Crayola's Law

A chronology of Crayola’s chromatic growth from 8 colors in 1903 to 120 colors today (not including metallics and neon). Weather Sealed reports that the average annual growth rate of 2.56% means a doubling of available hues every 28 years. That’s 330 colors by 2050. So every generation’s “standard” box has twice the variety its parents had. Thirteen colors over the years have been officially retired and three colors underwent official name changes.

The Color of Luxury

Some say it's purple, the color historically associated with royalty. Some say jewel tones. Others swear by black and still others go with gold.

When it comes to an instantaneous communication of affluence however, the colors of these boxes speak their message loud and clear. What's inside? It hardly matters. As for the outside, no need to wrap, a ribbon is just fine.

Didn't they look smashing piled up together under your tree this morning?

Sophie Cook, Genius in a Bottle

I gasped when I spotted the pastel chorus line of vessels in Daily Candy, of all places. I quickly clicked on the thumbnail and was taken to Horne, the online purveyor of beautiful objects. When I saw the lineup full scale, I was truly overcome with awe and delight. I then went on to the British ceramicist’s website and got to savor the porcelain pods, teardrops, and bottles individually. The shapes, colors, postures and surface subtlety makes for quite a visual feast.




Each piece is hand thrown and, as Cook describes it, “every piece is a challenge to make as porcelain is such a fluid medium on the wheel. I can throw up to six pieces a day but rarely, if ever, do all six survive the making and firing processes. On average, three will make it to their final destination.”

You know how many artists say that they are inspired by nature? I’m thinking that in Sophie Cook’s case it might be the other way around.

Of eBay and Empires

Awesome animated graphic of the rise and fall of world empires from 1800 by Pedro M. Cruz. I did a double take when I saw this because it looked so much like the "found palettes" I'd been collecting from eBay. It's a category I think of as "graphic cousins" or "visual homonymns"--they have visual similarities, but little in common beyond that. If there is a word for this phenomenon, I'm not aware of it.


Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.


Fisher Price records


Enamel skillets

I tried to come up with possibilities for what the word might be, and started googling. "Homograph" is already taken and refers to words that have the same spelling, but whose meaning can only be known from the context in which it is used. "Homoglyph" is also taken. It refers to two characters or sets of characters that appear very similar and can often appear identical. Examples are the numeral zero and the letter "O", or the letters rn and m. "HOMO pict" has somethig to do with chemical bonding. "Homopict" has to do with another kind of bonding.



When I tried working with “icon”, Greek for "image", I found out that "Homicon", is an annual convention for fans of Homicide: Life on the Street, while "Homocon" is short for “homosexual conservative” an oxymoronic political identity. Google assumed there was a space missing in "homoicon", so I was taken to an art essay in the Independent, Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? “Sebastian's appeal to gay men seems obvious. He was young, male, apparently unmarried and martyred by the establishment." "Homoiconic", however, is a word used in computer coding. According to Wikipedia, "Homoiconicity is a property of some programming languages, in which the primary representation of programs is also a data structure in a primitive type of the language itself, from homo meaning the same and icon meaning representation."

Alas, being at a loss for one word, has caused me to use many.

Gray Matters

Basements. All big buildings have them. Subterranean symphonies of meters, pipes, metal and concrete--and gray. Lots and lots of gray.


They all manage to be oddly familiar ...


and creepy at the same time.


In this particular basement, I couldn't help thinking about ...


Giorgio Morandi ...




Brice Marden ...




and Edwin Dickenson.


These three painters know a lot about color --


and a lot about gray.

Pimp My Bus

From the moment I saw my first Linea 17 turquoise bus, on day one in Buenos Aires, I was hooked.




There are 144 different bus lines in BA all privately owned and operated.







An eye-feast of color and typography ...




But really nothing compared to the old days when buses were rolling works of genuine folk art. See pre-1970s buses covered with the scrolling flourishes of ‘fileteado’ here and here.






Interiors, too, are personalized-- there was at least one instance of fuzzy dice, and fancy cut glass mirrors are installed over many of the windshields.

Buenos Colores

Garbage cans and other street furnishings are for most part invisible to us...




until we go someplace else. Above, waste receptacle, recycling bins, and public telephones in Buenos Aires.