Did you know that Häagen-Dazs isn't actually a thing? We just think it's a thing because it looks convincingly like a thing. But it isn't.
Read MoreApple irks and niggles
I feel like the Princess and the pea. No matter how comfortable and reassuringly supportive all my Apple gubbins may be, once the tiniest of disagreeable details becomes apparent, it plays on my mind. Why is it there? Why is it like that? Why isn't it right? Everything else is right, why isn't this right?
Read MoreMarvel Unlimited
I never thought this would happen. After years of loyalty to ink on paper, I've been converted to the new and the fangled. I've fallen in love with reading comics on my iPad.
Read MoreThe Hardest Client to Client
So here I am, back at the drawing board once again. Coffee rings and scraps of ideas all over the place. I'm going to pin this one down today, oh yes I am. Thing is, it's a massive job with wandering objectives and no obvious end-point. The client basically wants me to do everything – branding, stationery, website, marketing – with no budget and no brief. Quite what I get out of it is unclear. The crux of the problem (it's always satisfying when a problem has a nice firm crux, isn't it?) is that this handsome bastard taskmaster is little old me. The hardest client to client.
Read MoreAttach, Send, Wait, Worry
It’s been three seconds. OH GOD. I’ve just clicked send. I’m already regretting it, cursing my stupid index finger for clicking the mouse when the rest of my body really wasn’t that sold on the idea yet. This is probably revenge for all those paper cuts I’ve subjected it to over the years. Vindictive digit.
Read MoreDesigning for Academics
Somewhere between where I once was and where I am now, I spent a long, long stretch working exclusively with academics. As the in-houser at the local Higher Education Quangoplex, I learnt a thing or two about this very particular species of client. Should you ever have to deal with one, here are a few of their favourite things. NOW PIPE DOWN AND PAY ATTENTION AT THE BACK, IT’S YOUR OWN TIME YOU’RE WASTING.
Read MoreThe evil prints
Scared. I'm being watched, and I'm scared. There it sits, gently humming away in the middle of the room, blinking its little red eye innocuously. A small but constant noise that sounds like a distant gateway to hell whispers from its guts. It remains still, but angry gears and indelible ooze threaten to churn into motion at any moment. Cheap, unreliable, sadistic. My printer. My evil, evil printer.
Read MoreKen Adam and the architecture of Apple
Like a reverse Godwin's Law, it's impossible to discuss Apple's approach to design without the word “Rams” popping up eventually. From the orange button on the Calculator app to the perforated aluminium of the Mac Pro (RIP) and every nice little touch in between, the influence of Dieter Rams' industrial design is all over Apple. His ten principles for good design are like holy commandments to Jonny Ive and his team – it's surprising that he isn't on the payroll.
Read MoreThe school of twitter
Using Twitter is a double-edged sword and often like being back at school: Everyone starts off trying to impress their peers and get the most friends in the playground, but most people question why they’re there in the first place …
Read MoreSide Effects
When it comes to contemporary film-related design, Neil Kellerhouse is head and shoulders above pretty much everyone else at the moment. I just love this poster for Side Effects. It immediately brings to mind Farrow's iconic pharmaceutical packaging for Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, and yet doesn't come across as a conceptual rip-off. Maybe it's the red – I'm a sucker for red.
As for the film itself, I really enjoyed it. I went into it knowing little more than what's on the poster (I've been trailer-abstinent for almost two years now), and found it thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measures. Yet another great turn from Steven Soderbergh. Hopefully not – as he has suggested – his last.
So yes, poster and film: highly recommended. Just try not to get too distracted by Rooney Mara's post-Dragon Tattoo awksfringe.
Rediscovering albums
iTunes has reminded me that there's something special about a structured, deliberate collection of songs by a single artist. A good old fashioned beginning-middle-end snapshot of an artist at a particular time, requiring a bit of a time commitment. iTunes has returned me to a lifetime of slow listening.
