The Danville Warriors' third album 'To Be Onto Something' is a return to their post-electronica neo-ambient blues of their well-received first album 'Blueneck'.
Actually, the above group does not exist (must admit I'd love to hear their music). The album cover generated via the Flickr CD cover meme (quite a bit of fun). Nice photo Dear Harry.
Via Creative Review.
Below is an excerpt from George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning. A most interesting and well-researched series of ideas (as indeed the entire book is). If you found Tim Flannery's We Are the Weather Makers especially interesting, Monbiot's book will definitely be worth hunting down. Heat focuses more on the European (especially the UK-based) scenario and where Flannery writes in a rather avuncular, dinner conversation-like tone, Monbiot tackles the world of climate change head-on, with an ardent intensity.
Here he discusses the 'end of traditional shopping' and the 'end of packaging': in short, buy online/via TV/from a catalogue and have it delivered. Forget the over-aircon-ed, energy inefficient supermarket where you have to drive yourself... Read Monbiot in the continuation.
Great name, great vehicle graphics, or is that vehicle lawn? More photos in the continuation.
Jonathan Harris unveils another in a long line of data visualisations with Universe (which was unveiled at the recent TED conference). "Universe was inspired by questions like: if we could draw new constellations in our night sky today, what would those be? What are our great stories? What are our great journeys? Who are our heroes and heroines? Who are our Gods and Goddesses? What is our modern mythology? Universe tries to answer these questions through analysis of global media coverage, as construed by Daylife".
In the celestial interface of Universe, each of the myriad of stars form constellations and each of these constellations relates to a real-life counterpart sourced from online media coverage. The (very) open-ended nature of the interface is terrific – just jump in, hunt for a topic of interest and explore the many connections and linkages that emerge – and the aesthetics of Universe are really something too. Harris has devised a typeface where the letterforms are created by a constellation of stars that glimmer against the night sky. Navigating through the interface as it expands, contracts, changes colour (and twinkles) and forms new celestial connections is pleasantly rewarding. It's really 'nice' to use: immersive, engaging and fun.
Clever – as usual, Mr Harris – and bonus points for the animated constellation typeface.
Other works by Jonathan Harris I've blogged are here.
And I should mention the site wouldn't work for me on an Intel Mac. Older Macs – no problem.
Oz magazine bounded out of Sydney in the early sixties, turned up in London, helped define the counter-cultural 'underground press' movement, became the subject of two infamous obscenity trials (one being one of the longest in British legal history) and generally created a furore wherever it went. Oz was edited by Richard Neville, artist Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh (with others later) and featured contributions from Germaine Greer, Philipe Mora, Michael Leunig and Robert Hughes. Oz is now (becoming) available online. And what a visual treat and mind-boggling time capsule it is.
Graphically, Oz truly packed a KO-punch. Clicking through the Oz site reveals a plethora of wild ideas, some wild design and artwork and an outrageous mix of mind-altering commentary and image-making. The 'Oz-zies' exuberantly thumbed their noses at convention and the established norms of the day and all of their work was channelled to the public via some striking, iconoclastic publication design.
Oz, back then, was a wild, wild ride. (But wait, there's more).
Continue reading "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead: Oz Magazine" »
I've been using DropSend for the past 18 months or so. It's a terrific way of sending large files to clients, colleagues and others. I've also been using Stuffit for years (and years). It's an excellent file compression/decompression application. I've also recently come across BoxCloud – a file-sharing application which I'm yet to use, but sounds good. And there's Todos, a new app that displays all your applications via one keyboard command. Quite clever. I was about to send/upload a file and (apart from Stuffit) I couldn't remember which application was which.
Enough of the open boxes already!
Then I went to the Apple site...
Runner-up in the '1+1=3 T-shirt of the Year' award goes to the Jerkass Clothing Company for their witty and topical Stop Wars t-shirt range. Modelled upon (and cleverly parodying) a certain movie franchise made popular by a Mr George Lucas of California, this t-shirt forces viewers to do a double-take. (As all good t-shirt graphics should).
Is the t-shirt addressing current wars and conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere around the globe? Or does it relate to the fictional intergalactic war devised by Mr Lucas between the Empire and the Republic that features in his movie franchise?
PS. The winner of the '1+1=3 T-shirt of the Year'.
PPS. If you move your cursor quickly around the interface to Mr Lucas's web site, the effect is eerily akin to watching one of his films.
From The Age A2 Saturday April 1, in Flagging Passions, an article by Guy Rundle:
"The more you run our dismal bit of bunting up the pole, the more people will start to want something genuinely worth saluting. The lack of a big story is the context within which we will make the history to come."
And: "...the Australian flag, which is technically not a full flag at all, but an ensign, a version of a flag (the Union Jack) for a particular and subsidiary use."
The cover of this supplement featured no less than 32 flags of Commonwealth countries and territories. At a glance it's not terribly easy to pick ours from the other 31 flags. We all sport that quaint, identity-quashing, historical reference to 'the mother country'.
Detail of cover design by The Age © 2006.
I live in a house that has square corners. My workplace has square
corners. My computer and screen have rounded corners as does my TV set
and several other appliances. My car, bicycle, tennis racquet and small collection of power tools have all sorts of
odd-shaped corners. I have happily lived, worked, used and played with
all the above for years and am very familiar with their shapes.
Designed publications often feature images in their layout and in the
early days of my career, those images were usually square finished (in
a box shape with right-angled corners) or deep-etched (in a particular shape). Sometimes they
even had vignetted edges.
So why are rounded corners appearing everywhere in print and on the
web? What does this new-found, software-generated radiussed corner mean
and why are we using it?
In the month leading up to the Christmas/New Year holiday period cards arrive from the 'usual suspects': friends, family, clients, suppliers and designer friends and colleagues. The latter group often display an inventiveness and a creativeness and are eagerly anticipated. Actually it's the Christmas Eve drinks that are probably more eagerly anticipated, but the cards are usually interesting explorations of the holiday season theme and it's always fun to open the (e)mail pre-holidays.
Especially when the card comes from Tony Ward.
