Genius

Bladeless fan by Dyson. It's a good thing that Sir James Dyson has chosen to use his super powers for good and not to enslave the entire human race, as i imagine that would be entirely possible for him.

(via Heynumber2)

The Return of the Glitch

My very own piece of glitch art. It occured when previewing a print in photoshop before sending it to the printer. Cheers adobe. Does this make it a piece of art, graphic design, or found imagery? Is it the same thing as the original image, is it a representation of the original image, Is it an image of an image or an image in its own right? Does anyone really know or care? Original screen shot can be seen here

Musical Interlude: Black Lips "punk slime"

If this song doesn't get you at least a little bit pysched, want to dance, drink spirits and/or smash stuff up for funsies, i dont know what will. Possibly my favourite Black Lips tune, if not least for the opening line.

Albums to (spend all night ) photoshop(ping) to No. 4

Coincedentally, an example of the use of Rosewood that does not look totally lame.

Screen printing pt2: Cotton bags!

After i spent this morning letterpressing like a madman i went to the textile printing studio to screen print like a mad man also. Good thing i like printing, otherwise id probably be a bit catatonic by now. Anyway, here is what i produced: some lovely black cotton tote bags perfect for shopping and what have you, with a mighty fine floral print in white.

Detail of the print on the bags, which is taken from a 19th century carpet design. Imagine that on your floor, bloody hell.

Close up detail of the print showing the halftone effect i applied.

I printed 12 of the bags and if you would like one please ask and you are more than welcome to have one for free. Some of the alignment is a little imprecise though as it was all done by eye, and two of them have printing errors (but that just adds character, right?). Some people don't have a choice about if they're going to get one or not because i'm going to force them to take one.

Extra special thanks to my good man Mark Howlette of Motive Sounds fame for providing me with the bag hook up at a very reasonable price. Cheers howlette!

Letterpressing pt2. - Hot off the press!

Letterpressed like a mad man this morning using large woodblock type this time. Wood, obviously, is much easier to scuff and to damage than metal is so the blocks are often a bit scrappy, hence the lo-fi, distressed quality of the prints. A joy, but a knackering joy. I have tried to photoshop this effect before, and i've read some tutorials on how to photoshop it too, but nothing beats the real thing, thats for sure.

School of Saatchi

I tried to write something funny here about reality tv, narcissism, beautiful but slightly mental art school students, and that BBC series about the disabled girls who wanted to become models but i couldn't think of anything that was a) actually funny, b) made sense. To conclude, i recommend you watch School of Saatchi on bbc iplayer.

Screenprinting

Continuing my current analog/hand made/ink addiction, I have been screenprinting today. It made me very happy. Hopefully i will have some spoils of my endeavours to show you soon, and if you're very lucky, i might even give you a little screenprinted gift.

Letterpressing (pt.1)

Today has been a day of ink stained fingers. This morning i coated screens in time for printing on wednesday then headed down to the fine art print making facilities with the one and only Tony Moore so we could learn to use the old letterpress machine and have some fun. It is safe to say that we learned, and we had fun.

Tony psyches himseful up for what will no doubt be a highly educational and probably haphazard afternoon. Also please note the woman in red in the background, i dont know her name but she is awesome. She told us all about old fashioned colour photocopiers and we bonded over 35mm film. She later told me that i should start an analog revolution. I just might lady, i just might.

It is actually law that all fine art printing facilities and letterpress studios must have this poster displayed on the wall. Due to the painstaking nature and constant frustrating of hand setting moveable type many old and traditional typesetters would turn to alcohol for help. The ones who resisted the booze often went totally insane.

Typography fact: Upper case and lower case letters are called so because back when letterpress was the primary method of printing type, the metal letters were kept in seperate cases (fancy trays) the capital letters being in the 'upper' case and and the small letters being in the 'lower' case. Typography irony: The cases in this facility contained both upper and lower case letters.

Typography fact: "leading" (or linespacing to non-typographers) is called so because of the strips of lead that were used to separate the lines of type when creating the layout of the design. Typography irony: These ones are infact made of wood. They also double up as handy little tools (also called 'furniture') which allow you to keep the type in place before you print.

Applying the delicious red ink. One of the best parts of the printing process (although to be honest, there were few parts which werent a total joy).

To be continued!

Musical Interlude: The Velvet Underground "sister ray"

The first ten minutes of "sister ray" by The Velvet Underground,
roughly the length of time before most people get a bit bored of it. Class.

British Letterpress

What kind of monster doesn't love a good bit of old fashioned letterpressed typography? I stumbled upon this neat little resource site about letterpress, including explanations, diagrams, guides to processes, foundries and what have you. Quite an enjoyable way to pass the time (aka procrastinate).

British Letterpress

also, if you happen to have nothing to do in the London (an oxymoron maybe?) then you can take yourself down to the St. Bride Library, "the world's foremost printing and graphic arts library" which is home to thousand of books, magazines, specimens and artifacts relating to printing and typography. It is also very near to Tate modern, so you can really geek out on art and design stuff.

Square America at sea

Absolutely incredible set of photographs taken aboard a US Navy Destroyer
during the Vietnam War, showing the "odd langour of life at Sea". Creepy and a bit surreal. Square America is definitely one of my favourite websites.