burolandschap

As part of a larger project rehabilitating and restoring its lake district and wetlands in Bokrijk National Park in Limburg, authorities have commissioned landscapers to replace some of the traditional plank bridges with unique, submerged, sunken trails to allow hikers and cyclists to experience the ponds and lakes from a periscope’s perspective. More at designboom at the link up top.

fox-cull

In order to distance the media empire and its paracosms from the toxic propagandizing subsidiary masquerading as a news outlet, Disney’s studio mergers (themselves the product of a string of prior consolidations beginning in 1933) will be known henceforth as Twentieth Century and Searchlight Pictures.

7x7

franking privileges: Royal Mail (see previously) will issue postage stamp sets based on classic arcade games—via Boing Boing

cajun court: a resplendent Louis XV tower sequestered in the heart of Louisiana—via Messy Nessy Chic

cosmodrome: the busiest space ports in the world charted out—via Maps Mania

conurbation: the world’s largest megalopoli tracked on a bar-chart race

yugo.logo: a growing visual archive of brand enblems from Yugoslavia

team rodent: an intricate link diagram illustrating the connections between Disney properties and merchandising from 1967

tomorrow’s on fire: Australia needs our help and needs us to heed this stark warning—via Waxy

the ballad of rocket robin hood: a Canadian animated children’s show that aired from 1966 to 1969 featuring a team of Merry Men living in the “astonishing year 3000” and committed to protecting the poor and innocent from exploitation by Prince John and the Sheriff of NOTT (National Outer-Space Terrestrial Territories)

ポスター

We enjoyed reviewing this gallery of the official posters created for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games (previously here, here, here and here), the committee inviting prominent artist to contribute works promoting cultural understanding through sportsmanship and a celebration of friendly competition. We especially liked the piece entitled “Olympic Cloud” by graphic designer Taku Satoh and the vintage aesthetic it evokes. Be sure to visit the Guardian (see also) at the link up top to peruse all twenty and to learn more about the artists and studios behind them.

8x8

mudras: nifty exercises for your hands and wrists

holy rollers: A reformed, formerly anti-LGBTQ fast food franchise announces it will make amends

konmari: life style guru and evangelist of de-cluttering now wants to fill that tchotchke-shaped void in your soul

flea circus: the marvelous performing Savitsky cats, via Everlasting Blört

between two ferns: eight-two famous and infamous interviews animated

anti-archiv: a massive cache of photographs and home movies from the DDR, via Things magazine

discerning audiences: light entertainment from 1972

self-policing: a browser extension uses machine learning to highlight AI generated content, via Waxy

6x6

avoir un jour de courage: the immortals at l’Académie Française suggest a replacement for the English phrase “coming out”

notorious rbg: a leopard print camouflage homage to the Supreme Court Justice

vennbahn: a scenic bike trail following a former train track crisscrosses the border between Belgium and Germany multiple times, via Super Punch

acqua alta: tragic images of Venice drowning

mechanisms of affection: artist Maria Antelman explores how the tools of technology reflect the user

i’ve been called ruby giuliani: a drag queen entertained spectators during opening public testimony for the impeachment hearings

eurorando

Founded on this day in 1969 in a lodge on a popular hiking trail through the Swabian Jura (Schwäbische Alb), the Europäishce Wandervereinigung, the European Ramblers’ Association, la Fédération européenne de la randonnée pédestre was formed by founding members representing walkers’ clubs from West Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Belgian.  Now headquartered in Kassel and with offices in Prague, more than fifty-eight area- and regional-organisations from thirty European states sponsor regular outings and maintain, marking and signposting a vast network of long distance hiking trails (some seventy thousand kilometres worth across an active membership of some three million individuals, see previously). The so called E-Paths are not for virtual exploration, but rather are trails that cross a minimum of three countries.

7x7

foreverspin: a lovely film exploring the cross-cultural phenomenon of tops by the design duo Ray and Charles Eames (previously) with a playful, cinematic score by Elmer Bernstein

empire state of mind: re-examining the legacy of the Russian Revolution for Central Asia

bereitschaftspotential: an abiding experiment refuting free will seems to have been overturned, via The New Shelton Wet/Dry

east enders: Spitalfields Life celebrates its tenth anniversary revisiting some of the Gentle Author’s favourite posts

long play: a major drinks conglomerate pledges to spin plastic straws into vinyl records in the transition away from single use items

rendered environments: ambient animations from Georgian artist Sandro Tatinashvili

axis of rotation: a master-class in the art of the yo-yo

2.0

The always engaging Kottke directs our attention to an online museum that documents and curates various social media and productivity platforms, operating systems and video games from their earliest forms (see also) until the present. Much more to explore and reminisce over at the links above.

videojuego

We enjoyed perusing this gallery of vintage and antique sporting and summer travel posters going under the hammer. We were especially taken with the vibrant and angular design of artist Josep Renau Montoro exhibited in this 1941 commission for the Revolutionary Games held at the behest of Manuel Áliva Camacho. The artist was most famous for his murals and political propaganda during the Spanish civil war before being exiled first to México and then to East Berlin. There are other painters of note to be found in the auction preview including Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, Boris Artzybaseff and others.

closing the loop

Previously we’ve discussed how the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games are to make a statement on sustainability by salvaging precious metals for the placing athletes from electronic waste, and now courtesy of Dezeen, we see the committee has revealed their gold, silver and bronze medals.
Designed and conceived by Junichi Kawanishi, the medals and their cases are alloyed from substances recovered from old electronic devices donated by the public. All told, this netted—mostly from obsolete smart phones, some six million of them over the course of two years—thirty-two kilogrammes of gold, thirty-five hundred kilogrammes of silver and twenty-two hundred kilogrammes of bronze. Much more at the links above.

8x8

blood meridian: two animated maps (see also) chart Manifest Destiny from contrasting perspectives

lobby cards: the iconic film posters and title sequences of Saul Bass (previously here and here)

strong to the finich: because of the leafy green’s steroidal qualities, some are calling for it to be banded like other doping agents

scientific method: brilliant vintage middle school text books via Present /&/ Correct

nineteen eighty-four was not meant to be an instruction manual: workers trialled with beacons and bracelets to monitor performance and productivity

best in show: a curated selection of the winners of the National Geographic travel photography competition

lj: going into production in 2021, the Lightyear One represents the industry’s first long-range and untethered electric vehicle, via Design Boom

pomological catalogue: the 1886 US contract for watercolour depictions of all the world’s fruit

now that’s a horse of a different colour

Though the title idiom is much older than what Dorothy exclaimed upon entering the Emerald City and pertains to horse-trading and how the coat can change colour as the animal matures and what’s listed in a registry may not match what’s before one’s eyes and is first cited as “a horse of that colour” by the duplicity maid Maria in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601), we nonetheless enjoyed reading about the 1926 caper that a horseman of Scottish extraction nearly got away with at a race-track in Chicago.
Referred to as ringing in gamblers’ circles, the horseman, possessed of a special and nonpareil talent (sadly squandered on grift and crime) for a quick and convincing dye and rise, bleached and painted the thoroughbreds so that the track stewards and jockeys failed to notice when their horses were switched, handicapping the odds and virtually guaranteeing a big win. Targeting small, remote racing operations at first, the horse painter was able to skip town and evade repercussions once the truth was realised but luck eventually ran out with Pinkertons in hot pursuit.  Discover more hidden histories at Narratively at the link above.

7x7

horton plaza: a study of the postmodern ghost mall built to revitalise downtown San Diego

for hire: riotously brilliant hand-painted signs from South Bengal

big top: Germany’s touring Circus Roncalli replaces animal acts with holograms

cat walk: balloon apparel deflates on the runway and transforms into practical garments

normay: a projection map skewed by the mentions various places get from Donald Trump—via Maps Mania

team breakfast: a fun montage of musicians eating their morning meals, via Everlasting Blört 

toward a concrete utopia: a revival in interest for Yugoslavia’s monumental architecture—previously

6x6

someday my prince will come: life lessons gleaned at the Princess Academy

decolonise this place: a collection of maps presented from an aboriginal perspective, via Nag on the Lake

bathyscope: a ten-hour montage of mesmerising ocean footage

if you just smiled more: an epic discussion thread uses classical paintings to illustrate everyday sexism

the master and margarita: a compelling reading recommendation for Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet satire

