Tag Galaxy image search tool... out of this world?

Tag Galaxy is a tool that allows you to explore photos on Flickr. It is literally a galaxy of tags, where subjects take the form of planets. This is what I got when I searched for Union Jack

On the down side, I think the photos themselves are a little hidden, but it's an interesting navigation tool.

Woops

Perhaps the team behind this cover for a parenting magazine had just found out they were all out of a job - otherwise it's kind of hard to understand quite how the above made it off the printing press.

More amusing 'fails' - like 'rivet fail' - at failblog.org

My perfect birthday cupcakes (no hint intended)

Thanks to Ben Catchpole for this piece of ipod cupcake heaven.

Lazy web design tools

Great time-saving tools - very useful to generate quick backgrounds, tabs and reflections:

- Stripe Generator
- Tartan Maker
- Image Reflection Maker
- Tabs Generator

Lovemarks

What makes some brands inspirational, while others struggle?

The answer is Lovemarks - a term to coin brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason.

"Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately."

My Lovemarks are: New York City, everything Apple, Scrabulous, Whole Earth Peanut Butter, Google, Hawaii Conditioner, Laurent-Perrier Pink Champagne and of course Cinnamon Creative!

What are your Lovemarks?

Warmth and privacy while using your laptop

"These 'Body-Technology Interfaces,' (BTIs) in the form of hand-knitted custom wrappers for personal electronic devices, will reflect salient interaction behaviours between the participant and their chosen device."

One for the Dragon's Den?..

I don't think so.

Review: Tim Walker at the Design Museum

Above: Erin O’Connor, Jacquetta Wheeler and Lily Cole, Colchester, Essex, England, 2004, British Vogue

Ladies jumping out of books, coloured cats, a garden in a bathroom, a hanging model and the most stylish messy room. All from the imagination of Tim Walker, a fashion photographer with an amazing eye for absurd detail whose images are witty and playful yet sufficiently sophisticated for his high fashion clients.

His creations are daring, theatrical and full of a magic that has rightly earned him his place in the high ranks of fashion photography stardom, and a Vogue master lineage, at only 37 years of age.

Glam, decay, fantasy, impressive lighting - it's all there - and well worth seeing, at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, London,  SE1 2YD, until 28th September 2008.

Gates vs Jobs: The Game

Give it a go... Jobs to win!

I have a rival in the construction industry

Photographed by Mark - he saw this in Belsize Park!

Review: The bloke who does blotches and scribbles: Cy Twombly at the Tate Modern

'Cycles and Seasons' spotlights an artist who hasn't put a foot wrong in a 60-year career; he takes the casual, and makes it monumental"
Charles Darwent, The Independent, June 2008

Darwent has written an excellent review of the exhibition so I'm best to direct you there, but let me just say that I found this to be a stunning exhibition. Most attention-grabbing was Twombly's Four Seasons ("Quattro Stagioni") series created between 1993 and '94, pictured above.

...Did you also know that Twombly was in the news recently because a French woman kissed one of his paintings in a museum in Marseilles, France? She was wearing bright red lipstick, which stained the snowy white canvas. The painting was valued at over $2million, and the woman was charged with damaging the masterpiece.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons is at the Tate Modern, Bankside. London SE1 9TG, until September 14th.

More funny-because-they-are-true-isms

Web Without Sense is a gallery of common place website design/layout/marketing/general annoyances on the Internet. Equally, it is a bit of a sarcastic dialogue aimed to get a message across while being frank and outward. Check it out.

Spot on

Go to www.businessguysonbusinesstrips.com for more of these very funny-because-they-are-true-isms

This makes my heart melt...

This ad just puts a smile on my face. I LOVE IT!

You've seen Sony Bravia's first advert with the bouncing balls, and the second one featuring a big grey tower block with splashes of paint thrown at it, but this is the third, and best, in my opinion. Thanks to Tom Sheahan for sharing the wonderfulness of it with me.

