East London went all countrified on Sunday in the inaugural Oxford Vs Cambridge Goat Race. It was timed to coincide with the boat race, so while the reporters were giving pre-race coverage of the teams on the river bank, we were treated to pre-race feeds and bleats inside the city farm's enclosure.
It was a wonderfully surreal afternoon, with the feisty and somewhat vertically challenged Cambridge working the crowds and the serene and remarkably clean Oxford patiently eating with a sock puppet sat on his back. I told you it was surreal.
The event's logo was designed by Cookie, and I presume the sock puppet jockeys were the handicraft of his girlfriend, Nicky Gibson.
I blogged a little while about this Vetiver poster that I coveted, well I will covet no more, I'm the proud owner of edition 11/20, and it's a beaut. I'm waiting to frame it, but it's on the most delicious thick watercolour paper, it seems a shame to place it behind glass.
Further to a lovely email conversation with Ben, I was also pretty chuffed to find a screen-printed tote book bag inside my poster tube! It's all about the personal touches.
I've also noticed a few updates to his blog, and spotted this chunky little people typeface, 'Alphabetty' which made me smile, I apologise if I've misused/abused your typeface, but I wanted to say a personal thanks. Thanks!
This was a surprise birthday present and it's just beautiful and suits my Brompton down to the ground. It's a great piece of classic English design, so I thought I'd share the packaging.
It's in my genes of course! Great little Chupa Chups advert by DDB Spain, although it clearly works in any language, found via the appropraitely named Inspire Me Now tumblr
It's much anticipated and if the trailer is anything to go by, Spike Jonze's interpretation of Maurice Sendak's classic book 'Where the Wild Things Are' is going to be sensational.
I stumbled upon the ‘FOUR LINE LONG POEM’ recently and it got me thinking, are we heading towards a succinct world? Is less, more? Or are we just getting lazier? Is brevity the new brainy? No flowery prose or verbose dialogue needed now, just tell it to me straight.
“HATE BEEF LOVE TOFU”, “KNOW TRUE LOVE ONCE”, “BALD DOGS LOOK PINK”
OK, so you could interpret these ‘poems’ as deep, ridiculous or just plain bizarre, but this montage of four liners is also telling of our concentration span. Tweets and Facebook updates have to be engaging enough to stop us in our tracks at least long enough to LOL back some kudos.
Perhaps this is merely the latest fashion of story telling, but currently we are actively encouraged to make clever use of limited characters. Hemingway toyed with telling a complete and very short, short story in six words, that’s 32 characters to you Twits out there. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”, he claimed it was his best work.
The best use of Twitter I’ve seen to date aside from Towerbridge’s personable, informative and human Tweets, “I am opening for the FGS Brandenburgh, which is passing downstream.” is the creatively succinct tales of TimKeyPoet. Key manages to paint a world in a few brush strokes and leave us asking questions and frankly wanting more; “Poem#171. “I’m not marrying that pig!” I said to mother. She continued to leaf through the portfolio.”
Short, short stories are not a new phenomenon and I’m not claiming as much, but haikus must be sagely nodding at Twitter and waiting for all the fuss to die down. In the mean time it concerns me that we might lose the ability to converse in more than 140 characters.
I wish my neighbours would take off like in this clip, I was woken at 5am, yes 5am, by a drum kit and a bass guitar and the raucous party next door. And where was my invite?! Anyway, I've realised I badmouth my neighbours a lot and found this, I'm not alone! I'm just suffering from neighbourphobia.
The website has some sweet illustrations, especially in the quiz, including David Attenborough (the nicest man in the world). You can take the test and see how affected your area is too, it's a bit 28 days later on a serious budget, but nice sentiment.
Simple idea, nice execution, a potential DIY project. Let me know if this inspires you to make something similar, I'm going to be on the look out for an old test tube rack now...
{I can't find the original link that these came from, apologies.}
I have a moral dilemma, it's a cake so that's good, but it's in burger form so that's... oh, good. Ah, no dilemma at all it seems, just double delicious.
This incredible creation was made by caketime for Jon Burgerman, it was a welcome to New York cake for her visitor who ironically is named Burgerman but is a vegetarian.
You have to admire the attention to detail, read about the ingenious use of ingredients at the caketime blog, The use of mango as cheese and dyed desiccated coconut as lettuce. 10/10
Image credits: close up details: caketime, full burgerbun: Jon Burgerman.
I've shared tilt shift images before but it makes me so happy, so here's the latest installment from Keith Loutit, from Sydney's Mardi Gras parade. Happy sunny Tuesday! Also check out his bath tub animation, look out for the falling fisherman, great spot Henry!
Popular, influential and notorious. A geeky pleasure, if I were a typeface I would be Bembo or Bodoni, what would you be? Now there's a conversation stopper.
What a great way to start the day, I can only imagine how satisfying this chocolate tastes, look at it in all it's archaic splendour.
I did a little digging into the Mast Brothers and was delighted find them to be real, and don't they look exactly how they should? Mr. Wonker would be proud. Saccharine salutations to Messrs. Rick and Michael Mast.
My parents have a dog called Kip. Kip is very naughty and has picked up the pseudonym Kippy no no! Such is the regularity of his naughtiness, it turns out he is not alone, introducing Eli, better known as Eli, no!
Created by the very talented Eighthourday check out their other work too, I get the feeling Eli, no! is an imminent book success as the images have been removed from Flickr, and they are getting much coverage of late. Let's hope it sees the light of day.
