Posts by Gaz

England football team 09/11 jersey

Amid the enthusiastic drone of the vuvuzelas, the 19th FIFA World Cup began in South Africa yesterday. Of the 32 participating nations, overall the playing kits are as smart and appealing as I can remember.

England make their debut today and it’s their jersey that takes the spoils — an understated, clean and classy contradiction to the vibrancy and colour of the rainbow nation.

Harking back to pre-war, pre-branded era shirts, perennial kit makers Umbro went back to basics by taking inspiration from Saville Row to produce a more tailored garment. Even the geometric type looks like another English classic: Gill Sans. And whether you happen to be David Beckham, or a World champion gurner, the shirt looks great regardless — objective achieved for a mass-market product.

The red away jersey, unveiled by British band Kasabian earlier this year, is constructed in a similar vein, though it’s more a reference to England’s sole World Cup triumph in 1966.

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Aspiral Clock

You don’t need hands to tell the time, so say Aspiral. Echoing the fascinations that previous and ancient civilisations had with gauging the time of day, Will Aspinall and Neil Lambeth created this, the Aspiral Clock.

Measuring a half day, the clock itself rotates while the ball starts on the outside and gradually runs along the spiral until it reaches the centre and drops down the hole, back to the start—a cycle that takes exactly twelve hours.

Each Aspiral Clock is made individually and comes in a number of different flavours, which includes custom designs. If accuracy is a must, the Grey Timemaster version has 5 minute markings to make sure you don’t miss the train.

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The D-Premier

What at first glance looks like the sleekest of weighing scales, the D-Premier is actually a piece of high-end, hifi kit.

This wall-mountable unit, produced by French audiophiles Devialet, comprises of both stereo pre- and power amplifiers and a DAC.

It packs 480 watts of power and connects to a number of multimedia devices via HDMI, Toshlink, XLR and RS-232 ports among others. It is also wifi compatible. There’s obviously a lot of tech packed in under the under the hood.

The remarkable thing about this unit, however, is how it looks. Plenty of hifi equipment aimed at the top-end of the market, particularly amplifiers, look like they want you to know they exist; so much so that you can’t fail to notice. They can be monstrous behemoths, sometimes to fit all the required components in, but mainly to fuel their ego. They have that look about them. The look that says: ‘Turn me up to 3 and I will rip your face off.’

As for the D-Premier, it doesn’t convey that image at all. It’s aluminium housing is less than 45mm thick and it is only 32cm high. It’s understated, desirable and cool. Anybody got a spare £10,000 available?

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Homephone

Marc Schömann brings us his homephone concept—a sleek, almost totemic piece of telephony porn.

The calling method is simple: just rotate each numbered vertebrae to the corresponding digit of the number you’re calling, then when you are done, twist the top to connect.

Here’s hoping for the daruma otoshi version. Or the Tower of Pisa model.

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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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