The best rainbow ever

Found here.

Walmart logo designed by Walmart store

The new Walmart logo looks, to me, as if it was designed by a Walmart store, not a professional typographer or designer. My initial reaction was, “is that it?” which I think isn’t what they were after, but maybe, after an age of continued bad rep for human rights issues and the like, a less impactful brand position is just the ticket. My favourite comment so far from BrandNew describes it as a sphincter.

Ink Portrait

I've been shuffling some papers around this weekend and found this piece hiding from me. Its a slightly different style than usual but one I think I’ll be working soon.

101 Photoshop tips in 5 minutes

Don’t watch this if you don’t use Photoshop. In fact, unless you use Photoshop a whole heap then I’d suggest skipping it completely as you will not learn anything and your brain might ache. If however, like me, you use it for more hours a week than you spend reading books, hanging out with your friends or stroking puppies you might get a kick out of it, and perhaps, pick up something new. Via LifeHacker.

Pecha Kucha at the Hayward

I’m getting a bit out of sequence here, but while everything is still fresh in my mind I’d like to strongly suggest that if you haven’t ever been to a Pecha Kucha event yet you must. It was fascinating stuff. As we are in the midst of London’s Festival of Architecture (with the Hayward’s Psycho Buildings programme) all the talks were architecturally themed, which I was unaware of at the beginning, but glad of mid way through. 20 seconds can be both a lifetime and a flash depending on who is time-lord, and most of the time we were in good hands. I’d love to go in more details about what happened but it will turn into a list, and I wasn’t really taking good notes: Useless Magazine’s funky handmade graphics. The wholesome idea of Edible Estates. The chaps behind the Lift Structure and it’s wonderful quitled graphics, and a pair of French hippy architects whose names I’ve already forgotten, who were sleeping in tents in a derilict area of London to understand the land before erecting their temporary structure.

Experimental Jet Set rock.

The always brilliant Experimental Jet Set closed off this years D&AD summer talks with a glimpse at some old and work-in-progress. With their adorable funky dutch accents you’d be hard pushed not to warm to this team; and there work is something else. Rather than try to summerise their presentation I’ll let you have a look for yourself.


Experimental Jet Set

World famous online

The brilliant AceJet and SwissMiss have linked my Postcard Set on their blogs sending traffic to my humble site rocketing! Thank you. Hope you find something here you like.

2. Alexander Rodchenko

“One of the greatest figures of early 20th century avant-garde art”. Or so they say.
If I were to sum him up I would say that Alex was a handy chap to have around, especially when he had a camera to hand – especially if you didn’t mind a jaunty angled composition. Some of his pieces are very impressive, some more reportage of the current situation in the Soviet Union , and some you have undoubtedly have seen countless times before, unknowingly (2nd from the left).
That said it was his layouts and collages for the the legendary Lef Magazine that stayed with me, in particular No 7 which I happen to have recreated here in-house in the hope that the idea I had at the time will stay with me until the time is right.

1. From Russia with Love

I am sure much has already been written by better writers than myself about the From Russia exhibition at the Royal Academy, so I am just going to highlight my favorite bits:
New to me was the work of Sergei Sudeikin, or more particularly the funkiest clouds on show his Giselle (1915). Unfortunately I can't find a thumbnail on the web, so you'll just have to cough-up the £13 yourself, or take my word for it. |•| On the subject of funky, that camel in Date Palm (Martiros Saryan, 1911) it up there. And could be a pre-Dakar Rally example of sponsored desert transport. |•| Marc Chagall's The Promenade (1917–18) was lovely, and it was fun to watch the school group, sprawled across the floor trying to capture the image, but as I recall everyone was drawing the couple, no one drew the leaves which were the best bit in my eyes. |•| The award for Most Incredible Painting I have seen in years has to go to Pavel Filonov's German War (1914–15). You can see it here, but it doesn't even look like the same thing in a digital coat.
There were more but like I said, go look for yourself. It's worth it.

1-A-Day

The plan for this week is to visit an exhibition every day.