Miriello Grafico

I never though of the desert southwest as a place to be on the lookout for interesting typography. Seattle, San Francisco, Winston/Salem maybe, but US 5, west out of Phoenix, not so much.  Driving back from Phoenix brought me off the main roads and onto some lost and aged typography, just aching to be seen and used  again.- Ron

With the struggle increasing between on-line versus on-paper information delivery system, I know where I stand. I’m willing to read short update news off the web or my iPhone, but reading a lengthy book or anything I care to contemplate, from a screen doesn’t cut it. The Espresso System was announced recently at the London Book Show. It offers publishers and bookstore owners and anyone with the cash I guess- a true self contained print-bind-trim on-demand solution for the printing of countless titles, in a choice of languages. (In about three minutes!).

Is this the new shape of the neighborhood bookstore? So much for browsing titles of impulse book buying.

Here’s the story from http://www.boingboing.net/

Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.” The public domain titles were provided by the Open Content Alliance (“OCA”), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. The OCA and ODB are working closely to offer this digital content free of charge to libraries across the country. Both organizations have received partial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The EBM, now available for sale to libraries and retailers, can potentially allow readers anywhere to obtain within minutes, almost any book title in any language, whether or not the book is in print. The EBM’s proprietary software transmits a digital file to the book machine, which automatically prints, binds, and trims the reader’s selection within minutes as a single, library-quality, paperback book, indistinguishable from the factory-made title.

I have the pleasure of periodic visits to Italy. There’s an 84 year old farmer (contadino) named Guido in our village of Radicondoli. While the world would have seemed to have passed by this wise and savvy contadino over the past decades, a case can be made for the exact opposite. Guido Castellini’s quality of life has always been high, if you measure it by the quality of food on his table and the sharpness of mind after eight plus decades. And the barter tradition that exchanges his glorious eggs for Carlo’s meat or Salvatore’s cheese for his olive oil, is suddenly the stuff of new and progressive blogs underwritten by WIRED. Guido Castellini has been working one plot of glorious land for the past six decades slyly aware that one day we’d likely be back full circle to celebrate in his definition of “quality of life”.

Pass me those artichokes and fresh ricotta would you please . . .

Enjoy this article from John Tierney of the NY Times on a related take on a similar subject.

Salve, Ron

I’ve always been into globes, particularly old ones and odd ones. I’m not completely sure why. Probably because of their flawless shape, their utility and because of what they stand for. I like the idea of traveling to those unpronounceable places you saw as a kid, and still can’t pronounce as a grown-up. Unfortunately, these orbs have become popular with globe-collector types too, so cool ones have become harder to find without overpaying.

I’ve taken to making my own globe series instead. World of Words is one piece in a globe-like series I’m working up. This one was fashioned from an aerospace caliper, two volumes of the History of Negros in America, and an aircraft piston head. I’ll post more as they’re completed. -Ron    Photo by Ken West

When I told designer Michael Osborne I was going to be in Italy he said, “You gotta go see my design mentor, Primo Angeli. He’s living in Spoleto now. And if you don’t like Primo, you’ll still love his wife Deanie”.

I’d heard about Primo Angeli for decades, as he developed his packaging empire in San Francisco, but we had never met. I was intrigued to get an idea of what a wildly successful, type-A designer might be doing now in the bucolic small town of Campello Sul Clitunno, near Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. Maybe he spends his days covered in paint, grappling with immense canvases, straining to express his client-suppressed creative vision. Maybe he’s become a wine expert, amassing a wine cellar of Italy’s unknown best. Or maybe he’s still just trying to wind down from 40 year of running a top creative firms in a city that was at the center of the outer most reaches of the change and experimentation in the 60’s and 70’s.

Marlane and I spent two days with Primo and his rock-of-Gibralter and beautiful wife Deanie, in Campello. I found that Primo is doing a little bit of everything I projected and more. He’s still making sense of the business he piloted for decades,  stories of it’s wild successes and failures find their way into much of what he talks about. I learned that Primo loves to tell stores, like how his jukebox-selling father pleaded with him in broken English to not go into design, “Please Primo, donta do dis ding.” And I learned that Primo is also lucky, lucky to be the first born (Primo) instead of the second (Secondo). Secondo Angeli Design, just doesn’t have the same zing does it.

