Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

That Was The Week That Was — August 18th 2019

As Getz / Gilberto dominated the turntable this week, I continued to send out the Manifesto for Myself prints, only now the print arrives placed in-between a folded transparent printed overlay, giving some of the production details, which also match the style of the label with Morfff, my concrete letter holder. It's been great to see people share photos when they get the print, with so many being framed. A5 size prints are certainly the way forward as they're much easier to not only send but store as well.

Had a good client call to review the latest iterations. All very positive and certainly nearing completion. At one point there was an audible "wow" but I have no idea who said it — which can be a problem on conference calls with so many people assembled. Since then I've been exploring some changes and iterations based on the feedback. As an occasional distraction I started to explore using Vellum in Houdini. This is the system to simulate soft bodies and the like, and it's ridiculously good. My tests were stupid and very simple, but it was just to play around with so I can get familiar with its workings.

Notorious — one my favourite Hitchcock's films — is now back on limited cinema release with a new 4K restoration. It looks like though with everything going on right now I'm not going to have time to travel to Manchester to see it, which is a bit of a pain. Think I might have to rig up the projector and make a special night for watching this classic again.

I spent some time going through all the costings for the Produced for Use products — I now have a spreadsheet so it's like proper and everything. I just about make money on Notes to Myself as it was really expensive to make. It was never really about the money as such, more a labour of love. Seeing all these costs in front of me, from the boxes things get mailed in down to the little stickers I use, made me delve deeper into shaving off any residual costs, without losing quality.

New holiday reading arrived in the form of Semicolon by Cecelia Watson. This should fit nicely with The Collected Dorthy Parker.