I painted my room over the Christmas holidays, and it took me to the painting/wallpaper specialists shop. While I waited for the paint I chose to be prepared, I had a look at the wallpaper books. And I fell in love, wishing I’d considered this and had the patience to learn how to do it properly (since I’ve never applied wallpaper before). I mean come on, look at this:

Harlequin's Lucido Collection

Delicious.

I have loved horses since forever. It may be my one obvious girly streak. However I love Lula too, so…whatever. Everytime I see this photo I fall in love again.

Grey Horse

I found this amongst a box of books my mum thought to throw out. I jumped at the chance to inherit a 50 year old piece of design, by none other than Elizabeth Friedländer.

J.S. Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No. 4 in G; Penguin; cover design by Elizabeth Friedlander, 1954

FUSE. Graffiti tag on the train.

Money Talks, Glebe

A forgotten photo left to degenerate in someone's lawn.

Customs House is a cool library.

Finé.

Yes, another blog on Type.

But that’s because I’ve been at the airport a fair bit recently, and saw these delicious advertisements for Vodafone on the luggage trolleys.

That's me behind it in the green jumper, heh.

Get into Sydney

Yello Brands, Sydney, were commissioned to come up with the idea for the campaign, and they then employed Am I Collective (a South-African agency) to do the illustration.

For the rest of the campaign, go here.

Now, it’s no secret that I love Alex Turner. Yesterday morning I went through some heartache when it looked like tickets to see Arctic Monkeys live at the Enmore were sold out. I eventually got them after the venue changed to the much larger Horden Pavillion, and am now looking forward to getting on my Dancing Shoes and Looking Good on the Dancefloor. (Yeah, you can see what I did there.)

An extremely close friend of mine bought Arctic Monkeys at the Apollo (click for the teaser), and while I have yet to watch this, he sent me just a photo of the cover, and I swooned. This friend is also getting a t-shirt and ties combination for the show (But seriously, he is.)

Jealousy.

The DVD cover and poster were done thanks to AllCityMedia, and you can see the designs that didn’t make the final cut here. I really do like the final choice, and want. Except for the font, I hate it.

Limited Edition Box Set

And finally, some henna art, ’cause mum went to Dubai and got it done while over there. She wants to get it permanently tattooed. …Mid-life crisis?

Uh oh.

That’s all folks!

This is something like nine months old now after press release, but imagine having it.

Oh, and before I get flamed about how unrealistic or impossible it is, I’d just like to remind you this is a CONCEPT. An ABSTRACT IDEA.

Why would we need to sense our environment? Doesn’t that kind of make our own ability to sense things redundant? Way to make the human race substandard, Nokia Research Center (NRC) and the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre.

Other than that, its pretty cool, if unfeasible.

And a note on the presentation; remembering it’s a concept being delivered to someone, not a “we are making it happen NAO!”. The simple, hand done thing is nice, and gives that “fresh” feel. Same goes for music.

My year group at Billy Blue were given the following assessment: To spread Smiles across Sydney, and document it. How completely wanky does that sound for a serious assessment? No but really, go here for more. If not, we had to distribute this symbol and document the effect on the public:

The best thing you can give someone is a smile!

Anyway, each groups presentation was due yesterday (it took 3 grueling hours with no breaks), and some of them were on the hilarious side. Hopefully these will be posted on YouTube so I can share them. One group had both the amusing and “aww” factor going for them, you can get the gist of what they got up to on their blogspot.

Another group made a box big enough for a person to fit in, painted it silver with the Symbol we had to distribute as it’s face, cut out a slit for the wearer to see out of, gave him arms and a power lead to ‘recharge’, and christened him “Ro Bert”. Ro Bert got up to some pretty laugh-out-loud situations, all on video.

One of the smaller groups made stickers that looked just like the ones in CityRail trains, but had the symbol in a red circle and instead of “No Smoking. Fines of up to $550 may apply”, they read “Smile at someone. It’s a nice thing to do”. The stickers were stuck alongside the ones that already exist on the trains, so you’d do a double take if you didn’t have something else on your mind. They should still be around, if you see them, whip out your camera/phone and take a snap for me.

There were flowers (lots of flowers) made with the symbol as the ‘face’ planted in patches in the botanical gardens, especially in the grassy area out the front of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where they were obvious.

There were huge posters of post-it notes with the symbol on it for people to take and give to someone else.

There were cookies and candy and flowers and balloons handed out with the symbol and a cheeky message attached.

