Cover

What's in a cover? Do you judge a book by its cover? Interestingly Penguin has republished a series of age old classics by George Orwell with some fresh cover design. A great break from the usual staunch classics covers by Penguin, provided by designer David Pearson.

Each is stylistically different, a distilled reflection of the content of the book. A tongue-in-cheek cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four shows the title and author blacked out, a visual reminder of the censorship featured in the dystopic novel. As the designer, Pearson must have had to really understand the book's content as the subject matter.

Animal Farm (read my review of Animal Farm from ages ago) has a blood red background slashed with the title, divorced from the cartoony cover of animals (which was ironic considering the content within) on the first edition of the book I ever read.

What strikes me about these new covers is that you can judge these books by its cover because they are a cheeky static image of the novel. Sure, there's a lot more to the writing than the image, but better than having no feathers on a peacock.

You can see the other covers in this article by Creative Review. And do check out David Pearson's other work - he seems to have quite a connection with Penguin. Thanks again to Alice for providing inspiration.

Nostalgia

The Round Robin Photo Challenges is a blog I bumped into randomly the other day. At a predetermined challenge date, people post up a photo according to a theme and link back to it in the comments, allowing others to appreciate a collection of work that is almost curated around the theme.

This time the theme is "Long Ago, Far Away" and definitely a good excuse to trawl through old photos that would otherwise just rot away (OK, not really) on the hard drive. This photo is from the Shanghai World Exposition of 2010, the China Pavilion which was, of course, the grandest, largest and most boastful. A great moment on its doorstep was seeing how the building literally dwarfed the people lining the bottom of the photo. Perhaps it's not all that long ago that this was taken, but it sure feels like a long time and so far away from life here in NZ.

Tiny

Three great examples of tiny homes.

A while back I saw the video about Gary Chang's apartment in Hong Kong, curiosity piqued by the YouTube title "A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms". Seduced by the idea I watched the entire video (along with Chang's jolting Hong Kong English) and was mesmerised by the permutations that the shifting modules can create, apparently, 24 different spaces.

A more recent example is the New York apartment of Treehugger's founder. With an eco-efficiency mindset, the design of his home was crowd-sourced and ideas selected. The final solution makes use of some really excellent product design to supplement a much simpler sliding spaces arrangement.

It highlights the move away from 'rooms' at all, but space and how we use it. Micro-houses are already a huge thing in Japanese architecture due to tiny sites. These apartments economise space even further by thinking about the specific programmes of the space with a bit of human intervention. Rather than sprawling houses on huge pieces of land (and a lot of lawn maintenance), the inner-city lifestyle has increasing appeal and design is making it all the better.

Whether it's the constraint of a tiny site or just a compact way of life, this sort of design is never short of innovation. Even garages have been converted into stylish small homes, a touch of architecture and a boatload of thought lets just enjoy the smaller side of life. Gems surrounded by stone.

Thanks to Nico and Alice for the great examples behind this post - love it when people feed me ideas and awesome creative things! I, for one, can't wait to design such cool little environments someday when I become an architect.

Crumble

Timelapse PWC October 2012 from Nikau Contractors on Vimeo.

The illusion of the timelapse hides the fact that these demolition processes take an awfully long time as they have to break through all of the architectural technologies that we rely on to be very strong.

In 2011, I remember standing in the Christchurch CBD and watching one of these huge jaw-like machines crunch away at concrete and reinforcing steel. The machine itself was sitting on a hill of rubble of its own creation and a powerful cannon of water was used to drench the dust that would otherwise smother the adjacent surroundings. Hardly as dramatic as a blow up demolition, this building was the MLC Building (cnr Hereford and Manchester St), one of the first highrises in Christchurch at 11 storeys. Before the large Boxing Day aftershock it was planned to be saved. Talking to some of the locals standing around watching the building go down, there is a nostalgia to think that this huge building will become void, then as the memory fades, something else will replace it.

The MLC Building's staircase to nowhere.

Pollution

What is pollution? A powerful word with an equally devastating consequence, it lingers on the mind of many. But pollution can also enter our very beings - a timely reminder being this piece by Nolan Gapske titled "Pollution of the Mind".

My first thoughts were somewhere along the lines of Damien Hirst - the skulls and swirls and so forth. But this photo captures a much more temporal nature that embodies its subject. Hirst's skulls are objects: hardened resin, colour, studs, diamonds (or was it crystals? something insanely extravagant). They rely on that solidarity as a part of the statement.

It is fitting that photography is the medium for this, fleeting moments of this intrusion and beauty. Reminds me of the high speed photographs of sound sculptures but much more lethargic in nature.

Pollution is something we want to reject, but too easily does it mingle and become inseparable. Talking about the pollution of the mind, can we really reject the unwanted which is so interwoven with our very fabric?

You can check out more of Nolan's work on his Flickr page or his menswear blog Azzimoto.

Devoid

Fashion photography is an intense portrayal of finely detailed creative products. With so much happening behind the scenes - stylists, hair, make up, the model - it can often seem overworked or devoid of any meaningful content (usually with an overdose of narcissism or airy commercialism).

Which is what I found amazing about the stylised photography of Formento & Formento. Cinematic images try to tell a story and feel almost surreal, as if something from a Dali painting might wistfully appear. I like how F&F don't mind having underexposed areas - too often is an image ruined by even exposure which can be informatively boring. It is with these sets, combined with the clothes and styling, that the photos tell a story, often not from our present.

The photos are another sort of 'devoid', settings that could equally be bustling with people are stripped down to the one expressionate model. These buildings, the decor, the emptiness sits there, mingling with the subject.

Lumas London will be featuring a show of Formento & Formento: on the Road Again from February 20 to March 10 so if you're around London, go check it out. Breathtaking drama in photography and fashion combined can make you really think beyond the simple frame that is presented.

Thanks Lucire's article for the heads up. They also have a brilliant F+F Tumblr account. Also see a previous post on drama in photography in Philip-Lorca diCorcia's work.

Hand

What is this tiny device that is hailed to be the next big thing in computing? It's the Leap Motion, a gadget designed to be a human interface tool (ie like a mouse helps you do stuff in the computer) but in 3D. Feels as if we are leaping from one dimension to the other in technology - the mouse has had a long slow evolution, touch screens are now growing rapidly and then now, something that seems to come from science fiction.

What's even better, and much more productive on a proactive creative front, is that they have a software developers kit (SDK) that allows those inclined to do so to explore the possibilities offered by this device. A new way of interacting with electronics has already started showing some great uses - controlling a quadrotor, for instance. That's right, fly a thing with the sensitive control of your own hand.

It'll be interesting to see where this ends up - we never really see a revolution coming. Who knew that touch screens would be so popular and easily worked into our electronic repertoire?