Posts by Gaz

Balloon lamp

Kyouei Design have a number of ingenious yet simple ideas among their product range; the balloon lamp is one that really caught my eye. They’ve been on the market for a while, but time hasn’t ravaged their ability to impress.

The lamp itself comes flat-packed and is merely made up from a standard balloon, a high-intensity, low energy LED bulb and a couple of lithium coin batteries. Once the the balloon is inflated you have a great temporary, wireless lighting solution that lasts for around 100 hours.

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Homework

Since 2003, Polish design studio Homework, a duo comprised of Joanna Górska and Jerzy Skakun, have created posters for a range of cultural events.

Regardless of whether you can read Polish or not, the designers’ portrayal of the events in question, particularly the Hollywood movie references, gives you good idea about what is being advertised with minimal effort.

Actually, there’s a game in this: visit Homework’s website and see how many events you can guess the relevant posters are for. Unless you understand Polish of course, in which case you’d be cheating.

An exhibition of the studio’s work at London’s Kemistry Gallery begins on March 5th.

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Olly Moss’s 8 Films in Black & Red

Continuing on our minimalist movie poster tip [1] [2], it would be amiss of us not to mention Olly Moss and his Eight Films in Black and Red series.

There’s not much more to say that hasn’t already said, expect that The Great Dictator, Die Hard, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Deer Hunter are my favourites. The artwork speaks more than a 1000 words if not minutes. Consequentially, like all film preview trailers, they probably give away too much of what happens.

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Ettinger Flask

In maintaining a superior standard, Ettinger put a considerable amount of work into their products. This attention to detail isn’t a detriment to the simple purpose of its produce, however, and only adds to their allure. Take this 8oz leather clad stainless steel flask, for example.

This Great British brand has refined its craftsmanship in over 70 years of trading. Refined to the point that today they are the preferred leather goods manufacturer of the nation’s Royal Family, enabling the company to carry the crest of the Prince of Wales.

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Konst & Teknik

Swedish graphic design company Konst & Teknik can count work for Mono Kultur magazine in its impressive portfolio.

Particularly mentionable here are the book covers for Deleuze och mångfaldens veck and The Rest is Silence, and the extremely useful CopyPasteCharacter—an online tool giving easy access to typographic characters—that negates the need to learn alt codes and other such shortcuts. What a marvellously simple time saver.

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Case-Real’s Tube Amp

Koichi Futatsumata (Case-Real) designed this rather compact tube amplifier for Japanese electronics kit manufacturer Elekit.

Whilst the discerning audiophile is likely to pursue the natural sound produced by a tube (or valve) amplifier, they can be bulky, monstrous looking things with all the elegance of Dr. Frankenstein’s toaster.

Futatsumata, however, has managed to squeeze the required high-end components into a neat package. Coupled with its simple interface, Elekit may very well have a product that can appeal to the iPod generation.

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London 2012 concept posters

In his review of 2009, Michael Johnson revisited these London 2012 Olympic Games concept posters by Alan Clarke.

Although the official London 2012 identity, created by Wolff Olins, caused a huge stir on its release (no doubt the desired effect), opinions of the concept are very much polarised; and ever since the unveiling in 2007 there have been notable attempts to offer something more akin to Olt Aicher’s meisterwerk.

Clarke’s idea, linking particular Olympic events with nearby tube stations, was enough to scoop ‘best in show’ at last year’s D&AD new blood exhibition.

What with the impending ubiquity of the official branding, plastered on everything from cereal boxes to Adidas merchandise, these concepts are a tantalising insight into what could have been.

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