He doesn’t speak much Italian after ten year in Italy. But he can find the exact words for the situation when he needs them. It’s one of his gifts. When the cook at their favorite local restaurant came back to refill a basket of deep fried antipasti, Primo blurted, “Questi sono criminali”. (Those things are criminal!)

Seeing what people do with their success interests me greatly.  Primo and Deanie are living their full lives in Umbria with their opera singing son and his new wife, creating new and simple successes every day. Just like the day we spent together becoming new and fast friends. “I’ma glad you doin dat ding Primo.”- Ron

I just got back from southern France and Italy. An amazing trip full or connections with creative people and amazing beauty.  I wandered into a small  store in Avignon called VOX POPULI on the suggestion of our Provence experts, friends Simon and Debra Ritchkin. Talking with the owner/artist Pascale Palun- even now two weeks later- and I’m still captive in her vision of beauty and how she works.

Pascal and her husband Bruno have been collecting items from Frances rich tradition of brocantes (flee markets really) and have translated their collection of discards into a world of fantasy and old/new beauty and transporting visual dreamlike richness. Pascale invited us to tour their atelier on the second floor of a funky aged flat in Avignon center. She explained that she sells custom pieces to Anthropologie for use in their retail store displays. The work they do is really more of a world, an environment, a state of mind,  than a work. The entire atelier was full with assemblages and wire-drawn scenes, hanging lamps, re-purposed film negatives, and on and on.

I left their “world” mesmerized by the vision she has and her amazing way of seeing the potential in items that were destine to be discards. I’ll be back to Avignon, just to see VOX POPULI again, and maybe have a few more bottles of Cote du Rhone.

Bicycles tend to be an ongoing theme here at the MG blog, maybe because these products are the perfect blend of brand, design, functionality, and style - with international flavor thrown in too. Yet another cool bike blog when you need your bike fix: http://bicycledesign.blogspot.com/

A recent New York Times article by architecture and design writer Allison Arief, addresses the unique role of design and designers in the current economic downturn. The article supports my thinking that idea-makers can have more impact now than ever before, particularly ones that are resourceful and pragmatic about their work. Rather than waiting for enlightened patrons, designers need to become their own best patrons and start ideas others are hunger to engage in.-Ron

Above is an except from Allison’s article.  (Read it in full here at The New York Times.

At its heart, design is about problem-solving, but it’s also about problem-identifying. Instead of creating a need for things, designers can now focus on responding to things we do need. We may have never been confronted with as many problems as we are today; the blame for them can’t be attributed to designers, but many future solutions can — and will be.

After finishing our BLURB book on Barrio Logan a few months, tracking self-publishing has been on my radar. While  “vanity press” was once the last resort for struggling writers, it seems like it could become the new “test ground” for print publishers. With the publishing model under financial strain (what other business model allows retailers to send back their unsold units for refund and destruction) they can now cherry pick the selected “draft” publications with the potential for a more mass distribution, without having to pre-fund traditional royalties, production costs, etc.

My friend Troy Viss just sent me to Magcloud.com ,  an on-line self-publishing magazine site. I just ordered a sample copy of a cool design form the Philippines. If the quality is decent we’ll  experiment with the model. At .20 a pages it’s affordable and a new tool that when matched with quality creative can help move opinion and spawn ideas. All part of the “Creativity is the New Currency” mantra we’re chanting here at MG.- Ron

The images above are pages from a few Magcloud magazines.

BARRIO LOGAN DESCUBIERTO is a visual celebration of the working waterfront Hispanic neighborhood in San Diego, called Barrio Logan. The 88 page book is a graphic expose of the visual richness and unique creative energy of the community, featuring details of murals, typography,  sign painters, activists art and general community visual richness.
The book is designed by the team here at MG, led by Lauren English, many who have been active in the promotion and celebration of the community and it’s passionate and active creative members. The book contains a listing our neighborhood discoveries of cool, including artists, restaurants, activists, cafes, place we as designers have discovered and wanted to turn others onto.

While many work so feverishly to be wealthy, then build a fence around the property and never come in contact with the real world, the Barrio stands for the opposite. It’s a place where people share their feelings, their color, and eccentricities. The pathway to riches very much depends on how you define the riches. - RM

Preview the complete book at  http://www.miriellografico.com/mg/barriobook/. The book is available from that link for about $68.  That’s the publishers price, but they do a decent job. (We’ll even customize it with tipped-in found objects from the streets if you want to bring it in.)

Viva mejor.