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Andrew from Birmingham sent this in. Wonderful stuff.

 

https://t.co/KQ8T6i53Bk has a saved version of the sewing page that never closed its font size HTML tags:https://t.co/H0SMYhtFUg

— The 💿🐴 (@Hellalena) September 29, 2017

Turf accountants

A lot of London Land Rovers

Couple of years ago I started collecting pictures of Land Rovers in London. Defenders specifically. No idea why, that's just what we used to do in the middle ages of blogging.

I had a vague idea that I'd match them with pictures of muddy Land Rovers from the country. But that's a bit silly.

Anyway.

Some kind of hell on Earth

We live near an LTN, a low traffic neighbourhood. A few streets where they've blocked the roads to cars to make them go somewhere else and make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists. To encourage more walking and cycling. I'm a fan. I appear to be in a minority.

It gets vandalised regularly.

Graffiti and plants pulled up. Occasionally people try to move it with vans. One a few miles away had oil poured over it.

I can't remember another measure introduced by a council that brought about such violent opposition. Maybe the first speed cameras, but that felt less widespread. Poll tax maybe, but that's only administered by the council it was introduced by central government. That was certainly a violent protest. This is an unusually high level of hostility for a council traffic calming scheme.

They don't protest during Walk To School week.

I think in London these LTNs are primarily introduced to try and solve congestion and pollution but obviously prioritising walking and cycling over cars is also a response to the climate emergency.

Whenever I see these planters vandalised I reflect that LTNs are probably 0.001% of the change required to save the the climate, so is this one thousandth of the violent protest we are likely to see as governments introduce more measures. As governments will inevitably do that in a piecemeal and haphazard way, does that mean the violent protests become never ending. 

If you react this way to a 10 minute increase to your car journey how are you going to react when a government says you can only eat meat twice a week. Or you can only heat your home to 18 degrees C. Or only fly once every two years.

At the launch of yesterday's report on the Climate Emergency, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Prof Tim Palmer said “If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth”.

Postcard from the park (2)

This is nice. Seen a few of these sorts of notices around since the start of the pandemic. Feels like it's brought out more of a local, community-ness to folks. Maybe. Yes, this is in a nice, leafy, well off neighbourhood, but still in a big city.

Just don't knock on the door.

Small funny, probably true

Chris Espinosa who was Apple employee number 8 (and is still employed by them making him the longest serving employee) posted this on Twitter a few days ago.

David Beaver says it's real. Which is nice. Small funny.

A design mystery solved

Photo borrowed from Ben Quinton/The Guardian and this Guardian article. Hope that's ok.

Ten years ago, on this blog, we were obsessed with the question of who designed the face on Henry the Hoover. We ran a deep investigative series of blogposts. Who designed the face on Henry the Hoover? (Jan 2011) and Henry the Hoover face designer update (Jan 2011).

We reached no firm conclusions but a few reckons.

"The name and the face were both Duncan's ideas, put there (in his charming account) because the lonely cleaning armies of the early morning and late night liked to use an object they could address as a friend."

Duncan being Chris Duncan founder and sole owner of Numatic which makes Henrys.

We were basically correct, and we can now reveal the full story via this wonderful article in the Guardian Sucks to be him! How Henry the vacuum cleaner became an accidental design icon. 

Here's the full story.

By the mid-70s, after Numatic had found some success, Duncan was on a British stand at a Lisbon trade show. “It was as boring as sin,” he recalls. One evening, Duncan and one of his salesmen idly began to dress up their latest vacuum cleaner, first with a bit of ribbon, then with a union flag badge on what started to look a bit like a hat. They found some chalk and drew a crude smile under the hose outlet, which suddenly looked like a nose, then some eyes. Searching for a nickname that felt suitably British, they settled on Henry. “We put it over in the corner with all the other equipment and the next day people were laughing and pointing,” Duncan says. Back at Numatic, which then had a few dozen employees, Duncan asked his advertising guy to design a proper face for the cleaner. “Henry” remained an in-house nickname; the product still had Numatic printed above its eyes.

