“All the World’s a Page”

I recently discovered a really interesting shop called “All the World’s a Page” – which I’d like to share with you in honor of my extreme excitement about seeing the show “Sleep No More” tomorrow night.

All the World’s a Page’s wonderfully executed shtick is that they fit the whole of a narrative onto a single page. Their website kicks off with: “Once upon a time we asked ourselves a peculiar question: could you fit an entire literary work onto a single poster? Would it still be legible? What would it reveal about the hidden structures and rhythms of the text? And how impressed would our friends be if we tried it out? So we did and they were mighty impressed.”

The Tragedy of Macbeth. Two-colour offset (midnight black / blood red). Word count: 17,084. Typeset in 2.45pt Malaga. Printed on 150g Munken Pure Rough.

Faust – Teil 1 & 2. Two-colour offset (poodle black / ginko green). Word count: 88,567. Typeset in 4pt Malaga. Printed on 150g Munken Pure Rough.

“Sleep No More” is a production by my all-time-favorite theater group Punchdrunk, with whom I fell in love when I saw their 2006 production of “Faust” at 21 Wapping Lane in London. The show I’m seeing tomorrow is here in New York, and (as you may have guessed) its roots are in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The biggest reason that I love Punchdrunk’s work is because they create an astonishingly full sense of traveling into the world of the story. You could say that they fit the whole of a narrative into a single building.

March 16’s daily design idea is what other physical forms can contain a literary world?

Tribeca Film Festival 2010: stories of people.

At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, my favorite movies were Metropia and L’Arnacoeur (The Heartbreaker). While the movies were very different, they both told the story of a man re-learning the “rules” of his everyday life and struggling to balance his own desires with the expectations surrounding him. They also both had a strong leading lady, great humor (especially L’Arnacoeur), and beautiful cinematography (especially Metropia) – all things I appreciate in narrative films.

the two main characters make a run for it in Metropia

The Heartbreaker practices his dance moves to help in his seduction

Of the other movies I saw, my least favorites (only in retrospect) were a couple experimental shorts that showed people in them but made no connection to them. Initially I suspected that I might have an unconscious bias against experimental film techniques, but then I remembered how much I loved John Thompson‘s black white black white, an experimental short made by two guys with an 8mm camera, a sheet of glass, and some mud. It definitely wasn’t narrative, but it was on an unwaveringly human scale.

Ultimately I’ve decided that the reason I love film is that it’s such a great medium for telling stories about people. On top of that, my favorite part of film festivals is getting to hear the directors, writers, actors, and producers tell their own stories about the films that they’ve made. Having that connection always makes the experience of the film so much richer.

May 2′s daily design idea is give your designs a human side.