Mad? I think so!

I went back to Stratford-upon-Avon, I have no idea why it's named this, probably to differentiate itself from the other Stratford. But I digress.
     I went back and decided to go to the Mechanical Art and Design Museum. Inside, I saw several interesting machines. Most of them were marble runs, but they were impressive in their complexity. Another thing I saw a predominance of were clocks, but clocks made out of legos, marble clocks that were surprisingly accurate and an intricate wooden clock made of over a hundred pieces that not only told time, but also date, including month. According to its description, it could go two days before needing to be rewound. Everything was just an amazing piece of design and imagination. In fact, I think I'll build my own marble run when I get back home!

The Socially Acceptable Version of Candy for Breakfast

I got to enjoy a bowl of cereal at a nice, eventful place here in London, England. As a major foodie, I love finding places that have a gimmick to them, and a cereal bar is a new one for me. They have all kinds of cereal from the United States and Great Britain. Their entire down stairs is like a playroom from a millennial's  childhood; crammed with memorabilia from the 1970s to the early 2000s. I could watch He-Man cartoons while sitting next to a Star Wars lamp and enjoying a hearty bowl of Krave drizzled with Nutella and Pop Rocks. Truly some place that needs to be a thing in the States.
   

There where two things that I noticed while I was there though, pertaining to the cereal boxes. The wall behind the counter held all the cereal boxes from America, and the one to the left of the counter were the British Cereals. One major difference that I noticed was the lack of General Mills cereals on the British wall. Instead, they were replaced with Nestle brands. Perhaps General Mills is only a thing in America? The other thing I noticed is that litteraly anything marketabe was put on a cereal box. I mean everything! Don't believe me? Then look at the picture below. My biggest guffaw, was when I noticed the C-3PO cereal and remembered that we chose C-3PO as our mascot when designing a cereal box for the 1970's. Crap, I should have asked what year that box was from.

I'm Bodoni

     First off, I'd like to apologize for there being no graphics. I would have posted a pic of what is apparently MY typeface, but I couldn't find the card, and all of the things I looked up on the web regarding the font would have been web sourced pics which I know my teacher would have docked points off for. But enough of that, you need some context.

     My class and I went on  what was called a "type tasting safari" where we were walking around the Dalston area of London and finding different types from the local businesses on these worksheets we were given. At the end of the tour, we stopped by the guides' workshop where she had a lot of activities trying to match up taste, touch, and smell with texts. At the end of it all, we each got a grab bag with some miscellaneous things in it. A fortune cookie, a pencil, a few other things, and a slip of paper which told us what our typeface was. Mine turned out to be Bodoni. At least I didn't get comic sans.

     Looking up the history of Bodoni, I found out that the typeface was first designed by Giambattista Bodoni and is classified as Didone modern. There is quite a number of different kinds of Bodoni, from bold to italic, Roman to Title. It's quite popular in it's usage, especially with advertisements and titles. I learned that quite a few notable companies used Bodoni including the the text in the Mamma Mia! posters, Sony's Colombia Records used it for their wordmark, Nirvana's logo is Bodoni Poster Compressed. The late Tom Clancy used Bodoni for all of his artwork until Dead or Alive. So if my typeface really is Bodoni, then it seems like I have a promising career as doorman. There to look nice and draw people in to where the real action is happening.

Sign! Sign! Everywhere a Sign!

     As an opener, I challenge anyone reading this to stop, get up from your seat, walk outside, and look around. I guarantee you that you will see a sign of some kind. Hell, look around your home, there's probably dozens of signs within a hundred feet of you. Signs are everywhere in our society, we see them everyday when driving  in our cars next to the nearest strip mall. It is now legally required for Starbucks to have a sign and shop posted every hundred meters under threat of getting fined for customer negligence.

It's not?

      But that's the only reason I can think of for there being a fleet of coffee shops surrounding my home in the US?

     What was I getting at again? Oh, right! There are a vast amount of signs each with their own design and meaning. (Unless it's a major chain, then it's got the same meaning everywhere and it slowly wears you down to a point where you are ultimately dead to it.)

     I found that places of entertainment, especially those regarding table top role playing games and comic books would often use bright colours in order to draw the eye in. A rather effective tactic where everything in London is either red, black, or an off colour white. Yellow with black text (or black with yellow text) really stands out.

     

     However, there is an interesting connection between these two signs, and I don't just mean that they were right next to each other on the street. Both have to do with popular figures, one fictional and one real, but their text is very reminiscent of who they were in real life (You know what I mean). 

For Sherlock Holmes, His text is styled in Old Script reflecting the old-timyness of his stories and the rather official air that he had about him. I don't know what to say about the color scheme here other than golden yellow on green really stands out like a pot of gold on a four leaf clover.

 In this instance, the Beatles are rather iconic. I've never really given their logo much thought even though I grew up on their music. It's done in this interesting blend of modern and sans script that reflects their free flowing nature. It's almost like the letters are flowing, almost like a lava lamp (they even had a yellow submarine lava lamp in there). The style of their their text is very reflective of their origins of the 50's and 60's. It's really hard to miss something so iconic ( a part of my brain that I wish I could turn off in regards to the Burger King logo).

