matt kirkland > designer for hire

It’s worth nine minutes. I promise.

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:33:18 -0700

It’s worth nine minutes. I promise.

When Nina Katchadourian gets bored on long flights, she dresses...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:33:56 -0700

When Nina Katchadourian gets bored on long flights, she dresses up in toilet paper and takes photos. The project is called, “Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.”

Aaron Draplin lays it down. Via this pretty great Creative...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:40:41 -0700

Aaron Draplin lays it down. Via this pretty great Creative Mornings talk.

America’s Dead Sea. Our neighbor to the east.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:40:41 -0700

America’s Dead Sea. Our neighbor to the east.

The evolution of the moon. Via APOD.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:48:18 -0700

The evolution of the moon. Via APOD.

Gloves for biking, with built-in turn signals. Love it.

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:39:34 -0700

Gloves for biking, with built-in turn signals. Love it.

This amazing potted plant wall is in the background of this...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:26:53 -0700

This amazing potted plant wall is in the background of this video. I really want to make something like this. And then have somebody else responsible for watering it.

A certification in piracy. From MIT.

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:05:01 -0800

A certification in piracy. From MIT.

Now this is how you sell razor blades.

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 07:52:40 -0800

Now this is how you sell razor blades.

A quick book list

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:36:51 -0800

A few weeks ago someone asked if I’d compile a list of some of my favorite books. I sent him this list below, but I thought I ought to save the list for my own later reference. Here’s the email, below.

Here’s a quick list of my absolute favorites, all novels I’ve read multiple times because I love them so much - and books that I think have been important in my mental life. They’re ordered by ‘easy-to-read-ness’, but that’s just for convenience. Some notes:

I didn’t include any nonfiction or poetry. I really like novels.
You mentioned missing out on stuff in college, but most of these aren’t the classics - they’re what I read for pleasure in college. As an art major I wasn’t assigned much reading at all.
Sorry if these are obnoxiously long.
Don’t feel bad if you never actually read any of these.
Let me know if you have questions!

Matt

———

Book of the Dun Cow, Walter Wangerin. Kids book, barnyard animals, easy read. But despite that, it is utterly beautiful and changed the way I think about the everyday things in life. Don’t write it off because it’s juvenile fiction.

Gilead, Marilyn Robinson. A modern novel from just a few years ago. Totally lovely, fascinating. It’s a series of letters from an old pastor to his young son. I think growing up in the church this had a special resonance. It’s really, really, really good. It taught me what people mean when they say a book is ‘generous.’

The serious books by Graham Greene. These are, in order I like them: The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, and The Heart of the Matter. Easy reads, and really powerful. I can’t recommend these enough.

The Great Divorce, CS Lewis. He wrote lots of stuff, but Mere Christianity and Weight of Glory are great introductions. The Great Divorce is a novel, and not about Divorce, but The others (Mere and Weight) are my only deviations from fiction here, but his writing was really formative during my college years, and its stuff I still go back to. If you like either of these, then there are dozens more like it.

All Hallows Eve, by Charles Williams. Williams was this weird semi-christian semi-occultist dude who wrote what seem at first to be normal novels, but then take bizarre left turns into almost incoherent mysticism. But if you can hang with him for those bits, it’s great. He’s sort of an embodiment of a mystical side of Christianity that is obviously not a part of my upbringing. His other novels are good too, but this is I think the easiest to get into. Fair disclosure: I’m a little obsessed with him, and I’m on the board of the Charles Williams Society.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill or The Flying Inn by G.K.Chesterton. Chesterton writes novels that play with ideas, and while they’re not great novels, they are fun and clever. In Notting Hill, neighborhood pride among small pockets of London becomes so strong that wars are fought between Hyde Park and Notting Hill, and the city devolves into a kind of glorious feudalism. In Flying Inn, the UK bans the sale of alcohol, so two rebels go on the run with a cask of rum and a wheel of cheese.

- and getting into the older, ‘classics’ -

David Copperfield, Dickens. I hated Dickens in high school, and love him now. David Copperfield changed that. But while the writing is great, his characters are the best thing Dickens does. You have to remember that Dickens is so-so at plot, but he writes eternal characters, exaggerated people who seem as real and important as people you know in real life. They don’t learn or grow like in a regular novel, but that doesn’t diminish them. I think Bleak House is actually my favorite of Dickens, but Copperfield is where I started.

Moby-Dick, Melville. While the plot is interesting, the triple pleasures of reading Melville are:

1. The astonishing artistic quality of writing. You might call it the technical aspect. His turns of phrase are so well turned.

2. The lively characters he paints, with a really impressive depth of knowledge about people.

3. The off-topic, rambly, funny chapters about whaling and life aboard a ship.

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy. It’s great, and gets better the more I read it. Better than War and Peace. Like Dosto, I feel like I’ve learned a TON about people by reading Anna Karenina.

Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky. Lots of people dislike or can’t get through this, but once you get into Dosto’s rhythm it’s a great ride. Fun, fascinating plot, and the most strange but lifelike characters. I really get the sense that on some level Dosto understands the human soul, and varieties thereof, in a way I never will.

Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne. This is a long, old, silly book, but if you can get past the ancient phrasing and antique words, it is hilarious. It’s a postmodern ramble and was written in the 1700s. Most people hate it.

Nate pointed me to this (fairly boring) video of AMAZING robots....

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:14:58 -0800

Nate pointed me to this (fairly boring) video of AMAZING robots. Rather than build a robot that can find a shoebox on a shelf, pick it up, and bring it to a worker, Zappos has robots that bring the whole shelf to the worker. Impressive.

School desk design! The bag rack is great, but so is the little...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:24:35 -0800

School desk design! The bag rack is great, but so is the little ledge that stops your laptop from falling off the front edge.

This guy is my new hero. Payphones in NYC converted to guerilla...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:18:08 -0800

This guy is my new hero. Payphones in NYC converted to guerilla libraries.

Oh, we are so headed to LACMA to see this.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:08:41 -0800

Oh, we are so headed to LACMA to see this.

Kathryn Clark makes quilts that visualize foreclosures in...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:00:05 -0800

Kathryn Clark makes quilts that visualize foreclosures in American cities. Above: Detroit.

I’ll tell you something about yourself. You may think,...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:54:23 -0800

I’ll tell you something about yourself. You may think, “You know what, self? I’m not really interested in how chicken wire is made.” But you’re wrong.

Watch this, and tell me you’re not a little bit fascinated at the way the machine twists the wire together to make a fence.

Kohei Nawa takes taxidermied animals and covers them with glass...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:54:24 -0800

Kohei Nawa takes taxidermied animals and covers them with glass beads of varying sizes.

Amazing calligraphy from the 1600s. Lots more on Flickr.

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:30:08 -0800

Amazing calligraphy from the 1600s. Lots more on Flickr.

I do it every year, but I’m always willing to have...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:56:41 -0800

I do it every year, but I’m always willing to have company. I hereby propose a toast to Charles Dickens, on today his 200th birthday.

Cheers, Charles.

Oh, and a shameless plug: you should get my friend John’s new book about Charles Dickens. It’s pretty great.

Astounding. These anatomical cross-sections of a human body are...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:04:25 -0800

Astounding. These anatomical cross-sections of a human body are made of tiny paper strips, a fringe craft called ‘quilling.’