Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

A perk of working from home is the ability to make a nice lunch. Winter blues call for warming soups and the good old Campbell’s Condensed always goes down a treat with some crusty white doorsteps. But shock horror today! The label had changed and slapped over the classic red and white band was an ugly swatch: “Soon to be Batchelors”.

Batchelors will only ever make me think of grim, salty, dusty cup-a-soups that my mum subjected me to as a kid, not the lovely thick and creamy Campbells that Makes Double. This is a soup tragedy!

So many icons of 20th century culture are being swallowed up, rebranded, rebooted, renewed — and often to the detriment of the product in question. Will there be anything left for us to remember in ten years? Twenty?

Luckily, further investigation reveals that Batchelors won’t be changing the recipes and as they haven’t actually bought the brand, we might yet see Campbells on the label again in 2013.

I wonder by how much this will increase the value of Warhol’s classics?

It’s a new year: what better time for a lick of paint around here? The old design was never finished and I never really liked the literal interpretation of ‘pale movie’: monochrome images of some of my favourite films. So they are gone: dumped down the virtual swanny.

The new theme is still straightforward, but instead of a lighter background, I’ve opted for something more sombre. The focus is the large, randomized background images which capture ideas about loneliness, alienation, dereliction, decay and obsolescence; themes that I’ve always been interested in and will be exploring over the months to come as I try to improve both the subject matter of my posts and my writing style (I’ve been accused of being too wordy and too dry). While this is part of my style, I really want to develop language that’s more colourful and compelling, so stay tuned to see if I manage it…

Oh, and Happy New Year, etc.

London is a strange place. I’ve been living here for nearly five months now and still am struggling to adjust. It’s big, noisy, dirty, green, spectacular, aloof, lonely, entertaining and exciting. But above all it’s overcrowded. Large overcrowded cities need good transport. London has a pretty good network of trains, tubes, trams and buses, though you would be forgiven for thinking it’s awful if you ever get stuck in a rush-hour tube dash during a signal failure. But recently I have become aware of a new hatred spreading throughout the town. Metropolitan commuters have something else to complain about: the bendy bus. Read more »