To refer to someone else in one’s own text is to recognize the authority or intellectual pertinence of another, whose ideas and concepts are introduced to serve the purposes of illustrating, arguing, and/or reinforcing a set of ideas that is either built upon—or a continuation of—the reference and possibly to reassert its validity within a potentially different context. In doing so, however, a writer or director might miss the mark by misusing and/or misinterpreting the allusion.

in Messier, V. P. - Baudrillard in The Matrix: the Hyperreal, Hollywood, and a Case for Misused References

…or how to start a revolution in 44 seconds.

a Threadless T-shirt designed by Olly Moss

So, here I was strolling on the web, going through my temp (look at it later) bookmarks.. I got to this blog's page about some 1971 PanAm posters - which are pretty minimally cool. The author mentions the origin of these images as being courtesy of Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives. I had, of course, to click this link cause by now I wanted more eye candy. This is where the plot thickens: right there in the first gallery - the one for Chermayeff & Geismar - i see this corporate graphic design for what I think is "redtooth". At this point I'm confused. The caption mentions I company called Beaunit. I then founf out that Beanit is a defunct textile corporation. This gets even weirder when I google bluetooth beaunit logo and I only get 3 pages of results and nothing rather satisfying. Next I went to bluetooth's wikipedia page and also, no sign of a Beaunit mention. But there are two paragraphs telling it's story:

The word Bluetooth is an anglicised version of the Scandinavian Blåtand/Blåtann, the epithet of the tenth-century king Harald I of Denmark and parts of Norway who united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, uniting them into one universal standard.

The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes  (Hagall) and  (Bjarkan), Harald's initials.

The question, then, remains. Is this a case of design separated at birth, "a knockoff, a buyout, or some designer just phoning it in and reusing something from a company that went out of business."

see also Skyekat for at different story on the same topic.

Pink Floyd -  Welcome to the machine
 
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time,
Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'.
You bought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn't like school, and you
know you're nobody's fool,
So welcome to the machine.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star,
He played a mean guitar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar.
He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the Machine.

Radiohead - Fitter Happier

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries ,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals
(never washing spiders down the plughole),
keep in contact with old friends
(enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit at
(moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
charity standing orders,
on Sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash
(also on Sundays),
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism),
will not cry in public,
less chance of illness,
tires that grip in the wet
(shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory,
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat
tied to a stick,
that's driven into
frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics.

/design by raquel

Anyone who knows me knows about my fascination with Blade Runner as a cinematographic, philosophical, sociological and design piece. It just keeps surprising me every time I pick it up again. If Ridley Scott was its maestro, Syd Mead was undoubtedly its most noteworthy solist. In this short, written, edited and directed by Joaquin Montalvan, Syd Mead - who was also in the Art Department of Tron or Aliens - talks about imagination, creativity and future visions today. Filmed in HD it is worth getting on DVD (or here).

The Festival 404, born in the city of Rosario in December 2004, is an independent non-profit organization whose main objective is to promote and spread artistic productions around the world in the field of electronic art, generating a production environment in which the authors are interrelated.

According to the organization, "the '404 Festival Taiwan 2010 / Official Spot' film investigates the genesis of a world created from information where success and failure becomes layered into an evolving urban landscape. This city is not designed through intentional desires, but rather by the proliferation of ideas and thus equating failure with success, each becomes their own thread in a tapestry of an evolving construct." This is so obvious that sometimes people forget it. It is very nicely put though. As is their manisfesto:

ERROR IS CREATION
MANIFESTO TAIWAN 2010
By Gina Valenti

We live in a system that allows mistakes only when the solutions can be found solely within it.
We live in a system to which we must abide by, except when we make art.

I've always dreamt with a world that doesn't fear to make mistakes, never about one that flaunts the fact of being right.

In a historical moment that privileges the appearance of new devices,
people have easily become used to assimilate ideas which haven't been conceived to be their own, when actually thoughts should be newer than the novelty.

Those who believe to be part of a large audience, think of technological means as the only way not to fall behind, ignoring that this behaviour is the worst way of moving forward, only delaying the invention of our next bonfire.

In error lies a combination of possibilities that avoid function. This is a quality shared with art, and its residual value consists in being unuseful, in its lack of practicity.

Error bursts onto the scene.
Objects fail on purpose, forcing us to contemplate their inherent creative nature.

The main purpose of every object is to fail, and by doing so, they turn into something more complete: the result of what we do and do not expect. It becomes a new object, with new features, that will travel through the path that maximizes it.

In a world where thinking is considered erroneous, thinking becomes a duty.
Error is creation.

You should really go to their website and check out the artists page. It is loaded with videos and other goodies. Here a sample of what you might find:

And remember: embrace the unintended consequences.

P.S. I just still haven't figured out why the slogan is spoken in Portuguese… "festival quatro zero quatro, o erro é criação, o mesmo número um sítio novo, taiwan 2010"…

Still hadn't seen these videos of Ölof Arnald's last year's album. Nice.

i newspaper featured in Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type (read previous post).

I had this book in my hands today - Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book. For a manual it presents itself without any condescending and actually gives good technical tips on all things publishing (layout, typography, cover design, etc) by presenting things as they are. What I mean is that it doesn't seem like one more "(insert matter) for dummies". It's quite cheap at bookdepository - at least a quarter cheapen than in the big surface book store I went to.
Its author, Ellen Lupton, is director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She is the best-selling author of Thinking with Type, D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, and Graphic Design: The New Basics (with Jennifer Cole Phillips) - all published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Now, Miss Lupton has a wonderful website also entitled Thinking with Type which I wish I had known before I wandered into the thesis writing process. It is well worth a visit and a bookmark. GO!

When a lot of people do it the same way it's not copy anymore, it is STYLE!

 

Shmidt/Hammer/Lassen - Tian Yi Town Masterplan 2010

de Plussenburgh / Arons en Gelauff Architecten

MGD+EJV

 

Georg Linser and Emil Kapeller - Plattenbau in Viena 1967

GRO design has designed both the Nokia 6500 Classic as the Slide version.

 

If you don't remember Graham Hinde, he was the designer of Philips's Roller Radio and I have mentioned him earlier in here.

Gostei destes desenhos...

by ana luísa soares - residential building | projectoIII

view at Europaconcorsi

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