Sony claim that this - the Play Doh advert - is the 'most ambitious piece of stop-motion animation ever undertaken', and that they used 2.5 tonnes of plasticine for the three weeks filming took in New York. Take a look and judge for yourself, but I'm going on record saying this is definitely their best yet. How can you not wuv the cute widdle wabbits, aaaaaah.

Web usability

Jakob Nielsen is considered to be the guru of web usability. His expertise is based on human factors engineering, but he has received criticism from many graphic designers for not succeeding to balance the importance of other user experience considerations such as eye appeal.

In any case I find his knowledge very useful and his findings balance out my design eye.

He has written many interesting articles - one of the most useful is Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design. Notice how ugly the design of the page is...

European Design Awards 2008

Check out the the results of the European Design Awards 2008 by clicking here.

Review: Psycho Buildings (Artists take on Architecture) at The Hayward Gallery

Psycho Buildings invites us to engross ourselves in a series of ten captivating and disconcerting installations that combine 2 and 3D design with the use of light, colour and smell to encourage viewers to become adventurous participants, and question what architecture means to us.

The installations that I really enjoyed experiencing included a roof top lake, designed like an infinity pool, looking like you could row yourself (or even throw yourself) right over the edge; a steel-plated “Life Tunnel”; a miniature outdoor cinema made of plywood and PVC; a red fabric staircase and an inflated transparent fabric sphere where visitors interact by climbing a staircase to the roof and then rolling and bouncing around while observers below enjoy the view.

Without a doubt, Psycho Buildings is an exhibition which has succeeded in getting people to re-examine and explore their relationship with their surroundings. It's a really fun exhibition that deserves to be the highlight of The Hayward’s 40th anniversary season,

Psycho Buildings is at The Hayward, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1, until August 25th.

Everyday Illustration

I came across the drawings of Royal College of Art student Tom Judd who has completed the massive task of illustrating everyday for a year in what looks like the same sketchbook. Astonishingly this isn’t the first time Tom has completed the challenge having decided to take up this year-on year-off schedule throughout his entire life.

Check out www.tomjudd.co.uk/everyday

The Colours of Web 2.0

Looks to me like blue is in the lead...

Check out the World Clock...

Right here.

Some fascinating facts.

Please vote. Your designer needs you!

I have entered a design competition jointly with fellow designer, Tom Keane, and we have made it into the select Design Gallery . Please click here and vote for our Milk in a Can design!

Latest Work for Marks & Spencer

Lots of new projects created this last month for the High St giant

Branding new womenswear collections such as Denim Boutique, Saint Maxim, Exotic Island and Modern Smartwear, as well as new lingerie collections: Shanghai Blossom and Flowerpress

Lingerie Branding

Two new collections branded for Marks & Spencer: Flowerpress and Shanghai Blossom. Moodboards below.

What the font?

How well do you know your fonts? Try this test to find out.

Facebook In Reality

What would it be like if Facebook was actually played out in real life?

from www.idiotsofants.com.

Latest Work: the 'Seventies Summer' branding for Marks & Spencer

Latest project is now live: the branding of a funky new retro-style lingerie range from the UK High Street giant:

See the branding featured on the Marks & Spencer website here.

...And another for the M&S series

Further to this post, the latest in the series of the 'What's Hot' designs commissioned for www.marksandspencer.com appears online this week.

The live link is here.

Need inspiration for fashion design websites?

Then take a look at the website of CreateThe Agency, , an interactive agency for luxury, fashion and retails brands. Lots of absolutely gorgeous work dahling.

FOUND

www.FFFFOUND.com is a fabulous imagebookmarking site that's consistently inspirational.

Invitations to participate and post images are rare, which keeps the quality of the images high.

Still on the 'found' theme, for all the voyeurs out there, www.foundmagazine.com collects found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - you get the idea - basically anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Interesting stuff, and again, a good source of inspiration for creative thinkers.

