Heavenly Web Design

I came across this great website for creative agency RKCR/Y&R the other day and had to share it with you!

The website was created by Saint who have an equally brilliant website and a sparkling portfolio of work.

Guerrilla Shorts

So yesterday night I went along to the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds to watch "Guerilla Shorts" a collection of short films and an event held once ever two months.

Last night's short films included "Deep Six" a re-edited narrative from a Hollywood b-film in which repeated footage give the viewer the opportunity to really analyse what they are seeing instead of forgeting or overlooking subtle clues like in usual films. The film had been made by contact printing hand-photocopied strips of overhead transparencies onto 35mm film.

The second film was called "Necrology (Roll Call of the Dead)" a video of the late-1960s general public ascending an escalator in Grand Central Station, New York. The film shows them disappearing into a shadowy abyss with the suggestion of the people on their way to hell. The idea of the film is to leave the viewer pondering their fate.
"La Jette" is a fictional film about a man's life in Paris after the Third World War. He is used in experiements to travel back through time in order to get provisions from the past and bring them to the future to help their survival. He encounters a woman in his memories during the experiements and they share wonderful but mysterious moments. The entires film is made up of images held for a few seconds with an accompanying third person narrative and music. The only bit of footage is of the woman opening her eyes from sleeping. I have to say I the film gave the impression to me as just an excuse to film a woman who the director was besotted by!

After the intermission "UNdone" was shown. A 5 minute animation about an Irish scientist orbiting the Earth while the world collapses into nuclear Armageddon. Only the heads of state can flee and make a new life living on Mars.

"The Man Who Planted Trees" is a film I think everyone should see. It is an animation about a man who lives up in the French Alps as a sheppard who plants 100 acorns every day and eventually plants and grows an entire forest which the people of France can enjoy and love. It showed how man can make a possitive impression on climate change and that happiness can be found in even the most "dull" of lifestyles.

Finally a film which did not appear in the program, an animation about a carpenter and the rocking chair that he makes. It dragged a bit I have to say until the end where the director took the mick out of modern art. The art gallery in the film shows off stereotypical modern art such as a blank, white canvas with an admirer bent over looking through a magnifying glass at it. A carefully and cheekily placed second admirer behind the first did make a few eagle-eyed viewers laugh.

Leeds Industrial Museum

Today I crossed the mysterious bridge between Frankie & Bennie's and Aire of the Dog to the Leeds Industrial Museum (Armley Mills). This was a great little museum and for £1.50 you couldn't really complain!

The museum covers the cloth industry in Leeds, Film and Cinema, Letterpress, Tools, Engines and Machinery. It's main concentration is on the clothing industry as that was the original use for the mill. It has hundreds of machines on display and there are loads of pictures of the mills in operation.

The museum has its own cinema in which it plays a video on the industries in Leeds, mainly from the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The entire video is made up of period footage.
A section of interest to me was of course the Letter/Printing Press section. In it are two large chests of drawers which wide shallow drawers which would once have been filled with lead presses for each of the popular "founts" (fonts). A fount was made up of more than just the 26 letters of the alphabet, if I remember correctly, each fount had 34 "e"s alone. I was suprised to see labels on the drawers for Gill Sans and Caslon.
Layout of a drawer.

Kirkstall Abbey

Today I went along to Kirkstall Festival down by Kirkstall Abbey and took the opportunity to enjoy the ruins of the monestry. The abbey really is beautiful, especially with the sunlight pouring through the archways. I learnt quite a bit about the abbey during my visit, it's got its own drainage system which you can see running through the ruins.

Interesting Facts:
-the abbey used to have a main road running through it
-monks used cabbage leaves as toilet paper!
-they had to have a separate kitchen for meat by order of the pope.
-when Henry VI came to power the monestry was shut down and looted for anything of value including the church bells
-when drinking alcohol, monks had to use two hands to hold their vessel as a symbol of humiliation.
-monks were only allowed to talk in the tiny parlour room.

Well Kept Secret

Sat in a waiting room, reading the Telegraph Magazine (an activity only ever done in a waiting room) I was really intrigued by an article revealing a secret plan to bring a giant mechanical animal to the streets of Liverpool! So when I got home I looked it up online to find that the magazine was clearly well over a year out of date. Nevermind!



La Machine is a french company run by Artistic Director François Delarozière. His team of artists, designers, fabricators and technicians have created many mechanical animals to have walked the streets of London, Liverpool, Paris, Madrid and St. Petersburg amongst others.


Visit La Machine.

Confession of a sad graphics student...

Unfortunately if you walk into my room you will see, blue-tacked on the wall above my desk, a magazine advert. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't plain white with just a long paragraph down one side. However I feel that it should be used as an advertisers recipe for success!

Make a Great Television Ad and Win £20K

Include
Doritos

Avoid
Abassador's Receptions

Annoying jingles you can't get out of your head.

Odious condescending one-time hack director's that tell you to "calm down dear".

Penta-bloody-peptides.

Annoying jingles you can't get out of your head.

Talking about ooh-yeah-food in the yeah-right-here style of ahh, aah a phone sex worker.

The suggestion that shampooing your hair can somehow induce a multiple knee trembler.

Badly dubbed four-year-old brats gassing themselves on the bog.

Trying to be like well street blood just coz you is advertising to the yoof, innit.

The talky-walky bit that treats you like you have the itsy-bitsy mind of an ickle wickle child.

Caterwauling tone-deaf former bank clerks having a singsong.

Bev and sodding Kev.

Moronic lactose-obsessed muppets skydiving for balls of cheese.

Dried-up "not fit enough to actually be a model" beauty editors.

"Ever-so-arty" hippy-dippy soundtracks.

Dancing around like a cat having a fit just because you've consumed a pot of curdled milk.

Lipsy company presidents vain enough to think their pigeon English will sway us into buying a two-bit timeshare in some craphole nobody's ever heard of.

Barry Scott.

Annoying jingles you can't get out of your head!



I'll leave you to work out what they're talking about!

Leeds City Museum

The Leeds City Museum is really good. There's loads of interactive things to do, even if you'll probably lose any credibility you had when you're spotted building a roman temple at the age of 20....

My favourite part has to be the section on the back to back houses that us students still inhabit today in Hyde Park. One of the interviewed residents talked about how bay windows were a clear sign of wealth as they allowed you not only to look straight into the window opposite but also down the street as well.

The museum has sections on: The Ancient World, The Leeds Story, The Collector's Cabinet, World View: Out of Africa and Life on Earth.

Leeds Art Gallery

Not only is having a blog brilliant for killing boredom in the evenings in Leeds over the summer when the only other people around you are writing essays, but it is also pretty handy for encouraging you to actually get out of your double bed (the selling point when signing the contract for your moldy house) and go and see some stuff!

So, I ventured out yesterday and went to the Leeds Art Gallery and the Leeds City Museum, after all they are free!

The gallery has a whole host of different types of art from car engines covered in copper sulphate crystals to magnificent paintings in the hall you can see in the picture above.

A personal favourite of mine was called "Dry Eyes", a well thought-out photograph of a "seascape". The whole picture was made out of random objects, carpet for the sea, crates for the waves and a strange metal thing which I think represented a whale or a ship. It was a very intriging image and somehow showed man's impact on the oceans.

Park Lane College Setting an Example

Park Lane College is setting a great example to other colleges and universities with its entirely solar panel south-facing wall. Very impressed.

Naked Air Stewards Should Keep Passengers' Attention

Although the Air New Zealand staff looking like they're about to burst into laughter, this video should keep passengers' attention!

Concept: Our air fares have nothing to hide.