Paul Thurlby’s Wonderful Character Illustrations

British illustrator Paul Thurlyby has a lovely portfolio filled with a really nice collection of retro-modern illustrations all inspired by mid-century design. Originally from Nottingham but now based in London; Paul has worked on illustrations for a number of clients including the likes of The Guardian, The Times and It’s Nice That. Some of you may have seen the wonderful alphabet series which he created a while ago. It was really rather splendid and if you haven’t seen it then you really should check it out!

Today I thought I’d share some of the wonderful characters that Paul has drawn in the past. I was well aware of his alphabet set but I didn’t know he was also such a fine caricaturist. The top image of Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot really does it for me. Paul’s style sits so well upon these two icons of 60′s and I love the texture of Bardot’s hair. Also, check out his picture of The White Stripes – it’s just so much fun! More work can be seen online here.

Philip

Facebook’s Timeline: Memories Are More Complex Than Algorithms

Yesterday, Facebook announced the launch of their product, Timeline, a way to “tell your life story with a new kind of profile.” Much has been written and much more will be written in the coming weeks, and I can’t stop myself from pointing out a few things myself.

The Design
First up is the design, which is both beautiful… and confusing. The designers in the details and the work done in Timeline are pretty near perfect. It’s based on a beautiful grid, the spacing is crisp, the size of the type, it’s all rather nice. The introduction of a cover image of is interesting, bringing some personality to the standard Facebook profile, but it’s aspects like that, which to me, make it feel a lot like Myspace. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s certainly ground that’s been tread before.

My problem with the design though is that it’s a bit disorienting and somewhat noisy. Before it was easy to scan your profile because it had a single column that lets you absorb all the information easily. Now that information has been split into two columns, both are equally weighted, information moving back and forth freely. In my opinion this free movement makes it really hard to scan the page, yours eye have to go back and forth on the page, absorbing random pieces of data. Imagine reading a book from left to right and the story keeps changing as you go.

The page also feels rather noisy because of a few key pieces that are smattered all over the page: your user icon, your name and a timestamp. These three things exist on every single update you have, which makes for a whole lot of visual clutter. I’m not sure what the point is of having all that information, either. When you click their profile pic or their name, you just go to their profile.

The Concept
More than the design, which I honestly think is a bold idea, I’m not a fan of what Timeline really means. Facebook is trying to become so much more than a social network, it’s your life in serialized form, from your noisy beginning to quiet end. Facebook wants you to “input” your memories, your favorite songs, the things you cook, the movies you watch. That by doing all of this stuff, you can show people who you really are. But is inputting yourself into a mainframe a true representation of yourself?

Hell no.

I’m pretty morally against what they’re trying to do for a few reasons. The first, and obvious, is that they want you to input all of this information to sell ads against. That’s the way the world works in 2011, and though it sucks, it’s not my biggest problem. What I really hate is that they want to input your memories, but memories are so much more than some photos or a song you were listening to. Sure, those things can bring up memories, but there’s so much more to what a memory is. There’s smells, there’s taste, their’s touch and feel, and none of that can be experienced through a dump of information which Facebook is calling your life.

Your life is more than a bunch of information. Your life is more than songs or photos, it’s experiences, it’s friends, it’s things that can’t ever be replicated. Real memories live inside you, in your head and heart, made with real people in real life. It’s sad and scary that a company is trying to redefine what a memory is, that all we are is data in a cloud somewhere. Is there an answer to this problem? I don’t know, I’m kind of feeling pessimistic about it, but I can try and be hopeful that people are smart enough to know what’s real.

Bobby

Cate Blanchett collaborates with Nathan Coley, turns into an Archtiect

Atist Nathan Coley, presents images of insignificant structures and spaces from Glasgow and Melbourne. The presentation of these buildings is narrated by Cate Blanchett, who speaks as if she were an architect responsible for each of the spaces. It’s pretty hilarious. About the stacked stones that make the entrance to the derelict building above, the architect says: “The carved stones act as a contemporary sign post. On the left side, the stones are carefully positioned, adding order and stability; on the right, it’s a bit more free and romantic.”  Coley says the video is teasing about the pompous attitude of the architecture world while at the same time celebrating the found and unconsciously made.

Alex

‘Bioshock Infinite’ Preview (Video)

For many video game enthusiasts, the BioShock series is a grouping of games handcrafted by the gods of video games for us mortals to play when they allow us to. The series has two games so far–BioShock and BioShock 2–with a new one which will be released next year: BioShock Infinite.

Details on the new game were kept under wraps for some time, but are now out in the open: the new game does not take place underwater as the first two but in the air, in Columbia, during the year 1912. You play Brooker DeWitt, a former government agent, who is searching to find a woman named Elizabeth, who he feels is at the center of a civil war. Unfortunately for them both, she is being pursued by a former captive/robotic monster called Songbird. Sounds a little confusing, yes, which I am sure is the point until you actually play it.

The video above is a fifteen minute gameplay demo that debuted at this year’s E3, where it swept the conference’s awards. The video takes place in the middle of the game where Brooker and Elizabeth are perusing this air city, occasionally stalked by Songbird and others, but also using tears, items that alter space and time. As you can see in one of the photos, there is a “Revenge Of The Jedi” marquee which is when Elizabeth opens a tear to the early eighties (yes, that is Tears for Fears you hear in the clip).

As you can tell, this new entry in the series is a total departure and looks nothing like the other entries in the series. Watching the above clip it seems very, very confusing how to play this game as it looks like a movie. If you still want more on the game, the Bioshock Infinite site has much more fun videos and IGN released the first ten minutes of the game last year, furthering that this game is just a movie you click buttons through.

KYLE

‘Slipstream’ by Patrick O’Hare

Slipstream is a series of photographs by American photographer Patrick O’Hare. The work explores the American landscape in moments of development and it examines how these environments become ravaged during transitional periods. O’Hare throws a dark eye over these places and aims to capture the absurdities and mysteries of the land.

Yet amid these entropic moments O’Hare also manages to capture a bleak beauty amongst the land. My first impressions of his photographs was one of attraction, especially to the colors that O’Hare finds in these mysterious places. Take a look at the red soil at the development site at Lake Forest, Virginia (above), or look at the rich dark-green grass that runs up to Model Home at Clinton, New Jersey. These are place that really capture my interest, and this is something which is important for O’Hare:

I’m interested in what lies behind these netherworlds when they are stripped down to their essence. I look for the hillside drive through where light and darkness fill a shape, the roof of a Wal-Mart stretched to the horizon, the sweep of roadside embankments, cleared and manicured; all the borders where earth, man, and sky meet and melt into each other.

More work can be seen online here, and Slipstream is currently available as a limited edition book.

Philip