Ace Jet 170

belfastified

Objectified is showing in Belfast, at the QFT, this Sunday at 3pm, with Gary on-hand to answer questions...which is ace! 

Tickets available here.

Read about the film here.

Safe

Israeli road safety stamps from 1966.

  

Factory Records

There are a few perks that come along to designers: great, exciting, big stuff like international travel or sumptuous dinners in posh restaurants; small, everyday stuff like (for us) trays of soft white bread from one client, fruit cakes from another. You might get the occasional bottle of something as a thank you for a job well done, a favour or putting up with someone's second cousin's son on a work placement.

I remember once getting a mountain of Club biscuits left over from a "How many Club biscuit does it take to fill a Saab 900" competition and we once got to visit the Coronation Street set because we'd organised a conference in Granada's studios in Manchester. 

But for me, there's almost always been one, perhaps unglamorous, perk I've enjoyed immensely and that is the opportunity to get a sneaky peek "behind the scenes". Doesn't really matter where; a factory or workshop; a bakery or farm, I don't care; they're all really interesting; partly because I think I'm nosey by nature and partly because these are all places usually out of bounds to anyone not involved in the business in question. Factories are especially interesting: regardless of how mundane the product a company produces, the chances are that the kit they need to produce it is big, complex, covered in control panels and miraculously transforms a bag full of granulated plastic into a perfectly machined length of something we all need.

And so I've started a new Flickr set to record these visits. Wish I'd started it years back because there have been many missed opportunities for interesting photos. But I didn't so never mind. It kicks off with a trip to a plastic extruder and the roof of a new supermarket.

    

Plot Watch: Fast Food

Raphanus Sativus by name, Raphanus Sativus by nature; this tasty little, fast germinating, root constitutes our first harvest.

Ford Times

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, Michael from Ph.D (Santa Monica) sent me numerous editions of the Ford Times that span decades. They're really interesting for a number of reasons but the stand-out edition is packed with superb Charles Harper illustrations. Dave at Grain Edit has more. 

      

More Charles Harper stuff here.

A vector-borne infectious disease caused by protozoan parasites

It's 1962, Bulgaria...and the bugs are biting.

 

Plot Watch: Sizzlers

  

The sound of a tidy troop of well disciplined porkers browning over white-hot coals is music to the ears of the eager but fatigued plotter.

3D_HR

One or two people have asked for hi-res scans of some 3D geometry so there's some on Flickr now. I'll try and add more. What's great is that, with the right lenses, the 3D effect even works onscreen.

For Everyone Only

As reported by We Made This today, For Print Only is the brand new, must-read blog from the lovely people responsible for Under Consideration.

10

Commemorative issue marking the re-structuring of Australia's Government-run postal and telecom services in 1975. The "P" motif is still in use today but sadly, the Telecom identity appears to have been replaced around 1994 by an unremarkable new design. Worse was to come with a name change and some turd polishing.

Please note: The opinions expressed here are based solely on shoddy and probably inaccurate research of dubious value.

Mrs Eaves RIP?

Has everyone got their Mrs Eaves XL type specimen? Lovely. I really like the way Emigre produce their type specimens, very much in the style of a traditional specimen, only with an almost indiscernible something that is exclusively theirs. So indiscernible (if indiscernability can be measured by degrees, which it probably can't) that I'm unable to tell you what that something is. But it's there...somewhere.

It's lovely. But...I'm not actually sure about XL. Is it just me or does the increase in x-height kind of destroy a fundamental aspect that makes Mrs Eaves Mrs Eaves? Yes, OK, 8/10pt XL is way more legible than it's original equivalent but haven't we just ended up with a different font? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Licko and have enjoyed using the future Mrs Baskerville many times, but as the comparison pages show, the original's low x-height is a characteristic that defines the font.

I'm terribly sorry for even thinking this and perhaps I'm about to be very unfair but the new font reminds me of Mr Beirut's dreaded ITC Garamond (not that it actually looks like it but just that the original:new-version shift is similar to what happened to Garamond once Tony Stan got his mits on it) what with it's lower-cases trying so hard to look all grown up. Booo, unfair! I hear you cry...and you'd probably be right. Give me a week and I'll be using XL on everything.

    

The Return of Pop (up) Art

  

This is the other Marvel pop-up book I bought a few weeks ago. Like the X-Men book it's content centres on the origins of the characters and details their individual talents. The Fantastic Four's story goes something like this: 

Pipe-smoking genius and astronaut Dr Reed Richards is pissed-off with one-time friend and purse string holder Ben Grimm because Grimm thinks, clever though Richards is and visionary though his planned space expedition is, he's ignoring the potential hazards of cosmic rays, so threatens to cut funding for the Doctor's ambitious Starship project.

Fueled by her devotion to her future husband and knowing full well that Grimm has a crush on her, Richard's fiancee Susan Storm emotionally blackmails Ben into playing ball by questioning his nerve/manhood - a downright dirty trick if you ask me and particularly galling because: a) It turns out Grimm was right to be concerned, and b) Post-cosmic ray mutation, Grimm really gets the shitty end of the cosmic ugly stick. 

