Blue sky thinking

The sky above my house yesterday, 19 April 2010

These last few days we've had clear blue skies above our house in Ipswich, Suffolk. Not so strange you may think, the weather's been nice. That is, unless, you consider that it usually looks like this on a clear day:

The sky above my house a month ago, 16 March 2010

I have become fascinated by vapour trails these past few years, ever since I flew for the first time in 2006. Since then I can't help remembering the excitement I felt when boarding that plane to New York when ever I look at them. I have been photographing them regularly since.

They are also, rather obviously, a symbol of the amount we are flying. I've always believed flying is a luxury, not a right, and there's a certain sort of irony to a natural phenomenon grounding what is arguably one of the worst environmentally damaging extravagances that the 'developed' world partakes in.

Plane Stupid's 2009 advert. Written by the ad agency Mother, produced by Rattling Stick.

Links:

Plane Stupid

Mother

Rattling Stick

Typeface, the film

Link:
Typeface

Malcolm McLaren RIP

Brighton, March 2010

If it hadn't been for Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid, I'd have probably never have discovered Situationism. Sex Pistols, who for me were always so much more than just about the music, were arguably one of the greatest Situationist constructions the UK has witnessed. And for that, I doff my cap.
And of course, for Bowwowwow.





Links:
Malcolm McLaren obituary
Jamie Reid
Situationist International

Go to!

NB Dubdog, 2010, after van Doesburg

Yesterday Claire and I went to the excellent Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Garde: Constructing A New World exhibition at Tate Modern. Highly recommended - so much graphic design that came after was highly influenced by this egocentric innovator and those he associated with. He was quick to exploit associations in order to get his vision across and he wasn't afraid to burn those that swayed from his singular mission; being gutted at his rejection by the Bauhaus as a tutor, he set up his own rival course in Weimer that dismissed Bauhaus teachings.

This exhibition is testament to the many visually exciting explorations that were happening at the time, both from the hands and mind of van Doesburg and from those of avant garde art movements. And you can clearly see the reverberations this had on those that followed:

David Carson work arguably couldn't have existed without van Doesburg's Dada type experiments,


Theo van Doesburg. Poster Dada Matinée. January 1923


David Carson



Alan Fletcher's collages owe many a debt to Kurt Schwitters,


Kurt Schwitters, Merzbild


Alan Fletcher



Stefan Sagmeisters work for Lou Reed could be said to be a direct reference to Raoul Hausmann's Postcard to I.K. Bonset,


Raoul Hausmann's Postcard to I.K. Bonset 1921


Stefan Sagmeister



and Müller-Brockmann's posters could have been composed from a De Stijl 'how to' manual, if such a thing existed.


Theo van Doesburg Arithmetic Composition 1929-30


Josef Müller-Brockmann


I particularly enjoyed the De Stijl Typography and Dada & Constructivism rooms, and specifically some of van Doesburg's ramblings written large on the gallery wall. This example almost reads like a CRASS lyric:

DADA, PICABIA writes, does not feel anything,
it is nothing, nothing nothing.
It is like your hope: nothing.
Like your idols: nothing.
Like your paradise: nothing.
Like your politicians: nothing.
Like your heroes: nothing.
Like your artists: nothing.
Like your religions: nothing.
Dada was not made, but came into being.
One cannot become a DADAIST, one can only be one.
(Van Doesbury 1923)

The exhibition on until May 16th 2010, Tate Modern. Go to!

Links:
Tate Modern
Avant-garde
David Carson
Alan Fletcher
Stefan Sagmeister
Josef Müller-Brockmann
Crass

43 bye bye

A statement from Stop43.org.uk facebook profile:

We have spent this afternoon biting our nails hoping that the news that the Labour and Conservatives had agreed to drop Clause 43 was actually going to happen. It was by no means a forgone conclusion. Indeed the LibDems could still have scuppered it. We sat on the news and didn’t pre-empt the outcome which has just been confirmed. A huge thank you for the messages of support during this campaign, but above all for all your tireless efforts writing, emailing, Facebooking and Twittering your MPs. It is these efforts, above everything else, that have achieved this.

It’s been hard work but also an honour to have been part of so much unified support.

Today, I can say I am proud to be a UK photographer. Today we achieved something memorable and outstanding for our future rights and the representation of photographers in the UK.

Well done and congratulations to everyone and your efforts. WE WON!!!

