We Made This

Great big stinky flower

Cool Hunting is a site that's always worth checking out if you want to be one step ahead of the crowd. It's been running for quite a while, so is a bit oversubscribed, but you can pretty much guarantee the stuff you see on it will pitch up in magazines, newspapers and online not long after it appears there. It covers a broad mix of design, culture and technology, written in an engaging and informative way.

For a while now they've been featuring short video pieces to run parallel to some of their posts, mostly dealing with über hip music, technology and dance events; so it's great to see their latest video is all about a great big stinky flower that's just bloomed at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

Check it out here.

And there's no denying it. The flower is indeed deeply cool.

You can also check out a rather nifty time lapse of it on the BBG site.

(Picture by Chris Kreussling, http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/)

Penguin press ad

It's not often we're moved to post on here about advertising, but this recent press ad in Time Out magazine for Penguin Books really caught our eye. The small text up the side reads:

PEEL HERE Turn anywhere into a bookshelf with these stickers

And that's it. You peel off the book spines, and stick them anywhere you want.

That's just fantastic.

Keep on Trekkin'

Alistair has somewhat rashly decided to trek up Mt Kilimanjaro in aid of Cancer Research UK. He's got to raise £4000 by the end of November, which sounds like harder work than the trek itself.

If you fancy helping him out (and donating to a fantastically worthy cause at the same time, and thus getting a lovely warm glowy feeling to enjoy for the rest of the day), just click here.

The Urban Forest Project

Normally cities are referred to as the urban jungle, but for a city known as The Big Apple, calling it the urban forest makes a certain kind of sense.

The AIGA, World Studio, and the Times Square Alliance have got together to create the Urban Forest Project, an open-air exhibition round Times Square of banners by big name designers, photographers and illustrators, all riffing on the theme of trees. The ones above are by (left to right) Vince Frost, Weston Bingham and Stella Bugbee.

186 banners have been created, and it's interesting to see the recurring themes, and to see which designs really stand out. Go look.

From Core 77

Stencil set

More tasty goodness from the Ephemera Fair, this is a set of zinc stencil numerals. There's not much more to them than that, and that's just fine by us.

Licence for one male servant

Another Ephemera Fair find: most printed matter you get from the Inland Revenue leaves you feeling less than wonderful, but we'd happily get one of these. It's a Licence for a Male Servant, from 1893, for what looks like a Lord Slothfield, at one time at Skipton Castle, but then latterly at Appleby Castle in Cumbria. And just fifteen shillings. Bargain.

V&A Summer Fete – Penguin winners

So, after much deliberation, perusal, consideration, discussion, and a bottle or two of beer, we decided upon the two winners (one junior, one adult) of the Design Your Own Penguin Book Cover competition we helped out with at the V&A Summer Fete; which, happily enough, are the two that we'd already mentioned in an entry below.

Would-be-designers were asked to create their designs within a hand-drawn version of Romek Marber's classic Penguin grid, dating from 1962. We reckoned the two winning designs captured the essence of their titles with an almost effortless grace and frankly astounding economy. (Especially considering the two minute time limit.)

The War and Peace cover captures the futility of conflict with stunning simplicity; one soldier standing over the body of another, each a reflection of the other. It's full of emotion, but without veering anywhere near sentimentality. Quite brilliant.

The Outsider cover amazed us with the strength of the narrative it created, particularly with little more than a few strokes of the pen. Simply a fantastic illustration, and one which reminded us of Tom Gauld's work, which is high praise indeed.

Ephemera Society Fair

We pootled along to the latest Ephemera Society Fair at Holborn yesterday, and picked up a bunch of fantastic printed bits and bobs. We'll show some of them on here during the coming week.

First up is a copy of the Highway Code, from 1959, a rather delicious five colour (red, yellow, green, blue and black) job, with a series of fantastic illustrations (unfortunately uncredited); and this rather stern warning from the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation:

To all who read this Code I would therefore say: "Give as much time and thought to learning the Code as you would to anything else on which your life might depend. Contrary to what you might think, this Code is meant for you, not the other road user. Remember, it is your life you are risking."

Beyond the Valley

Wandering through Soho today, we stopped off at Beyond the Valley, a rather lovely little store on Newburgh Street. It's a combination of shop and gallery space for recent graduates of the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths and so on. If you're in town and have a bit of time to spare, check it out.

Oh, and they've got a show by Tinsel Edwards opening tonight, called, somewhat archly, 'I hope there's free drink tonight'.