Pop a cap in your house

Just a quick post to keep things ticking over while we get our act together blog-wise. This is my favourite cap from a recent exhibition of work by a small bunch of very talented graphic design graduates. To celebrate being in business for a whole 90 years, New Era launched what sounds like a good fun competition, posting a select group of people a kit containing a blank cap, pens and markers with a completely open invitation to let their imaginations run wild. Check out this link for a brief overview.

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Chalky Van and the Chalky Man

Who could ignore the chance to legally draw on someone else’s car? Not me. I guess it’s a game of “Spot the Mr Magoo Mobile”!

London Design Festival threw up all sorts of quirks like this. More to come.

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Rubbish!

Literally. Who came up with this crap?

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On Your Bike, Mate.

Signs just like this have been cropping up all over central London. It’s caused a buzz. Whispers. “What’s it all about?”, some ask. “What’s going on?”, others muse… I’ll enlighten you right now. Nobody’s in danger! The Barclays Cycle Scheme has hit town.

This is how it works, from what I understand. You don’t need to take a test; you don’t even need to own or use a helmet. What you do need is a few minutes to sign up to the scheme for either a day (£1), a week (£5) or a year (£45). After this, they’ll send you your electronic key card which will unlock a bike from any of the stands positioned around the centre of London.

Now that initial fee does not cover any usage costs. Every day, you’ll have half an hour of free cycling before the money starts trickling out of your bank account. If people are just using the scheme to cycle from home or a station to the office and back every day, then the likelihood is that they won’t be needing it for any more than an hour, which costs a pound and is a great and cheap alternative to taking the tube. But keep it out of a dock for a whole 24 hours (the maximum you can keep it without incurring a late return charge of £150!) and it will cost you £50. Which is a lot. (I imagine this is squarely aimed at naive tourists who would use the bikes to sight-see for the day, so I’m not going to be overly critical about it.)

I think the bikes look alright in the flesh. They’re built for the job, but they’ve got some retro flare to back it up. I’ll put up a couple of pictures at the end to demonstrate some of the details. I’ll give it a week before we start seeing some great graffiti work and graphic transfers cropping up on the rear wheel covers (a two-finger salute to Barclays), and this should brighten things up a bit.

All in all, a really great idea that it’s about time London bought in to. Europe’s been in the saddle for years, but it’s taken a very eccentric cyclist of a mayor for us to get on board. I’ll sign up, but I might get a helmet first. I’m thinking sky blue.

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What a bum advert

What a great idea for advertising. We saw these all over Berlin, waterproof seat covers wrapped over locked up bikes. I’m guessing put there by advertising agencies walking around placing them on random bikes.

But, you know that if Germans had any essence of a sence of humour like us Brits, they’d utilise it to advertise sausages, lipstick, or fudge. Wasted opportunity.

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MilkIt, BagIt, JugIt, DrinkIt

So, since discovering ‘JUGIT‘ on the shelves of Sainsbury’s I haven’t failed to preach the word to anyone willing (but mostly unwilling) to listen. 75% less waste. That’s better than Puma’s not-so-clever Clever Little Bag (so clever they made a grammatical error on the bag itself! Umbro would never make that mistake, firstly because we would never attempt such a bull sh*tting marketing campaign).

JUGIT is clever, not only in what it is, but in its execution. The way it’s presented on the shelf draws inquisition, the instruction leaflet is clear and thoroughly well thought out and designed, and the method in which it clamps and pierces the milk bag is simple and smoothly executed.

But, there are flaws… Like the fact I usually shop at Asda, but can only get the milk bags at Sainsbury’s. 2 x 2pint bags cost £1.50. And if you forget to close the spout lid before inserting a new bag, you get a lovely milk fountain, all over yourself – not something I’m used to..

Admittedly, milk in bags is nothing new, but I’ve never discovered a method of actually using them.

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Coventry Degree Show 2010 short review

Over the weekend I made my way down to the Coventry University Degree Show of 2010. Realistically, the only exhibition worth making an effort for is the Transport Design show. The Graphics Show is poor, the Illustration Show had its moments, the Fashion Show was weak, and as for The Fine Art show.. it’s just an embarrassment of twisted youths trying to find themselves and believing that they’re too good for proper art – come on guys, who still thinks burning dolls heads and nailing them to a pole covered in bubble wrap and straw is art..? It never was, and never will be!

Despite these uncharacteristically harsh words from me, the only iPhone picture I captured from the day was this, from where else but the Fine Art show..

Hand drawn little Sharpie illustrations all over an 8’x8′ wall, and see that toilet paper hanging just left of centre, that’s all hand drawn too. Very good, I’m impressed. But then again, that’s what appears on the paper every time I wipe my arse, because I’m just so full of art. And you know why that is, it’s because I studied Transport Design! (see above).

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The three day week hits Clerkenwell

With the disappearance of the great weather over the last few days, London welcomed a design week, of sorts. According to the trendies who organised the event, a week is now only three days rather than seven, so a fair bit of work-dodging has been needed to see any of the exhibits. Most people have never even heard of Clerkenwell, and despite having worked in it for over six months I have never ventured very far into the maze of little streets lined with design studios, a steady stream of film crews shooting hollywood blockbusters (this week they were filming a ghoulish comedy that’ll apparently be called The Great Ghost Rescue, out next year), historic buildings (St. John’s Ambulance all started out just round the corner from the studio) and lots of nice pubs.

It turned out to be a whole lot of quirky furniture stuff in some great old buildings, free beer (and free hog roast apparently, although I never found this!), some funky lighting, ohsocool bikes, double-decker buses with design shops in them, cloud-making ice cream trucks and giant lamps. Oh, and it was all sponsored by Nissan by way of the Cube, so they were all over the place. Have to say they’re just not as amazing as the previous generation though. Too squishy-looking and not very cubular (cubic just doesn’t sound right).

One of the girls from the studio visibly retched when I said I liked this...

It was dead good

Top floor of the double-decker

I’ve wanted to have a look at one of these cardboard chairs for a while, and they’re actually pretty cool! When you buy it, it’s only about half the width of a regular dining chair, but it stretches to about five metres and supports up to 2 tonnes! It’s also guaranteed for three years which is good news, because they really don’t feel like they’d last much longer than a week…

It’s not every day you see this written in the window of an ice cream van:

London’s great!

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Fixed Tape

Well it hasn’t been a day for blogging. Dull and windy (I’m not talking about 480 for a change), I haven’t felt the need to spend much time outdoors on the lookout for posts, but I did find one thing that I’ll put up on here. Now artists have been using tape in numerous guises to create works of intriguing art for a little while now, but I haven’t noticed it done in a designerly (sp?!) way until today. This new design company has managed to kill two birds with one stone; A couple of rolls of magic tape have not only served to fix a cracked window, but by cutting into it, they’ve branded their studio. Top marks for ingenuity, hip hip hooray for cellotape.

It doesn’t look very open yet though.

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Lenticularity

Just because I have a bit of an obsession with anything lenticular (yes that’s a link, impressed huh?) at the moment, here’s a couple of pics of the latest FCUK window display. Superbly simple technology that’s been around for years, but happily it’s making a very welcome comeback, with more sophisticated lenses, for longer animations. Cycling around the 90 degree window display, still posters turned into short clip video screens. Certainly an attention grabber, especially for the paranoid who think they’re being followed. I want one for the corner of my living room, about 32″ big, that can show moving pictures, but plays sound too..

“Oooooooh, hokeekokee..”

Go see it for yourself.

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