Illustration: Ugly Buttons
Ugly Buttons from 1967
"There are 24 buttons in this series. 11 were designed and painted by Norman Saunders and 13 were designed by Wally Wood and painted by an unknown artist." normansaunders.com
Design: Moomin Gingerbread
Moomin gingerbread made by A Cat In the Kitchen. Go here for her post on recipes for Swedish gingerbread biscuits.
The Groke, Little My and Moominmamma as Swedish Gingerbread biscuits
Ephemera: ...and other printed matter
New additions to P-E Fronning's Flickr set -
Ephemera and other printed matter
Architecture: The Playboy Townhouse
The Ultimate The Playboy Townhouse could have looked something like this in 1962. Looks alright to me in 2006. The article is from the May 1962 issue of Playboy.
Via PCL LinkDump
Stuffed: Odd dolls
Photos of some nice and kind of odd dolls (link 1, 2 & 3) found by bandyman - Mr J. He says they're Chinese; I don't know. He's not to be trusted.
Via Josephzohn gås Blogger
Design: WhatTheFont?!
Do you keep hundreds or thousands of fonts on your computer or discs? Have you experienced wasting a great deal of time going through all of them just to find the right one? Sure there are nice applications for download (even for free like The Font Thing, FontPage) that will will help you review your fonts more easily, but it still takes time. Also you might not have the right one! This online service might be a solution for you:
WhatTheFont : MyFonts
...and then you might wanna download some fonts for free? ...and then some?
Thanks to P. Asth!
Art and illustration: John Bauer
gether with his wife and child in a shipwreck. Following Bauer's death Gustaf Tenggren took over his roll as illustrator of "Bland tomtar och troll". After Tenggren came Einar Norelius (see this earlier post) and he was succeeded by Hans Arnold (see this post).
This post about Bauer was inspired by this post by Stephen Worth of ASIFA who says that Bauer's "...style influenced generations of artists from Gustaf Tenggren ... /... Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen to Brian Froud and Jim Henson (The Dark Crystal)." Judge for yourself:
Other sites of interest is The John Bauer Museum and Project Runeberg - Målningar av John Bauer where you can find great scans.
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Video: Saul Bass title sequences
The great graphic designer Saul Bass (1920-1996) though having created many well-known logotypes and posters, is mostly know and remembered for his work with movie title sequences (IMDb). This is a collection of the few I found on YouTube. My thanks to those who uploaded them. If you find more or upload more please let me know.
"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it."[1]Check this site out for great screenshots from other of Saul Bass' title sequences and this one for screenshots of other great titles.
Illustration: BibliOdyssey posts
"German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber (1739-1810) trained as a physician and went and studied botany in Sweden under the great Carolus Linneaus."/"The absurd rendering of many of the animals comes about because the engravers/artists working on the project did not actually see the animals."/"And thankful we are too." - Indeed we are! Get links and more of the illustrations of "Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen" here: BibliOdyssey: The Concept of Mammals.
Engeneering manuscripts by "Mariano di Iacopo [Jacopo] (aka Mariano Taccola; and also referred to during his life as the 'Archimedes of Siena') (1381-?1453)" Go to BibliOdyssey: Engineering The Renaissance for the rest of Taccola's illustrations in engineering manuscript collection "De Ingeneis".
Animation: Whiteboard Stop Motion
Johnny at Drawn! writes "This music video is outstanding. Created for the Swedish band Minilogue by Kristofer Strom from Ljudbilden & Piloten, the entire thing is stop motion animation created on a whiteboard."
Go to the post at Drawn!
for this YouTube video and more.
Festival: Stockholm International Film Festival
I managed to watch three movies today at The Stockholm Film Festival. However I have a hard time justifying sitting through the first one - Electroma. Some kind of sci-fi roadmovie by Thomas Bangalter, one of the members of the French popgroup Daft Punk. The music score by the same group and others were quite alright but it wasn't enough of it. Even together with the sometimes great images it wasn't enough. Tideous and pointless in my opinion. Having said that I must point out that I can appreciate poetic and slow moving pictures but you have to give me a reason! I'm angry at myself for not walking out of it. But after having watched two men/robots in shiny helmets walking for an hour I guess I was too tired of walking...
The second film was an American independent production by Mia Goldman called Open Window. A pretty strong drama about a couple and their struggle after the woman gets raped by an intruder. It makes a point by not lingering on the deed but on the aftermath. Also, to a large extent, we get to follow the events from the man's viewpoint and lets us understand that the repercussions of a rape might be different but just as severe for the man. It's a pretty painful movie but still it breathes of hope. (Cybill Shepherd and Elliot Gould have supporting parts).
Third and last I downed the French picture Them (Ils) by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. In the countryside outside of Bucharest, Romania, French teacher Clementine and her man Lucas are restoring an old mansion. The couple without a care in the world are suddenly one night flung into a nightmare. There are sounds outside the house and then inside. Who are the intruders and what do they want? The festival catalogue draws some paralells to The Blair Witch Project, The Descent and "a little spice of Wes Craven". This is probably true. They continue to say that the makers of the film "...have created an intense, claustrophobic universe" which sounds about right. I'm no horror movie expert but I guess it's a decent shocker. Edit: Oh, I forgot - "Based on a true story"!
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