Logo Addiction

The FedEx logo is graphic design genius. (For those who didn't know, there is an arrow made my the white space between the E and x)

It was designed in 1994 and has won over 40 design awards worldwide. The man behind it was interviewed here.

One question that I wish was asked in the interview is "are you peeved that UKMail nicked your idea?"...
...Although I'm sure the answer would be, "No, their logo is rubbish, they were too much of a bunch of pussies to leave their logo down to subtlety and anyway, the arrow goes the wrong way on theirs."

Gosh it just makes me feel annoyed when I see a UKmail van.
I need to calm myself by looking at the refix version of the Amazon.com logo...

From this:


To this:


Ahhh, that's better. If you can't see why, then you've not become baptised/addicted/obsessed by logo design... Beware, once you have there's no turning back. You'll be noticing kerning FOR LIFE.

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Award-winning Infographics

Lee Byron is a designer whose blog/website I've followed for a while now and he has produced some stunning work.

The Malofiej Awards are the equivalent of the Grammies in the international infographics world and at the ceremony in Spain, Byron has just picked up the top award for this brilliant design for The New York Times...














Entitled 'The Ebb And Flow Of Movies', this interactive flash design allows you to look at the major box office hits in the last 22 years. Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the Oscars tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time. I've quite enjoyed scrolling through to try and decide my favourite year for movies. You can also click on any given film and you are linked to a review. It's beautiful to look at but if you also start to analyse it you can see just how much work has gone into it. I read that it's been adjusted to take into account inflation as well.

Lee Byron's other New York Times work, showing visually where the medals have gone in Olympic history took a SIlver Award in the 'features' category.

One of my personal favourite works is his Last.FM 'What have I been listening to?' chart, which is a timeline similar to his box office one that shows the ebb and flow of your music taste. Byron for a while ran a group on Last.FM where you could request a graph, but now it's stopped and it seems that Last.FM never bought up the idea.

Our protagonist in this post now works for Facebook, so it'll be interesting to see what he gets involved in. I wonder how much of a role he had in shaping Facebook's new layout, which is getting frustratingly closer to Twitter.

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Spike Jonze

"I have to praise you like shouuuuuld..."



















bit of a legend...

Films:

- Where The Wild Things Are (coming soon)

- Jackass

- Being John Malkovich

Music videos:

- The Pharcyde - The Drop

- Fatboy Slim - Praise You

- Beastie Boys - Sabotage

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Sheep Art

Oh my gosh.

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Berlin

Ahhhh well turns out my apartment in Berlin had no internet, so I will summarise the last week in one post...



It was great. Street art, beer, architecture, techno. I know every city has these, but Berlin has the best of each, seemingly without trying.



Street art: the Kreuzberg astronaut (top) or the Oberbaum Brücke mural (just above).
Beer: Berliner Kindl or Altenberger. Hidden home-brew in BKK (Bier Kommunitat de Kreuzberg).
Architecture: from the Brandenberg gate to the Bauhaus.
Techno: Digitalism, Boys Noize, Robots In Disguise, to name a few of the top exports.

Must see: The Jewish Museum is incredible purely for the building and curation, the building is one long zig zag, with only a few windows and some purposely empty exhibition rooms, very clever. Although not forgotten, the history of berlin feels accepted, acknowledged and put aside. There is a lot of irony and sarcasm, I suppose there has to be.



The graffiti is outstanding, and that is definitely a compliment coming from a bristolian. The above photo was the front of a computer shop.



On the friday night we went to Mr Flash at iCon. The hairy Sebastian Chabal loolalike angrily puffed on cigarette after cigarette as he laid down massive tracks such as Kasey's remix of Proxy 'Raven'. iCon is like Berlin's Fabric, only about a 20th of the size. Which is definitely a good thing. Up and coming artists there include: MSTRKRFT, Busy P, Caspa, Chase & Status, Aeroplane, Mr Scruff, to name a few. I think the guy who's bringing such a selection to town is 'Marvin Suggs', who played a great joint set with Mr Flash late that night.

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AA(rgghhhh) Taking Over The World

American Apparel isn't just on sale in American Apparel, it seems to be the choice template for all 'small company' clothing ranges. I worked there as a Christmas temp a few months ago and it made me laugh how people will pay £15 for a simple organic black tshirt. AA seem to have pulled of the biggest coupe in clothing branding - the no-logo, plain, one colour style is now their logo, and of all the fonts to choose they've got Helvetica. They've obviously got the wholesale offers sorted down to a tee (excuse the pun), and make sure that their name is clearly stated on the website and label of every product.

