Visuals


So Tanzania was full of beautiful sea and landscapes, interesting things to look at and constant surprises since I'd never been or lived anywhere quite like it before. But it was totally lacking in art, design and visual stimulus. I did a short, year long course in Graphic Design. It wasn't the kind of graphic design I wanted to be doing, I guess I wanted to be making and designing prints, illustrations and playing with word and image and semantic meaning. No cigar. We did a crash course in editorial design but even then our tutors were so restrictive and uninspired that we never got to do anything really experimental and fun. Anyway, I'll quite my moaning. This caught my eye in the underground in Sao Paulo:

and I felt happy to be back in the first world, back in a place where posters and signs are printed not poorly painted by hand. It seems strange that catching sight of this poster became one of those moments you have when you're making your way somewhere, alone in a big city and your thoughts are drifting between strange existential musings and working out which line you need to change onto and how, you catch sight of a cool piece of design and you think - wow, I'm not in Tanzania anymore. The lack of seeing anything like this for so long, I felt almost homesick, in London there a always cool things popping up, you almost stop noticing them, the city is saturated. Anyway, I felt at home, in a big city, miles and miles away from my city.