One Plus One Equals Three

Design Nagunae

1+1=3 est fini, but I've started to upload my photographs (many of which are in the sidebar at right) at Flickr.

Slumdog Millionaire: That typeface in the end titles looks very familiar

 

Or: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it means you don't notice the dance number.

We spent Sunday afternoon happily watching Danny Boyle's hit new film Slumdog Millionaire. A colourful, very involving and energetic 'fairy tale' yarn that left me oddly underwhelmed afterwards. Perhaps it was the formulaic second half of the film – even though the first half is exceptionally good, even brilliant. Perhaps it was seeing some of my design work (possibly) appropriated in the film – in the end titles to be exact. True story. Quite a surprise.

The end titles of 'Slumdog' roll over a Bollywood-style dance number with the titles appearing on screen in a type treatment identical to one devised by myself for a project my studio completed in July 2006. That particular project was designing a photographic exhibition about Bollywood culture shown at Melbourne's Immigration Museum entitled 'Bollywood Dreams'. I blogged it here (it was always one of the most popular posts at 1+1=3) and I outlined how I created the font/type treatment. I've since received numerous requests from people wanting to buy the font*. However, it only exists as vector outlines in Illustrator. 

Above, at right, is the type treatment devised by myself in 2006, at left is the type in the end titles of 'Slumdog Millionaire' from 2008. Exceptionally similar don't you think? A coincidence?

Over and Out

After almost 5 years of writing, collecting and linking to material here I've decided to blog-off. It's been fun doing 1+1=3 but I now feel I've contributed 'my bit' for quite a bit – now it's time for me to sit back and smell the coffee (mind you, that's always been a favourite pastime – a long macchiato, please). I am feeling a little blogged out to tell the truth. I have some other extra-curricular, and (vaguely) design-related things on the horizon I'm keen to do, so I will be devoting my spare time to them, rather than to this.

My design partnership is growing (it's been quite a big year for us) and running a business, doing design and having a life means of late it's been a little tricky fitting the blogging in (ah, the lot of the solo blogger). Plus the timing feels right – so it's time for me to move on.

Thanks to my regular visitors. I hope you've enjoyed an occasional read, and if you have taken the time to add a thoughtful comment here too – I'm grateful. Thanks to Ben Greig, Mark Seggie, Stephen Banham and David Thompson for supplying the occasional link or three. Thanks also to Honie for the late night cups of green tea and for the, er, immeasurable 'Honie-ness'.

1+1=3 will stay online as an archive for a bit. If I decide to pop up elsewhere online in some way (I probably will) – I'll leave a notice here. There's always our studio's site too.

Thanks for dropping by.

PS. OK – there's just one last link that you should see...

Recent Highlights 108

+ Film stills... lots of film stills
+ New Views 2 in Melbourne
+ Brisbane and Melbourne get gonged in the National Architecture Awards
+ 'Face Your Manga' and create a manga-style avatar of yourself
+ Westfield mega-mall: the death of city architecture
+ Couplelook (guilty as charged)
+ There is probably no god (on buses)
+ On the set with (the original) Godzilla
+ 50 Asian movie posters

+ America + Obama = Thank you!

An A to Z of New Zealand in Stamps

 

New Zealand's post office has released a stamp series celebrating an A-Z of NZ cultural icons.
Watch out for that Q! Via Letterbox.

Hi to visitors from Coudal.com. I'm from the country right next door to NZ, and I don't 'get' half (well, maybe a third) of these either (!)

Michelle Park, originally from 'the 'Land of the Long White Cloud' offers an explanation of the above NZ icons...

Arrived: Some Micro-reviews

A bunch of recent books and a probing, insightful game, reviewed briefly in the continuation.

‘Mankind Is No Island’

A quite beautiful short film that uses found typography to help convey its sincere, heartfelt message. Shot entirely on a mobile phone in Sydney and NYC, Mankind Is No Island was the recent winner of NY Tropfest. Via PSFK.

Quote for the Month: November 2008

"Most think of design in terms of putting lipstick on a gorilla.”
An oldie, but a goodie from Dieter Rams.

Wine Flavours, Visually Speaking

Just in time for the (non-official) Melbourne Cup long weekend:

Carl Tashian has created a visualisation of different wine varieties and flavours. The visualisation is "based on over 5,000 wine tasting notes from a major Australian wine magazine". Compare wine varieties and how they relate to their various flavour components.

Now, if you could only lick the screen and do a tasting (I do love a good pinot noir)...

Via Information Aesthetics.

Design-related Inventions & Discoveries by the Chinese

A (very) abbreviated list emanating from my current read: Simon Winchester's brilliant and fascinating book The Man Who Loved China. Winchester writes beautifully and his words are underpinned by some extraordinarily thorough research. The following is an abbreviated appendix from the book (that relates vaguely to the field of design). Compare these dates with the corresponding records of invention and discovery in the West and you'll see the Chinese inventions often predate similar in the West by hundreds of years. Which is old news to some, but surprisingly 'new news' to many.

Abacus: AD 190
Ball bearings: 2nd century BC
Balloon principle: 2nd century BC
Belt drive: 5th century BC
Book, printed, first to be dated: AD 868
Bridges, iron-chain suspension: 6th century AD
Camera Obscura, explanation of: AD1086
Cast iron: 5th century BC
Coinage: 9th century BC
Collapsible umbrella: 5th century BC
Gear wheels, chevron-toothed: AD 50
Lacquer: 13th century BC
Maps, relief: AD 1086
Maps, topographical: 3rd century AD
Paper (invention of): 300 BC
Paper, money: 9th century AD
Paper, toilet: AD 589
Playing cards: AD969
Porcelain: 3rd century BC
Printing, bronze type: AD1403
Printing, movable earthenware type on paper: 11th century AD
Printing, multicolour: 12th century AD
Propellor oar, self-feathering: AD 100
Reel on fishing rod: 3rd century AD
Ships, construction principle of: 2850 BC
Silk, earliest spinning of: 2850 BC
Steel production, cofusion method of: 6th century AD
Stirrup: AD 300
Water mills, geared: 3rd century BC
Zoetrope: AD 180

Winchester's latest is the book of the year for me – it's endlessly fascinating.

"Four thousand years ago, when we couldn't even read," wrote Voltaire, "the Chinese knew all the absolutely useful things we boast about today." But then, in the 1500's, China's centuries of inventive endeavour suddenly ceased. Why? Well, you'll have to read the book. A review.

Boring Books

Publish or perish... or fall (yawn)... asleep. Thanks Ian Haig.

Recent Highlights 107

+ The Lewes Pound: a community-based currency
+ Hoefler on Korea's cleverly designed Hangul alphabet
+ Asian wine craze sparked by... manga?
+ 3D city maps with user-generated information
+ Melbourne's giant dim sim (I wish...)
+ New (fresh!) Woolworths logo
+ The 2008 Lucky Letter Awards
+ The omnipresence of the typeface Meta
+ Observatories observed
+ Melbourne Today: daily photos

Sydney: Tilt-Shifted in Motion

This has been popping up all over the blogosphere – but it's certainly worth a look. Sydney's Tamarama beach captured via motion-based tilt-shift photography (obviously a top-secret process – but I'm guessing it's time-lapse shots processed 'tilt-shiftedly' then stitched together to create a motion piece). More at Keith Loutit's Vimeo site. Thanks David Thompson.

Some more tilt-shift photography at City Shrinker by Melbourne photographer Ben Thomas.