The Poppy: Design of Remembrance

Poppy

November is a month now associated with the Poppy, a symbol of remembrance and appreciation of the sacrifices made by past generations, and in the last few years, our own contemporaries. A classic and simple design, the Poppy as a logo is instantly recognisable, as well as a way people can display their own appreciation of this military sacrifice for our own freedoms. The Poppy Appeal has successfully used this flower as an effective iconic design of simple poignancy.

Amidst the carnage and devastation of the battlefields of the First World War, the poppy flower was seen growing amongst no man’s land, and carved such an impression on the mind of a serving doctor, John McCrae, he wrote the famous poem: “In Flanders’ fields, the poppies blow…”. This poem inspired an American War secretary, Moina Michael, to start selling poppies, the proceeds going to the ex-Service community. And thus the Poppy Appeal charity through the British Legion was born.

The first Poppy Day was in 1921, and has remained a tradition every November since. In 1922, Major George Howson, founder of the the Disabled Society (established to help disabled ex-Service men and women from the First World War), suggested to the Legion that members of the Disabled Society could make the artificial poppies sold for the charity. Subsequently, the original artificial poppy was designed so that disabled workers could manufacture it with ease, especially so that it could be made by a worker with only one hand.

The simple design was, therefore, mostly born from a necessity of easy assembly. As with a lot of great iconic logos, less is more. The blood red is striking, and yet the Poppy’s soft edges portray a powerful message of beauty amongst the destruction – of life amongst the dead. And lest we forget.


Re-Creating Famous Movie Scenes in Powerpoint or Keynote

Microsoft Powerpoint and Apple Keynote have come a long way. Now, rather than boring people with presentations that are full of bullet points, you can bore people with presentations full of pointless transitions and effects (as I often do).

The side-effect of these features is that you can easily create some relatively sophisticated animation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-create famous movies scenes using nothing but Keynote or Powerpoint. Above you’ll find my first attempt at the Stay Puft scene from Ghostbusters: you can download the Keynote file I used to create it (Creative Commons licensed – do whatever you want with it).

I’ve thrown down the gauntlet; will you pick it up? Let’s see what you’ve got.

Corporate Control and the Cute Trigger

mickey

In the December issue of Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf takes on America’s increasing obsession with cuteness in his article Addicted to Cute. He posits that companies, who are doing bad and decidedly un-cute things, will often try to identify their brand with something that pushes our cute button, because it triggers the bit of our brain that probably evolved out of a desire to protect our offspring. If we associate a brand like Geico (an insurance company that deals with ugliness as a core part of its mandate) with an adorable gecko, consumers and potential consumers are distracted into thinking that the gecko is the company and we are less likely to think about their actual business. In fact, we may want to protect the company, in a strange and abstract way.

As another example, Windolf draws attention to the evolving face of Disney icon Mickey Mouse:

In a 1979 article for Natural History, evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould noted … [Mickey Mouse] evolved from the thin cackling rodent of the silent-film era to the high-voiced, plump-headed figure of the 1950s and beyond. So as the Walt Disney Company grew more powerful and profitable, its public face grew cuter.

Disney – Mickey Mouse image by Joe Penniston.

Taking it Offline: Why Print Journalism Still Rules the Roost

newspapers

Over the weekend, I had a rare opportunity to indulge in some quiet, contemplative time alone, as my husband had taken the baby to visit family in Hertfordshire for the day. Whenever I contemplate solitary activities of a Sunday, I immediately think of a bedcover strewn with the day’s news, a coffee in hand.

Before the baby, I read the news like most other hot-blooded ex-pats: online. At work, I would skim the latest headlines, whether arts or food or celebrity, and sometimes even delve a bit deeper into ‘local news.’ I was as prolific as my curiosity and natural inclination to chase after the elusive ‘common story link’ would allow. Then I would migrate over to Twitter like everyone else.

My Sunday morning in bed, which consisted of me pouring over choice bits of The Guardian, reminded me of why I prefer to read my news in print as opposed to online. I’m talking about something other than simple design, which, certainly, seems to tell the story of the news itself as it draws your eye across the pages, intimating continuity and reassuring you that time considering a point-of-view article is just as well spent as a foray into foreign policy.

There’s no denying that with print journalism, what you see is what you get. The Internet suffers because of this same equation, since what you see isn’t necessarily all that you can get. And unless you’re well versed in the intricacies of Information Architecture, you probably won’t spend too long searching for something nobody has told you to find. Most websites present a Russian doll of links that, more often than not, lead you astray – leaving you to retrace a trail of breadcrumbs just to find your way out again, let alone the information you came there for in the first place.

Without the benefit of defining sections, colours and other sign posts to tell you where to look next, online news appears as homogonous and infinite as the stars, with no natural beginning or end point, and thus gives us little incentive to plough on. Certainly, I might be more inclined to peruse a cartoon or a review of We Need to Talk About Kelvin if I see it there in front of me. I’m sure these pieces exist online as well, though I probably wouldn’t exercise my clicking finger to find one.

But even apart from these obvious differences, I believe print journalism will always win out over online news on a solitary Sunday morning, even if every news site came up with a clever design to keep me clicking. It’s the same reason why books win out over blogs, conversation over email – there is something tangible there, something that seems to grasp our own intuition and make us feel a part of something larger. There is a sentience in print that simply does not exist online.

I watch my son systematically put objects in his mouth, which is how infants get to grips with not only matter, but information, and the messages we transmit through seemingly innocuous material. The same holds true for print: inside those pages is a discourse so electric, so ‘live,’ that as you peel the fruit down to its stone, you can almost hear the thoughts of those who consume it alongside you from distant bedrooms, cafes, airports. The message is palpable.

Photograph by Alex Barth

Buy Chocolate Anuses at The Shop of Horrors in London

The Last Tuesday Society's Shop of Horros in Bethnal Green, London

The Last Tuesday Society “is devoted to exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic aspects of life in London and beyond.”

They hold a wide variety of beautiful, curious events, and I suspect we’ll be writing about them again in the future. But today we’d like to highlight their incredible Little Shop of Horrors in Bethnal Green, London. The shop of curiosities sells:

A wide variety of curiosities and oddities […] from human fetuses to shrunken heads, chocolate anuses, carniverous plants, orchids and mutated teddy bears, not to mention a fine selection of speciality teas, broken children’s toys and dead plants

It’s located at 11 Mare Street, and is currently open 12-6pm, Friday to Sunday.