Posts by Scott

Since we’re on the subject of Dieter Rams this week, I thought I’d post on his Vitsoe Shelving series. You may remeber the name Vitsoe from the Name That Chair post a while back, but it’s not enough just to have a Rams chair, you must also surround it with his amazing shelves. The Vitsoe site features a nice gallery of the shelves in their natural habitat, and you’ll also catch a few 620 chairs in there.

If course, a setup like those in the gallery will no doubt cost you an arm and a leg, but it’s nice to look. It’s always funny, whenever I somehow randomly find myself in some rich guy house, they never have anything as cool as this. It’s either gaudy old classical gold leaf stuff dripping with ornament or garish nouveau riche style with white carpets and bad marble floors. Apparently you have to be broke or German to appreciate this stuff.

“Omron 86R & Braun 4 776 calculators. Interesting similarities and differences, especially layout, letter forms, color and shapes. The Braun’s 12.5mm total thickness versus the Omron’s 25mm is a clear sign of the 10 year age difference between the two designs.

Omron 86R & Braun 4 776 calculators. The Braun’s font is clearly Akzidenz Grotesk, but the closest I can find for the Omron’s font is Univers 53 Extended. Any better ideas? “

Dieter always wins out, but that Omron still has it’s own thing going.

Via faasdant

Grain Edit posted up some Jacques Auriac posters along with the video below. These are really amazing, it’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be any higher res scans around the net. There are some more shots from an Auriac book over at Grain Edit’s original post.

You’re looking at the Xerox Star which “represented the most complete implementation of the ‘Desktop Metaphor’ of any system until the advent of mature Desktop graphical interfaces later on the Mac and PC/Unix/Linux in the 1990s” [source:digibarn] Digibarn has posted up several Polaroids from 1981 depicting the various facets of the Star 8010’s interface (a few of which are shown below). I don’t know what’s more amazing: how ahead of it’s time this GUI was, or how little the OS interface has changed in the past 28 years. This was nearly three decades ago and we’re still clicking folder icons and using archaic pointing devices. Where’s my Minority Report interface!? My wrist hurts.

Check out all the rest of the hi-res Polaroids here.

Beautiful poster for the Convair 880 by one of my favorite designers, Erik Nitsche. Apparently $1,000 will score you one of these rare prints.

via Grain Edit

Just a quick summary of this case since the details and “facts” have been shifting so much: Designer Jon Engle cried foul and the entire internet rushed to his aid. Engle accused a stock art site of stealing his designs and then billing him $18,000 for them. But as it turns out, he may be the real culprit. Read on and come to your own conclusions. This is an epic tale!

DOUBLE EDIT!: It just keeps looking worse for old Jonny-boy’s case. Jo just linked to a nice summary of this whole disaster which can be found here. Frank also sent in this link to some side-by-side comparisons of Jon’s work and the StockArt stuff. If this turns out to be all wrong, why did this guy do it? Perhaps he didn’t think it would blow up so big? If in fact this is all some elaborate hoax, $18,000 is probably the least of Jon Engle’s worries now. What a mess!

Edit: Wow! This is a saga for the history books. After posting this article, a few astute readers pointed out this thread on Reddit. Pretty interesting information there. I guess it’s up to you to decide who’s at fault here.

The alleged story — in Jon’s words — can be found here. But in light of recent information, you may want to take it all with a grain of salt. Either way, quite an interesting train wreck of a story this will be if it all turns out to be as upside-down as it’s starting to look.

I finally took the time to check out Daft Punk’s latest film, Electroma, tonight and I must say it was pretty impressive. The cinematography and visuals are breathtaking and the sound design and music (which was, sort of ironically, not made by Daft Punk) is incredible. The plot is pretty much an afterthought though; your standard issue vague, arthouse storyline that didn’t really move me in any way. But I didn’t want that out of it, nor was I expecting it, so I can’t knock the film for it. The substance is in the imagery and it’s simply beautiful. When paired with the excellent sound design it achieves a 2001-esque vibe, a sort of retro-future as imagined in the 80’s. You can watch a Vimeo clip from the film below featuring the superb laboratory scene (from which the stills above were taken). It’s out now on DVD and I would have included the cover and title graphics, but they’re pretty bad, which is a shame because a film with imagery like this just begs to be wrapped in quality design.

It’s been a few weeks since we launched the ISO50 Playlist and now a brand new set of tracks is loaded up for your listening pleasure. Just hit play — top of the page, center column (RSS readers must visit site to listen). I am working on the code to allow loading of older playlists which will be archived in the future. Enjoy!

ISO50 Playlist 002 – Compiled by Jakub.

Track Listing:

1. SKALPEL – SCULPTURE
2. CLOUDLAND CANYON – DAMBALA
3. BIBIO – ABERRIW
4. JIM O’ROURKE – FUZZY SUN
5. M83 – YOU APPEARING (ADDLED EDIT)
6. GROUPER – HEAVY WATER/I’D RATHER BE SLEEPING
7. TSTEWART – WHAT’S THIS COLOR
8. AMERICA – AMERICA – TIN MAN
9. MICHNA – DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
10. RATATAT – MONTANITA
11. STUDIO – LIFE’S A BEACH!
12. PETER BJORN AND JOHN – ERIK’S FISHING TRIP
13. TOM TYLER – DAYLIGHT ROBBED HER
14. CLOSER MUSIK – 1,2,3, NO GRAVITY
15. FARBEN – AS LONG AS THERE’S LOVE AROUND – ORIGINAL MIX
16. PAUL KALKBRENNER – AARON
17. THE CHAP – AUTO WHERE TO
18. MILOSH – COULDN’T SLEEP
19. MOUNTAINS – BLOWN GLASS TYPEWRITER
20. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – VISITING FRIENDS

Hit play on the player at the top of the page (center column) to start.

@McCrothers pointed out the fact that you could find some very interesting vintage items on Etsy. I thought it was all about handmade accessories and trinkets, but the above examples suggest otherwise. They’re from the 26 Olive Street shop where you’ll find a few other interesting odds and ends along with a lot of nicely Poladroid-erized product shots. This comes via a Valet article breaking down the Etsy second-hand market.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3QBcrliFNk

When I was down in LA for the Ghostly show, Jakub, Sam and I were talking and this Schaefer’s Beer ad came up. It’s one of those things that’s so great you want to wait to post it for as long as possible. Well, it’s been years since I first saw it and I guess now is as good a time as any.

This is Ed Kalehoff performing a jingle he wrote on the Moog Modular System for Schaefer’s beer. Even if you don’t know of him, you know his work; he did most of the music and cues for The Price is Right. Nothing tops this though, nothing. How great it would have been to live in a time when a beer slogan like that could fly. Also, was he scratching on that 2″ reel? Awesome.