Bump!

Evolution of Scooter (or Bumper-) cars made by Reverchon in France. From top to bottom: 1950, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1980

Drivin´ n´ smokin´

I don´t know what she is trying to sell, but I can tell when she did it

Nice detail of a vintage scooter made by Ihle

Another classic Ihle-car: The Mercedes-scooter

Buy Nothing! Pay Now!

It´s now three month after the Designers Republic closed their doors, and now CR Blog has published an article about the relevance and the dialectic dilemma of the influential company.


It´s an entertaining read that focusses on the different stages of tDR`s work, as they moved from logo parody to "digital baroque" and later to abstract and obscure pseudo-architecture, while the mainstream followed, copied and eventually even hired them.

Peter Saville Q&A

Some clips of a Peter Saville Q&A from the D&AD President's Lecture from March 12 can be found here.


Below is Saville talking about Banksy and his disdain of the British Gallery scene. I think this is the most interesting of the clips. Some of them just prove that designers are not necessarily more interesting than anybody else.


Peter Saville Q&A: What do you think of Banksy? from D&AD on Vimeo.

Von Braun

We had loads of Braun products. My father was really into them during their heyday. Sadly many things were lost or broken and so they vanished with the years. I still have and use a wonderful Braun Super-8 projector and when I have to buy now consumer products I make sure to check out what Braun has to offer. Since Braun stopped offering entertainment products, the only consistent and typical Braun design can now only be found in their kitchen products.
I wonder if Apple has already seen the new Braun Pocket Shaver, which is a refreshing step forward back to classic Braun. New stuff to rip-off.

The pictures are from various sources I saved over the years. Most can be found in the Dieter Rahm Pool.

Seconds with Saul Bass

The amazingly disturbing title sequence to John Frankenheimer´s "Seconds" is another Saul Bass masterpiece. Body horror, transformation, surrealism and paranoia all neatly wrapped into an unsettling 3 minutes (with Rock Hudson playing the lead in one of his best roles.)









Here is a rare interview with Mr. Bass discussing his work. I guess this was shot in 1977, after he had already finished his first feature film, the classic "Phase IV".



Together with his wife, Elaine Bass, he directed another, almost forgotten sci-fi film in 1983. "Quest" was a 30 minute short film after a Ray Bradbury story. Financed with the help of a Japanese corporation "Quest" was hardly ever shown and is a lost gem in Bass´ biography.

I found the film in two parts on "google video". Enjoy a fast paced allegory with very "Tron"-like special effects!

Quest 01

Quest 02

Logo Fail

I have no idea how old and well known these logos are. Especially the above logo for the Arlington Pediatric Center is an epic fail. Most of the others could actually be fully aware of their more or less subliminal, phallic associations.


Megaflicks or Megafucks?!




Czech Sausage

Wordle Up!

I tried to create a wordle word cloud containing everything that was written on this blog, but more than one page is obviously not analysed by the program. Anyway, I love that the three most prominent words read "like great music"! (click pick to see big)



Experimenting with fewer words: "From Revolution to Revelation" is a line from Pet Shop Boys´"My October Symphony". After a few randomisations Wordle changed the design "To Revolution from Revelation".

The next try contained the embedding code of the last picture, resulting in a "wordle revolution".

What would a wordle from Japanese Kanji symbols look like? It turns out that Wordle is not kanji-ready yet, transforming the text into pure cubism.



Before and after:


Checking out the wordle gallery is fun. Of course many people have already condensed the works of Goethe and Leviticus. Can you write a new story or poem out of a wordle cloud or is it a new form of algorhythmic newspeak?

However, the aesthetic value of some wordles is amazing and it turns everybody into an instant graphic designer or poet (at least for fifteen minutes.)
In the light of the recent demise of The Designers Republic these auto-art features take on a whole new meaning. "I love my Designers Republic"