Andre Regini

Probably a robbery, a bit of skullduggery

If the Digital Economy Bill goes through (second reading today) it will potentially mean drastic changes to the copyright laws in this country that could result in any images you post to your website, Flickr, weblog etc, being used by anyone without the need to ask your consent. Under Clause 43, anyone using your work only needs to declare it an 'orphan work' by doing a cursory search for who holds the copyright and registering that they have done this. If you discover your work has been used, you can claim an as yet undisclosed fee for its use, but you have no right to stop its use.

For more in depth details, follow these links:
Orphan works
Stop43
Copyright Action

Other aspects of the DEB:
38 Degrees

And on a related photography note, a campaign aimed at stopping photographers being branded as terrorists:
I'm a Photographer, not a Terrorist

400 +

Coming in 2010: McJunk, the book

More details: McJunk

Cold sweat as I dwell

I got a letter from the shadow government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me to vote for them or whatever
Picture me given' a damn I said never
Here is a class that never gave a damn
About a someone like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn't wit' it but just that very minute...
It occured to me
The suckers might just get authority

Apologies to Public Enemy

2.0 or not 2.0?

Diagram of a Blog by Paula Scher (click on image for larger view)

My Google account was disabled last week. This came after trying to log in to Blogger and being prompted by Google to reset my password due to 'suspicious activity' on my account. I proceeded to cock up resetting my password, hence the disablement!

In the time between me emailing Google and my account being re-enabled, I made elaborate plans, both in my head and on paper, for my online presence. After all, I imagined never being able to post here again. I'd decided I was going to take down my website in readiness of starting an MA this September and planned going Word Press or even Indexhibit to document work produced by it. This wasn't a great emotional tie as my site has some pretty old work on it now and isn't really representative of what I do anymore. I'm not entirely sure what I do do now, but that's a different story and one that the MA will help to clarify, I hope.

Then Google got in touch and I regained access to Blogger again and all's fine and the same as ever and the plans have been shelved.

For now.

Anyway, last week blogging was on my mind quite a lot. The same day my account was temporarily snatched from my grasp, I'd spent a day at work mulling over some student blogs. The following day, when I got home, with half an hour to kill while cooking, I booted up my iMac and was bombarded with RSS updates in NewsFire; Johnson Banks had an interesting post about Photoshop the verb; there were a couple of things that took my fancy on Design Observer; I Love Typography's 'A few things I've learned about typography' beaconed; and Graphic Journey Blog was recounting the second part of a traveling/graphic design story, seducing me with photos of snow filled landscapes, constructivist classics, architecture and sculpture. With only 30 minutes to spare, there was no time to decide which one to read, and this, the same day that the new look Creative Review thudded onto my door mat and a neighbour kindly dropped off my copy of Eye that the postman couldn't get through my letterbox. I decided to drop the pixels for the smell of CMYK on coated stock.

The day after I killed some time at work surfing blogs while waiting for students to turn up to tutorials. I read about Brody's new role at the RCA on CR Blog and got hooked on the comments. I started getting itchy fingers and wanted to stick in my two pennies worth. I'm glad I didn't after I followed a link to Paula Scher's brilliant Diagram of a Blog (above). As I've just got rid of a 'friend' on Facebook for trolling, I'm glad I was stopped in my tracks.

So, what's all this about then. Well, today I've been talking to students about how design starts with writing. But I'm coming to realisation that, sometimes, just sometimes, writing gets in the way of designing. Divergent tactics are all too tempting. When I was doing my PGCE my bathroom had never been cleaner. Thank god that design blogs were in their infancy then and that the only one that I read regularly was Underconsideration's Speak Up. At least I had a clean toilet to show for my lack of an essay on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I pity some of my students and have suggested disconnecting their modems or blocking Facebook for the duration of writing their dissertations.

And as for me, well, there's a few projects that have been knocking around for a while that I must draw a line under. And the plans I had when I thought I was going to be permanently blocked from Blogger, there was some promise in there somewhere that has now been diminished through lack of urgency. So I might well have to uninstall NewsFire and declare a moratorium on Dublog. But not yet. In the words of the 1980s anti heroin adverts: Blogging, I can handle it.

Links:
Trolling
WordPress
Indexhibit
JohnsonBanks
I Love Typography
Graphic Journey Blog
Creative Review Redesign
Eye magazine
Speak Up
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Creative Review - Protest Posters, Parisian Style

Creative Review - Protest Posters, Parisian Style


Situationist overtones.




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