Didoni Biscuits

Lovely letters + biscuits = genius

From ToveLisa via decor8

Shake It

There's quite a lovely Polaroid exhibition at the moment at Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery, featuring a fetching David Hockney composite Nicholas Wilder Studying Picasso, some gorgeous Guy Bourdin images and André Kertész's intriguing portraits of glass blobs. And I never knew that Andy Warhol was responsible for those endless Beauty features in glossy magazines - you know the ones - lightbox + perfume bottles = feature...

I need these in my life.

Letter Coasters & Number Placemats from Little Factory.

Lubalin Now

Jessica Hische


TV Land, Gretel, Matt Owens.

This is what you might call my cup of tea.

I'm not sure whether this is at the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography or Cooper Union’s gallery, or both, but it doesn't really matter unless by some miracle someone hands me a free ticket to New York. That would be nice, though.

Tom Gauld for the Guardian 187. Eric Gill

187. Eric Gill, originally uploaded by tom gauld.

Banksy's Steam Roller

I'm not sure the point of this recent Banksy work is to bring to mind Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but I'm afraid that's what I'm getting...

Tom Gauld - Robot 22

Another lovely robot, this time created with Odosketch.

Whippy

Love this ice-cream inspired light fitting design from Mixco, the 'Whippy'.

does anyone know who painted these?

does anyone know who painted these?, originally uploaded by kweezy mcG.

Mystery solved! It's the talented Graham Carter, and limited edition prints are available online here.

My New Favourite Blog

Bakerella might just be the best thing ever (besides actually eating cake). Concerned not only with making A LOT of very yummy cakes and other sweet lovely things, the posts are as much about imagination, decoration, colour, styling and photography. A feast for the eyes. eh? eh?! (sorry, had to...).

Topshop Totes

Topshop.com are giving away one of these cute tote bags with every online order at the moment. Rather tempting...

Walk on the Beach #1

I love the softened glass you find on the beach...

Apollo 11

A little bit slow off the mark I know but I only just had a look at this, and the images are too good not to share... Boston's The Big Picture with another astounding collection of photographs from the Apollo 11 Moon landings.

Joshua Covarrubias

I saw the fantastic flowchart below from the Pipeline, designed by Joshua Covarrubias (through a tweet from @yellowgoatetsy) and it made me smile. I'm glad I Googled him and found his website (bit mean of them not to link to it I thought?) as it has some lovely pieces, particularly the image above (for Kalina Magazine).




The Sartorialist

Pattern People

I've just discovered the great Pattern People blog. Written by Pattern People Jessie Whipple Vickery, Valerie Mathus and Claudia Brown, the posts pull together inspiration and trends from the world of fashion and textiles, alongside everything from interiors to art exhibitions they curate themselves.

Image above from Hervé Léger for Max Azria post. I love the organic shapes the contrast of these harsh linear patterns create.

Below, Janine Rewell's "Tan Lines", originally seen here. A fantastic idea, although it would definitely make me feel less squiffy if it was a spray tan. Not sure anyone really needs encouraging to use sun-beds...

Looking Into The Past

Portland Oregon, Then and now, originally uploaded by Tinflower.

The lovely Looking Into The Past Flickr pool juxtaposes old photographs with their contemporary original locations.

Via Wired

Tate St Ives

Tate St Ives, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Just got back from my jollies and now I'm ploughing through the ridiculous amount of photographs taken. In the meantime, St Ives is lovely, Tate St Ives was really rather nice and there were some great bits of handpainted type bobbing around.

More to come on Flickr, and normal service (ie. sporadic and random posting) will return soon...

Faber 80th Poetry Series

Faber 80th Poetry Series, originally uploaded by Faber Books.

Lucky me, I have some very pretty books to dig into over my holiday.

Featuring fantastic lino-cuts by various artists, credits for all on Faber's Flickr stream, and more info on the books here.

Joanna Rutter

Gorgeous jewellery from Joanna Rutter, soon to be stocked by Soma Gallery in Bristol or you can buy direct.