I'm a little preoccupied with pitch madness at the moment, normal service will resume shortly. Until then, imagine me like this grey lady, with a face full of cumulonimbus. Via Booooooom
A small but perfectly formed batch of 25 pop up books, Pop Up Porn, have been hand made by Michele Chun and Miya Saito, those little minxes. Available to buy from Sometimes Books for $50 or a card for $5.
Sexy!
The subject matter may be a little risque but it's still a crafty and clever project. Documented on their Flickr stream.
To be honest, I'm glad JWT have repositioned themselves so it's not just housewives perving over semi-clad men (wow I'm officially getting old), it does feel a bit JWT but at least it's positive and a bit phantasical and it's a lovely Spring day so I won't slate it. I think the full 60second clip is aired tonight on channel 4.
The ginger gene is dying out. In 100 years there will be no more strawberry blondes, gingas, carrot tops, copper knobs, flamed haired beauties, no nothing!
I went along to the Idea Generation Gallery on saturday to view Jenny Wickes' exhibition cataloguing, questioning and realigning our opinions of the endangered ginger in an aptly named exhibition called Root Ginger.
It was a strangely alien collection of vibrant orange on stark white walls, but there is a beauty in it, undeniably and to my good friend Sophie who is a profound supporter of the ginger, I salute you.
Do you ever see something that just makes you reflect for a moment or makes the world seem to pause?
These two birds were swooping along the road and caught my eye, I followed their path upward and saw this scene. Welcome to my filmic life. My filmic, ordinary life.
For visual stimuli other than google images, check out the fledgling photographic dictionary and watch it grow. Let's hope the quality of images stays constant.
I have been hoarding this poster on my desktop for weeks and decided to track down its illustrator and do a little investigating.
It comes from the creative talents of Ben Javens, Vetiver are a folky band who are in the country at the moment supporting among others, Fleet Foxes, who I happened to see on Sunday night at the Roundhouse. Sadly, Vetiver were not there and nor was Ben's lovely tree poster.
You can buy it for 35 Great British Pounds here. Take a look around the site, some interesting ideas, especially the cross-eyed clock on the home page. Cross your eyes et voila!
This happens to be true, which is not a laughing matter, and I'm not making light of it, but I just found it accidentally at Aintlifegrand.co.uk and it tickled me. Do you ever have conversations where your opposite number manages to pull out a conversational killer (so to speak, I'm not being deliberately morbid).
The point of the post is to nudge you in the direction of aintlifegrand, because (i) it's a great sentiment and (ii) it has jolly good, light-hearted stuff.
His name is Chris Gray and you can also see his stuff over at TOY illustration
It's been a while since I did some painting, but I was set Valentine's as a deadline. I really enjoyed the process, always hard to know when to stop, I think I prefer some of the work in progress images.
I'm a little jealous, ok very jealous of the skills of Zara Picken, I found her work featured on Cookie's blog and it's beautiful. Muted colours and lovely textures illustrate quirky ideas. Zara is a recent graduate and is already picking up accolades and commissions.
The nodding woman in no way represents my current state, but let's say I can relate. The idea of x-raying beards to find out what's harbouring inside is inspired. Keep up to date with Zara's blog here.
My friends over at Sennep have just launched this petition campaign for British Heart Foundation, it's a good cause, sign up and enjoy the beautiful origami animation.
Spectacular images by Narelle Autio capturing swimmers in a foamy struggle with the water. The middle one in particular looks like a giant effervescent hand grasping his body. Simply magical. More premium images over at the Stills Gallery.
I spotted this image over at estupipedia, which despite not quite understanding the spanish lingo, it's fast becoming one of my favourite sites for inspiration.
Anyway, love the love image, images/fonts in bookshelves is quite a la mode and it also illustrates the Feist lyrics that have been playing on a loop in my brain recently. Perhaps by writing them down I'll exorcise them.
I posted a while back about slings that tell stories, well they should make one for my friend who did her arm a mischief playing Korfball. Don't worry I don't know what korfball is either and Jemma's explained it to me several times now...
In short I thought I'd show some of Jemma's latest work, so that when the cast comes off you may commission her and her nicely rested drawing hand.
Jemma has many diverse clients but her latest spell of editorial illustrations for The Independent is high on my radar at the moment. Did you spot the Gordon Brown in the cliff face? Magic.
My latest read, The Book Thief is with me at all times, it's a great story narrated by Death, no less, anyway I'm taking my sweet time over it, because it's excellent and I don't want it to end.
Interestingly I was in a Post Office queue for 30minutes the other day and it was lovely because I read the whole time. Queuing, so ordered, so British. Why am I uttering this drivel? Oh yes, books are great for swallowing you whole, as this advert neatly shows. The fact it happens to be Penguin is merely a coincidence, although as you know, I love them too.
I've been doing some background research on Alanna, and she's done a load of Penguin prints that sadly are too beautiful and too expensive for me to even contemplate, so instead I've added this gorgeous scissors in situ, isn't it grand? In case you're super loaded and/or super loved up, could I please request one of the Penguin prints for Valentine's day please. Thank you.
Sometimes you see trends in illustration and this week I am seeing scissors. Scary I know, if this were a dream analysis the forecast would not be good, however I am not dreaming I am seeing. These snippy entries are from Harry Malt, Rex Design and Alanna Cavanagh respectively and they're all worth checking out. So cut loose and go see for yourself.
Mmmm paper patisserie and cardboard confectionary served up by Patianne Stevenson. Patianne is somewhat of a gourmand and has created these inspired pieces in her 'cardboard kitchen', the texture and colours are just beautiful, you can buy then over at her etsy shop.
Her food obsession also stretches to painting, so if you're feeling peckish, indulge here.
