Noisy Decent Graphics

Bridget Riley at the Hayward Gallery

It's closed now, but it was brilliant. Her paintings look great when they're big in a gallery. The slight texture of the paint and canvas adds just enough to make it much more rewarding than looking at pictures.

There's obviously a graphic quality that appeals to graphic designers. She must have influenced hundreds of album covers and logos and tshirts. But in real life they feel more "painterly" and better for it.

Her early sketches and college paintings were lovely. A reminder of everyone's days at art college, except she was obviously better than you and me. 

The best bit was her planning sketches, showing the way she works out the geometric patterns. Lots of graph paper. Graph paper! Wonderful stuff from a wonderful, timeless, artist.

Taps: a reminder

Must do a post about the decline of everything via the design of taps this year. Seeing as I'm the only person that reads this, this is a reminder for me.

Hello me.

 

There should be more statues to good sportsmanship

"Landy is remembered for his performance in the one mile final at the 1956 Australian National Championships prior to the Melbourne Olympic Games.

In the race, Landy stopped and doubled back to check on fellow runner Ron Clarke after another runner clipped Clarke's heel, causing him to fall early in the third lap of the race. Clarke, the then-junior mile world record holder, who had been leading the race, got back to his feet and started running again; Landy followed.

Incredibly, in the final two laps Landy made up a large deficit to win the race, something considered one of the greatest moments in Australian sporting history. Said the National Centre for History and Education in Australia, 'It was a spontaneous gesture of sportsmanship and it has never been forgotten.'

Sculptor Mitch Mitchell created a bronze sculpture of the moment when Landy helps Clarke to his feet."

More here.

 

 

10 years

BERG and RIG doorbells. Taken at the BRIG January 2010.

 

That was a good decade. Here's to the 20s. Have a good one everyone.

Special shout out to the RSS crew.

Rembrandt's Light lit by Peter Suschitzky

The Dulwich Picture Gallery have an exhibition of Rembrandt that focuses on how he illustrated light. It's good you should go. Russell, not you.

The most interesting thing about the exhibition is that it's specifically lit by Peter Suschitzky who's an actual cinematographer and photographer who worked on The Empire Strikes Back, Crash and many others.  That fact made me notice the lighting and I thought it was good. Obviously all exhibitions are lit, but I've never noticed it before.

Anyway.

 

 

Basquiat and Keith Haring exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria

Really enjoyed this. On until April. Go if you happen to be in Melbourne, Australia.

 

KAWS exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria

Really enjoyed this. On until April. Go if you happen to be in Melbourne, Australia.

Back this beautiful book

Beautiful and important book by my friend and incredible designer Richard. 

He says, "Not since the early twentieth century and the post war building programmes of WWI & II have we needed such a wholesale reappraisal of all the systems by which we live, and by which society functions. Including not just the methods by which we design, make and build, but also the values through which we ‘see’.

So how do movements like this happen? Where do they come from and what exactly are they made of? How far back do the origins of the Sustainable Movement really stretch?

This book looks at the journey taken to get us here, to the beginnings of a new movement, which despite remaining an unproven theory, has for some time now, shown great potential. Then shows how only as a brightly lit community in action, might we collectively set ourselves on a healthier long-term trajectory."

If nothing else buy it for the beautiful typography.

Back it here.

One Sketch A Day

Just over a year and 177 sketches so more like One Sketch Every Other Day but still this has been the most fun I've had in ages. I have a few simple rules;

Sketching for relaxation.
I'm always amazed how relaxing this is. I'm able to completely switch off and be immersed in the sketch. Whatever I'm doing, wherever I am, I find this a huge relief from the days activities. I find this strange but maybe I shouldn't.

None take longer than 10 minutes.
It’s just sketching for relaxation so I don’t worry about it too much. Just draw. This, of course, is always the best way to draw.

No deeper meanings.
Most of them are just what's in front of me when I remember to sketch or when I have ten spare minutes. No ironic points made. No in-jokes. No shade. Just drawing.

Looking back here are some of my favourites.

We stayed in a cabin in a forest and walking back one evening I spotted the light and stopped to draw it. I had some pens in the cabin so I went and got them. I love the black and white with one colour effect. I like how it's clearly night even though the sky is white paper.

One of the best pencil sketches I've done. There was a nice flowing nature to this. Everything just seemed to work. I'd like to do more pencil sketches but pencils are harder to carry around.

I like drawing with marker pens and no hard lines. And I'm a bit obsessed with this tree.

I sit on a lot of planes and it's the perfect place to observe people sat still for a long time. I could easily have called this project One Bad Posture A Day.

I sit in a lot of meetings, again a good place to observe people sat still for a long time. Sometimes I sketch on an iPad. It's very easy to get a good result but I miss my little notebook. Maybe I should just put one of the stickers on the iPad. That's probably what Russell would do.

Bananas. I love bananas.

Airport lounge. I should do more where there are lots of little quick sketches. 

Like these ones of the great Roger Law.

This iPad sketch was very popular and was drawn from a photo I took. I'm not that fussed myself.

Incredibly satisfying this one. Incredibly quick.

Early for coffee with a friend. Stop and get out the pens. Photographed in situ which is nice.

Let's end on a nice story. I know Tara the co-author of this and was drawing this when she unexpectedly (to me) turned up at our house. This picture is now framed and hangs in her kitchen.

Anyway, follow here if you're interested Ben One Sketch A Day. 

 

 

More Light, More Power

Our office building in Old Street has this shield outside.

It's even better inside. The words say 'More Light, More Power' which is a good phrase for many things. I'd always assumed it was a strapline for an old power station. 

