beeker ideas

interesting stalling/stalling interesting

I thought I'd try and write some of my Interesting2007 bit today.  So of course I'm blogging about it and starting to worry a bit instead.  But I realised I hadn't mentioned it on here yet, so it's absolutely a valid thing for me to write about it.  Before I start writing for it.  Should be a smashing day.  Hope to see lots of you there.

So.  Suppose I'd better just get on with it.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrup.  (What the kids now say at the end of things, instead of Boom.)

brett dennen

I wanted to share Brett Dennen with you, if you didn't already know of him.  He supported Rodrigo + Gabriela the other night at Shepherd's Bush.  And I've already raved about them.  Brett was a beautiful surprise.  He had a fine, fine stage manner.  He was worried about falling off, because the stage was so high.  He had a brilliant drummer called Randy who Matt + I both fell in love with (who features in the bigger lineup in the clipe up top.  It seems he's always popular).  And his knee dancing was second to none.

I suggested him to Dan for Innocent's fete thing.  He'd be great after Seasick Steve.

panelling it up

I'm very pleased to be part of a scarily mighty and very interesting lineup of people speaking at this excellent conference.  On June 1st of this year.  Faris of Naked, Russell of OIA, John Grant of John Grant, George of Adscam, Hugh of Gaping Void, Iain of Poke,  Johnny of Anomaly NYC, Jess of Contagious + Regine of We Make Money Not Art will all be impressive, and I'll do my best.

Be lovely to see you there.

house guest

 

what i've been up to

It's been a bit quiet round here since I started back at Bloom.  I've realised it's actually quite hard to do a proper job and blog lots.  For me anyway.  But I've made a little resolution to do more again on here.  Not sure what's new, so that I can call it something proper.  New Summer's Resolution.

Aaanyway.  I wanted to show you one of the first projects I picked up, which was the Call for Entries ad campaign for the Design Business Association.  This is the design version of the IPA.  The beauty of it was how fast we went from briefing, to seeing it in print and on postcards.  There's nothing like seeing your work getting made.  So it's been ace.  And a real eye opener. 

Above and below are the Design Week ads.  I'll put the postcards up too. 

(Oh, and you should enter.  If you fancy it.  That would make us...effective.)

So that's what I've been up to.  Well. Some of it.

hype

I'm probably last, but I discovered Hype a couple of weeks ago.  And just in case I'm not last, thought I'd pass it on. I'd been promised by a friend it would change my life. Actually my life doesn't feel that different, but then she's an exaggerater.  And I have found some great stuff on there.

It's good for searching for unknown or obscure tracks by artists you know. And it links to Youtube footage when it can. The best things I've found so far are this from Saul Williams:

(The cover is also strong.)

And then this from Malcolm McLaren.  Weird. But good.

wim crouwel in helvetica film

Ooh, and I just found this.

wim (vim) crouwel

   

Just been to a truly wonderful D&AD lecture from the Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel.  I didn't know anything about him before, but I'm trying to learn, and I know he's one of the greats.  He was very great, in a hot, coughy Logan Hall packed to bursting in his honour.  The 80 year-old (who was given the name Gridnik for his use of grids in creating fonts) charmed the pants off everyone with a retrospective touching here and there on what inspired him.  Which turned out to be mostly 20s architecture.

I've never seen so many thick black angular glasses in one place.  And the designer questions at the end were brilliant.  (Do you ever use Serif?  Which font was the one with..?  and so on.)  One question was about how much he uses computers, and just like an old writer, he says he must still draw everything out in pencil before moving to a computer.  But that he loves them nonetheless.  This extremely youthful, joyous, passionate old man ended his answer with a sigh and a declaration that if he could start over now, and do it all twice...But he didn't mean any regret.  It wasn't about changing what he'd done.  It was the tantalising thought of the chance to go again, just for the pleasure of it.  But this time with a computer.  I believe he'd have an awful lot of fun.  Again.

What a lovely, brilliant man.

my dictionaries

A few people have posted about their favourite books recently.  Including Dan and TomLR.  So I got mine out.

My grandfather gave me these dictionaries when I was about a year in to university.  He'd bought some new ones.  Which he then used to curse for not being as good as these ones.  And he was right.  These, I know, will be the best dictionaries I'll ever have.  Partly because he gave them to me.  And partly because they're perfect.  From a lost world.

They have his neat signature in them for a start. 

And they have a history of being thumbed through by far more scholarly and noble hands than mine.

CT Onions must have been a great man or woman.  Living up to his or her name.

I love that it is in two parts.  It seems to mean that if you take words seriously you could never fit them all in one volume.

And the pomposity of this diagram in the introduction is just brilliant.  The assumption that Technical words are somehow on the common (Colloquial) end of spectrum along with Slang and Vulgarity.  Of course anything foreign must be Literary.  Of course.  This logic all feels very Brief Encounter.

These two volumes contain any words worth having, I'm convinced.  Even though they're quite old.

When I was living in a house of pharmacology, law and sports science students, they books had the answer to all our puzzles.  They're magic that way.

But they also - and this is the real delight - have funny old words you've never heard of, and will probably never hear of anywhere else.

It's a word trove.

And so thorough that even looking up very usual words is fun.

If you're that way inclined of course.

Most of all they remind me how important it is to care about words.  To love them and look after them.  And to do something wonderful with them, when you can.  That was the gift.