Here! There! Everywhere!

There are times where I am amazed when people don't know how to do something that I know how to do; such as swimming, riding a bike, or reading a map. I think that has something to do with some weird bias that forms when you're growing up. Like, when you were learning, you saw other kids learning, so you thought that everyone must have learned that skill around that age. But in real life, it's perfectly understandable that people didn't have the same opportunity to learn as you did.......

What was I talking about again?

...

......

Ah yes, reading maps!

This is a picture that I took of a directory during a stroll through the Kensington Gardens. I personally like this map more than the directories I find outside of train stations. Mainly because this one is much more colorful than those. 

I love the use of greens and blues to represent the garden fields and water respectively. The orange is a nice contrast to mark the walkway paths, and I can find my way to any number of tube, bus, or bicycle stations in the immediate vicinity. By following the transport markers. All-in-all it's a very eye pleasing design. 

There was one problem I had with it though. I was a north facing map, with is a common feature that you want for when reading maps, but I was looking at it straight on when I was facing south. This forced me to try putting everything I saw around me upside-down and backwards and get my bearings that way. Left was Right, Forward was Back, and my chickens have flown the coo coo's nest!

Straddling a fine line

If there was one thing that I remember saying from my many weird quotes, it's;

"It's meant to keep you warm, not to make you look good." - Bryce Ebert (American oddball)



Now when I said that, I was referring to how a winter jacket covered up my figure, making me look much more rotund then I am. A silly thing to be worried about perhaps, but I care about it.

The reason that I bring up this thought is from my class' trip to the Design Museum. Now, you may be asking yourself,  how does this involve my earlier ramblings. I'll tell you. We are entering a period where the line between function and fashion is being blurred. There were so many design ideas that I saw at the museum, ranging from shoes (which some galleries left me feeling like I was in a Stanley Kubrick movie) to new technology and game designs which blended the appeal of art with the promises of the future.

                Don't believe me? Then take a look at this spacesuit.

Yes, that is meant to keep you protected in the hostile environments of space. The sleek and stylish space suits that so many movies and video game promised us are on the cusp of becoming a reality. Now that I think about it, this is just what we consider stylish for our time, designs for new technology has always tried to look appealing. That's why we had so much chrome in the 50's and wood paneling in the 70's  and 80's. At the time, it looked stylish. So everything that I saw in the Design Museum is a product of what we think is stylish at this time. There are always going to be new ideas and new technologies, causing designs and the idea of art to fluctuate wildly over time, but that doesn't make anything that I saw at the museum an inferior product. It still beautiful and innovative. 

But, my god, I just started this post out trying to describe how impressed I was with the merging of technology and art, and i just destroyed that topic when I realized that what is stylish and innovative now is going to change in who knows how many years. It's a bit disconcerting but also uplifting. The thought that were always going to be improving and creating new ideas. I just wish I could have come to that conclusion before I began this post rather than in the middle of it. 

Animals in Architecture

There's one thing that I've noticed here in London that I haven't seen much of in Las Vegas. Things like gargoyles or using other such animal figureheads in architecture, like this dragon..... actually, I'm not quite sure what that would be used for. It kind of looks like it's either a guard for the column  that it's attached to, or you're suppose to use the surrounding ring to scrape dirt off your boots before going into a building. I would believe either one. But the use of Animals in practical architecture is something I haven't seen much of in the more modernly built America and it's something that I wish would come back.

A swan candelabra, I'm not even sure how that works since it's taller than me or if I just think that a candelabra is something completely different.

Stand closer to me (I want to see if they think we're brothers)

 Often, my process of creating a blog post is to look at he photo reel on my phone and see which photos remind me of something related to class.
     This time, it has to do with our class field trip of World War One monuments here in London. While looking at these pictures in close proximity to one another, I realized one thing, most of the monuments had only a central figure rather than a group of people. In fact, this monument dedicated to the Royal Tank Regiment was the only one on my photo reel to have a group of figures.

     This reminded me of a chapter in our design book regarding proximity. How we, as individuals, perceive connections between individuals based on how close they are to one another.
     Although, now that I say that out loud, I realize that there's more to it then that. I mean, drawing that line has to include environmental factors, clothing, interactions, and physical appearance as well. I mean, you could look at people packed shoulder to shoulder on a subway and you would probably just think "Man, those people must be really uncomfortable." Rather than "Man, that sure is a large family."
     Getting back on topic, I found it interesting that this was the only stature with a group of people, and that I could tell, based on their outfits and proximity, that they were all apart of the same group. Most of the other statues I saw were honoring a singular individual and their accomplishments and even others that honored groups were either; one man to represent every other soldier, a group of flags, or just clothes hanging on pegs to represent the women workers of World War 2.
     Perhaps, speaking entirely for the group memorials, it was a way to add ambiguity. To give the feeling that this could be anyone, and that feeling is much harder to achieve if you're looking at a full battalion of statue figures. But still, I feel like the tank regiment is represented well with this statue. To me, these could be any tank crew, because every tank crew has this dynamic.
     So, in my opinion, the ambiguity can be maintained for an entire group, even if it is more than one person on the statue.