Immaterials: Light painting WiFi

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

I love the way Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen have gone about creating their WiFi 'light paintings': the long exposure photographs are beautiful, and the choice of photography as a medium is very thoughtful given the nature of their subject. I enjoy the simplicity and also the ingenuity of their light rod too (especially clever to someone such as myself who is not particularly technical). It must be lovely to be both poetic and scientific - such an interesting combination of thinking, which has the potential to arrive at ideas just like this one.

See more here

center of attention

i was just finishing up a long day at work, and flitting about on the internet waiting for some files to send... and then into my evening came center of attention, a beautiful site dedicated to a collection of old record labels. at the end of my long day, i found the round shapes quite soothing, and was rather delighted by some of the designs (although as is often the case with things, i think the greatest pleasure comes from seeing the collection en masse). save this treasure up for 4.40pm on friday and enjoy!

put a bird on it...

...from the TV show Portlandia (found somewhere on my internet travels). Now whenever i see a crafty-handmade-something with birds this is the first thing that comes to mind.

logos & birds wk 2

be careful kids - this one's a little bit rude in parts, but it's also pretty clever (i liked the end - look out for the north face and all the logo planets!)..

ps

just a little link that harks back to our theme of a few weeks ago, 'picture books and illustrations'. An Illustrated Guide is a whole site dedicated to reviews on this very subject, and is created by Matthew and Catherine Buchanan.

The selection of books is just great, and i really love how they intersperse their reviews with quotes, one such example that took my fancy was by PJ O'Rourke:

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

Excellent advice from a site that is well worth a visit!

bird 1

logos and birds

"Children at eight years old can identify 25 percent more Pokemon characters
than wildlife species" (Balmfold, Clegg, Coulson and Taylor, 2002)

This week I'm interesting in exploring logos and branding - such familiar parts of our lives that we can theoretically recognise the identity of more companies than we can species of native birds. A few posts on birds will also pop up along the way - so that we can perhaps begin to redress this imbalance, if only in rather a small way!

First up are some visual explorations of just how entrenched our recognition of logos is - the 'Unevolved Brands' project from Graham Smith takes the marks of well-known companies and reduces them to geometric patterns of circles. The viewer is then encouraged to try and identify the logos based based on colour and layout alone. I felt quite morally smug when i could only identify a few ("i'm a great example to our generation! i'll bet i can name at least twice as many birds as i can logos!") but I suspect that this has something to do with it being a British site (and my not being British). Here's a few to whet your whistle, but there are literally hundreds (with answers) at http://unevolvedbrands.com/





The other interesting project, which is in a similar vein, is by design consultancy Antrepo who explored the idea of stripping back the packaging design of popular products in order to increase their effectiveness. 'Minimalist effect in the maximalist market' manages to reduce everything to look as if it belongs in a Scandinavian supermarket, but it must be said that most of the outcomes are not only preferable to the original, but could also tempt me into making a purchase (let's be honest though, nutella doesn't have to work that hard as it is!).

It's interesting to see that in both these cases, there is a real focus on a return to simplicity and essence both in style and content - hope yet for those of us who enjoy a bit of space on our cornflakes box...