The genius of everyday things

Where would we be without the little heroes that underpin our everyday lives? Could you be bothered to brew leaf tea five times a day or fish the beans out of your morning coffee?

Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things is an innovative new exhibition giving the spotlight to the miniature marvels we couldn’t live without.

The featured inventions are presented alongside original sketches and drawings by their inventors, patent specifications and original advertisements. The exhibition reveals the efforts made to establish each product, as well sharing quirky titbits of information such as Napoleon’s role in the evolution of the tin can and the connection between a descending plane and bubble wrap.

'At a time when celebrity is king, it gives all of us at the Science Museum enormous satisfaction to celebrate the truly uncelebrated and shine a light on a group of outstanding inventions and inventors, revealing the supposedly mundane to be nothing short of remarkable.’  Dr Susan Mossman, materials science specialist at the Science Museum.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/galleries/hidden_heroes.aspx

If I where an icon

5 minute exercise using Otl Aicher grid. 3rd year students giving very different ideas of what they would want their desktop icon to be. Some showing little imagination!

Win Crouwel

In 1963, he was one of the founders of the design studio Total Design (currently named Total Identity). From 1964 onwards, Crouwel was responsible for the design of the posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1967 he designed the typeface New Alphabet, a design that embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes. Other typefaces from his hand are Fodor and Gridnik. In 1970 he designed the Dutch pavilion for Expo '70 (Osaka, Japan). A design of Crouwel that is well known in the Netherlands is that of the Number Postage Stamps for the Dutch PTT (in circulation from 1976–2002).

In the years Crouwel was working for Total Design, he designed many geometric wordmarks, one of which is the wordmark for the Rabobank, designed in 1973. The lettershapes have been influenced by the fact that the wordmark had to be used as a 3D light box. After the 3D application was finalized, the 2D design for print was adapted from it.

kylebean.co.uk

A Brighton based designer specialising in hand crafted models, set design and art direction. Since graduating in 2009, has worked across a variety of platforms including installations, window displays, editorial and advertising.

kylebean.co.uk

Rubbish poster

Pangrams for our time

A pangram (Greek: παν γράμμα, pan gramma, "every letter"), or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once.

Modern takes on the 'Quick brown fox' type designer's pangram referencing the August riots are among the works on show at an exhibition of new projects from the Mill Co creative community

The three Modern Pangrams, which were written by Matt Gibbins and Eddy Hall, designed by Darren Hughes and art directed by Mike Hughes, add a modern flavour to the traditional type specimen (though, as RayMans has pointed out in the comments below, two of them appear to be missing the letter 'y').

They were created in response to a brief set by Mill Co for its second annual exhibition, put together in association with Monotype Imaging. Mill Co's community of illustrators, designers, writers, photographers, art directors and artists were given three Monotype fonts, Akko, Neue Haas Grotesk and Rotis II, and asked to do with them what they like – re-draw them, illustrate them, set them on fire, anything.

Around 30 artists responded and their work will appear at the exhibition which opens on October 14 at the Mill Co Project gallery space, Lime Wharf, Vyner St, London E2.

BT Vision rebranded by Man vs Machine and Proud Creative

BT Vision, the TV-on-demand service offered by BT to BT Total Broadband customers, has just undergone a graphic rehaul, courtesy of ManvsMachine in collaboration with Proud Creative.

Charged with developing a new identity package for the BT Vision service, Manvs Machine and Proud came up with the idea of creating a V-shaped portal that while representing the V of Vision is also a play button. This device can adapt different colours to represent the different genres of content available – and also adopt different behavioural traits in motion idents - it can float, bounce, skip and jump etc. Here are some of the idents created for the service, three of which (Bubbles, Paint, and Powder) were shot by photographer Jason Tozer:

"We developed the ‘portal’ as a multi-functional logo icon derived from the theory and principles of light refraction," says Mike Alderson, creative director at ManvsMachine. "It reinforces the ‘V’ of Vision, effortlessly becomes a play button synonymous with on-demand and acts as the window through which all content can be projected and represented."

While ManvsMachine worked on the filmed and animated idents, Proud Creative worked on the graphic design elements of BT Vision's new identity, including the logos, a typeface and colour palette for the identity.