arbitrary constant

Dan Hill is a designer and writer, living and working in London. He blogs at City of Sound.

What would your Mastermind specialist subject(s) be? • Oh god, no idea. I'm a generalist, not a specialist. Could I destroy the game by picking general knowledge as my specialist subject?

Europe or America? • Europe. Every time. Mainly for the civilisation. Only exceptions would be New York — which is basically a European city, stretched — and Seattle, which feels Northern European-meets-Pacific; a nice combination. For the 'New World promise' that America clings to, I prefer Australia. Anyway, Europe for its unbeatable collision of the Mediterranean with Scandinavia, with Zürich ending up as the result.

What book(s) are you currently reading? • "The Damned United", by David Peace, a fictionalised account of Brian Clough's 44 days in charge at Leeds United in 1974. Absolutely fantastic, utterly compelling. Actually I just finished that. So now started 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond. OK so far, if a little dry. I'm multi-tasking these with a few coffee-table-sized doorsteps: a new biography/monogram on my design hero, Josef Müller-Brockmann, by Kerry William Purcell, and Clive Challis's majestic book on the great advertising creative Helmut Krone. Also a history of photojournalism — Things As They Are — and the new Edward Tufte. These flit in and out of my consciousness, hanging around on my desk at home.

What news sources and/or websites do you consult on a daily basis? • The blogs/feeds I tend to prioritise are things like Things magazine, Coudal, BLDGBLOG, Design Observer, Archinect, Inhabitat, Russell Davies... There are quite a few by mates that I keep an eye on, plus a wider set of blogs — from related cities, from related industries, from related interests. In all, there must be 150+ blogs I follow with NewsFire. Obviously, I'll rarely check them all daily. At the moment, a weekly browse is all I'm managing.

I get breakfast news radio from Five Live, mainly because the football. Speaking of which, there are guaranteed daily visits to Liverpool FC website, and the football pages of the following websites: BBC Sport, The Guardian and The Independent.

That's it daily. (I buy the Financial Times at the weekend and The Economist every Friday, and quite a few other magazines... )

Are you happy with your Body Mass Index? • I have no idea, as I don't know how much I weigh. I'm about 6'1", and while I'd rather I was leaner, I'm OK I reckon.

Which television quiz do you most enjoy? • I don't watch any. I remember liking Blockbuster a lot, as a kid, and then student. That was good.

What is your favourite building? • Tricky one! That's like saying what's your favourite music or something. It varies, depending on mood, context, use etc. I guess I'd plump for the Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona pavilion, though I reckon that might change if I ever get to see Villa Savoye, Zumthor's baths in Vals, Brasilia etc. In London, I like the Daily Express building on Fleet Street a lot. I think 'home' qualifies too, because of who's there.

Whose art means more to you than just paint on a canvas? • Musicians like Miles Davis, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Arto Lindsay, John Coltrane... for sure. Then designers whose work has transcended its origins e.g. Josef Müller-Brockmann, Paul Rand, Max Bill, Abram Games, Helmut Krone, Alexey Brodovitch, etc. A few fantastical architects like Archigram, Cedric Price etc. — their work may be art as much as anything else. In terms of 'formal art', I like the Futurists, Dada, El Lissitzky, Edward Hopper etc. Contemporary video artists, like Bill Viola, Douglas Gordon, Jeremy Deller, and Christian Marclay. People like Paul Schütze, James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, Donald Judd. Many photographers like Bill Brandt, Robet Frank, William Klein, Lee Friedlander, Nobuyoshi Araki, William Eggleston, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and so on. Again, depends on what I'm interested in at that point ... what projects I'm into, at the time ...

To which magazine would you most like to have a subscription? • Well, I have a few. But the graphic design journal 'Eye' is the consistently most interesting, appealing magazine to me. I do like the Japanese graphic design magazine 'Idea', and don't have a sub for that, so maybe that's the one. Are you asking? :) (I think Monocle might be worth watching, btw.)

What relevance does politics in the United Kingdom have to you? • Unfortunately little, in the party political sense. Can't stick a credit card between their policies really. And none really address what I think is really problematic, in a small-p political sense — an everyday civility, or sense of civic value, allied with a progressive spirit ...

What is your favourite font? • For my own use, Gotham, and then I guess Helvetica or Akzidenz Grotesk.

Due to an unforeseen error the Internet vanishes overnight. What do you do to pass the time? • What I do every day anyway. Write, draw, talk to people, read, drink, eat, play football, listen to music etc.

OK Computer or The Bends? • Easy. OK Computer. The Bends is lightweight rubbish.

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