I was recently lent a great documentary film about Lancashire based film duo Mitchell and Kenyon. The pair were active in the early 1900s and shot Edwardian life to use as entertainment in the traveling shows. For example they would set up their camera to take footage of factory workers coming out of the gates at the end of the day- they would encourage people to get in shot and people smiled and waved and stuff and then the film would be shown the following evening as part of a nights entertainment and people would come and watch themselves on the screen.

It’s fascinating to historians as it provides a valuable insight into life then and specifically in and around the North West of the country. But I think it’s more interesting when you start to consider spectacle and documentary and home video. It’s also really interesting as when you see footage of these people from a hundred years ago (which normally you see as static photographs) you quickly understand what a short time ago it was and, we always consider people back then to be juddery (thanks to different frame rates on many cameras and stuff ) or stiff (as in the smart photographs) but when you see people moving around freely and normally (and I know it sounds stupid, but as you or I would) the anachronistic clothing and cars and stuff is forgotten a human connection emerges which I hadn’t expected. You do get a real sense for the people in the images- smiling and being excited about this new technology. I wish I could have that novelty of being filmed and watching myself on screen in such an innocent way as they did. Sadly it will never be- I’ve grown up with cameras and video and the spectacle of cinema and the unreal on screen, not to mention the fact that any city dweller has to give into the fact that they are probably filmed 50 times a day (or whatever the scaremongers tell us).

A really interesting and worth watching artifact.

Don’t normally gratuitously post graphics (there’s too much pretty stuff in the world). But here are a couple of particularly amazing bits of work- one from Artist and Illustrator Anne Harild who made these collages about the modernist housing estate Bryant Court in Hackney from photos of the area. I think it’s the jeuxtposition of modernist building against the irregular shed-like quality of the ‘dwellings’ that gets me. So much lovely texture.

And this piece buy graphics legend Marian Bantjes speaks for itself- pointless and beautiful decoration of a laser dinghy, referencing another graphic design classic- dazzle ships.

Moving house double bike- I think there is a real place for proper cargo bikes like this in ‘The New World’ (which I’m working on creating) I love the idea that the modern family still has a garage where the car is replaced by one of these.

I think it’s interesting how Puma are advertising their product now. And as I had this queued up to blog I came across these other trainer adverts, trying to push their products in a similar ‘not-so-sporty’ way.

These trainers have built in foursquare- geotagging trainers- orwellian or brilliant?

This is a machine which as far as I can tell- has a story loaded on it and then takes keywords and compares those to keywords in patents in the US patents office- it finds the images associated with the words and then draws them- a drawing for every word. So you end up with a story told in amazing diagrams and drawings. Read the website, watch the video…….. link: http://storyteller.allesblinkt.com/

I only ‘This Happened’ found this one the other day- not sure how I missed it for so long to be honest- Created/curated by Chris O’Shea, Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Müller, it’s basically videos where a designer (normally interaction) talks through one of their projects for a bit and then takes questions. There’s a couple of gems in there- I’m a big fan of Matt Cottam of Tellart’s talk about wooden logic.

I’m in love with this set of photos ‘Le Camp’ by Claudine Doury. They beautifully capture a period between childhood and adulthood- documenting a space away from the domesticity of the home and the imposing structures which parents put in place. Link here: Claudine Doury

Originally found here: also nice- iconology