There were posters, tattoos, stickers, flyers, interviews, challenges, competitions…There was Facebook, there was MySpace, there was CityRail, there was Sunrise, there was the mX, there was Nova.

Mission successful? I don’t know, you tell me.

Apparently, a good designer knows what’s going on in the world.

This sucks because I tend to be slightly naive due to sheer laziness, however I’m just going throw in some propaganda commentary on that which I have managed to absorb. Relating to design.

I saw Rocknrolla on Friday night. It had been booked in to see the second I saw the shorts for it. This may or may not be because I have seen (and own) Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and love it with every fiber of my being. (It’s not hard to see why, being nominated for 20 awards and winning 13 of them)

Rocknrolla has had mixed reviews. Most critics are on about how Guy Ritchie sticks to what he knows. Look guys, there are thousands of directors out there and plenty more movies. If he found success with a particular formula (and isn’t coming out with the exact same movie every year), let him run with it every now and then. He TRIED romantic comedy with Swept Away, and clearly FAILED; check out the amount of “Worst” awards it won/was nominated for. This may or may not have been because of Madonna (fool/s).
Rocknrolla is full of Ritchie style, speed and interweaving story-lines, and has a little less black comedy than Lock, Stock. Music as usual in his gangster films is fun and I’m considering buying the soundtrack. …If limewire and my tight-arseness don’t get to me first. Overall, quality for a friday night movie not with girls. I bought Snatch on Sunday because I get obsessive like that.

One more thing: Ritche is currently shooting Sherlock Holmes. It will be released in December of next year, and should be well worth your hard-earned (or not so hard-earned) dollars. Robert Downey Jr., Rachel McAdams and Jude Law. If it turns out to be rubbish, I promise right now you may print out this entry and I WILL eat my words.

Wanting to also see Quantum of Solace, Australia, Death Race, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Burn After Reading, Twilight (maybe with out Stephanie Meyer’s 14 year old twittering about her obsession with a vampire and horribly overwritten descriptions I might enjoy the storyline).

Adios!

A little late on the political bandwagon, but I found this today and thought this was interesting:

Yes, they did!

Shepard Fairey and Moveon.org got together and created a whole lot of Obama stickers and posters to mark this particular victory. Propoganda? Your choice. Visit Obey Giant for more.

Went out for the third afternoon into the CBD for the Smile In Sydney (here and here) assessment. I think we were all a little over it by today. Twice is more than enough, and some of us were sick/hungover. We got some good footage, and I’d like to think we got a good reception, although the ratio of people smiling due to our efforts to people reading our sign but continuing on as if life is only full of misery was kind of sad. Maybe its wrong to think people actually WANT to live in a happier place. I’m a cynic, it’s true, but for the amount of people obviously reading our poster “What would Sydney be like if everyone smiled more?”/”Have you smiled today? ” and walking away as if they hadn’t seen anything at all…Geez guys, lighten up. Video later, depending on if it goes online. Photos later too. For now here’s a photo from the mX of some of the girls in our class on the project:

mX = lots of exposure, dammit!

Text reads:
C’mon, give us a smile. There’s a free cookie in it

Smile more – that’s the simple message design student Kristal Yeung (left) is sending to Sydneysiders. She and her friends Whitney Smarz (centre) and Claire Rooney (right), will be distributing cookies packaged with a smile symbol and a poem on Thursday in Pitt St Mall. Let’s face it, getting something for free always cheers up your day.

I also love Kinokuniya as a library. Service and pricing is poor, but I can spend hours in there quite easily, soaking up all the wonderful modern resources they have to offer. You should too!

Continuing on from my first blog where I looked like a type zealot, I was looking through some existing typographical posters in an effort to garner some inspiration for my own set I have to come up with by Thursday as part of an assessment.

The following made me groan with frusteration. Just for clarification, the students who made these were assigned the fonts. I feel bad for them.

Totally showing this to Peter McGill to see if it makes his most hated typeface passable. The overall design is actually quite appealing, but Helvetica=fail. See here.

More like Comic Sans for being crucified. This is meant to be ironic, but come on…you just don’t joke about that. I’ll bet the girl who was assigned this wanted to SHOOT HER LECTURER IN THE FACE. Comic Sans should be restricted to school classrooms of grades K-4, otherwise it and its creator should die. The only positive thing I have to say (which isn’t all that positive) is that the design is kind of…immature and naive, which suits the font. This, on the other hand is straight to the point, no irony to get in the way of the atrocity that is Comic Sans. It’s great: