tantramar

Everything Under One Roof

You may have seen adverts for the Museum of Everything. Brave title isn't it. I just went for a second time as I was overwhelmed the first time. I should point our quickly here that it's an outsider art museum and a damn good one at that.

Located in a strange cavernous and incredibly neglected building in Primrose Hill. It launched as a Frieze affiliate and I thought it was due to end at the end of the year. However I can't find any mention of that in the site now.

Seriously though, if you like folk art or outsider art you'll be hard pushed to find a better collection anywhere in the country I suspect. And the photography sign is pretty sweet too.

It's a Date

Sadly I'm not around but I think this will be pretty good.

Mad About Maps

I'm fascinated by mapping. One of our ways of defining ourselves in our world physically, emotionally and metaphysically. Maps mean so much and so little at the same time. They are a mind boggling thing to study and so it was pleasure I watched Parag Khanna's TED talk about political mapping with great interest, explaining how borders are changing and why.

Also on the mapping front Paula Scher (work below) is giving a D&AD lecture shortly in London. I love maps and hand draw text so clearly I'll be there in the front row!

Every Day Awesome

This is taken from learn something every day which I'm enjoying muchly. I have already learned that you forget 80% of what you learn each day so I'm hoping these nuggets are in the other 20%.

Electrifrying

This is taken from a super good collection of 'how to electrocute yourself' by Bre Petis. Nice.

Talent Talks

Juan Francisco Casas draws pictures with a Bic Biro. He's better at it than me... considerably better. Photo realism with a Bic Biro really put me in my place today.

Technicolour Inspiration

This is great. Dan Meth, an animator has compiled a little video of all his influences. Like a little blast from the past. 

Ah nostalgia... such a sweet bedfellow.

A Is For Awesome... Obviously

Paul Thurlby is a great illustrator. He's been doing his own little alphabet which I've been watching grow over the past few weeks. It's been quite pleasurable seeing which ones he's done each week. I'm kinda sad it's (nearly) over. See them here.
Enjoy.

Twinkie The Kid!

I just stumbled across a really pretty damn sweet collection of American food packaging on Flickr. It mostly seems to be kids food packaging and ads from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

If you like this kind of stuff I can't recommend the Crazy Kids Food book highly enough.

Jonathan Levine Gallery

The Jonathan Levine gallery in New York is probably one of my favourites to visit in Chelsea. They always have interesting people showing there. From the Date Farmers to Jim Houser to D*FACE, the roster is pretty solid.

The show on now is pretty damn good with some great work from Souther Salazar (above) and Andy Kehoe below.

It's always worth stopping by, if only to talk with the most friendly gallery staff in the world.

Artful in NYC

Hoofing around NYC recently I visited some of my favourite old art spaces and a few new ones. Somehow I'd never been to the American Folk Art Museum before. This might be because it sits next to Moma which is pretty good at sucking you in.

The museum is quite small (for a museum) but damn it has good stuff. They have most of the Henry Darger portfolio which takes up half of one floor as well as several other great semi-permanent collections. I saw some astoundingly good work and learning about some crazy cats who were new to me. If you like Folk Art you can't not go here.

If you like your lofi art really lofi, then you can't do much better than Printer Matter on the edge of Chelsea which has more zines and odd art books than you can shake a stick at. A great shop.

I has also never previously made it to PS1 (below). This uber contemporary art space is an old converted school in Queens.

It's an amazing building so no matter what the shows are they have on display it's worth a trip out there. They also have a series of pretty hip parties at the weekends throughout the summer.

Ron English At Elms Lester

I popped by the ever reliable Elms Lester gallery today to peep at the new Ron English show. Pretty good if you're a fan of his work...

The show is up until June 6th.

Music To Design To

Alistair over at We Made This, friend to designers everywhere (and Tantramar) is compiling a list of what music designers listen to when designing things. So if you want your Moroder or Stevie Nicks to make the mix, send it over to him.

Cycling Upstairs

Sadly there aren't nearly as many bicycles in China as there once were. For example nowadays 3 million people take a taxi in Beijing every day! When you have lots of bicycles, you need smart design adjustments for them. The flat bar in the centre of these stairs is for people to push their bikes up.

One of the directors at Fjord; Christian Lindholm calls this of course design, because when you see it you exclaim 'of course it should do that'.

Holy Logo Batman

I like logos, I think they're a very interesting domain. I brush with some logo design in what I do at Fjord but it's certainly not my forte.

One of the interesting elements around branding is how far can you push the design and make sure it retains what it is, giving the right message to baying hordes?

This animation of the batman logo over time raises lots of questions along those lines. Intriguing.

Warning: U2 has been used as a soundtrack, you may want to turn down your headphones, or take them off.