SamKnows

SamKnows

I ‘ve been busy rebranding, redesigning and Cookie-ifying all of SamKnows digital products this year. First to get relaunched is the website – www.samknows.com.

If you don’t know anything about SamKnows and it’s highly likely that you don’t, they can measure your internet, they measure lots of peoples internet, they are considered the best measurers of the internet in the world! Governments, regulators and ISPs all over the world use them to conduct national studies on internet performance. They have big plans, plans to help you get better internet, understand your internet performance more, make the complexity and mystery about why your internet is sometimes good, sometimes bad and thing of the past, they want to build a self healing internet so you don’t ever have to worry about bad internet again. We’re not there yet… but you can sign up for a free Whitebox and start monitoring your internet right now, new features will be hot off the production line.

Big up to Callum for building it, all the .svg animations on the homepage required some mad maths skills. Oh there’s a couple of hidden Easter eggs on the homepage, see if you can find them :)

Olympic mascots become self-ware and go on a killing spree around London!

Wenlock - Olympic mascot

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.

Mandeville - Olympic mascot

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!

My olympic mascot pitch

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..

Vík Prjónsdóttir

Vík Prjónsdóttir Blankets

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.

Electric Powered Flying Suit

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:

Puffin

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.

Dictators of Fashion

Social Suicide - Dictators of Fashion

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.

Social Suicide - Dictators of Fashion

Best Made Co. Axes

Awesome Axes

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.

More Axe Action

Via: seiz whaa?