The Policeman

I just saw this over on david the designer's blog and it's so funny, you have to go see it all.

Some Nice Packaging

Michael Poliza

In some round-about way this morning I found Michael Poliza's site. He recently flew in a helicopter from Hamburg to Cape Town, and has a fantastic collection of imagery from it, particularly the aerial shots. It really struck me how patternistic (did I just make that word up?) some of them become but besides that, they're really just fantastically beautiful.

Viktor & Rolf

Type seems to be creeping more and more onto the catwalks lately - not in an obvious, saturated way, more as a contrast to the fussy prints that really have been. I thought these sculptural pieces from Viktor & Rolf are absolutely beautiful, really strong and imposing, but without being too jarring. Apparently they're "making a stand against the fast pace of fashion", which seems an odd thing for a fashion label to do, but I guess their hearts are in the right places.

Happy-Cow Milk

Very sensible.

"Everything I do always comes back to me"

Sagmeister @ Deitch, originally uploaded by smoonyc.

The CR Blog has a piece about what looks like a really interesting exhibition at the Deitch Gallery New York right now - Stefan Sagmeister's latest. Sagmeister is a great inspiration to me (as he is to many) and this looks especially intriguing as it stems from more personal work (although I think most of his work has a sizeable element of 'him' in it). The 20 'maxims' are themselves just quite nice really - nothing earth-shattering (the fridge-magnet comment isn't wholly unjustified) but it's nice to see a break from corporate identity and other such yawnness, even if it is mainly to promote a book.

The exhibition will shortly be followed by another PR exercise for Michel Gondry's 'new' film, Be Kind Rewind, which looks A.MAZ.ING. I say 'new' as it was obviously written a while ago, seeing as the subject is a video shop, but I'm willing to ignore the fact I haven't watched a video in years in order to see Ghostbusters being re-made with cardboard and tinsel by Jack Black.

In Effect

Right – "Point of Exposure", Jen Stark, 2007 (photo by Harlan Erskine), Left – "Bad Hair Day", Diem Chau, 2005.
I'd really love to be able to go and see the new In Effect exhibition at the OKOK Gallery, a collaboration between two great artists, Diem Chau and Jen Stark. I'm quite intrigued - from their previous work I'd say it's going to be eye-achingly colourful, but the poster (below) suggests something a little quieter. But it's in Seattle. And I am not. Nevermind.

I Fancy You, Idiot Head.

Lots of niceness at Lazy Oaf just in time for Valentines Day.

LOLZ

It's like a parallel universe...

Much fun defacing design seriousness.

Nosiness

If anyone's ever wondered what Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller's house might look like then get your nosy self over to design*sponge and have a poke around.

Animation Weekend

I've had a couple of DVDs sitting on my shelf for a while and hadn't got round to seeing them this weekend, and they were BOTH great! Not just good, absolutely go-and-buy-it-now fantastic. Saturday's showing was A Scanner Darkly, adapted from the novel by Philip K Dick, about a not too distant future where everyone is constantly under surveillance in a battle against widespread addiction to new drug 'Substance D'. It's really beautifully, strangely accurately, animated through rotoscoping. At times you really have to remind yourself that it's animated because your brain kind of tricks you into thinking it's 'real'. Which complements the story quite well, too.


I also finally got around to watching Spirited Away. Again really beautifully animated, and a really charming, lovely, funny and engrossing story. The only other Studio Ghibli film I've seen is Princess Mononoke which I caught on tv a while ago, and I'm definitely going to hunt some more down now...

Happy New Year!

All the best for 2008. I hope you've all eaten as much chocolate as I have. I've been rather busy lately working and Christmassing but things will be back to normal soon, I promise. If they're not I might explode a bit...