No wonder, afterwards, he wants to clobber Richards - the post-adverse-incident bendy bastard. What's surprising is how quickly Grimm gets over Reed's blunder and the frazzled four quickly realise their new freakish forms can be put to good use, helping mankind. 

But first: names. And it's Susan's dumb but loyal brother - who only tagged along on the ill-fated spin around space because he had nothing better to do but landed arguably the most useful and certainly the coolest power - who piped up first with his superhero name: The Human Torch. Big Sis followed up with her H G Wells rip-off Invisible Woman. Self-depreciating Grimm settled for The Thing which couldn't be more ambiguous and is probably a reflection on just how livid he was at the time and how choosing a silly name for his new monstrous form seemed unimportant compared to the fact that he was now hideously lumpy and orange. 

But how ultra-pissed-off all three must have been when Richards finally chipped in with his own super-smug name, Mr Fantastic. Not least because "fantastic" he was not - he was just more pliable that he used to be. Which is ironic because it was his inflexibility and stubbornness that got the team into this mutated-mess. 

If you ask me, Richards immediately recognised that invisibility, flaminess and brutish strength were all way cooler than being, basically, Stretch Armstrong, so tricked the others into subservience by adopting a leaders name. A travesty...but an interesting lesson in branding.

   

Save the MMOP

 

Daniel Neville (of must-read Nevolution fame) is amongst those responsible for this:

Melbourne Museum of Printing (MMOP) is a working museum of typography and printing. Since 1993 the museums focus has been on the retention of traditional printing methods and equipment. Initially established as the Australian Type Company – containing a comprehensive collection of printing presses, typesetting machines, types and other print-related artefacts in addition to its Monotype-based typecasting machines and matrix collection. In due course, it became the last remaining typefoundry in Australia and should, by commercial norms, have closed in the early 1990’s when proprietor Michael Isaachsen turned the whole collection into a non-profit museum.

The museum has hosted numerous workshops, tours and events including studio visits for hundreds of students of Visual Communication from Swinburne, RMIT and Monash universities. High profiled designers such as Tobias Frere-Jones and Patrick Thomas have visited the museum.

Over the past 2 years the MMOP has come under increased financial pressure and at this point is in a perilous position. Consequently a volunteer committee of artists and designers has been formed to undertake an extensive campaign to try and save the museum, and thus increase patronage and use of the museums print workshop facilities by artists and students. The committee is made up of designers, artists, students and print enthusiasts.

On Sunday May 17 2009 between 2 and 6pm, the museum will be open to the public. This event will take place at the museums print workshop located at 36 Moreland St, Footscray and will include live music by The Primitive Calculators, letterpress and typesetting demonstrations and a print exhibition and fundraiser – with works created by some of Melbourne leading contemporary artists and design studios.

PRINTS/EDITION OF 20, $200 EACH OR $3000 FOR A BOX OF ALL 22  

Artists: Jon Campbell, Anna Ephraim, Emily Floyd, Greg Fullerton, Matthew Griffin, Lucas Ilhein, Susan Jacobs, Callum Morton, Rose Nolan, Alex Selenitsch, Richard Tipping, Ronnie van Hout  

Designers/Studios: 3 Deep Desi, Alter, Chase & Galley, Fabio Ongarato Design, Hofstede Design, Studio Pip & Co., Studio Round, The Narrows, John Warwicker, Yanni Florence 

Theoretical Reconstructions of Imaginary Objects etc.

 

Well that was easy and I have to say, really enjoyable...funny even. I was expecting it to be heavy going, like Ways of Seeing from the same Penguin series - which, I'm reluctant to admit to be struggling with...again. It seems to me that Ways is one of those books that every designer is supposed to have read but everytime I give it a go, well, it just leaves me with a headache.

Munari's Design as Art (originally published in english in 1971), on the other hand was a joy: insightful, broad, macro, micro and witty. If you don't know it, and I didn't until recently, it's a collection of, kind of random, essays on aspects of design; not unlike Beirut's and Vignelli's books. Munari covers topics like: colour education for all; central images in posters (which, I thought, had parallels with something Ben had reported on recently); fit for purpose; how (unnecessarily) complicated Western life is; making a lampshade out of a nylon stocking; how to geometrically construct the thorn of a rose; how many things are (unnecessarily) made to look like other things; the similarity between the growth of a tree and a nuclear explosion; and loads of other things. But what surprised me was how accessible it all is. There's no high-brow, over-intellectualising; just plain wisdom and perceptive observation. And you can get it for just a few quid so it's damn good value for money.

   

Incidentally, I haven't given up on Ways. A lame, perhaps vacuous, strategy it may be but what I've decided to do is re-purchase it in the new format/design, in the hope that I'll be more inspired to persevere. You see, there's something about the Yes designs. I particularly like how the uncoated cover board deteriorates almost the minute you handle the book...not sure if it's an intentional aspect of the design but I welcome it either way; I love a dog-eared book. Anyway, I'll let you know how I get on.

Plot Watch: Civilization

  

Words are inadequate to describe just how happy I was. A full canister of calor, a small and tightly packed basket of the dark stuff and within minutes, pungent and rich, freshly brewed plot-based espresso.