For me, the most interesting thing about the Comedy Carpet (one of the UK’s biggest ever pieces of public art which opened yesterday), is the typography and its actual production.
Collaborative artist, Gordon Young was inspired and supported in researching the content for the carpet by Blackpool-based comedy expert, Barry Band and historian and writer Graham Mccann, and on the typography and layout by graphic designer Andy Altmann of why not associates.
image: blackpool council
Production
Five years in the making: one of the most complex pieces of public art ever commissioned at first sight, the comedy carpet looks as if the text is painted, but in fact each of the 160,000+ letters has been individually cut from 30mm solid granite or cobalt blue concrete, arranged into over 300 slabs and then cast into high quality, gleaming white concrete panels. The letters range in size from a few centimetres to over a metre so viewers can enjoy it both close up and from the glass viewing platform in the blackpool tower eye.
The scale and incredibly complex nature of the work meant that comedy carpet team even had to set up its own bespoke studio to make the artwork. after several months of research with input from chemists and engineers the comedy carpet team devised new techniques and recipes for production including a special mix to produce the hardest and whitest of concrete and the perfect blue that won’t fade. The process of making each of the 320 slabs involved many complex stages from cutting, sorting, fettling, and laying out each of the letters, to a 3-stage casting process, curing, trimming, grinding and polishing. and that’s before it was transported to Blackpool for the installation on the headland.
gordon young selects letters for a part of the comedy carpet
image: blackpool council
image: blackpool council
image: blackpool council
image: blackpool council
section of the 'carpet' being cleaned
image: bbc
image: bbc
image: bbc
Created as part of the major regeneration of the promenade, the comedy carpet was commissioned by blackpool council, with part of a £4m grant from cabe’s seachange programme. catchphrases, jokes and songs from more than a 1000 comedians are now immortalised in concrete and granite artwork which is situated at the foot of blackpool tower.
Artist Gordon Young has been working in the public realm for over 20 years creating pieces that mine rich seams of social history, engage communities and extend the relationships between art and architecture. at the heart of all gordon’s young’s work is language - words that entice, fascinate and on the comedy carpet, amuse. titter ye not, just like that, oooo-er matron, nudge, nudge wink, wink, oh betty! suit you sir, yeah but no but, what’s on the stick vic? , in the comedy carpet young has created a giant 'giggle map' immortalising the UK’s favourite comedians and comic writers fromthe hey day of music hall to 21st century stand up.
A selection of cool, random and cleverly designed products from New York based product designers, The.
Anti-theft lunch bags
Stop those bullys at school/work nicking your sandwiches!
Framed objects
Walls notebook
Walls Notebook is a notebook / sketchbook that features 80 pictures of "clean" NYC walls instead of blank pages. Write, draw, paste, or doodle on these inspirational backdrops. You'll be one step closer to being the street artist you've always wanted to be … minus the jail time.
Stacked cups
What appears to be two or three cups nestled within each other is actually only one cup.
Speak-er
thinkofthe.com
Great motion infogram from Australian motion designer Patrick Clair from Australia about the "open-source weapon" Stuxnet.
via: http://blog.iso50.com/24484/anatomy-of-a-computer-virus/
http://vimeo.com/patrickclair
Advertising Agency: Serviceplan, Munich, Germany
Chief Creative Officer: Alexander Schill
Creative Directors: Alexander Schill, Maik Kaehler, Christoph Nann
Copywriter: Andreas Schriewer
Art Directors: Manuel Wolff, Savina Mokreva, Roman Becker
Others: Robin Ruschke, Michael Falkensteiner
via adsoftheworld
via designyearbook.com
“We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn’t want the high maintenance aspect of a video…” - Fast Company
Jamie Beck (photography) and Kevin Burg (design/motion) have worked together to create these beautiful, subtle and intricate animated gifs they call Cinemagraphs.
Here’s a collection of Cinemagraphs from Jamie’s blog From Me To You.
So, how are they created? Here’s an explanation by Jamie Beck, thanks to The Atlantic. Read more
I've just got back from a week in the French Alps, and as usual I've taken loads of pictures. As well as taking loads on my proper camera I also used my trusty iPhone 3GS, and namely the Instagram and Hipstamatic apps. Since I've started using the instagram app, I've barely touched hipstamatic and the multitude of other camera apps I've got installed. But I thought this little trip away would be a good chance to revisit it (it cost me money after all) give them a little head-to-head and decide once and for all if one reigns supreme.
Here are the results:
Instagram.
Hipstamatic.
One point to note, is that all the instagram photos were taken on a sunny day, where as at least half the hipstamatic shots were taken in poor visibility and low light.
Interface
Generally I much prefer the instagram interface, not having to wait for the image to "develop" and the ability to try all the different filters out before selecting the best one. However the randomness of hipstamatic does sometimes produce nice and unexpetced results, but equally there are plenty of shots which could be much improved if there was a better viewfinder or if they could be applied retroactively. I also like the ability to edit the image in another app first (I use TiltShiftGen, quite often to tweak colours, saturation and contrast), before then applying the filters and thats before you even get onto the social aspect of instagram.
I'm not going to talk about the social aspect of instagram (which is great by the way, as you will know if you're familiar with the app), but merely comparing the usability and results as I had limited access to that whilst up in the Alps.
Results
The main difference in the actual shots/filters seems to be the level of contrast, with it being richer in instagram and more washed out and dreamy in hipstamtic. I tend to prefer the results instagram provides - being able to browse the various results means the best filter is always selected, maybe if the same was possible with hipstamtic I'd use it more as too often the results aren't quite what I hoped for.