Jonathan Barnbrook

The man is a typographical God

Latest Design Work: Hot Trends for M&S

Here is one of a series of brand new designs commissioned for www.marksandspencer.com for the 'What's Hot' section of their e-commerce site.

The bold and funky design has generated approximately 10,000 clicks in the one week it's been live, with a conversion rate of 2.7%, and it will now form the basis of the new template for all the 'What's Hot' pages in the coming weeks.

The world's 50 most powerful blogs

"Blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating the minutiae of our everyday obsessions.
Here are the 50 best reasons to log on"

Courtesy of The Observer Technology Section

Printable paper rulers

Just for you, some paper rulers you can print out for when you don't have a conventional ruler to hand.

Bless the Web.

Review: Vanity Fair Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Vanity Fair was launched in 1913 by Condé Nast, whose vision was to produce an insightful magazine reflecting the era’s vibrant culture

Now 150 portraits of artistic, literary, sporting, fashion and high-society leading lights, photographed by legends from Cecil Beaton and Man Ray to Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz,have been gleaned from its glossy pages to the walls of the National Portrait Gallery

In the early selection from 1913-1936, artists, dancers, writers, and scientists, such as Claude Monet, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin, hang next to society beauties such as Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo.

 Publication of Vanity Fair was suspended in 1936, owing to the Depression and stormy global events, but it relaunched again in the 1980s. The contemporary photos are more venturesome and we are treated to the likes of Tom Cruise, Keira Knightley, Madonna and George Clooney. And of course who can forget that front cover of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore.

If you're seriously interested in photography you shouldn't miss the Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2, £8-£10, until May 26th. I thoroughly recommend it.

Facebook for Freelancers

Workology.com is a new social networking site for freelancers and SME’s where amongst other things you can create your own Mini Site to showcase your expertise, skills and services, and also connect and share advice with others in the freelance world.

02/04/08 UPDATE: And here's another one which actually sounds even better.

These babies are springing up all over the place.

Another Great Website

Take some time out to explore this Flash-based website - it's really something:

www.camper.com

It's Camper's site for their Spring/Summer 08 Collection

Any thoughts.. Or any others to add?

Completely Brilliant Ad

Click here...

Ski time!

What a week! Thanks Bernard, for a magnificent week's ski-ing.

Smash and fab

New Honda commercial

Following the exceptionally innovative Cog, Grrr, and Choir ads, I was interested to see what Wieden + Kennedy would do next with its advertising for Honda.

The latest TV campaign airs this week and features a car made of jigsaw pieces and a giant sculpture of an engine constructed from thousands of Rubik's cubes,

The rubik cube art thing has actually been done before.

Anyway, not to detract from this, the ad presents Honda's engineers tackling many more series of bizarre puzzles to highlight the innovative thinking, and problem-solving engineering techniques, behind their new FCX Clarity hydrogen-fuelled car.

They even slot in a small reference to Cog by creating a chain reaction with spoons and polystyrene cups on a tea break.

The ad finishes with the Honda team creating a car out of jigsaw pieces, a scene that echoes "the Baking of" ad created by Fallon London for Skoda (the idea begins to wear a little thin by now.)

It closes, as always, with Garrison Keillor’s voiceover spelling out the message of the ad – a feature of Honda campaigns that gets more condescending and aggravating every time. Maybe they need to work on a change here? (Dervla Kirwan's booker at M&S, take note of that tip too.)

Despite the minor criticisms, all in all a riveting ad.

The best damn website in the Universe

From a design point of view this cannot be beaten. A great idea and brilliantly designed and executed.

Do you agree, or have any others to add?

www.leoburnett.com

Review: From Russia at the Royal Academy

The critics have gone ga-ga for the Royal Academy's show of Russian and French masterpieces.

It is one of the most-talked about and highly anticipated exhibitions of recent months as more than 120 masterpieces from Russia's four great state museums have finally arrived in the capital.

