Saturday, June 20, 2009

Daily Routines


Inspiration can be a fickle mistress, and part of the artist's work is to develop an effective seduction strategy.  Sometimes it can take a great deal of finesse in order to entice the muse of productivity to come out and play.   Encompassing favored locations, drugs of choice, or even requisite lunch menus, many artists have come to be known for their very specific (and often peculiar) work habits, which can be as interesting and unique as the work they help produce--sometimes more so.

Daily Routines is an amazing collection of interviews with artists, writers and great thinkers about the way they structure their days.  I love being able to get a firsthand account of extraordinary people doing ordinary things.  It's somehow simultaneously comforting and inspiring. (hey, even Virginia Woolf needed a snack break sometimes...)

Many thanks to Tim for the great find!

Here is an excerpt from Daily Routines, which details Simone de Beauvoir's day-to-day working habits. 

Enjoy!
-Gillian



Simone de Beauvoir
INTERVIEWER: People say that you have great self-discipline and that you never let a day go by without working. At what time do you start?



DE BEAUVOIR: I'm always in a hurry to get going, though in general I dislike starting the day. I first have tea and then, at about ten o'clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o'clock, I go back to work and continue until nine. I have no difficulty in picking up the thread in the afternoon. When you leave, I'll read the paper or perhaps go shopping. Most often it's a pleasure to work.


INTERVIEWER: When do you see Sartre?


DE BEAUVOIR: Every evening and often at lunchtime. I generally work at his place in the afternoon.


INTERVIEWER: Doesn't it bother you to go from one apartment to another?


DE BEAUVOIR: No. Since I don't write scholarly books, I take all my papers with me and it works out very well.



INTERVIEWER: Do you plunge in immediately?


DE BEAUVOIR: It depends to some extent on what I'm writing. If the work is going well, I spend a quarter or half an hour reading what I wrote the day before, and I make a few corrections. Then I continue from there. In order to pick up the thread I have to read what I've done.


INTERVIEWER: Do your writer friends have the same habits as you?


DE BEAUVOIR: No, it's quite a personal matter. Genet, for example, works quite differently. He puts in about twelve hours a day for six months when he's working on something and when he has finished he can let six months go by without doing anything. As I said, I work every day except for two or three months of vacation when I travel and generally don't work at all. I read very little during the year, and when I go away I take a big valise full of books, books that I don't have time to read. But if the trip lasts a month or six weeks, I do feel uncomfortable, particularly if I'm between two books. I get bored if I don't work.


The Paris Review, Spring-Summer 1965
(Thanks to Marcine Miller.)

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Vintage Bally

Graphic design in classic French advertisements has long been a source of inspiration for me (though lately others have been drawing inspiration as well... see Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, et. al).

Designer Jacques Auriac's work for Bally is a sensational representation of what makes this genre so alluring: the colors, the bold shapes, the simplicity.  What I really love about these images is how they convey such a strong statement without making any direct references to the products being advertised.  Instead, the prints rely on visual elements to convey the style and energy of the brand.



(My apologies for the tiny image - but it was too cute not to post...)




-whitney

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Time-saving tips for busy graphic designers

Thank you to JP Williams of Amassblog.com for sharing this letter from one of his vast collections of typographical ephemera:  written on official Bauhaus letterhead and signed on page 2 by Walter Gropius, this  official correspondence is typed entirely in lowercase font.

The bottom of the letterhead contains the adage, "wir schreiben allas klien, denn wir sparen damit zeit", which translates to "we are writing everything in lower case in order to save time".


I love the idea of letting one's design influence all aspects of life, correspondence, love...  to efficiency and beyond!

--g