Typical

From time to time, particularly at networking events just after I’ve explained that we both run Union Jack Creative and have day jobs, someone will ask what our typical day looks like: frankly, not especially exciting. Our typical days involve logging a lot of computer time, for better or worse, and since we don’t live in a neighborhood with coffee shops I can’t even pretend we leave the house to work there. I suppose that’s part of the reason we love to bike so much; it provides our daily excitement.

At any rate, the question comes up, and it’s just not one I have an interesting answer to. Instead, let’s talk about another pretty typical occurrence while we’re spending all that time on our computers, which is falling down the rabbit hole that is the internet. For Jack, this happens most frequently with Wikipedia or Pitchfork; for me, lately, it’s Pinterest. This morning, by way of example:

I did my morning scroll through Pinterest while eating breakfast, and I happened upon a letter constructed from what appeared at first glance to be Jenga blocks. After quite a bit of clicking, I tracked the image to Colossal, where it was used in a feature about the artist Marc Böttler, who created an alphabet using blocks photographed from a specific angle so that the stacks and rows lined up to form each letter. In the Böttler feature, Colossal referenced the similar work of Jérôme Haldemann, using toothpicks; onward I clicked.

In TYPICK, Haldemann channeled the hedgehog for a school assignment, and modeled a specific font (Bodoni). Haldemann’s work reminded me of the shadow script sculptures of Fred Eerdekens, which I was sure I had pinned at some point. (I hadn’t.)

In my futile search for Eerdekens’ work in my pin boards, I rediscovered the shadow portraits of Kumi Yamashita – some created using letters and a single light source.

So, there it is – a typical part of my typical day. My mind has always worked this way (just ask my mother), hopping from one topic to the next in a flash, so much so that I also typically spend time retracing my wanderings through the apartment to try to remember what I had been thinking about minutes before. The internet is really just an enabler, but sometimes, like this morning, the trip is a delight and the discoveries are worth it.

What have you discovered lately?

image credits: 1-Marc Böttler, via Colossal; 2-Jérôme Haldemann, via Colossal; 3-Fred Eerdekens; 4-Kumi Yamashita