Ha ha, only kidding they do look like they were sent back from the future by Skynet though ;)

So finally the London 2012 Olympic Mascots by have been revealed. As you would expect from the 2012 committee, they are not really what we expected! Far from cute & cuddly they are cold & hard, more like a Henry Moore sculpture than a kids toy.

Designed by London agency iris, I read that they only cost ”a few thousand pounds”, I think they probably cost a bit more than that! Probably just trying to play it down after the £400,000 logo fiasco.

I feel for it’s designer though, whatever you create you’re going to get people ripping the shit out of it (myself included, sorry..) It’s an impossible brief, design by committee jobs always are.. I actually like it quite a lot, everything from the neck down looks awesome, great proportions, clean lines, sweet as in my book. Problem is though, why oh why that eye Olympic Committee?

You can tell by the descriptions on iris’ design boards, that the eye was supposed to be a camera lens, but at some point they decided to stick a cartoon eye on there which looks totally at odds to the rest of the angular design. Pixar have already shown with characters like WALL•E, or even their original anglepoise lamp short, that with the limitations of something ‘less human’, you can get a lot more unique character out of it. Feels like it was almost good, but they fucked it up at the last hurdle..

I actually took part in the original pitch too!

Only fair to put my own work up for comparison/criticism. My idea was unsurprisingly the sock monster route. Rather than selling preformed shiny toys to the kiddies, I wanted to make ‘kits’ which were essentially a pair of long sport socks with instructions of how to make your own mascot from scratch! Thought it would be nice thing to do in school as a crafty lesson, give them chance to be creative and add a bit personal flair to their own mascot. The agency I was working for poo poo’d it because it wasn’t ‘commercially viable’, said the committee would never go for it as they needed to pay for the Olympics through some mass-produced piece of Chinese plastic..

I‘m lovin’ Think Geek’s April Fools today, but I tell you what, I would genuinely buy one of these if they were available, brilliant :)

A while back I was repeatedly sent this Beardcap link, I never blogged about it at the time as it was all over the internet already. But the Icelandic company responsible – Vík Prjónsdóttir continues to knock out fresh stuff, in particular I’m lovin’ their new blankets.

The layering of this Shield of Wings (pictured) and the anchored Sea Blanket is mighty nice. Although the one that I really want to get shipped over from Iceland is Hidden World (bottom pic), it’s well wizard :)

Via: Coolhunting.

Mark Spurgeon is collecting photos of old hand painted building signage on his site – Preserve. Most shots are from New Zealand and Australia so far, so if you have anymore, send them over »

Lots of great stuff on there, but I’m really taken by these massive numbers painted on doors above and below :)

Normally I would have a blind spot to web polls like online advertising, but not these from Spot The Tiger. Each week a new poll is illustrated by a guest designer and put up for vote, there’s some great designs and interesting results.

Pictured above: Nuclear weapons by Nazario Graziano, Smoking by Ed Nacional and Alcohol minimum price by Adam Morris.

It’s that time of year when designers across the globe check out what Nicholas Felton has been up too the previous year in his annual report. As always, meticulously recorded data and beautifully put together. Letterpressed print version available from his shop (only 2000 copies).

Holy Crap, NASA are working on this one man helicopter/plane concept that Q in MI5 would be proud of. They’re calling it the Puffin, minus a few propellers here and there, it definitely has some similarities:

I love the quote on Scientific American’s article – “In my opinion, a mass-marketable version will need conventional seating and cup holders”. Yeah who cares if it’s an electric-powered flying suit, I need a fucking cup holder before I get in that thing ;)

Via: The Adventure Blog.

I got a sneak peak of Social Suicides Dictators of Fashion collection when I bought my yellow suit. First impressions, very nice :) Juicy pics on their site, although the online store doesn’t seem to have any stock yet.

I want to like the Churchill suit (top pic) but I’m drawn to the de Gaulle below, lovin’ the asymmetrical leather trim detail. Apparently mimicking a ’Sam Brown’, which is a leather belt that passes over the shoulder to suspend a holster, whatever looks great.

Wow, I never knew I wanted an axe until now, amazing how much a couple of paint dips can increase my desire of a object. Not sure how much use they’d be in London, but if I was in the market for an axe, then a Best Made Axe it would be.

An axe is indispensable & sublime, the epitome of fortitude & strength, a perfect design object, a timeless instrument.

Via: seiz whaa?

I‘m loving this series of murals – A Love Letter For You, by Stephen Powers. He’s still got a few more to do (50 comissioned in total), reminds me a bit of Bob & Roberta Smith’s shop signage stuff around Hoxton Street, although Steve’s stuff is much more graphically interesting and funny.

Via: 30gms.

Finally I got my Typekit invite yesterday :) It’s ridiculous really when you think about how long the web has built on only a handfull of fonts.. well no longer!

All the major browsers are now starting to support this embeded font thing if you provide a URL in your CSS to the font file, great news. Problem is there’s not that many fonts that you can ‘legally’ use in this way. That’s where Typekit comes in, it’s essentially web only font licencing service, with some clever stuff behind the scenes that smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type.

You can sign up and use the free fonts (for free), or drop a bit of cash (up to $50 a year subscription) to get access to hundreds more.

“For designers and developers, this is a significant step forward. No longer will you need to trap your content in images or Flash just to express yourself visually. Pages will be more usable, accessible, and indexable.”

I’ve been having a little play around with it, and am currently using Buendia by César Puertas for the titles. I think it might be time for a full re-design soon though.

Movember + Twitter & Hashtags = Tachetags! This was the brainchild of a mate at Blast radius, who got me in as the ‘moustache expert’ to make it happen.

Basically the idea is you upload daily photos of your folical folly to twitter (using twitpic, yfrog or img.ly) and add #tachetag in the text. We’ll pull them all into tachetag.com where you and anyone else can see your progress and, if they like the look of your hirsute heroics, add a donation in your name.

There a few more features in the wings, like being able to post images directly on the site, personal pages with all your photos and hopefully an animated gif of it growing.

Mark Weaver is still knocking his retro/modern collage pieces every day, I hope he makes this one into one of his silksreen posters.

This is an awesome idea, recycling old camera lens components into these one off retro bracelets. Brain child of Aussie Photography Craig Arnold (can’t find his site), but they are for sale in the UK Cost £100 – £150, available from Oye Modern. Not many left, but be sure to check all the sold one’s too »

Via: Ace Jet 170.

Stumbled onto Studio On Fire’s blog Beast Pieces. Plenty of gorgeous letterpress work, but particularly taken by the collection of wedding invites they’ve printed. Loving the ligatures on the invite above by (the groom) Jefferson Perky.

It’s interesting that they print a whole set of cards, invites, RSVP’s, thankyou cards etc all in one go – “One of the things that we do to make printing them affordable is run all of the pieces on the same press sheet. Our presses are big enough to run several different cards on the same press sheet, then trim them down to size. This represents a huge cost savings over printing individual cards, setting up the press for each form on each card”.

Lovemix Boombox:

Great old school boombox with the love dial set to max, designed by Adam Ramerth. This design is even available for customisation if you’re interested.

Lovely set:

Loving all the colour combos and mix of paper stock & printing techniques. Great all together set with nice envelope labels, perforated RSVP’s and even tiny little envelope to send it back in. Designed by Erin Jang.