When, for experimentations sake I overlaid some grid combinations that I had concocted for my current web project it took me back down memory lane. Maybe it’s just a geeky/nerdy (delete as appropriate) designer thing but I was instantly reminded of iD magazine. It could be a trick of the mind, maybe it was Face magazine instead but no matter, I got my thrill.

Forget the content, as clearly iPAds et al are not 1984 at all. It was the blocks of fluro green that overlaid the magazine-like layout. It’s a thing of beauty.
I only wish I could present it to the client with some kind of rationale that they could buy into ;-). Naturally I had to check if my mind was indeed playing tricks so I typed ‘id magazine 1984′ into Google.com Check out that green- it’s uncanny! Are you curious enough to do the same?

Oh, actually this post was meant to be about the organic nature of grids but I rather like the direction it has taken so i’ll keep that little nugget for another day!

Just a little detail from from a recent project I was working on for one of those large global corporations that supply you with all the consumer products you love. You know the one. It’s BIG! Hair, shaving, beauty, laundry etc etc.
Anyway, this was a direction that wasn’t selected for development. At the time I took it personally. Big mistake. Never get emotionally attached to work you do for clients. Easier said than done, especially when one has crafted an intricate icon that would just sit perfick in an iPhone app icon. Never mind. The chosen one is not bad either. Hold on to your hats’. All will eventually be revealed…

Frankly, this has to be one of the most amazing animated gif’s that I have ever seen! The level of intricacy is quite wonderful and it looks like it has come directly off the drawing board of MC Escher.  It’s rather refreshing in this era of bigger/faster/shinier what can be achieved with a so called obsolete process. Complex yet simple by equal measures.

See the full 17,000px wide panoramic on Flickr (5Mb)

Well, I have been honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to feast on this wall of creativity pretty much every day for the last year. Ever changing and morphing into different forms, Rue des Pyrenées has been a vast canvas for urban essays issuing from the cans of some of the finest street artists in Paris. It’s been mentioned here before on these pages, but this time it’s real. The ephemeral nature of the artform has finely caught up with this particular incarnation. The demolition crew have been brought in and the Marie of paris has authorised the razing of the former bus station-one wall of which you see here. I can’t help but wonder what is going to replace this little coloured corner of South East Paris. Je vie dans l’espoir that it will 1 tenth of a percent as interesting as what it is replacing!

It’s a fantastic trawl through the world of urban art, street culture and it documents the it’s ever evolving influence on daily life. The author put’s it quite succintly-
“Writer and fimmmaker King Adz has spent 25 years getting to know old-school graffiti legends, avant-garde street artists, DJs, writers, poets, designers and musicians to produce this groundbreaking insider’s guide to street culture.” and also goes on to say “This book is going to be fucking amazing and beautiful to read”

Quite!
Maybe worth a letter to Santa…

A fascinating retrospective of  the Czech toy Designer Libuše Niklová who designed ground breaking flexible toys from the 50’s to the 1980’s. Check out her Accordian dogs n cats- they will seem eerily familiar to you and you won’t quite know why. Ingenious use of the then relatively new material called plastic. Squeezy, Inflatable plastic Czechoslovakian toys that will put a smile on your face, and lovingly curated to boot.

Sometimes Paris is amazing.