Bembo's Zoo
Computer stress from too much time at the computer? Take a moment more on the computer with this fun computer stress relief idea.
Clever creation of an animal alphabet
Bet you've never taken your computer to an outing at the zoo. 'Course, if you're the overly serious type and hauled along a laptop to work on while your children watched the monkeys, you're probably a workaholic and in that case it's unlikely you'd appreciate this delightful diversion any more than you'd let yourself enjoy monkeys at a real zoo.
As I was writing this introduction to Bembo's Zoo, one of my favorite websites, I came across a word I hadn't remembered seeing before. It was "abecedary." I assumed it had something to do with the alphabet and wanted to look it up on my speedy computer dictionary. No luck. Tried Google and found 841 websites using the term but no definitions. Turned to the paper source of "The American Heritage College Dictionary" and still couldn't find it.
Incidentally, in 2009, after
this page was up for several years, I got an email from a reader
who said that: "the word "abecedary" can
be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, marked obsolete, with
the meaning: A table or book containing the alphabet; a primer;
the first rudiments of anything, with the earliest quotation
nearly six hundred years ago." So maybe I shouldn't have counted
on only the Internet to find the definition I wanted, or should
have looked more thoroughly.
In any case, I did find "abecedarian," which is a noun meaning "one who teaches or studies the alphabet, one who is just learning, a beginner." As an adjective, it means "having to do with the alphabet, being arranged alphabetically, and elementary or rudimentary." Certainly
these terms apply to this fabulous site.
The Bembo's Zoo website was created by the graphic designer Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich and is an animated version of his high-concept and appealing picture book, Bembo's Zoo: An Animal ABC Book , in which animals are made from stylish letters. Using only letter-forms and punctuation marks in a limited palette of "aqua, burnt orange, buttery cream, brown, and black, the book's visual premise is the exceedingly witty manipulation of letters—in Bembo, a graceful serif font—to create each of the alphabetically correlative animals."
Watching the letters become charming animals should delight any audience. After the zoo doors have opened, just click on a letter and enter a delightfully fanciful world.
© Copyright 2004, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
