Hasta La Ideas

Tweet your favorite grammar mistake for a chance to win a modern parody of Strunk & White

Typically when sending a text, Tweet or Facebook post, correct grammar takes the backseat to witty punctuation or uber-abbreviation. We may be devolving into “chatspeak,” but as the foundation of any language, grammar remains an essential tool even in the digital age.

Bringing life to such a humdrum subject is no simple task. Enter Chris Baker and Jacob Hansen’s new book The Elements of F*cking Style. Fresh off of the Thomas Dunne Books and St. Martin’s Press, the “helpful parody” addresses everything from common questions like “What the hell is a pronoun?” to conundrums like “Does not using paragraphs or periods make my thesis read like it was written by a mental patient?”

Baker is offering a copy of the book to the first five CH readers who Tweet at him (@funkmastabaker) with their favorite grammar f*ck up by a friend or public figure. To see what makes it such an enticing offer, check out our brief interview with the grammar-savvy author below.

You typically run a website, is this your first printed publication?

“Elements” is our first foray into the printed world, but the genesis of the idea began with the website “The Fucking Word of the Day,” which was based off the insight that learning can be made fun if you swap out boring, stale examples for those that use sex, drugs and swearing.

Why produce a physical book?

Despite its austere reputation, we’ve always considered grammar to be among the most sensual of all academic subjects. As a result, we wanted to present our material by way of a physical medium. The iPad and Kindle are great, and we won’t bemoan any customers who choose to download the book instead of springing for the hard copy. Having said that, our goal really was to create a book that could be shoved into a back pocket on the way out of the house, and then put back onto the bookshelf in the evening. Plus, it’s great for swatting flies, which can be of great benefit in a dorm room or office cubicle.

So what can we look forward to next?

Next, there will be a book more closely related to vocabulary. I’m also working on a book on cinema, and a number of other web related projects.

“The Elements of F*cking Style: A Helpful Parody” is available online at Amazon for $10, and also at various independent bookstores.

“I wanted the book to be like an interior design magazine, but with more pages and more images. Normally, a beautiful interior design story is only six pages, and you really don’t get enough. So I wanted 20 pages of these houses, and I also wanted really tight, detailed shots. There’s a lot of text in the book [written by Michael Owen Gotkin] and you can learn a lot by reading it, but that wasn’t an essential goal of mine. Through photography, I wanted to give people a perspective on these houses. Yes, you could visit them, and maybe you can’t, but you’ll never see them in the way that I photographed them. I shoot in natural light. I shoot the way the house looks. I don’t bring in massive amounts of equipment. I shot the whole book on negative film with long exposures. I painfully tried to create a sense of romance and nostalgia—and silence.”

-Photographer Don Freeman, speaking with us about his new book Artists’ Handmade Houses (Abrams), a collection of 13 homes handcrafted by artists and craftsmen including George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, Wharton Esherick, and Russel Wright.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Competition: we’ve teamed up with British designer Michael Young to give away five signed copies of his new book that chronicles his time working in China.

The hardback book contains images from Young’s projects and experiences since moving to Asia almost 20 years ago, as well as text on his evolution as a designer written by academic John Heskett and a foreword by Young himself.

Works in China highlights five key projects and includes interviews conducted by Heskett with client CEOs, Young’s design team and external consultants.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Michael Young: Works in China” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers.

Read our privacy policy here.

Competition closes 19 July 2011. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

The publication coincides with an exhibition of the designers’s work, on show at The Space in Hong Kong until 17 July.

More about Michael Young on Dezeen »

Here’s some more information from Young:

Michael Young Studio and Friends of HKDC are pleased to announce a gathering featuring Michael Young and his new book – works in China.

MichaeL Young Comments:

When I arrived in Asia I decided to record some of the important moments and meetings with new clients, I did not know the reason why, I just felt it important to collect the data since the impact the local environment was having on my creative process’ was immeasurable.

After a chance meeting with academic John Heskett in 2010, it was obvious we were working in parallel – studying how design could impact on the economic growth of brands. I never saw reason to make a classic design book for the coffee table, I wanted to make a useful tool and whilst the contents of this book are not a guide to working in China they will certainly demystify the process. After almost 20 years my first book “works in China”.

Pages : 160
Title : works in China
Introduction and interviews by John Heskett
Graphics : Fabian Monhiem
Hardback
Price 27.00 Euro inc post any where in the world

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Quick. What “proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes”? This is how the late philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul described propaganda, but his definition could also apply more generally to graphic design. Where one begins and the other ends (or should) is the subject of what promises to be a lively, amusing, and downright informative debate-cum-panel discussion that will take place tomorrow evening in New York at the Phaidon Store. The SoHo booklover’s paradise and co-sponsor Esopus magazine have lined up the ultimate panel of experts for the propagandorama: all-seeing design maestro Steven Heller, Shepard Fairey (he who shall be Obeyed), and that Subliminal Kid DJ Spooky, also known as Paul Miller. Stick around after the panel to pick up a copy of Heller’s smashing Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State, freshly published in paperback (the people’s format!), which he will be happy to sign for you. Click here for full details on tomorrow’s event.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Avec l’utilisation de plusieurs centaines de feuilles, l’artiste australienne Kylie Stillman conçoit et imagine ses oeuvres directement sur des livres dont le rendu est splendide. Avec des créations diverses, une sélection de son travail est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Sculpture Books
• Interactive Paper Sculpture
• Paper Sculptor

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