Ace Jet 170

Instant Byrne

Has everyone seen Instant? The story of Polaroid. Very clever stuff, it's been well covered in the digital domain. The easiest thing to do is sit back and watch the Vimeo here. But you've probably already done that by now. A small detail that stood out as a particularly interesting example of Polaroidism was David Byrne's cover for Talking Head's More Songs About Buildings and Food, for which he snapped relatively small parts of his band mates and layed them out together to reconstruct their image.

Smaller Than Expected

And it's not even real leather.

Creative partnership Asbury & Asbury have partnered with creative partnership Hat-trick Design to create, in partnership, a thoroughly disappointing piece of work. Your 2013 diary: complete with contact details of people who never call and those you owe money to; a place to note ideas you'll never follow up, a map of roads to nowhere and a page left unintentionally blank.

Lower your expectations and you may still be left wanting.

You may purchase your limited edition diary here.

Rock

It's "The World's first power generating iPad Rocking Chair", the perfect Christmas gift (if you're a bit flush) for your old man. He can rest his tired bones and power up his iPad all at the same time.

Blocked

If you can't work it out with a pencil, this might help. With contributions from designers, illustrators, artists and others immersed in creative endeavours Breakthrough! brings together some highly personal, some a esoteric, all proven techniques for when that big idea is eluding you.

Old woman takes flight on goose

Now these are lovely. Beautiful colours and great use of near-silhouettes.

Look, Stranger!

Andrew mentioned something about foil blocking earlier in the week and it reminded me of one of favourite foil blocked spines. I flippin' love this.

Turnip

Sorry. I can't remember what these are for. Nature or seasons or something. Who knows.

Update:
Special thanks to Aleks in NL for addressing my ignorance. He says, "These are the Dutch 'Kinderpostzegels' from 1971. The designs (earth, water, air, sun and moon) are made by Babs van Wely." And sent a link to this.

Oh my!

One Point Oh design beautiful things. And sometimes, they screenprint their beautiful designs onto, oh, say, choppings boards, for example. And occasionally, every now and then, they stick dirty great big stamps onto the chopping boards they've screen printed their beautiful designs onto and they post them to some very lucky people.

Thanks One Point Oh!

Space

The fact is space stamps, are the best stamps.

Books for Every Interest

Beautiful work for Penguin from Young & Rubicam, Malaysia. I think this is the best but there's more on Ads of the World.

International (Dead) Man of Mystery

Just over the road from the studio the shop with no name opened last month. That's not it's real name (that's why I didn't give it initial caps) but that is what it is. I asked the owner. I asked, "What's this place called then?", "It's not called anything", he said, "it's the shop with no name", and laughed.

There's all sorts of stuff in the shop with no name; load's of old stuff. It's not quite a junk shop, the stuff is more carefully selected than that. Neither is it a collector's emporium of rare delights, it's a bit too much of a mish-mash. But it's just over the road and it's perfect for a little lunchtime distraction.

On my first visit I bought two employment cards from the seventies. They were together and were clearly connected. Husband and wife perhaps? Relieved of a couple of quid I retreated back to my desk to absorb my vintage find.

Husband and wife? Hmmm…Well she's a little older. Then close examination revealed the unexpected: Mr and Mrs Employee were actually one and the same person. Not, as I intially thought, a cross dresser. Smart young made adopts the dress sense of a middle aged lady? No, that's not fair, Mr Employee's mop top and cravat suggest a more dapper demeamor. I think our man was really a bit of a dude. And with his exotic, Trinidadian background quite the hit with the ladies.

Temporary Herbster

Truly, madly, deeply honoured to be writing this month for Herb Lester's Journal. During October I'll be offering a smattering of sneaky peeks into some of my favouraite bits of Belfast, opening up with the easily missed but highly evocative Linen Hall Library.

Flash

Designers; we're suckers for dials aren't we? These are flash exposure calculators from The Past™. Each is just a couple of old inches across and made from a sturdy plastic so look as good as new.

Michelin Man

About the time we went to France, at the beginning of the summer, ex-pat print maestro (and acely named) Merrick Angle very kindly sent me a whole bunch of old European Michelin maps, to add to my joyful, if purposeless, collection. By far my favourite bits (have I said this before?) are where the map kind of haemorrhages into the margins.