✔] 

Half of 2019 is over! Instead of making my best of media lists at the end of the year, I’ve decided to do these semi-annually. Here goes!

Series

Russian Doll

Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salary Man [1]

Umbrella Academy

Atypical [2]

Jane the Virgin [3]

Death Note [4]

Bleach [5]

Ouran High School Host Club [6]

Movies

V for Vendetta

I am Mother

In 2016, I loved another show about everyday life and food in Tokyo so I gave this The Sweet Tooth Salary Man a try. While Midnight Diner pulls at your heart, this show mercilessly grabs you by your tastebuds… and spanks you with a velvet paddle. Yes, the show is about delicious food — real locations in Tokyo with real menu items — and yet it goes there. It’s the right amount of wrong with generous helpings of Freudian daydreams in the theme of dessert. 

In April, one of my beloved pets passed away after struggling with the month-long aftermath of a stroke. On her last full day, she curled up on my lap with a blanket. I could tell her time was coming, but the only thing I could do besides giving her water and food by syringe was to just stroke her softly for hours. This show played in the background. It was both enough of a distraction and a balm; it kept me going. This isn’t why you like shows, but I’ll always think of the wonderful last day I was able to give to a much-loved pet whenever I think of Atypical.

If you hate telenovelas, you’ll love Jane the Virgin. If you love telenovelas, you’ll love Jane the Virgin. See what this show does? I had a totally different (and wrong) expectation for this show, it’s so much better than what I thought it was. Yes, there are cliffhangers and evil twins and love triangles, but there are also witty uses of motion graphics (the show would not work without this element), forays into the creative writing process, ample helpings of Spanish dialogue, hilarious and complex characters (Yael Grobglas who plays Petra does not get enough credit!), and of course a healthy dose of magical realism.

Netflix made a buttload of anime available recently, and I am so happy to discover this category. I started with Death Note because I heard its merchandise was banned at a lot of high schools. Starting with what’s forbidden is not a bad rule to go by. 

I initially thought Bleach the anime would be too stupid. I wholeheartedly admit to my wrongs. Sure, there are some crappy production decisions (some backgrounds look half-assed and animations of clouds of dust settling sure do take up a lot of time), but the stories are rich. Each story arc brings at least a half dozen new, very thought-out character designs and back stories. And I love the hilarious and often self-deprecating after-the-credit-roll shorts. Props to the producers on taking risks for these 10-second long stories. Skip all live action Bleach movies, and come straight to the anime series.

Working on something with a Dutch theme, and I’m heading down a rabbit hole labeled Gerard Unger.

The Dutch aesthetic doesn’t do much for me personally, but maybe as Unger’s last typeface, Alverata is possibly less representive of his oeuvre — so I’m getting faint whiffs of the qualities that I love in *British* typefaces. I find myself looking at Alverata over and over.