Here's some nice ideas, made on American Apparel clothing:


Pelski's


Headhoods

But having worked there I'm not really sure if I buy all their 'we pay everyone good wages and it's all made in one little downtown LA factory' speel. There is definitely something seriously distasteful about the whole company and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the fact that their factory employment scheme doesn't help Mexicans in Mexico at all. Maybe it's the issue that their promotional photography is now pornographic.

It's a massive corporate company trying to pretend it's a "totally rad, hip, sexy, well Greenpeace, small organisation" but noone being fooled. And as for the small businesses who get their plain wholesale tshirts in from American Apparel, print on them and sell them as unique, well, who are they kidding?!

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Yellowstone

Episode 1 - Winter

Watch this great nature documentary on iPlayer at the moment.

Some of the shots are stunning. It's like another planet.

Check out the bison, they look like a cross between what Luke Skywalker rides in The Empire Strikes Back and a character in Where The Wild Things Are! Apparently they've survived since the ice age because of the extraordinary environment in Yellowstone!!

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Knackered

This has been the most tiring week of 2009 for me so far. But probably the best as well...

I've had to hand in 2 essays and 2 animations at college, Liverpool have scored 8 goals against two of the biggest teams in the world, I've had 4 mates come and stay for the weekend, Comic Relief has broke the records despite the credit crunch and since thursday morning I've had a grand total of 12 hours sleep starting with that sleepless night. Quite a random collection of key points but that's just how my weeks gone.

Now, what could be a better way of relaxing than listening to Damon Albarn's voice. Legend.

Gorillaz - Hong Kong

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Green Fields

Blur - Coffee & TV

Here's to next week... In which I'll be visiting Berlin!! Exciting! So keep checking on here a week of beer, techno and sausages!

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Fake Blood Essential Mix

iPlayer - Both hours "The Club and Afterparty"

Zshare - Hour One "The Club"

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Man United 1-4 Liverpool

Thank you very much.

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A-Trak Attack

A-Trak said he was worried after touring with Kanye West that he may just become "Kanye's DJ", but noone that stupid. The three time DMC champion still has a lot up his sleeve and is working, remixing and playing alongside all the right people at the moment.

I first saw A-Trak back in October 2007 at Clockwork in Bristol (photo above) and he did a joint 2-hour set with DJ Mehdi, probably still in my top 5 DJ sets. DJ Mehdi has just interviewed him on his blog here.

Having just finished his Infinity +1 tour (check out the awesome graphic design - spot the genius hidden writing), A-Trak is playing at Fabric on the 3rd of April alongside the Chemical Brothers, Joe Goddard of Hot Chip, and Scratch Perverts to launch his new Fabriclive mix. The tracklisting looks tasty...

01 A-Trak ‘Say Whoa’ [Fool’s Gold] and DJ Sneak ‘You Can’t Hide From Your Bud’ [Classic]
02 Boys Noize - ‘Oh! (A-Trak Remix)’ [Boysnoize Records]
03 Scott Grooves feat Parliament Funkadelic ‘Mothership Reconnection (Daft Punk Remix)’ [Soma]
04 Voodoo Chilli ‘Get On Down’ [Cheap Thrills]
05 Skepta ‘Sweet Mother (House Version)’ [Boy Better Know]
06 DJ Class ‘I’m The Ish’ [Unruly]
07 Metronomy ‘Heartbreaker (Diskjokke Remix)’ [Because]
08 His Majesty Andre ‘Peep Thong’ [Cheap Thrills]
09 Zombie Nation ‘Forza (Original)’ [UKW]
10 Alex Gopher ‘Aurora’ [Go 4 Music]
11 Dance Area ‘AA 24-7’ [Phantasy]
12 Robbie Rivera ‘Move Move (DJ Observer & Daniel Heathcliff Remix)’ [Juicy]
13 Daniele Papini ‘Church of Nonsense’ [Media]
14 Laidback Luke & A-Trak ‘Shake It Down’ [Fool’s Gold]
15 Nacho Lovers ‘Acid Life (Nachos 909 Dub)’ [Fool’s Gold]
16 Rob Threezy ‘The Chase’ [Rob Threezy]
17 Friendly Fires ‘Paris (Aeroplane Remix)’ [XL]
18 Fan Death ‘Veronica’s Veil (Erol Alkan’s Extended Re-Edit)’ [Phantasy]
19 Simon Baker ‘Plastik (Todd Terje’s Turkatech Remix)’ [Ongaku]
20 The Martian ‘Tobacco Ties’ [Red Planet]
21 DJ Gant-Man ‘Juke Dat Girl From The Back’ [Fool’s Gold]
22 DJ MP4 ‘The Book Is On The Table’ [Musics Net]
23 Jamie Anderson & Content ‘Body Jackin’ ‘[IDG]
24 Raffertie ‘Do Dat’ [On The Brink]
25 DJ Zinc ‘138 Trek’[Bingo Beats]

I'm not giving this away though... Buy it!