Read MoreA new source of inspiration
Jesus H. Corbett, I'm tired. I have sick in my hair, I ache, I don't know what day it is and I'm so very, very tired. Ten years ago, this would have simply meant it was Sunday, but these days it's all down to another very small, very big reason. Three months ago, Brody Benneworth-Gray popped into the world and brought with him a life of adorable chaos. And bits of sick.
Read MoreThe Loved Vons
The lady wife and I usually head to Somerset House around this time of year for one of their fantastic open-air film screenings – highlights from the last few years include Goldfinger, Alien and Tremors. Giving it a miss this year though, but I'd still like to get my hands on one of these limited edition prints that HelloVon has produced to accompany the screening of The Loved Ones.
Read MoreTruth
Irma Boom:
I always say, when I’m asked whether the internet means the end of the book, that it really means the beginning of the new book. More books are produced now than ever before, but people use them in a different way. After all, you can read plenty of information on the internet now. Print, however, still looks like the truth.
Amiga
There I was, lazily flicking through the latest releases on the App Store, looking for things I really don't need or want, just in case there's something incredible buried under all the camera filters and calculators and clunky weather apps. I was about to give up too, and then I saw something glistening in the most obvious of places. Right there on the main "Featured" page. XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it said.
Read MoreMy desk, my raw material
What better place to turn for inspiration than that pile of old books and ephemeral loveliness cluttering up your desk? Trust me, having a good tidy is a vital part of the creative process.
Read MoreOrwell's Six Rules of Good Writing
Adrian Shaughnessy's rather splendid-looking collection of essays, Scratching the Surface, has just landed on my desk. Whilst having an initial flick-through, a brief editorial note caught my eye: Shaughnessy credits George Orwell’s six rules of good writing (originally published in his essay Politics and the English Language) as the door that enabled him to progress a a writer – “my writing is always poorer when I forget one or more of them”. They are:
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Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
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Never use a long word where a short one will do.
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If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
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Never use the passive where you can use the active.
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Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
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Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I rather like them in their common-sense simplicity (even the ironic superfluous “always” in three). Almost like the word version of Dieter Rams' ubiquitous ten principles for good design. Get rid of all the junk and get straight to the point. Only what is necessary. I like that.
Bruno Munari on design as art
From Design as Art by Bruno Munari:
The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide. … It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest, the most up-to-date, the most likely to resolve our common aesthetic problems. Anyone who uses a properly designed object feels the presence of an artist who has worked for him, bettering his living conditions and encouraging him to develop his taste and sense of beauty.
The Great Gatsby
This week I've managed to read and watch The Great Gatsby. Suffice to say, one is significantly greater than the other.
Read MoreFriday links
Some spare hyperlinks cluttering up my tabs:
Just when you think there aren't any more possible readings of Star Wars, along comes Ryan Britt to postulate that everyone in Star Wars is illiterate. Fascinating and well reasoned article, says a lot about where we're going.
And this seems a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: vintage pics of NASA facilities. I bet Ken Adam studied these pics for days.
Mid-century souvenir postcard envelopes from various Japanese vacation destinations. Nice.
What's YOUR favourite magazine? magCulture wants to know, and it's for a bloody good cause.
The Coppola family tree. There are a LOT of them.
Spotted this at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness' credits: "No Animals Were Harmed" is a registered trademark! And the American Humane Association aren't too shy to threaten legal action if you misuse it.
Dear Apple, let's talk about photos. Been using iPhoto a lot recently (having a baby will do that to you), and it really is a sluggish, out-of-date pile of arse. Desperately needs a massive update.
The always intelligentfunny XKCD on why sensible passwords are sensible.
14 year-old discovers iPad Smart Cover magnets can shut off implanted defibrillators.
Actual amazeballs: the Eyeball, packed with cameras and sensors, can be thrown into a room/cave/wherever. It instantly creates a digital panorama (complete with environmental warning) for rescue workers or explorers to map out a space. Like something from Minority Report.
Want to get Tom Hanks to appear on your show? Send him a typewriter.