Enfant Fantastic among modern Japanese illustrators, Radical Suzuki. His is a peach-fuzz fizzy delicious world.
[Interview, gallery, videos] Read more »

Following on from the Kerouac missing-chapter article, here is a trailer for a new documentary on Big Sur. The soundtrack has been crafted by Ben Gibbard & Jay Farrar.

Jack Kerouac, beatnik, American football star, marine, fire guard, movie worker, Pentagon worker, and author of numerous books which he carried around Herzog-esque in an old bag —unpublished for years. His best-selling work On The Road epitomised a wandering, lost generation —The Beat Generation.

Laying on the desk in front of me is a washed-out pink booklet with 11 type-writer set pages that constitutes the missing chapter to On The Road. Read more »

Travel quotes are as numerous as pebbles on the beach. But search amongst them and one finds some are smoother and shinier than others....

I have collected together what I think are the top 20 quotations about travel and the spirit of the journey —in no particular order. If you know of a better one, let me know. Read more »

The Nepali author of Tilled Earth and Forget Kathmandu talks about her work, the current political situation in Nepal, and her hopes for a new order.

Manjushree has written travelogues, novels, short stories, and non-fiction. Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy — part memoir, part travelogue, part political analysis — was sold only under-the-table upon publication but persisted as a testament to the ongoing crisis. The central tenet of all her publications to date has been the injustices and imbalances of Nepali society. Manjushree has consistently sought to give a voice to the people of Nepal through her writing. Read more »

A sure-fire way for a traveller to get to know a culture and its people better is to step outside the anaesthetising confines of hotels and stay in someone's home instead. Even more desirable in these penny-pinching times is to be able to do it for free. The couchsurfing phenomenon facilitates just that and has been connecting weary, low-budget travellers with far-flung couches around the world for a decade and rising. Sightseers of the world cast your fanny packs aside —it is time to go native, it is time, perhaps, to surf a sofa or three. Read more »

Creating something involves, amongst other things, a process of being inspired, learning, and taking that knowledge to try and build something better. The Web accentuates and diversifies that arena of shared knowledge and experience. I am learning about grid systems from someone who, in turn, has learnt from others.

Nathan Smith's fluid and fixed 960 Grid Systems are precise structural approaches that speed up prototyping and production. David Wertheimer's redesign of The Economist first opened my eyes to the concept of efficient grid systems and Nathan's work helpfully explains the methodology behind such systems and provides numerous working examples.

Standing up for layouts.

It's a long way from here back to dolphin island.

+What we can draw or print on paper is sometimes a little harder to achieve in the wonderful wobby world of web design.

Part of a client design request —handed to me as a crayon drawing on a bleached sheet of A4— were two rough and aberrant intersecting lines intended for the division of the website's structural areas. Read more »

"We have been a week under canvas and discovering a Greek island. Our backs are sore, but our hearts are full. We are poorer, we are richer. We are happy. We are free."