daniele capo

Suddenly this week summer has come, windows are now always opened and my cats study the movements of birds (with a more interested approach than Leonardo da Vinci). At the moment I have few design commisions (and soon I’ll become worried about), so I can play a little:

• reading books
• my font
• the project for a new press
• painting
• twitter
• etc.

Reading books

At the moment I’m reading ‘The French Revolution’ by Lefebvre, strangely when I started reading this book (because I feel like I knew nothing about it), the real-life french started the boss-napping thing. Good timing. One thing interesting, and discussed recently on Le Monde Diplomatique also, about the French Revolution is the course of events that lead larger and larger pieces of society to join and trasform the fight.

I Have read a novel by Anne Holt, What is Mine: a kind of Scandinavian greek tragedy, where the tragic destiny is reversed and the Father pays (before) for the sins of the Son.

I’ve also read François Cheng’s “Il vuoto e il pieno” a book on chinese painting. This book made me aware of this chapter from Laozi:

Put thirty spokes together to one hub,
The original empty space makes the use of wheel.
Knead clay into vessels,
The original empty space makes the use of vessel.
Shape door and windows for a house/room,
The original empty space makes the use of house/room.
So the things that are made are only conditions,
What [we] are using is still the original empty space.

And, to conclude I’ve read a little introduction to japanese philosophy (G. Forzani, I fiori del vuoto, Bollati Boringhieri).

My font

The progress of my serif font is slow, here is the present state of the art:

For a discussion about it, see the typophile thread where nice people try to help me.

The project for a new press

If you have read my site, you know sometimes I write about building a printing press. I have two idea at the moment and I’m trying to transform it in a real plan. It must be simple, and this is not simple. In the process of designing the press I started observing more closely photos of handpresses or platen presses: if you have a photo of a press, please send it to me!

Painting

The cited book on chinese painting (and the quote from Laozi) gave me the energy to start playing with ink and the negative/positive relationship:

Twitter

And, after all, I started twetting. I think twitter is good for the kind of person I am and, moreover, is something that make you feel better than, say, a facebook user. It is more like the facebook of the perverted.

Etc.

Very interesting the new advertising for Magnum Algida, the icecream, and the ‘pleasure card’: marx+freud

A friend of my sister asked me to make a small ‘journal’ for drawing/watercolor. Soon I will post some photo.