Across cultures, eras, and disciplines, a small vocabulary of shapes recurs again and again in symbolic systems. These are not arbitrary. They are the result of how human perception organizes the world—how we see boundaries, directions, forces, and relationships. Each shape carries a set of tendencies, not fixed meanings but…
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A symbol is not merely a mark, an image, or a thing—it is a bridge. It stands in one place while pointing somewhere else, carrying meaning across a gap between the visible and the invisible, the concrete and the abstract. A symbol allows something to be seen that cannot, in…
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Number One: Pursue Obsession Without Apology The subjects that return to you uninvited — the ones you feel almost embarrassed by their persistence — are precisely the ones worth pursuing. A personal visual language is built from obsession, not from subjects deemed appropriately serious or commercially viable. The embarrassing preoccupation…
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One might ask why this matters — whether it is not, finally, a self regarding project, a kind of extended navel-gazing with better materials. The answer is that a genuine personal visual language is one of the most outward-facing things a human being can produce. When you construct a language…
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Sometime, within the first few weeks of art school, someone will say it. A professor, a visiting critic, a paint-stained upperclassman leaning in a doorway–they say the same thing. And, it sticks with you: “Create your own personal visual language.” The phrase lands with the weight of instruction and the…
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Since receiving my first rangefinder camera at age nine, I have learned from my practice and studies that photography is a decisive engagement with reality. This phrase suggests something far more active—and far more philosophical—is involved with photography than simple image-making. The phrase frames photography not as passive recording, but…
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Once I coined the term “Illusograph” for a certain type of artwork I do, it was easy to coin another phrase for another type of artwork I do – the fictive advertisements, logos, brands, anything commercial looking really. I call them Mythographs – which, of course, coined some other words…
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See and be seen! Don’t let your signals fall silent. Keep your turns crisp, confident, and unmistakable with Buxley’s Blinker Fluid™, engineered for modern motorists who demand peak signaling performance. Buxley’s High-Performance Blinker Fluid Formula is rated for up to 100,000 blinks – because every turn needs to be noticed.…
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This article, The 50 Secrets of Magic Design is written after the spirit—if not the spectacle—of Salvador Dalí and his book, The 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, written in 1948. Dali offered the 50 secrets for painting through his well-known eccentricities, philosophies and odd artistic practices in this very important…
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Eric Hatheway 
The Artist 
Lumbergh