online:22 july 2008 modified: 21 July 2008 21 July 2008 the design of the world
by pond 1 in late evening
...the so familiar yet always refreshing sight of the backs of these tall houses across the water... the irregular placing of their rear windows, all painted white and set in walls of yellow brick that became greyish when the air here was smoky*...
*clean air legislation (permitting only smokeless fuels in British cities) came into effect in the 1950s
...these accidents of the design of houses whose fronts are deliberate facades (imitating the Graeco-Roman architecture of the Italian Renaissance) are to me, and perhaps to others, the unconscious elements of a semi-random unofficial beauty that is seldom described yet is to me reassuring... one of the real attractions of this place and of this world...
...crossing the causeway between ponds 2 and 3 i see six vapour trails converging towards the north... some are new and sharp and some are blown about by the winds... and i see completely still water on each side of the roadway... and now, on a seat among trees on nearby a hilltop, i feel at ease and at home in the presence of these things... and these words...
...and sometimes i wonder at the ordinariness of the words that come through my fingers as i tap on this screen and how they differ from the words in my other writings... technical or experimental or poetic...
...the title of this fragment came as i remembered a film i saw today about the typeface Helvetica**... and particularly the strong loves and hates it arouses in the typographers and graphic designers who described their work and their feelings about it...
**Helvetica, a documentary film by Gary Hustwit, 031 Plexifilm, a production of Swiss Dots in association with Veer, 2007, 95 minutes.
...as i listened i remembered my own dislike of that typeface - i realised (from how it was described) that each part of it is over-designed and made to carry the idea of standardisation and control, and that is why it is liked by some and hated by others... i much prefer the lighter and freer shapes of Gill Sans... and the unnamed inscriptions of David Jones in which each letter is the start of a rethink, a form of designing afresh in each object that in principle should become more possible with computer-aided designing!
...these various observations of the design of the world (both natural and artificial) are to me the ingredients of a new way of living that we haven't yet experienced but which it is my not so hidden hope to explore in these writings... mmmmmmmmmmmmm...
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