Skip to main content

Journal Page by Austin Kleon


I love this journal page created by Austin Kleon!  For an opening page to a journal, the message is wonderfully inviting, and writing in secret code is a fun concept.  

Secret code reminds me of the book titled 'Code Girls' about the young, educated college women recruited by the U.S. military during World War II.  Their job was to do codebreaking in which they took the place of men who'd done it before them--so the men could be moved into other positions-- even those in the theater of war/operations.  The codes these women broke were difficult to near impossible to do and many involved 'keys' that affected how letters were to be decoded.  The work involved math, attention to detail, and an ability to see relationships between totally different things that may have been seen at different times or in different places.

There was also a Star Trek: TNG episode where Picard meets an alien captain whose race can only communicate in allegory based on the race's native folklore.  The alien captain and Picard are transported to a planet where they face this challenge in communicating.  Picard learns that it is necessary to understand a species folklore in order to grasp the meaning of an allegorical language.  Sounds like it could be a form of code too.

Getting back to a journal, what kind of secret code would you develop if you chose to use one?  Would it be allegorical, pictorial, using letters of an alphabet with or without a 'key', an entirely new language/code you create, or something altogether different?  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Visiting The Hague and Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Paris!

Since late March, I've been planning an international solo trip that included meeting up with friends.   The planning is what makes a trip an adventure, and it was definitely fabulous -- now that it is in the rearview mirror -- so to speak.   During my two weeks abroad, the sights visited included the: Mauritshuis, a lovely art museum (The Hague, Netherlands) Binnenhof (The Hague, Netherlands) Delft (Netherlands) Kasteel de Haar, a castle (Haarzuilens, Netherlands) Museum Speelklok (Utrecht, Netherlands) Walking Tour of Amsterdam (Netherlands) Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Dutch Resistance Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) De Oude and Nieuwe Kerks aka old and new churches (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Anne Frank House (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Sainte Chapelle/Conciergerie (Paris, France) Giverny - Monet's residence at one time (outside Paris) Versailles (outside Paris) Musee d'Orsay/VR Event titled 1874 Impressionists First Exhibition

New Project in Progress

I'm working on a new project with multiple layers and shapes of different colored organzas.  It is an interpretation of lighting on an ice rink...from a show I recently saw.  There is a lot more stitching to do, but I like how its coming along.  I'm learning organzas are not easy to work with especially when you layer them and have overlaid edges.  The fabric also tends to ravel easily. This post also linked to  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com .

Concertina Dazzle Days

If you don't know what a Concertina Sketchbook is, it is folded paper (back and forth) that looks like the bellows of an accordion when done.  Concertinas can be home-made or purchased, and they are fun to work in.     The photos above are of three continuous two-page spreads from my own Concertina (the one on the right - the latest). The mark-making was done with Sharpie markers, Posca pens, Micron pens and Sakura PenTouch markers.   All the shapes and color choices in the images above were spontaneous as well as the details.  There was no plan.  What I like about these is that each two-page spread collaborates with the next one and so on (as the designs spill over from one spread to the next). As new ones are created, they  add to the wonderful visual feast. One of the things I love doing with these also -- is to crop sections and digitally mirror them to form symmetrical designs. The results are occasionally delightful.  In fact, this one was made from such a process and has a n