Category Archives: design

Reading between the lines

Posted on March 21, 2013 by things magazine

A proto-satnav: leather-cased scrolling travelling map from the 1920s, ‘a Bakelite cased unit housing a pair of rollers manually operated by two winding arms to the side, with 24cm wide plastic window displaying a Bartholomew’s road map for South-West England’ … Continue reading →

Posted in design, history | 1 Comment

Soupy twist

Posted on March 15, 2013 by things magazine

There are many gems at Bonhams’ upcoming Aviation and Space History Sale in New York, including ephemera, artefacts, historic photos and stunning imagery. A selection: signed image of the Mercury Capsule, Soviet surface-to-air missile engine (‘apparently unfired’) / Wally Schirra … Continue reading →

Posted in collections and archives, design, ephemera | 1 Comment

In deep

Posted on February 15, 2013 by things magazine

Wired’s piece on Gunther von Hagens, ‘The Plastinarium of Dr. von Hagens by Daniel Engber, is accompanied by photographs by Vincent Fournier. The above image is ‘the carcass of a giraffe, its spots turned pale in an ethanol solution, lies … Continue reading →

Posted in design | Leave a comment

Colour and culture

Posted on February 7, 2013 by things magazine

‘When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to “think pink!,” it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor … Continue reading →

Posted in design, history | Leave a comment

Imaginary views and made up buildings

Posted on January 29, 2013 by things magazine

We often get called out for being too much in awe to Lego, but CUUSOO is something to keep an eye on, a kind of Kickstarter for Lego models, where users post extraordinarily detailed and complicated models – such as … Continue reading →

Posted in art, design | Leave a comment

Small is beautiful

Posted on January 27, 2013 by things magazine

The 1957 Voisin Biscooter C31, part of RM Auction’s Sale of the entire contents of the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum (via MeFi). For more Voisin, see our earlier post, Dead icons.

Posted in design | Leave a comment

Doing the twist

Posted on December 13, 2012 by things magazine

Morphological similarity and visual inspiration: Someone has built it before. There are no new architectural ideas / ArchNewsNow carries the burgeoning Niemeyer backlash / Cibarius, a tumblr about food / The Gourmand, a magazine about food / Post New intrigues … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture, design | Leave a comment

Dead icons

Posted on December 6, 2012 by things magazine

The Voisin was Le Corbusier’s favourite car – the company sponsored his notorious plan for Paris’s reconstruction and inspired his own Voiture Minimum, as well as some eccentric speculations. Here’s a gallery of Voisin Automobiles currently on show at the … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture, design | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Book covers, from now and then

Posted on November 5, 2012 by things magazine

A little late for this, perhaps: ‘Dracula will be a 740 page book by the artist Roman Vasseur that features the covers of an ongoing collection of novels from the vampire genre.’ See some of the covers already collected. The … Continue reading →

Posted in design, linkage | Leave a comment

Histories of power and rock and roll mice

Posted on October 24, 2012 by things magazine

The Nimbus MkIII is a ”pareidolic robot’ that identifies forms and faces in clouds.’ (via b3ta, one of many visionary projects showcased at the RCA’s Design Interactions 2012 site. We also liked A Brief History of Power by Tobias Revell … Continue reading →

Posted in art, design | 1 Comment