Beautiful short film explaining and celebrating the role of those lovely people we work with and call UX designers.

Some very lovely work coming out of McFaul Studio. They are in their own words “Big but small: A pioneering, boutique, full-service design agency with a massive following and global footprint”

The point of some of the last posts on this site have been to showcase what people are doing with cutting edge technology, this post is to showcase the everlasting beauty of old school technology. Namely letterpress and the art of relief printing.

I have always loved the process and results generated by letterpress. I still have a couple of mini presses and drawers full of type at my mums house from when I experimented with it an university. Sometimes you just can’t beat getting your hands dirty and being surrounded by physical type and the smell of the inks.

Reverting to Type is an exhibition curated by Graham Bignell & Richard Ardagh, showcasing the work of 20 contemporary letterpress practitioners from around the world.

It looks absolutely stunning, I shall be popping along I suggest you do the same if you’re in or around London over Christmas.

10th–24th Dec 2010 and 4th–22nd Jan 2011
Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet Street, London N1 6HD
Open daily 10AM–6PM

Ok so I am obviously like a moth to the flame with info graphics but Francesco Franchi’s work is far too nice not to share with everyone. An Art Director for ‘IL — Intelligence in Lifestyle’ he has amassed a pretty nice body of work.

Lovely Flickr photostream, I like the fact that he has taken the time to photograph his work properly, nice attention to detail.

A lovely post on the Creative Review blog, U&lc lives. U&lc launched in 1974 was the most important typography publication of it’s time. Hugely influential and still standing the tests of time, Monotype Imaging are making editions available to download in PDF format.

For all the type geeks out there this is a must have edition to your collections.

Here’s a challenge that’s pretty irresistible but the stakes are high! Can you draw the internet? So who’s more imaginative the creative industry or a bunch of 10yr olds?

I think i’ll sit down with my 3yr old and see what we both come up with at the weekend. I think i’ve gone into competitive dad mode, his better not be as good as mine!

Since the David McCandless post on data visualisation I have been doing tons of research into info graphics and how to turn complex data into rich, clear and easy to understand visuals. I stumbled upon the portfolio of Nicholas Felton who’s work is really very nice, especially his annual reports.

I had to make a trip into my loft this weekend to get a few things and while I was there I noticed this black box. I had forgotten all about this box, it holds a collection of graphic material that I have collected since I was at college (15 years ago!). So I obviously neglected what I was supposed to be doing and took a trip down memory lane.

I was amazed at what I had collected over the years. Everything is pre-digital and is an incredible array of books, brochures, leaflets, flyers, business cards, post cards etc. It was lovely to hold and feel tangible objects that had numerous printing and binding techniques, there wasn’t a single printed pdf in the whole box.

Now as much as I love digital and archive lots of digital movies, pdf’s, banners, emails, jpgs etc and using the mac I have numerous ways of efficiently browsing and finding exactly the file(s) I’m looking for I haven’t been this excited about looking through an archive for years.

Above is just a small number of items from the box. If you’re interested or are a graphic nerd then there is a brochure by Jonathan Barnbrook for the Virus font, House Industries type brochure, One Dot Zero film festival brochure, D&AD invite, T26 font leaflets, Zip design promo, Designers Republic (RIP) invite, Fuse 11 typeface postcard, Letraset catalogue (which is about 20 years old) and a couple more items going off shot.

I’ll have to post some more as there is some really lovely pieces of print design, especially one from Artomatic.

I only found out about this yesterday, the Anti Design Festival is happening around Redchurch Street in London’s Shoreditch. Apparently there are a host of exhibitions, installations, workshops, performances and talks in Art, Design, Product, Film, Sound, Fashion, Performance, Print and Interactive etc.

This is what the website has to say “As a response to 25 years of cultural deep freeze in the UK, the Anti Design Festival will attempt to unlock creative fires and ideas, exploring spaces hitherto deemed out-of-bounds by a purely commercial criteria. Created initially as a direct response to the pretty commerciality of the London Design Festival, the festival will shift the focus from bums-on-seats to brain food, and from taste and style to experiment and risk.”

Go check it out.

Spent a fantastic bank holiday with the family up at the East Anglian Railway Museum which is just outside Colchester, Essex. We were there for the Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends day!

This is a fantastic fully operational station with working museum. The museum buildings have been kept or restored back to their original state and there are hundreds of great examples of railway signage, posters and other collectible ephemera ranging from the early 1930′s and 1940′s.

Found these great examples of advertising that were exhibited in the main ticket hall. The visual impact of simple bold typography, the use of strong vivid solid colours and illustration are a great antidote to some of the over photoshopped examples we are bombarded with daily today.

Also great simple straightforward copy, “You can taste the fruit!”, “The mint with the hole”, “They’re new, They’re pepperint, They’re Spangles” Genius!

And here is the reason why we went in the first place. The phenomenon that is Thomas the Tank Engine!