Ace Jet 170

A Coordinated Greeting

Finally found a use for those Michelin maps I bought earlier in the year. They're French so it seemed only right that the greeting should by like-wise. Have a great Christmas everyone! See you in the new year.

 

Gerard K

I recently stumbled across this set of Child Welfare stamps from 1931, immediately recognising them as the work of Piet Zwart. I was wrong, they're actually by his mate, the lesser known Gerard Kiljan but date from around the period Zwart did loads of work for the Dutch Post Office so the mistake was fair enough I think. And they're certainly Zwart-ish. Along with their other mate, Paul Schuitema, the three constitute a kind of New Typography super-group.

  

Is that a Penguin in your stocking...?

I'm sure it's not unique to them but I do think Penguin have a knack of publishing eminently collectible sets. Some fairly large like the Great Ideas books and some, like this Penguin on Design series, small; which means you can get the lot for not very much. They're ideal stocking fillers for those with design tendencies.

I particularly like them because the cover for "The Medium..." is miles better than the cheesey 1967 one and the cover of "Ways of Seeing" is a) way better than the previous edition and b) true to "the fundamentals of [Richard] Hollis's original design".

The CR Blog reported on them back in November with more interesting details.

I've asked Santa for "The Medium..." and "Design as Art".

Datart

Berlin-based artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer is a master of the new dark art of data/code art.

Via today and tomorrow (again!)

Lijit Widget

I've reinstated a search widget over there on the left. The first time I did it it didn't work. Not sure if it will this time but I'm told it'll take 48 hours to catalogue Ace Jet so we won't know until Friday.

Postgate Postscript

Just heard the very sad news that children's TV genius Oliver Postgate has just died. That's really sad. His work was the backdrop to my childhood and we've been indoctrinating our own children in the Postgate-way since they were born. I flippin' love reading Ivor the Engine stories to our boys and can't read them without adopting the narrator's superbly atmospheric intonations.

The Guardian have a good YouTube tribute.

Bubblicious

Well I've got mine. Every holiday I stack up a pile of reading matter only some of which I actually get through but this is at the top. I know "everyone" has been saying what a big influence Bubbles was, particularly on the big names of the 80s, but a quick flick through reveals just how strong that influence was. And what a prolific career the man had. There's loads of amazing work here, amongst my favourites being his Masereel-on-acid illustrations for The Inner City Unit and the incredible Imperial Pompadours.

      

Oh the horror!

Nate from Design Feast emailed me about these new Penguin Hardback Classics, available exclusively at Waterstone's and designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. They're lovely and you can see them here but if you follow the link there to the Penguin blog you'll also find a link to an entry about Coralie's work for Penguin's classic horror series, which for me at least, are even more interesting.

   

Philatelic Austratecture

From last year, read about them here. More and better images on Flickr.

 

 

System Addict

Everyone's* talking about it: Aisle One's Antonio has grid fever and there's no cure.

* OK, well not everyone.