Bombshell - The Hedy Lamarr Story

I've been meaning to watch this for some time and it's a belter. Hedy comes from that wealthy Jewish-Austrian milieu that includes Wittgenstein and Popper (and Hitler if we excuse the wealth). She's a stunner and by the age of 19 had filmed the most erotic movie ever and married a wealthy Austrian industrialist. 

Bored with parochial Tyrolean mise-en-scene, she legs it to the USA with a reputation as a kind of teenage pornstar, and a stifling movie contract with Louis B Mayer that required a life of amphetamines and benzos to stay awake or get some sleep during 6-day-weeks of production.

Hedy is clearly no slouch when it comes to innovation and free thinking, but after some consideration of the documentary, and a fairly fierce conversation with my father who has some expertise on the topic, I have to concede that although she had a large hand in developing spectrum-hopping for guided missiles, torpedos and drones, it's likely her Italian collaborator George Antheil had a lot of input. It's also possible with her Austrian Jewish origins that she may have been a conduit for leaked secrets from Germany? 

Just a thought.

That said, Hedy also dated Howard Hughes who gave her free rein with all his designers and engineers for anything she wanted. So she must have been a brilliant mind.

Hedy was also an early adopter of plastic surgery and even provided suggestions for her surgeon on how to do it better. Sadly that story continued too long and by the end of your life her face was a mess (sic).

For me though the early Hedy isn't that attractive (though I wouldn't say no), but in 1969 she appeared on one of those vapid chat shows with creepy hosts. 

Despite the toe-curling dialogue she's a stunner even if there's a nip or a tuck here and there.

Conspiracy No More

Death & Destruction.

British Teabagging Wastes 33 Hours A Year (And Violence Abroad)

65% of Brits admit to overfilling their Kettle which means that"British households waste $114 million every year. UK energy needs are so desperate they are prepared to support terrorists and rebels in Syria (200,000 dead so far) so their Qatar friends gas pipelines can run through it and keep the old energy order in place.

“One day of extra energy use [from overfilling electric kettles] is enough to light all the streetlights in England for a night.”

“The average Brit spends 33 hours a year waiting for the kettle to boil.”

The Miito Kettle is not cheap so it takes a while to get the initial investment back, however it is a design classic and each purchase will contribute towards making economies of scale sufficiently competitive with standard kettles.

Occupy Subversive Visuals

Cigarette Packaging

Impending legislation may mean that cigarette packaging for Marlboro could end up looking like this. I guess people like Emigre will have a field day with the font as key design feature. Via Influx Insights and Ed's Photo Stream.

However as a lapsed non smoker (I should work in PR) I always thought the Thai health warnings are the most punchy I've seen, and yet that never worked for me. It's possible that as a word man I might find Pentagram more effective. I guess I'm not the market segment being spoken to as one would hope that it's the younger ones who are put off ever trying.

This is one of the milder ones although you can see more over here. Frankly the following effort by Pentagram is just cool and precisely the reason why so many take up smoking in the first place.

Challenging Conventions

The Telegraph posted this trailer for Coco Chanel and I thought maybe a few of you would know if it's your sort of thing if my review was rubbish but the embed conveyed the style a bit better than I was able to explain.

Are Economist Front Covers Better Than The Ads?

The Economist Covers (light version - 30 Slides)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: money value)

Yes is the answer

Calling All Graphic Designers

I've been getting restless with my blog design for some months now. It's always been a bit of a sandbox, meaning I like to experiment with new stuff, and I intend to add new widgets as and when I think they could be interesting. There's a kind of colour code. The background is black, the type is greyish and I use a bit of green to highlight some bits and pieces but that only really matters when I play with the colour palette on the widgets. But I'm bored of the look now and was intending to give it a facelift.

However it strikes me that there are much better designers out there than I, and I'd like to give you the chance to redesign it. The deal is that in return for making this blog look ship shape, maybe even tasteful, you (the designer) get to have your creds on it day in and day out and a link to your website. I'm not expecting an avalanch of people to get in touch, but if there's only one, then we probably need to have have some to and fro about details, in case say the widgets need new colours, but if there's a few of you interested in having a crack at it, then it's a straight forward pitch.

Does that sound fair?

If not the comments are always a good place to chip in on how we could do it. Now that I've put my neck out, I expect a resounding silence to ensue and a few hours of tinkering with Blogger templates on my own. I'd be well chuffed if someone could inject some style and substance into the design. The best idea I've seen recently is Peggy's blog which doesn't even have a title. I like that mininimal approach, plus I don't think anyone else has done it. Anyway, there are no restrictions. Everything can go if it's for the right reason. It would also be a pretty good showcase for the winners talents.

That's all I can guarantee.

Made in England

 

Currently trekking across the Americas from Mexico to Canada along the continental divide is Cookie from Made in England. Along with his mate Paul he's been blogging the journey and they are both (after what seems like forever) just over the halfway mark now. It's terrific blogging and he and Paul are both doing it for Charity which you can check out over here 

Just as exciting is that if he makes it back to London, Cookie has one of the best digital graphic design blogs that I know of. You can still sponsor him mile for mile as it's not certain that he's going to make it with his toes disintegrating as we speak, thus saving yourself a couple of dollars you cheap skates ;)

Designs on Money

It's not often I post up quality design over here but I think the new British coin designs are really good. Perhaps up there with those Dutch Notes that looked so fantastic prior to the adoption of the Euro.

The new designs have been chosen via an open competition three years ago which attracted some 4,000 entries. I'm really pleased that the winning designer is a young Brit of 26 years-old called Matthew Dent, originally from Bangor who now lives and works in London as a graphic designer.It pleases me that world class designers are still emerging in the UK and so young too.

Here's a Dutch example for those who remember having some beautiful cash in their hands before the Euro. Isn't it just brilliant and beautiful?

Via Core77

Trashvertising

I couldn't help laughing at this bag I saw in Xidan over the weekend. I'm probably going straight to hell aren't I?

There's an anthropological/linguistic/ethnographic study in the waiting for this little number above. I'm being serious because actually it's unacceptable in many Asian cultures to wear this and yet the intended irony has gone off-skew with this example I saw in Beijing. Lauren or Angus might have a bit to say on this.

Everybody loves a bit of Exciusive design don't they? Just splendid!


Or can we safely blame Moschino for this kind of stuff.

Chanel

Ed just posted about Chanel and so I've got to get this off my chest. Chanel are kicking retail ass at the moment in so many ways that I can only describe as creative tumescence pour moi. 

I passed their flagship store in Bejing and pulled out the Canon to snap their window display. It's on another level and frankly I could write about just their shoes for a few hundred words. 

I realise that luxury is the opposite of a lot of values I espouse on this blog but never confuse true beauty and design genius with high bills.

AWE5OME

These guys are popping. I particularly like Steve Lawler's work and don't forget to take a sniff round Poolatwork