Here's another one on a gate near a church. 

Here's another on the top of Shoreditch Town Hall. Turns out it was the motto for the borough of Shoreditch to celebrate the provision of electric power around 1900.

You can read more here and here and lots more by googling. 

Made me wonder what the motto is now. It's 'Justice is our tower'. I dunno maybe that's something about luxury apartments.

Every London borough has a motto obvs. Redbridge's is 'In Unity Progress' while Ealing's is 'Progress With Unity'.

Islington's is 'We serve' which maybe they nicked from Wandsworth whose motto is 'We serve'. Or vice versa. IDK.

More London borough mottos here.

Anyway.

It's rare we do a typography post these days

But here we are.  I saw this at the Wellcome Collection and thought it was nice. Clear and simple with a little added depth when you look closer. No clever ideas getting in the way.

I have no idea who did it. I don't think it was a design agency but some creative soul at the Wellcome Collection.

 

Unpackaged 10 years on

10 years ago as-near-as-is-good-enough-for-blogging I visited the Unpackaged store in Islington.

I wrote a glowing review. I was very taken with the concept and the store.

It looked like this. More pictures here on Flickr which everyone used then because it was two months before Butterfield quit with an epic resignation letter.

2008 was that golden age when we all blogged about Brands going Green. Jones invented the term Unproduct, Russell blogged diligently and I created a media storm in Design Week which now 404s. You get the idea here. Good times.

The other day I went into a Planet Organic and I saw this.

I wondered if it was the same Unpackaged. It is. Hurrah! Their story has taken all kinds of twists and turns since 2008. They opened a cafe, another cafe, a bar, a different shop and a restaurant. Closed all that. And now have concessions in three Planet Organics. 

Which got me thinking, in many ways this is better than opening a shop themselves. Is it similar to supermarkets stocking Fairtrade? Which always seems to be the best example of Doing Good at the High Street Scale of things. Which feels important. Good is good, but it's better when it's at a mass market scale even if it's a little bit less good.

Are there any other examples of this?

High Street brands are always trying lots of innovation when it always seems like a better idea to find something good and help make that bigger. Which sort of reminds me of this bit of the GDS Design Principles, 

"Government should only do what only government can do. If we’ve found a way of doing something that works, we should make it reusable and shareable instead of reinventing the wheel every time. This means building platforms and registers others can build upon, providing resources (like APIs) that others can use, and linking to the work of others. We should concentrate on the irreducible core."

Anyway. Less plastic, more dried bananas.

RELATED (am I doing this right)

Don't forget to visit Sophie's brilliant website Trash Plastic.

 

 

Drafts folder

Dead singers

I stayed in a hotel the other day and it had a music theme. Every floor had these big pictures of dead singers.

Hotels often have pictures of dead people. I wonder if it's to help you sleep.

Anyway.

 

Celebrating 26 years of my shirt

I wrote about this shirt in 2007. I'm writing about it again. Yes blogging is so bad I am now writing the same blog post about the same thing just twelve years later. Think of this as the reboot. Same narrative new, higher res, images.

For the new listeners here's a recap. I bought this shirt with some money my Granny gave me for my 18th birthday. That makes it 13 26 years old. I bought it in a shop in Bath called John Anthony for £75.

The same comments I made in the original post still apply.

1. 26 years on I still have absolutely no idea what I was doing spending £75 on a shirt. Although over 26 years that works out at £2.88 a year so if they'd had subscription models back then I reckon this would have been a great deal.

2. 26 years. More than half my life. And yes, maybe well made, well designed things last longer and that's better. Slow fashion ftw.

Anyway. Next update 2031.

 

Here's the latest on the water fountains

First the designers, now it looks like Account Management have got involved.

Undoubtably a good idea

These water fountains have caused a stir on the design forums.

They've been called "hideous" and "naff". I'm not a fan of them visually, but I think "naff" is an extremely patronising way to critique public design. But anyway, there's plenty of discussion about the design of them here and here.

They are undoubtably a good idea. Presumably you can't just revive the old stone fountains and presumably someone else other than the government has to pay for them, so that might as well be Thames Water. 

What I find most fascinating is that they look like an ad campaign made into a 3d object. More persuasion than usability. There's one near me, I'll report back in a few months.

UPDATE: It has been covered up. Maybe it was the designers.

UPDATE: Account Management are involved

 

Cindy Sherman at the National Portrait Gallery

I love Cindy Sherman.

Actually I don't. I don't like the photos that much. They're good, but I don't find them amazing. I absolutely love the fact that all her pictures are self-portraits. 40 years of that, that's brilliant.

What I mean is that I like Cindy Sherman like I like Radiohead. Because it's well known that it is possible to like the idea of Radiohead without actually liking the music.

Cindy Sherman at the National Portrait Gallery.

More info here WARNING opens on a page that auto plays a loud video. 

Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Very good. I enjoyed it way more than I expected. You should go. Dulwich Picture Gallery continues to have surprisingly good, though small, exhibitions. Russell, worth a look if you happen to be in Dulwich.

I'm sure Modernist is the correct technical art term, but it didn't feel how I think of modernist. If that makes sense. It felt much more industrial. There was more movement than I was expecting. The prints felt like stills from a film.

The London stuff was great and I'd not seen any of it before despite always thinking I've seen all of those London Underground posters.

Closes 8 September. More info here.

They've repainted the bollards

This is what they looked like in 2014.

And this is what they look like now, freshly painted in 2019. Splendid.

I've written about this before in 2016, 2015 and 2014. Fascinating stuff.