We salute you advertising guy! Great article, well worth a read.

Sight lines to Wembley

From the top of Forest Hill in South London you can see the arch of Wembley stadium. That's 15 miles away as the crow flies.

So how far can the eye see? Google says 3 miles and then 12 miles but I can see the moon most nights and that's over 200,000 miles away. So a bit of science for you.

Anyway. When they built Wembley I thought they said the arch would light up every time a goal was scored. Next time a match is on I'll go to the top of this hill and check.

Postcard from the park (1)

Why would you do this? Why split BREAK and FAST like that? There's plenty of room for the whole word and it's not one of those trend–y gra–phic de–sign things with the hyphens (em dashes), so why bother?

We'll never know and that's beauty of it.

Imagine the mascots

The Hundred is a 'new' form of cricket. Not really, but it's a shorter, repackaged form of cricket designed last two-ish hours and therefore be more suitable for tv and short attention spans than a five day Test match. If you like cricket you will know this, if you don't you won't care.

Anyway.

All the teams are sponsored by salty snacks. The designers have made the logos nice and big on the kits. So it looks like everyone is wearing a crisp packet.

I was looking for a picture to illustrate this for you but of course someone has already done it. Pic from The Times.

The Hula Hoops one and the Tyrells one are particularly good.

They are literally wearing crisp packets. Shame they don't have mascots, they'd be amazing.

 

Would you pay £63 for a chicken?

The four main chickens. Nothing to do with the exhibition.

Great review of Doug Fishbone's exhibition - Please Gamble Responsibly in Cork. Closes 29 August.

In it he notes "that it would now cost £63 to buy a chicken if groceries had increased at the same rate as homes". That's a great way to illustrate the madness of housing economics. 

Simple. Whimsy. Powerpoint. Well worth a read. Would you pay £63 for a chicken? The artist who built a street to show house price madness.

Bedlam

Not the image that comes to mind when you think of the word bedlam.

From the Wikipedia entry about Bethlem Royal Hospital:

"The word "bedlam", meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital's nickname. Although the hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform."

 

Related, strange name for a house.

 

Might blog every day in August

That's a silly idea isn't it? In the old days we used to shut for August. Once upon a time we had guest bloggers in August.

Anyway.

 

Underground overground Tom wouldn't have been free

I made a special trip to see the Camberwell submarine the other day. It's not a submarine nor is it an air vent for a Tube line. It's actually ventilation shafts for boilers that heat two council estates nearby.

I discovered this recently after reading this brilliant article about London's hidden portals to the underworld air vents. There's loads of them and once you realise you start seeing them everywhere. This reminded me that when I worked at the Co-op I walked past this thing every week for three years before I worked out that it was a Heatherwick air vent for the Tube.

They're both good, aren't they? Useful and interesting – my favourite combination. I'd love to design one.

There's a more comprehensive list here.

George Michael AirPods

I love a bit of personalisation. I was 16 when this came out, listened to it on repeat. Still do. Thank you George.

Morning Cedric

In response to My Captain.

I was in a cafe, early, the other morning. Overlooking the sea. A man walked in and the owner said, "Morning Cedric, welcome to paradise".

More typography - some nice 3D signage

Postcards by David Gentleman RDI

Bought this wonderful box of postcards by the brilliant David Gentleman. All scenes from central London.

This is Russell Square, I thought I was stood in the right place but actually I needed to step back about 10 meters and that Y shaped tree would have been in front of me.

Might do some more photos like this. Would be a nice day out on the bike.

Lovely old signage revealed

About time we had a bit of typography on this blog. Might do some more.

I'm a particular fan of those 3D painted letters.

Top shop to let

I knew Top Shop had gone bust but I hadn't been past the shop on Oxford Street until last week. Odd to see the huge retail presence in the centre of Oxford Circus with a 'to let' sign. Even weirder because there's the usual jarring estate agents sign which reads "be the future".

As David Cameron said to Tony Blair at his first PMQs, "He was the future once".