You can also keep up with Joanna's new work on her blog and Flickr stream, currently featuring some lovely surface pattern designs and pretty leaf cut-outs too!

Salvaged Garden

Fab salvaged garden, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Bit quiet on the blogette at the moment I know, trouble is when 2 out of 3 of the design department are off on maternity it gets a tad busy.

Anyway, here's a snap of a great garden I saw on Friday, every time I look at the pictures I spot more things...

We Love You So

'Wildcake' from Coco Cake Cupcakes, worth a look for some sweet sugary goodness, and also cat cakes.

Blogging the inspirations, influences and building blocks of the Where The Wild Things Are film.

via Binky

So jealous...

... that my friend got to meet these guys today!

Beach Balls & Balloons

TOBYhouse is primarily an interior and retail design consultancy, but they also produce a small number of lighting and housewares products. The Beach Ball and Balloon Lamps particularly stood out to me; the beach balls so much fun, happy bright and joyful, and the balloons are just such beautiful colours, they have a great depth and warmth to them. Apparently the products are available in boutiques in London and Milan, or you can find contact details on the TOBYhouse website.

Rob Ryan. Yes, again.

Bristol's Soma Gallery brought some lovely lovely new prints to my attention. (How is this guy not writing songs?)

Cherry Blossom

A friend of mine forwarded me an email full of pictures of Japan's cherry blossom season today and I had to share it. The contrast of the softest soft pink and the bright orange here is beautiful. To see the cherry blossom has to be one of my dream trips.



The pictures seem to be watermarked from wusjp.com but I have no idea what that is as I can't read Japanese, and apparently neither can google translate to any useful extent. A quick search through Flickr finds plenty more great examples.

167. Francis Bacon

167. Francis Bacon, originally uploaded by tom gauld.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld for the Guardian (Saturday Review letters page)

Buy it!

Kuniyoshi

I went to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition at The Royal Academy last week and thoroughly recommend it. One of the most influential and prolific creators of Ukiyo-e, Kuniyoshi was not only a highly skilled craftsman but also an innovator, developing the use of tryptych. His work covered so many areas, from his famous Warrior series, to political satire (not easy to get away with at the time), narrative, landscape, portraits of actors and popular stage productions, and even his own line in pretty surrealistic shunga. If you can then go when there's a guide to take you round, we tagged onto the group a few times and the guide was really interesting. I hadn't realised that prints of this kind were very mass-market, costing not much more than a couple of bowls of noodles apparently, and were also copied by rival print-houses - there's even a counterfeit version of one of the prints on show for comparison.

Now I'm pretty clueless when it comes to manga and other comic books, but just looking at Kuniyoshi's warrior prints you can clearly see a forerunner to the modern graphic story-telling of Japan, so much so that some of the compositions are deceptively modern, only the slight fade of the ink and wear of the paper give away their age.

There's a (much better written) in depth review of the exhibition here, and more info here.

Yulia Brodskaya

The quite prolific Yulia Brodskaya has updated her website with even more yummy papery goodness. Check out her news for lots of recent commercial projects ranging from Starbucks, to t-shirts, more for The Guardian and lots more editorial.

Thanks for the tip, FormFiftyFive.

"New York's in Love" by David Bowie

"New York's in Love" by David Bowie, originally uploaded by frogers.

Just came across this in my Flickr contacts - a painting for the Ace Hotel in New York by Jeff Rogers.

Miura

Miura, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

I spotted some shots of this on vial3tt3r's Flickr , and just harassed him till he sent me one. And I'm so glad I did, it's really beautifull! And it came with my name on it, hand drawn, I can't tell you how fab it is :)

You can see more of it on the Miura website too.

GLAM

GLAM, originally uploaded by pam sattler.

Something pretty to get Friday going...

UK Wired

Possibly a bit weird that I'm quite as excited as I am about seeing this. It's looking good I think, some nice type - I like the squirmy 'start', it's a good springboard, and that header sans is lovely (not sure what it is though, I'm not very good at type-spotting). Some great illustration too, although I'm not sure about the clash of that orange with the orange-toned photograph on screen, but perhaps it will make more sense on paper. Nice portrait too with some lively colour (even with the floating punch-in-the-face arm). The article doesn't mention credits for these unfortunately.

