Obsessing over these graphics for Olivetti typewriters, mostly designed by the Italian graphic designer Giovanni Pintori. So classic, yet timeless. The amount of effort it takes to look effortless is a constant challenge for me in my own work, and I can’t help but wonder if Pintori whipped these out with his eyes closed and a smile on his face.
Booklet cover:
Posters:
Manual:
Ad:
Giovanni Pintori:
I once had a boss who would invite his team to his house for an amazing holiday dinner every year. We would walk in, smell the Christmas tree, drink some festive cocktails, and sit down together for a family meal that was the perfect counterpart to spending the holidays with actual family. We always did a very cheesy office secret santa with a $5 spending limit, but it always followed with the promise of our boss giving us individually selected books, mostly beautiful art books that us young kids could only enjoy otherwise as an indulgence. At the end of the night, most of us would get back on the Metro-North for the 2-hour ride back to Grand Central. Along that way, we obsessed over our new books and nervously analyzed out loud why he had given each of us the specifically selected book we were given. If the book wasn’t serious enough, or expensive enough, or heavy enough, or on a subject that one could not personally relate to, the timid insecurity we all had would ring out into the stale train air, “My boss hates me.” You could say we (like small children) really vied for his affection.
One year, I received Sugimoto’s Architecture of Time. I proudly showed off the cover of my book when my colleagues inevitably asked, “What did you get?”
He adores me and thinks I’m perfect.
Then there was the year I received Gregory Crewdson’s Twilight. This was my first introduction to his highly produced photos of suburbia and I remember slowly flipping through the book, horrified at the analyses that I knew would await me on the long train ride home. Does my boss think I’m sad? Lonely? Dark and soulless? So fake, that the fakeness was real? OMG. He thinks I’m a freak.
I remember the first time I saw a real Gregory Crewdson photo. It was enormous and absolutely spectacular. I could see how beautiful these images were, and that they had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with something unlike I had ever seen before in photography.
This all flashed up in memory because I see that Gregory Crewdson is having a show at Wave Hill of pics he took more than 15 years ago of fireflies. Fireflies also on my mind because they make appearance in Tinybop’s Plants app at dusk, a beautiful surprise for those who are curious enough to discover them.
Pictured above: Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 1996. Silver Gelatin Print. 6 3/8 x 9 5/8 inches. © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
CommentPaper to Plants from Tinybop on Vimeo.
Kelli Anderson made this unbelievable stop motion animation entirely out of paper.
CommentGrampy is a character from the Betty Boop cartoons, who likes to invent contraptions out of household items.
He has a thinking cap, which he puts on when he’s trying to solve a problem. The cap is a mortarboard with a lightbulb, which lights up when he has his “Aha!” moment.
I want this cap.
This episode is called Betty Boop and Grampy, produced by Max Fleischer in 1935. It’s good for a giggle:
And relatable (in both this post and in my work), here’s The New Yorker article on the “Aha!” moment (which inspired my reminisce on Grampy), seen through the eyes of their cartoonists.
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