Cloud Watching

I can't believe no one's commented on my floaty word cloud thingie! It took forever to find the perfect one. Isn't it beautiful? (Though sometimes it reminds me of a swarm of mosquitoes) What I love is how dynamic it is; it's poetry in motion - literally. So expressive. Don't you just want to play with it forever? Dragging your cursor thru, in, around and beside, twirling it, stretching it... Like silver thread thoughts from Dumbledore's mind.

image via art via

May 3, 2010 Update:  Blogumous mysteriously quit working much to my disappointment :(

Type O

I love words, letters and numbers. I love books. I love typewriters, type, and typography. And so does pretty much everyone else in the world. I know I am totally not unique in this regard. But the upside of being one of the unwashed masses is that there's a market for what I like, so people with talent keep creating it!


Zebra Eye by, White Hand-type by, Inject Knowledge Question Mark by, Insomnia by
When M for Amazing was little his dad would play an old radio play for him about a shipwreck loaded with rats that crashed onto a lone lighthouse in a storm. The rats are cunning and surround the lighthouse gnawing and exploring, trying to find the way in. The Lighthouse Keeper goes mad and in one scene throws his body against the glass window then falls back to view all the rats pressed against the glass in an effort to get to him. "Look!" he screams, "My portrait in RATS!"

This is Stacy Benson's self-portrait not in rats, but in words. So cool.


I think the following piece, besides being such a perfect visual representation of this type of conversation, also absolutely rings true in content. We've all been there, done this.

I think these next two are excellent examples of consumer friendly typography in ads - Madison Avenue Smart. The Titanic poster isn't done justice unless you click on it and look at it full size.


{Why Did The Titanic Sink? via}

And this bit is called Point of View, for obvious reasons. . . Leave it to the Brits.

Via far better bloggers than I

Word

I've been trying to add a dynamic tag cloud generator to this blog - not a static one-time-shot, but one that would continually renew the image as new posts were added. I guess my html expertise of four days isn't enough to accomplish that yet. But it's been fun playing with all the different widgets and gadgets. The results remind me of Magnetic Poetry but more sophisticated. I'm thinking a lovely piece of art could be made by inputting a favorite poem or an old love letter. Or maybe an individualized gift for someone by entering words from their life history? Or sweet baby words to hang in a nursery. I can tell I'll definitely be playing with Wordle a lot more in the future; give it a try!

(poem image via the awesome Hank Conner}