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Epic

Tonight was epic. I'm talking about Liverpool v Real Madrid. Liverpool 4 Real Madrid 0.

It was incredible. In the first 22 minutes a graphic came up saying we'd had 8 shots already! It was an onslaught. I knew it was going to good as soon as Torres rounded Cannavaro with a backheel in the first 2 minutes.

The Kop stand at Anfield is incredible on European nights and there was something about last night that seemed to hype the Liverpool into a frenzy and crush the Real Madrid men to despair.

For me though, watching the game on telly, it was the Champion's League music that got me excited about the match. That music is so epic! I love it! So I thought I'd post a collection of particularly 'epic' songs...

Zadok The Priest - Handel
You'll Never Walk Alone - The Kop
Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros
Earth Song - Michael Jackson
Pocket Piano - DJ Mehdi
Ecstasy Of Gold (Ennio Morricone vs Nas) - DJ Erb
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace - John Williams
Capsule In Space (You'll Only Live Twice) - John Barry
Requiem For A Dream - Lux Aeterna

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Tea Towels To Dry For

Pretty bad pun I know, but I didn't make it up... It's the name of this website, that has been set up by two tea towel enthusiasts since last year. ToDryFor.com is like a catwalk for tea towels, and you can submit your designs to them and they will link them on the website. Yes it's that simple.

Here's some good ones:

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The Legend Of Tilt-Shift

Tilt-shift photography is a technique in which you can make real footage or photographs look like toy miniature models. It can be done afterwards to any photograph in photoshop or can be used on video.

For example, this photograph is real and shows real cars and people, with effects added after:














Whereas this is a tiny model figurine left in the street:


































The artist who took the 2nd photograph has a blog that I've followed for a long time, called Little People In The City. He leaves these tiny models in different places around London and takes photographs depicting a scene, and then he leaves them. Sometimes he goes back and sees how they've got on, sometimes he just lets them go unnoticed and stay hidden forever, fending for themselves in the big bad world. He's got a damn cool book out you should buy aswell...












But that is not tilt-shift, and that is not video. The king of tilt-shift seems to be Keith Loutit from Sydney, Australia, whose videos on Vimeo are incredibly popular. They are the best examples of tilt-shift I can find on the internet and look stunning. Here's his latest one, watch it full screen on high definition:


Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

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March 2009 Mixtape

Here's a mix I recorded the other day.

It's not perfect but I haven't recorded one for a long time....

Zshare Stream/Download
Paris Is Burning (Cut Copy Remix) - Ladyhawke
Waiting Two - DJ Mehdi & Chromeo
Aer-OBAMA (Daft Punk vs Adam Freeland) - Daft Punk vs Adam Freeland
Tha Raven (Kazey & Bulldog MPC Reverse Remix) - Proxy
Steroids (ft. Uffie) - Mr. Oizo
Cockney Thug (DJ Primecuts Remix) - Rusko
Kilometer (1001010101001 Remix) - Sebastien Tellier
Cornelius (Radio Oi!) - The Bloody Beetroots
Jump Around (Deadmau5 Remix) - House of Pain
Jack Got Jacked (Jack Beats Remix) - AC Slater
Mind Dimension (The Bloody Beetroots Remix) - Tiga
Mr. Brightside (Bass Weazal Vs. Mikey Hook Remix) - The Killers
Thou Shalt Always Flatten Beats - Dan Le Sac Vs Mr Oizo
Violator (Jack Beats Remix) - White Williams
Kalemba (feat. PongoLove) - Buraka Som Sistema
The Fear (The Count Saves Lily Allen From The Fear Remix) - Lily Allen
In For The Kill (Skreams Let's Get Ravey Mix) - La Roux

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The Onion

The Onion is a spoof American news website taking the piss out of pretty much everything and anything! I can't believe how much work has gone into this website just for a joke! It's so vast that it's easy to end up on there for 2 hours reading fake articles and watching fake newsreels. If you spend long enough on it then you start to believe some of it's real!!

Here's some of my favourite parts:

Obama in 3D

Judi Dench dating female DJ

TV Listings:
"Hungry Betty
ABC
9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST
Starving but good-natured Betty works at a food magazine where everyone is constantly eating."

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

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Illegal Seagull

Illegal Seagull, SRSLY?LOL and Splashback are all the creations of crazy Bristol-based djs and promoters Lucie Red and Nadoone. They are pretty mental non-genre-biased club nights and the posters by illustrator Christopher Wright are graphical representations of the madness they aim for. They definitely stand out! Tonight is their biggest night yet, with about 15 djs lined up to play Motion skate park in Bristol.

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Red Riding Trilogy Tonight

The Red Riding Trilogy starts tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.

