Tim Fraser Brown has done a charming peice with Sam Hall, Alex Wooley, Amy Knowles and Andy Kidd took Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergere and reproduced it using a grid of over five thousand Pantone swatch chips. It ends up as a kind of contemporary pixelated sort of impressionism just stopping short of digitization. This technique could – and probably should – be applied to some other paintings too. Come on Tim, why stop there?

[Tim Fraser Brown]

Apparently one of our favorite designs from the Philips Simplicity concept show we discussed a long time ago has finally been adapted for a commercial product. The Philips LivingColour mini lamp doesn’t look as good as the original concept design but instead takes the form of some kind of odd magical egg. It’s rather expensive too at £85.00 ($164.59 CAD). This really illustrates how something can start off life as a great idea and be bastardized by committee by the time it hits shelves. What a pity.

At the aptly named Colourful Animation Expressons site, Oswald Iten has been writing about colour design and theory including a series regarding Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. He does a great job of highlighting the subtext involved and how potent effective use of colour can be. Many videogames and advertisements are trying to use such techniques now but many movies are really struggling with good colour design lately, either totally ignoring it, or trying far too hard to force chromatic themes over narratives. It’s never too late for us to learn from the masters though, so higlighting and discussing a wonderful example never hurts.

Pecay over at BibliOdessy has collected a few examples of satirical maps from the first World War. They function as political cartoons diagramming both geographic conditions and sentiment regarding various regions. You don’t see many such maps produced anymore but their charm is undeniable as they anthropomorphise various countries giving them personality and character, illustrating how they all interact.

Jordan has directed us towards the 2012 Olympiad logo which rightfully made us cringe, especially after the revalation of the one year development process and the $750 000 price tag and also of course the horrible accompanying copy on the London 2012 website reading, “the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012.” Nevermind the fact that it looks as though it was designed by Max Headroom, whats worse is that this logo design is so bad it is a serious health concern.

“When people see the new brand, we want them to be inspired to make a positive change in their life” -Tony Blair

Yes Tony, the logo makes us hate our lives. Mission Accomplished.