Original article at SPD.

Plundered from Binky the doormat.

LEGO Twitter Fail Whale

LEGO Twitter Fail Whale, originally uploaded by tveskov.

Full marks for effort.

Aoyama Hina

sacla-fee600, originally uploaded by hinaaoyama.

Some amazing papercuts...

More here.

Picasso: Challenging the Past

I went over to the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago to see the new Picasso exhibition there. I'd really recommend seeing it, it was so interesting. His painting is so full of expression, even when his works vary to such a huge degree stylistically I feel he could not help but communicate a sense of how he felt about the subject. For instance, portraits of his first wife from the beginning of their marriage and a couple from later in their relationship certainly betray a lot of feeling about her beyond those of her being a muse. One felt even sarcastic. I can't say I've felt that about a painting before.

One of the more obvious questions the exhibition presents is that of originality and authenticity - these are all paintings openly based on other artists' previous work - and what that means. What is inspiration, and what is, frankly, copying? Picasso presents a range of works where he more than successfully demonstrates that a confident personal style and vision is what shows through beyond subject matter. I think spirit matters too. A lot of this work felt like it was produced for the enjoyment of painting and exploring the concept first and foremost. Anything slightly more commercial just would not, by it's nature, communicate this spirit.


Olga au col de fourrure, Pablo Picasso, 1923.

Words Are Pictures

I came across some fantastic work by Craig Ward today. It's so inspiring, and also really interesting to be able to see the work in progress on his blog. I find other people's work processes quite fascinating, perhaps because I'm not all that confident in my own; it helps de-mystify these fantastic finished pieces a little. Sometimes I don't feel like I exist in the same universe as some of the amazing artists I guff about on here.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld for the Guardian

110. 3d Friends, originally uploaded by tom gauld.

Lovely lovely things.

The Face

The Face 10.87, originally uploaded by nevermindthepollocks.

Ahh, the good old days. A whole Flickr pool of The Face.

The Nature of Things

A lovely bit of surface pattern by the very talented Helen Dardik. I noticed this whilst catching up on my blog reading after my holiday. Helen often posts brand new ideas and patterns on her blog but this one really stood out to me. I love how it doesn't over-sentimentalise our connection to the natural world, but celebrates it in a positive way.

Helen's blog.

I'm back!

View from Sears Tower, originally uploaded by ant217.

I've been off galavanting, but I have my feet back on the ground now. Plenty of posts in the offing, I promise...

It's bun o'clock

It's bun o'clock, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Perfect to warm you up after a snowy lunchtime walk. (May have overdone the butter slightly though...)

Giant snowman in progress outside

Giant snowman in progress outside, originally uploaded by hello.vickibrown.

Front Garden. 1130 hours.

Life in Technicolour (nightmares)

I don't get around to watching a lot of music videos, but this just appeared on my tv screen for a few minutes, and now I feel like Chris Martin is going to haunt my nightmares forever. Or a Chris Martin puppet, specifically. I have no issue with puppets, cute puppetty music videos, or puppets in rock star likenesses even. I once saw Beck play an entire set behind a small stage of Jim Henson Studio puppets, and that was bloody brilliant. The main problem I had with it was, aside from the general creepiness of the puppets (possibly a deliberate attempt to avoid being too cutesy, but really, who can tell?) is that it's SO bizarre, SO disturbing, (eerie, frightening, ghoulish, gruesome, hair-raising, horrible, menacing, nightmarish, ominous, shuddersome, sinister, terrifying, threatening, unpleasant, weird, etc...) that not only does it sit very uncomfortably with the song - Life in Technicolour, quite a classic Coldplay-being-amthemic, optimistic type of song - it actually completely distracts you from it. It insists that you don't listen to the song at all.

So, to sum up... it's rubbish.

Thank you. That is all.

Beck puppets = good. Just for your own reference.

Beck's Puppets, originally uploaded by Samuel Stroube.