Links on Art and Design: A digest of short items from Twitter and other sources

Some interesting links and short items on Art and Design from The New Modern twitter stream and other sources.

Architecture

Design

  • Hollywood’s computers: NPR looks at the computer screens shown in films that tell a story in a flash of computer animation. [read/listen]
  • A blog entirely dedicated to the beauty of ampersands [view] via @swissmiss
  • Beautiful, historic, and/or interesting letterheads enshrined Letterheady [view] via @walterolson
  • Why did the modernists love sans serif typefaces? [read] via @thinkaboutart & @ColinPeters

Visual Art

  • How art affects the brain, a study/exhibition at the Walters Museum [read] via @davetroy
  • Niagara Falls… to American art what portraits of kings are to European art? [read]
  • A typically lovely illustration by the legendary Arthur Rackham [view] via @ThinkAboutArt & @EricOrchard

Polaroid film: A 1972 “introduction” by Charles and Ray Eames

So serious–artistically and technically–for what is basically just an advertisement!

This short film is intrinsically interesting because it was made by the iconic designers Charles and Ray Eames, but it’s also fascinating as a time capsule of 1972… as a technical lesson on how a wonderful invention worked… and as a reminder of why–even in our age of instantly sharable digital imagery–people still desire this kind of tangible photography.

[Video found via Merlin Mann]

Note: The above YouTube version is inferior to a Vimeo version that I first posted. Unfortunately, it seems to have disappeared. If I can rediscover the better rendition, I’ll repost it.