Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts

Friday, September 20, 2019

Art imitates life imitates art imitates . . . oh, dear

March 19, 1956: I Love Lucy

The Ricardos and Mertzes are in gay Paris. Lucy wants an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Ricky doesn't want to spend that kind of money.

Lucy has an idea (Here is where everyone needs to run for their lives). She will go on a hunger strike until Ricky buys her an honest-to-goodness Parisian designer gown. Lucy has another idea (If you're still around, you deserve the Armageddon that's about to descend on you and all). She will have Ethel sneak her food, so that the hunger strike actually isn't. Lucy hides the food all over their hotel room.

Ricky feels guilty. Ricky gives in. But then Ricky finds a roast chicken in a camera bag. Ricky grabs the dress box and runs off. Ricky and Fred decide to "show" Lucy and Ethel. Ricky and Fred have Jacques Marcel "designer dresses" made out of potato sacks and put phony Jacques Marcel labels on them. And as a crowning touch, they give Lucy and Ethel a feed bag and a champagne bucket as "designer hats."

People stare at Ethel and Lucy. People laugh at Lucy and Ethel. Humiliation abounds. Ricky and Fred feel guilty. Ricky and Fred buy them real Jacques Marcel dresses (again).

Later . . . Ricky, Fred, Lucy and Ethel see the sack dresses and unique "hats" on models for Jacques Marcel. But Lucy and Ethel had burned their unwitting "designer originals."

Cue face palm from Ricky.


Sept. 20, 1967: D.H. Holmes ad, Baton Rouge, La.

Holy crap.
And that's why you come to this here little blog, folks. There's no absurdity that I won't notice.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Putting lipstick on a . . . blog


Things may look a little different around here. Not a whole lot . . . but enough.

Welcome to the new look of Revolution 21's Blog for the People. The basic format is the same, but we've given the old girl a new set of duds and a little eyeliner and lipstick after several years. I like the new look, and I hope you do, too.

Probably the biggest thing you'll notice is that the blog now displays a lot better on tablets, courtesy of installing (and tweaking) a new Blogger template that, at long last, will keep all the elements of this thing where they're supposed to be, no matter how you size your browser window.

IT'S LONG overdue, and she'll be looking a lot less like a hot mess, all without you having to futz with the size of your browser on the computer screen. Here it is full screen on my Surface, on the right.

Before, it would have looked staggeringly weird. But you probably know that if you have a tablet and have ventured over to the blog.


So, that's all I have to say about that. Enjoy the new, more adaptable look of the Blog for the People.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

I. Need. This.


Treffen George Jetson . . . .

Electronics today come in basically one style -- black plastic crap. If you're lucky, you might find some various-color plastic crap. In the heyday of mid-century modern, that's not how radio- and TV manufacturers did business.

Especially not the Germans.


http://www.earlytelevision.org/index.htmlThis is a Kuba Komet console TV-radio-phonograph. This is art.

If there is a holy grail in mid-century modern design, this might be a contender for the title. I want this. I may need this.


I know I can't afford this. Word is that if you find one today -- and the Kuba Komet was insanely pricey in West Germany when it was new (from 1957-62) -- it'll set you back about $10,000.

And that's enough to make your bank account go kaput.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Design by Beetlejuice

http://www1.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=NE_LJS&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=9

This is what I call putting 10 pounds of "design" in a 5-pound bag.

Predictably, the sack tore at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star, and we ended up with the Ghostbusters blasting the hell out of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (or something supernatural) right above a story about Omaha cops blasting the hell out of a Airsoft-armed robber . . . and a sound man for the Cops TV show. Tacky, much?

I do love me some nice newspaper design, and once upon a time, I had something of a knack for it. But I love me some journalistic integrity more. And when you let "designers" and artists run roughshod over the editorial process in the name of making tomorrow's bird cage liner nice and pretty today, weirdness is sure to ensue all too often. Because artists.

BUT WHAT gets me is that this isn't that outstanding of a page, designwise. Obviously, the Design Powers That Be appear wedded to having a story with less-than-compelling photos as the centerpiece.

In this case, a better journalistic page would have been a better designed one, too. It would have been easy to avoid this journalistic -- and common-sense -- train wreck. As Lou Grant is my witness, if I've seen front pages built around mediocre art once, I've seen it a thousand times.

On the other hand, if big pictures of crumbling concrete are that near and dear to your ink-stained heart, and you just can't make the lead story the centerpiece . . . just find another Ghostbusters picture for the top of the page. Duh.


You know what I'd do if I were a newspaper editor trying to herd a bunch of cats designers? I'd ask Jim Romenesko for an 8x10 glossy photo of himself and I'd turn it into a bunch of posters like this, to be displayed prominently around the newsroom . . . especially around the design desk.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Radio as objet d'art

How do you wake up in the AM?

This how we rise and shine à la maison de Favog. It's a 1951 Stromberg-Carlson clock radio I found on eBay.

Once upon a time, beauty in the things we use every day wasn't unusual. Televisions and radios were pieces of furniture that commanded attention, things that stood out whether they were in use at the moment or not.

Now, unless you pay a premium for the privilege, not so much. A TV is little more than a screen; a radio -- You remember those, right? -- is a plastic box with a digital display.

A CLOCK RADIO is your smartphone . . . or one of those unadorned little thingies you stick your smartphone or iPod into. And the sound quality is such that your low-bit rate MP3 file sounds the same as a high-bit rate MP3 file that sounds like a low-bit rate MP3 file.

Yecch.

No, I am a proud anachronism. I love beautiful anachronisms, and I use them whenever I can. AM radio. Vacuum tubes. Analog clock dials. Young people still can tell time on analog clock dials, right?

If the power goes out, I can reset the clock in a snap on this thing. Try that on your digital clock radio -- assuming you have one of those and not a little box into which you shove a smartwhatever. When I was a little kid, my parents used this for a clock radio.

YOU BETTER damn believe everybody woke up. WLCS PLAAAAAAAYS the hits!

If only I could get the new-old clock radio to pull in the Big Win 910 all the way from Baton Rouge, circa 1967. Or 1971 -- I'm not picky. I'd settle for Omaha's Mighty 1290 KOIL from the same time.

Unfortunately, it's just a great old AM clock radio, not a great old AM clock radio time machine. So KHUB in Fremont, Neb., it is . . . the only station on that venerable old amplitude-modulated band that has both music and news hereabouts.