And just like that, it is February. I feel like I spent all of last month just getting into the groove. Last week, I finished off my most pressing deadlines, and did more admin tasks than I would have liked. There are a lot of different things going on at work, and I’ve been struggling with code-switching.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING
1.
On Tuesday afternoon I sent out a new issue of my newsletter. This one is about pixel type and needlework, and I show a handful of books that feature woven, embroidered or knitted letterforms, which could just as well have been pixel typefaces. I’ve been interested in this connection for a long, long time, and I also wrote a little about a couple of workshops I’ve facilitated that tinkered with this idea.
2.
Running an online shop is hard. I spent half a day doing inventory, which had become impossible to postpone because a couple of bookstores I love agreed to stock the India Street Lettering zines. Then I got the zines ready for the stores by wrapping them in sparkly tissue paper that I am very pleased about. And then there was making GST invoices for past orders in the specific format that my accountant requested. There is only a small number of zines left, and I am excited to send them all off to new homes so I can concentrate on making something new.
3.
Last Wednesday on my day off from TypeTogether, Amber and I decided to play hooky and head out to lunch at Café Lota. Off late, I hadn’t kept tabs at what was happening at the Crafts Museum, so I was happy to find that there was an exhibition about ikat textiles that was going. It dovetailed so perfectly with what I had been writing and compiling for my newsletter, and gave me the push I needed to get it ready for publication. I decided to give India Art Fair a miss this year, so it was doubly nice to catch an exhibition the same week.
4.
Amber and I went birdwatching after more than a month. Just a stroll in the neighbourhood park, but it is winter so we saw almost two dozen birds in only 45 minutes. The highlight was the big group of red-naped ibises. Two winters ago, the park was home only to a pair of them, but their numbers have really grown. It was also nice to catch some wagtails before it is time for them to migrate away.
5.
I posted my 500th photograph on India Street Lettering — what a thrill!
I’ve been thinking a lot about this project and Instagram. I never made a dedicated handle for it, and I find it increasingly dull to post the photos on the app. But given that most folks seem to be consuming everything on social media, I sometimes wonder if anyone ever finds what I publish on the website. The website has its advantages — tagging and annotating, for instance — that mean a lot to me, and help me make sense of the photographs. For me, this documentation goes beyond nostalgia, or a thirst for the aesthetic, or even the desire to capture every iconic sign. I want to make connections, discover new paradigms of letter construction and typography, find patterns within and across cities and neighbourhoods, and embrace new ways of seeing letterforms that does away with elitist ideas we learn in design school. Instagram just doesn’t feel like the place for that. But is it the place from where I can introduce more people to this intention? Probably.
6.
Months after I wrote it, my essay about the behind the scenes work for Primarium went up on the TypeTogether blog. This project was almost two years of my work life, and I feel quite proud seeing it come together as well as it has.