Matisse's The Dance (above) was the highlight for me. The work was painted in 1910 for a Moscow sugar merchant and has never been seen before in this country. Other works on show included paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse together with those by Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich... quite a unique opportunity to explore the fascinating exchange that existed between French and Russian art during a crucial period that was witness to upheaval and revolution.

Of course there is general acknowledgment that a "pretty spectacular" multitude of treasures has arrived, but on the other hand the Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle, asks: who wants one damn masterpiece after another?"

Simon Jenkins, another critic, also picked up on the abundance of Russia's collections writing. "Russia has more works of global appeal than it can handle, yet needs more money to look after a fraction of what it has". He points out that most of these treasures are buried in vaults "which few people alive will ever see".

A great reason, then, to brave the crowds and book a ticket.

From Russia is at the Royal Academy, W1, until April 18

Latest Work

An eyecatching illustrative style for promoting this innovative Alternative Energy Fund to wealthy investors.

Allan Cinnamon performs...

Here's my design for the flyer of my dad's gig - "On Broadway & 52nd St" - which promises to be a musical journey from Broadway to Bebop. It takes place this Wednesday 30th at Cafe Also. It's sold out but there are plans for further performances.

Jewish Book Week front page news in Design Week

The new 2008 Jewish Book Week identity was reported in this week's issue of Design Week. (17 January 2008) currently out now.

Jewish Book Week 2008

This is the exciting new design for this year's Jewish Book Week festival. It represents the rich and varied programme of the festival - all you culture lovers out there are in for a fabulous treat!

I can't reveal anything yet but from the 8th January you can check it all out for yourself on www.jewishbookweek.com.
Here you can also book tickets for events and find out all the inside information.

Also, for any facebookers, the JBW group is here.

Jewish Book Week in Miami?

Look at this picture. I spotted this 'orange tree illustration' on the side of a building in Miami Beach last week.... Very similar to the Jewish Book Week official logo to the left methinks. Hmmmm...

Any thoughts JBW people?

I'm in love...

...with the world's most hyped mobile phone: the Apple iPhone.

What a stunning piece of gadgetry - a visual masterpiece.

As expected, Apple have done a fabulous job building an intuitive and simple to employ user interface, sleekly encased in a very slim cover.

For a very informative (and less biased ;-) personal user review click here.

Review: Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

I caught this show first thing on Saturday morning. It's a wonderful time to visit the National Portrait Gallery, as this early in the morning the exhibition space is still empty and you can have the place to yourself, enjoying an unblocked view of the works.

The show examines the role of portraiture within Pop Art bringing together key works by all the major Pop artists - Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein (USA) and Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield (UK)

Using images of the famous and the notorious taken from the media, the Pop Art portraits created a new breed of fantasy portraiture using the influences of popular art and culture.

Comic books, magazines and other modern mediums were the inspiration for the Pop Art Artists to create altered and transformed images of instantly recognisable faces. An obsession with celebrity and the changing influence of fame, the images are often warped versions of a very familar face or versions of the artist themselves put through the media celebrity filtered lens.

A truly inspiring exhibition - full of colour, wit and lateral thinking.

Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
11 October 2007 -20 January 2008
£7.00-£9.00

Great throwback commercial from 1990

A classic commercial from 1990 for none other then my car, a P-reg Suzuki Vitara.

Pure classic.

Surrealist Cinema

My friend Sanjay has designed a T-shirt ('Surrealist Cinema') on sale at the Spunky Store in Bristol and online at www.spunky.co.uk.

The design is also featured on a sweatshirt and 'hoody' on the website and publicised in the upcoming FHM Christmas 2007 issue.

Inspired by Donnie Darko, The Simpsons and the work of Frida Kahlo, Surrealist Cinema is a parody on the Gracie Films logo often seen in the credits to The Simpsons.

Buy here for Men

Buy here for Women

Mini-profile here

Please buy and feed his children ;-)