{"id":3331,"date":"2009-01-29T06:27:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T11:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3331"},"modified":"2009-01-29T06:27:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T11:27:28","slug":"note-hideous-gridded-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/note-hideous-gridded-paper","title":{"rendered":"Note hideous gridded paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to put this Michael Bierut<\/a> post among the week’s Unrequired Reading, but I thought it deserved its own entry. It’s all about the notebooks that Bierut has used for the past 26 years. He’s up to #85.<\/p>\n

As anyone who knows me can imagine, I find this sorta thing fascinating. I love looking behind the curtain and seeing the processes and tools behind work. It’s the same reason that I enjoyed the Wrap-Up Show on Howard Stern<\/a> (before Rufus chewed through the antenna cable of my Sirius unit in a fit of pique and left me radioless).<\/p>\n

While he does explore his work process, Bierut also manages to discuss the significance of the notebooks as<\/em> notebooks, without treating them as dreaded Art Objects. His stories of Never Leave a Notebook Behind reminded me of the brunches I spent with Chip Delany<\/a>, who would invariably bust out one of his cheap spiral-bound notebooks to jot something down in mid-conversation. They were as much a part of him as his trademark Santa-beard.<\/p>\n

I’ve never been good at note-taking. I do keep a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook<\/a> in my Bag of Tricks, but rarely take it out anymore. I bring a second one with me to trade shows so that I can appear to be interested when companies give me long technical descriptions of their new products. At the office, I use notepads of employees who were fired. I find it kinda funny to take notes on phone conversations and write to-do lists on pages that bear the names of magazines that were shut down five years ago.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s an effort for me to keep a piece of paper and a pen nearby when I’m reading those Montaigne essays. I do write down a line here or there in the Notepad of my iPhone, but they only seem smart at the time. I’m more likely to write down the beginnings of a post here in WordPress and save it as a draft. That way, there’s even less evidence of what my thought processes are.<\/p>\n

But I digress (which is what you came here for; admit it); go read Bierut’s post nowish<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to put this Michael Bierut post among the week’s Unrequired Reading, but I thought it deserved its own entry. It’s all about the notebooks that Bierut has used for the past 26 years. He’s up to #85. As anyone who knows me can imagine, I find this sorta thing fascinating. I love … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Note hideous gridded paper”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[271,65],"class_list":["post-3331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-michael-bierut","tag-samuel-r-delany"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-RJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1847,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hero-with-a-thousand-typefaces","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":0},"title":"Hero with a Thousand Typefaces","author":"Gil","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A book that didn't make my \"best\/worst\/weirdest\" list from 2007 was Michael Bierut's 79 Short Essays on Design. I adored it but couldn't come up with a decent joke award for it. Looking back, I should've gone with \"Most fonts used in a good cause,\" since every essay is set\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Design"","block_context":{"text":"Design","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/design"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1568986998","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":840,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cola-war-on-terror","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":1},"title":"Cola War on Terror","author":"Gil","date":"February 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week's reading in the Official VM Book Club Of One was The Other Hollywood; this week it's The Substance of Style, Virginia Postrel's book on the value of aesthetic value, as it were. I just finished the third chapter, \"Surface and Substance,\" which ends with this passage: When terrorists\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1691,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/great-now-im-afraid-to-die","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":2},"title":"Great. Now I’m afraid to die","author":"Gil","date":"October 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Bierut shows us how to eulogize someone who was batshit-crazy.","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1367,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/making-music","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":3},"title":"Making Music","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Bierut at DesignObserver feels that Dreamgirls misses the soul of the music that it's trying to capture, and he has some neat remarks about the \"production line\" of Holland, Dozier and Holland at Motown records. It puts me in mind of Jack Kirby's most prolific and productive era, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2282,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-aug-22-2008","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Aug. 22, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"August 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Summer's nearly over, but there are plenty of oddball links to carry you through another week! Just click more! Did Hillary Clinton run the worst campaign since, um, John Kerry? * * * I had no idea Ruth's Chris originated in New Orleans. I do know that they cheat by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1623,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/new-reads","url_meta":{"origin":3331,"position":5},"title":"New reads","author":"Gil","date":"August 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In lieu of writing my substantive take on the idiocy of the subprime loan crisis -- do ya think they were called subprime borrowers for a reason? -- I'll fill you in on my latest readings. I began reading two books yesterday, and am enjoying both of them immensely. Around\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Design"","block_context":{"text":"Design","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/design"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1568986998","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3331"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3335,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}