The blog with the scan of the diary that Mike wrote

A page from blogshank.

Blogs: they're the greatest thing ever, correct? The tool by which everyday citizens can overthrow the cultural hegemony of the mainstream media and give us their version of the world, direct and unadulterated.

Well, in part. But on a more prosaic level, too many of them can be tediously similar, both in subject (either a single overriding passion or set of opinions, or else mundane musings on the everyday) and in presentation.

Thanks, thus, for blogshank, which manages to be both delightfully random and evocative and also visually arresting.

It is made up of scans of an actual diary, each double page entry covering a week and filled with sketched drawings of seemingly arbitrary events and encounters, as well as occasional reminders of real life appointments.

Of course, not many of us can sketch so well: blogger Mike Smith happens to be a Cambridge-based freelance graphic designer and illustrator who has also written a children's book, this under the name of Walter Smith.