берёзка: the floating step of a ballet ensemble founded by choreographer Nadezhda Nadezhdina 

talky tina

Having first encountered the strange and robust marketplace in haunted dolls through the excellent podcast Oh No Ross & Carrie, I enjoyed this follow-up and expansion on the topic—via Messy Nessy Chic.
One is course paying for the menacing narrative and the tragic backstory to account for these cursed, possessed artefacts and most auctions are conducted with a strict no return policy and sold “as is.” Though we yet mourn for weird, niche eBay, allowing the sale of such items signals a departure from the company’s restriction on the trafficking in souls and the sale of metaphysical services, such as casting spells. Learn more about this strange phenomena and antecedents at the links above.

macroalgae

Instead of the usual plastic cups or bottles of water offered to parched runners, for this past London Marathon participants were handed out some thirty thousand gulps of a sports drink encapsulated (previously) in a seaweed-based edible container. Among the newest wonder material, designers and the industry are just beginning to appreciate the potential of seaweed as a sustainable bio-plastic which, incorporated dietarily, can also combat the bio-genesis of methane.

hall of fame

Graciously, the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life invites us to seek refuge from the hustle of the High Street and hide a bit in an old haunt—The Champion located in the West End, just off the retail monotony of Oxford Street—and soak up the atmosphere.
Though the pub has been there on the corner of Wells and Eastcastle since the mid-nineteenth century, a contemporary of the Victorian explorers and sports pioneers depicted in stained glass, these were much later additions, commissions from the accomplished artist Ann Southeran installed in 1989 to give the place some added character, and include the subject Captain Matthew Webb (*1848 - †1883) who was the first recorded individual to cross the English Channel under his own power. In 1875, Webb swam from Dover to Calais in just under twenty-two hours, fighting the powerful rip-tide and painful jellyfish stings. Sadly, Webb’s later stunt of crossing the Whirlpool Rapids below Niagara Falls proved to be too treacherous and Webb died during his swim. Webb’s life and legacy are remembered in the poem “A Shropshire Lad” by Poet Laureate John Betjeman and the caricature of him that appeared on a brand of weatherproof matches is said to have been the model for Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. Much more to explore at the link above plus a detailed gallery of the Champions at the link above.

pawnographic

We regret having missed this scandalising graphic design choice from December of 2017 when the new season’s World Chess Championship logo had its debut, but it is still resonant since the world (on-line and off) is puerile as ever and wont and eager to prise a dirty joke or snicker out of any situation. The studio behind this pugilistic emblem as well as the client organisation that commissioned it called out as something obviously tantric responded in a healthy way, however, appreciating the furore and the focus it brought.
The world is lousy with bad design and there’s a lot of unintended suggestiveness—though of course sex sells, but overall attacking what’s bold or avant-garde makes design as whole boring and more conservative, brands and associations not wanting to risk what might be made the butt of ridicule. This obsession—which I am sure will go into overdrive with candidates developing their campaign imagery—seems to me like a surrogate for that persistent though mythical legend about subliminal advertising (by definition, if it is subliminal, it does not register) that had people trying to find (and in some cases swearing to it) nudes in ice cubes for the past six decades.  More to explore at the link up top.

avon calling

Though more glaring and fraught examples are to be found among the ruling, grifting crime syndicate (here and here especially) of the US, we appreciated the spirit in which the origins of both Cobra and its foil the elite paramilitary unit, G*I* Joe, was shared. Loosely based on conservative pundit William F Buckley (*1925 – †2008), Cobra Commander of the Marvel canon was a used car salesman in Springfield, Anytown America whose brother served on multiple deployments to Vietnam in order to spare his brother from being drafted.
Suffering from post-traumatic stress, Cobra Commander’s brother took towards increasing self-destructive behaviour—ultimately leading to his demise in a car collision. Inconsolable, Cobra Commander blamed the crash on the survivor, another veteran who afterwards sequestered himself from the world and studied the martial arts in Japan. Hungry for vengeance, Cobra Commander contracted the services of an assassin, who mistakenly killed the ninja master rather than the student—persuading the survivor to reenlist later as Snake Eyes. After this debacle, Cobra Commander sought to return to his dealership but his wife discovered what had transpired in Japan and threatened to come forward to the authorities. Cobra Commander abandons his wife and takes their infant son on the road to eke out a living, conning the unsuspecting and setting up a pyramid scheme to attract followers and accrue funds, appealing to the disenfranchised for whom he finds a resonant kinship. Cobra Commander begins wearing a blue hood during his motivational talks to disguise his identity.