Beginning with key Chinese characters—which the book refers to as building blocks—author ShaoLan Hsueh and artist Noma Bar have made a memorable guide, as helpful as it is pretty,…
Continue Reading…
Ji Lee’s entertaining book of letters in their most graphic element
Seeing the world through the eyes of Ji Lee means every billboard is a blank canvas, the alphabet has three-dimensional form and words are actually images. The former Creative Director at Google Creative Labs playfully communicates through visual design, depicting clever messages that are sometimes obvious and sometimes abstract, but always on point.
Joining Talk Back and Univers Revolved in the collection of Lee’s independent projects to take book form is Word as Image, which illustrates 100 of his “head-scratching” designs, some of which we first saw in his talk at 99% in 2009. Whether it’s turning the letter “A” into Dali’s famous mustache or reducing Christianity down to a few meaningful letters, Lee’s tongue-in-cheek outlook never dulls.
The book also challenges the reader to take their turn at crafting word images, offering insightful tips on the various ways you can play with letters, eventually reducing words down to a graphic form. Playing with scale, covering letters up or seeing letters as objects are all some of the ways Lee astutely outsmarts simple words.
An entertaining and enlightening book, Word as Image sells online from Penguin and Amazon.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Parse hop hop’s poetry with a book of dry interpretations
While most gets what Tupac meant when he rhymed, “I ain’t guilty ’cause, even though I sell rocks/It feels good puttin’ money in your mailbox” on his hit 1999 track “Dear Mama” (a song now included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry if you needed anymore proof of rap’s mainstream legitimacy), some rap lyrics are just downright baffling to anyone not pursuing a linguistics degree on the phenomenon of hyper-regional slang.
Seattle-based writer William Buckholz steps in with his book “Understand Rap: Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You and Your Grandma Can Understand.” The result is exhaustive and seemingly in earnest, making for hilariously thorough explanations of double entendres in the same class as the Twitter stream English50cent.
The book’s chapters cover ten thematic categories; “Fashion” includes favorites like “Hockey players pagin’ me to practice on my wrist” (with so much diamond jewelry, my wrist is like an ice rink), while “Places” describes selling drugs on a particular street in Cleveland, OH with “Slang on the double nine,” and from “Insults” you get poetic gems like “Leave you kinda startled like the funk off of Fritos”—comparing an element of surprise with the unexpected pungent smell of the corn chips brand.
Great for giggling over with friends or an ideal gift for any student of lyrics, “Understand Rap” sells from Abrams and Amazon.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
