Stephen Banham at TypeSHED11

Stephen is a storyteller, and self-proclaimed type evangelist, which is pretty handy as he’s the guy behind the type foundry Letterbox. Funny dude too. He opened my eyes to the worlds biggest logo, a whopping 2 miles across. each letter is 180m x 140m, with a stroke width of 12m. That’s like a motorway. And if you don’t believe me look at this (I love GoogleMaps). Apparently is isn’t a logo (say Reaymix) as that wold be illegal, rather it is a 4 way landing strip for the flying doctors or somesuch. Yup.
Apparently there is also some dude who has trained birds to fly in logo-formation. As long as you are called ‘V’. Actually VOLVO, NIKE and ANZ hav all been done (but I don’t have photos to prove it). He also recounted a slightly disturbing story about the recall of brands by school children and how accuratly many could draw the logo from memory. While the Nike swoosh is not surprising the ligatured db of Cadbury was accuratly reproduced by one, which is just nuts.

Type is an expression of our language, and our language is our culture.

More photos on Flickr.

Leonardo Sonnoli at TypeSHED11

February 11–15 2009 saw the birth of TypeSHED11, a “clued-up concoction of [typographic] commentary” with international speakers talking frankly about their work/inspiration/knowledge.
Leonardo Sonnoli’s An egg is not a potato presentation was an insightful talk about the books that he loves (one of which is a book of sounds: it has no words but is made of different paper so the pages make different sounds as you turn the pages) and the typographic/design work that was influenced by them.
More photos and comments can be found on Flickr.

TypeShed11

Wellington has been playing host to some of the biggest names in type and typography on this planet at TypeSHED11. And what a privilege to hear them speak over the last three days.
Experimental Jetset, Bruno Maag, Paul Elliman,Leonardo Sonnoli, Stephen Banham, Christian Schwartz, Kris Sowersby to name just a few…
I will do my best to add footage and images so you too can experience some of it too. Wow.

Fizzy Shit

I am in two minds as to whether this is a prank to see how many designers rant (as we like to do) but what the hell. Here’s my two cents.
If you are slow on the uptake a leaked brand manual for Pepsi had made its way onto the web. I heard about it form the always interesting Ben Terrett. Holy crap! What a blast. It is well worth downloading yourself and have a read (get it here). See if you can keep that smirk off your face.
Apparently “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations.” It that what drawing circles on top of curvy lines is? I get it. No, wait. It thought it was just doodling. “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of doodling.” There, that makes more sense.
To compare, what I believe is a weak re-brand that had tried far too hard, to a universal constant like GRAVITY, yup that mysterious force that governs the entire universe, shaping everything, even Hawkins struggles with it, to compare the effect of Pepsi’s new doodle to that of gravity it just fucking insane. Oh well, it got me. Have a read yourself and see what you think. Then tell me if you have an uncontrollable urge to go out and deliberately buy something else just to prove a point. Gravity, you ain’t got control over me, watch me fly.
Don’t even get me started on their new understanding of the golden ratio…

CPBI

Stumbled across this logo at LogoPond. “Call & Post business incubator is about bringing companies and people who can help those companies together to form strategic alliances.”
Feels somewhat familiar too me, but I can’t quite place it…

Mac on fire

This afternoon I was alarmed to discover the power adaptor for my MacBook Pro was on fire. As one would be. Especially as I was plugged in and working at the time. Imagine if I had stepped out of the room for a few minutes and not seen and smelt the acrid stench of burning metal and plastic. I’ll readily admit that my MBP is one of the ‘old’ ones (three years), but not, as far as I was aware one of the ‘they-set-themselves-on-fire-ones’.

Naturally I ring Apple customer support in Australia and half an hour later I am assured that they are glad I am alright and there was no further damage to the me or my property and a new adaptor will be couriered over pronto. Thank you Apple. Great service skills all round.

I guess I won’t be working for a few days though…

Castlepoint

Castlepoint, originally uploaded by smoothfluid.

Street Art Berlin ("don't forget...")

Street Art Berlin ("don't forget..."), originally uploaded by epoxy _.

What a brilliant underground (quite literally) idea. Just to remind you how far from the truth what you see is.

Criminal Designers

Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution.

THE VIGNELLI CANON Massimo Vignelli

Backwards to the Future

“My feeling was that with globalization, we were all starting to be alike, to dress alike, to use the same products. It was clear that we'd see a resurgence of the local… A chocolate manufacturer told me the other day, ‘We’re successful today for the same reasons we had trouble ten years ago: we’re small, local, have a tiny production, are artisanal and have an old-time image and packaging.”

Not so much a case of Back to the Future, but backwards to the future for sucessful brands according to Portugese emporium owner Caterina Portas. Via BrandChannel