But then I knew all this before, which is why I hadn't used it for donkeys. But it does produce some nice images, and combining the two apps also gives some interesting and different results. So maybe I will use it a bit more from now on, if only to make my photos slightly different from all the instagram'd ones flying about.
If you want to check out my photos I'm sure I will get them on flickr soon or you can browse my instagram shots here (requires login) or here.
If you want to follow me on instagram my username is bentopliss.
hipstamaticapp.com
itunes.apple.com/us/app/hipstamatic/id342115564?mt=8
instagr.am
itunes.apple.com/us/app/instagram/id389801252?mt=8
artandmobile.com/tiltshift
itunes.apple.com/app/tiltshift-generator-fake-miniature/id327716311?mt=8
Last Thursday, I attended New Adventures in Web Design, a new web design conference taking place in Nottingham organised by Simon Collison. I was fortunate enough to win my ticket back in October whilst taking part in the Creative Cup (check my post about that here), and so on Thursday morning I set off towards Nottingham.
Now getting to Nottingham from Manchester isn't the most straight forward of journeys, especially via public transport and the morning after moving out of my flat. Nevertheless I made onto the first of four of trains I would be taking that day, at 5.50am changing in Sheffield. Below are a couple of my early morning snaps.
I'd not been to a conference like this before, and after heading down on my own it was a welcome relief to see quite a few familer faces throughout the day. Now onto the talks. I'm only going to give a brief summary as other people have already summed up the talks very well, and probably much better than me. I thoroughly recommend reading Jake Smith's review or Bluegg Creative's review.
As a designer who works on both online and offline projects I was pleased when most of the talks dicussed a much broader level of design and its principals than I had anticipated, there was also very little technical talk, which also suited me down to the ground.
Some rights reserved by jontangerine
The day got underway to an interesting start with Dan Rubin and Mark Boulton both questioning the evolution of design and its terminology, whilst asking the wider design community to seek to amend them and "create a new canon". The main theme I took away from this is that on the web there "are no pages and there are no edges". Digital is a new and evolving industry and we should question our process until the best practice can be established.
I really enjoyed the talk given next by Elliot Jay Stocks, again it crossed over from digital to print and back again. He talked about the benefits of varying disciplines (something which I believe very strongly about), even if its only to make you realise by switching how much you prefer the thing you spend most of your time doing. He then went onto talk about the pitfalls of using design cliches and trends, as well as the necessity of focusing on the tiny details when using things like drop shadows, highlights, bevels if you must go for that whole web 2.0 aesthetic.
For me the talks which focused on personal work I found to less inspiring then the those which covered broader subjects. Although they all covered interesting points, I found harder to engage with as it was just confirming (for me) the process of desiging I go through every day on projects and I didn't feel like I learning unlike in the talks of the morning. Saying that, there wasn't a talk all day I didn't take something away from.
Towards the end of the day my early start was slowly but surely catching up with me, but the final two talks from Andy Clarke and Brendan Dawes certainly did enough to keep my attention going strong right until the end of the day. Both are strong and confident speakers who took interesting angles on design. Andy Clarke spoke about westerns and comic books, relating the production, direction and illustration techniques of the formats to the rhymn and art direction of good website design.
Whilst Brendan Dawes focussed on the beauty of product design (again a subject I feel close to after studying it whilst at university), and making things - design shouldn't be constrained, its about questioning things and learning quite often through play. I liked how this linked back to the points in the morning about the redfinition and questioning what we do.
After a great day of talks (and once I'd recovered from a serious numb bum) I managed to hang around for a few hours and grab a few beers before heading back on the last train(s) back to Manchester. Unfortunately due to the poor transport links between Manchester and Nottingham I couldn't stay on and drink into the night, next time I'll book a hotel room and take the next day off work.
As far as I m concerned it was a great day, where the little details made all the difference, even if it was a particularly long one getting home 20 hours after I intially left in the early hours of the morning before. The name card/shedule lanyards were nicely designed, as were all the other little bits in the goodie bags such as the bookmark, pin badge as well as the New Adventures paper which is a great read, which you should all buy by the way.
Some rights reserved by jontangerine
Below are a few snaps from my iPhone 3GS, hence the poor quality.
newadventuresconf.com
flickr.com/groups/naconf
creative-cup.com
colly.com
4 Cities / 294 Walls / 2930 km of Road.
Created by Turkish group Sokak Savasa Karsi highlighting the battle against war and terrorism. Covering 294 walls in 4 cities in Turkey, the bodies and the shapes of soldiers were cut out of pieces of newspaper, then fixed in different districts and photographed to create a wonderfully shot and great little stop-motion animation.
If someone would like to buy me this Pantone chromatic wheel calender please feel free. Derek Bowers has done a great job on it!
"My brief was to create a calendar for Pantone, the world-renowned authority on colour. The main aim for me was to make this calendar relevant on a global scale. With the colour wheel being universally recognised, I used this and combined it with a mosaic made up of 1440 different images to create my main graphic. Sticking with the whole worldwide idea, I have included many visual references to a host of different countries within the mosaic, and highlighted many of the main religious and cultural holidays throughout the year. To answer a question I have been asked a few times, no 'special software' was used to produce this. The grid was build in Illustrator and I placed all 1440 images by hand in (as close to as possible) some sort of colour order." - Derek Bowers
"Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of." - Charles Richards
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Play with time, or at least your alarm clock.
Puzzle makes it fun to set your alarm clock by letting you manipulate the numbers yourself. You physically arrange the strokes of the digital numbers in order to set the time on your alarm.
via designboom.com
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