"The TV adaptation of David Peace's cult noir novels feature a stellar cast of celebrated actors including Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Andrew Garfield, David Morrissey and Maxine Peake, the three feature-length films are set in Yorkshire during the 1970s and 80s - a time of paranoia, mistrust, corruption and the terrifying legacy of the Ripper murders."

The adverts for this have been great (can't find them on the net yet), because they've been done in a sort of documentary style, cutting to interviews with the cast, which as stated above is awesome. The website is also pretty neat. The way it zooms in on the rooms when you click on them is brilliant.

It's been very well marketed, the timings good, the tv ads are good, the branding and graphics are good, the websites good...
Let's see if the films live up to the hype...

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Can't Believe I Missed This...

At 8:10pm on May 30th last year, Channel 4 aired the first 'live advert' in British television history. It was an advert for Honda and it filled an entire ad break. TV cut live to an aeroplane flying somewhere Spain with 15 skydivers inside waiting for the signal. They had a camera on another plane flying alongside and one of the skydivers had a camera strapped on, so then someone cut between them live. After Come Dine With Me got to it's first ad break they jumped.

As they fell towards the ground from 10,000 feet up they steered themselves into the letters H O N D and A before pulling for their parachutes and drifting to the ground. Amazing. You can watch it again here.

This must have cost a ton to buy a whole ad break and organise it all, especially knowing it could all go so wrong. The director himself had admitted that if the skydivers failed to make the letters, you wouldn't even know who the ad was for!

I now find out that this was just a small part of generating hype for an entire advertising campaign involving skydiving. For the launch of the Honda Accord, 45 skydivers were going to create shapes signifying all the new features as they fell above the Mojave desert!

But it's more than that still. This advert was a breakthrough idea to keep adverts being watched in this new 'fast-forward' age of the television. It says to Sky Plus, how about we make the adverts so good, viewers don't even want to fast-forward?! As I have cruelly found out, if the adverts are live, you feel left out if you didn't see it when it first aired. It almost makes me want to go and watch the adverts right now just in case there's something 'live' happening. That sounds ridiculous, but when this happened last year, not only did 2.2 million viewers see it live on Channel 4, another 100,000 tuned in especially to watch it on the +1 service!

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Cheap/Free Theatre Tickets!

To encourage more 15-25 year olds to visit the theatre, the National Theatre on the Southbank are offering cheap tickets with the new 'Entry Pass' scheme. There's no sign up fee or contract, the first show you go to see is completely free and from then on every ticket you buy is no more than £5!












This fantastic idea started on the 23rd of February and has yet has no time scale at all! It was inspired by the 'A Night Less Ordinary' association that have teamed up with the Arts Council England and Metro newspaper to offer 600,000 free tickets to under 26's across the country. 200 venues are involved so it's well worth checking it out.

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Girl Power

Is it me or is this a golden era for female singers, songwriters and rappers?

Little Boots, La Roux and Robyn coming with an indie/electro pop sound.

M.I.A., Santogold and Yo Majesty! spitting on bumping beats.

Duffy, Adele and Amy Winehouse bringing the retro flashbacks.

Lily Allen, Kate Nash, The Ting Tings with their colloquial lyrics, each in a different way.

And then there's artists like Yelle and Goldfrapp, bringing yet another dynamic.

The talent is utterly overwhelming.

There are so many tracks by these artists that have come out in the last 2 years that I love but just too many to post up. I did have links before but that got this post deleted I think. Just get to know...

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Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

Available here on iPlayer for the next 4 days!

Directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno it follows Zinedine Zidane, possibly the greatest footballer player of all time for the entirety of one Real Madrid match against Villarreal. 17 cameras follow the French midfield maestro from angles all around the stadium.

At exactly 90 minutes long I appreciate that it's hard to enjoy such an abstract piece of cinematography but the overall atmosphere that is developed through light and sound is stunning to watch. Zidane sets up a goal at one point and then late on in the game gets involved in a scuffle on the pitch and gets sent off, only to receive rapturous applause from the Madrid fans. The film stumbles luckily into becoming a direct representation of Zidane's career, ending with a red card from a stupid lash-out as he did in his final game the 2006 World Cup final.

At half-time the film shows other things happening across the globe at the same time. Footage is shown of the aftermath of a car bomb in the Middle East and the camera zooms to show one of the survivors wearing a Zidane replica shirt.

The film is quite serious and is best if you know Zidane and football well I expect. But I think if you see this slightly cheesy YouTube compilation first you will realise why Zidane is considered as the greatest footballer ever. His technique and relationship with the ball is incredible. And this is one of 100s of compilations on the man.


Zinédine Zidane - L'Etoile Bleue by zinedine13

EDIT: Link went down but I think I've found the same video on reuploaded on Dailymotion.

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