The Secret of Drawing is a four-part mini-series from 2005 by the BBC about the history of drawing and how it has been and still is an integral part of our lives. Whether it be the telling of stories, creating technical plans for architecture, or as a tool of exploration, drawing is an important part of the human experience. Parts 2, 3, and 4 are available on Google video, but unfortunately I cannot find part 1 right now. Video after the cut.

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Colourful Notions is an excellent documentary program, for designers and nerds alike, that aired on the BBC television show Horizon in 1984. It explores what colour is, how the human eye interprets it, and how colour is transmitted via RGB channels through your television or computer monitor. The video is after the cut.

via Computerlove

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I have recently come across a box of old family photos and keepsakes from my great great grandmother (or something not really sure), which contained a plethora of goodies. Yes, goodies. Regardless of my lame description, it is a pretty good find. I’ve started archiving the contents of Flickr, beginning with the business cards. My goal is to post a few each day. The contents of the box seems to range as far as dates, but I’ve come across a few thing from the early 1800’s. Enjoy.

When I first moved to the city I started noticing stickers that said “you are beautiful”. I finally decided to look them up after seeing one while in a particularly bad mood. I was pretty impressed by what I found. The stickers are just one part of a slew of projects that revolve around the simple phrase “you are beautiful”. The one project that interest me the most was a conversation that took place through the placing of plastic cups in a fence. Their statement of intent says they are trying to create “moments of positive self realization”, and in our current apathetic surroundings this idea seemed surprisingly unselfish, and well, just nice. It allows the designers to indulge themselves, but in the end, it is a good thing.

Super_Collider is the combination of electronic/experimental music producers Cristian Vogel (Tresor/NovaMute) and Jamie Lidell (Warp). In 2002, the German television channel ‘VIVA’ aired an hour long special called SC_TV, which is an experimental audiovisual collage based on Super_Collider’s Raw Digits album. The audio is a mix from Vogel/Lidell that combines their older work with various influences that inspired Raw Digits. The video, animation, and editing for SC_TV were all done by ZEROH and red design, the British design studios that also did the album artwork for Raw Digits. There is a ~2 minute preview available, as well as the entire hour broken into eighteen separate sections.

On Wooster Collective I just saw a video that I have been trying to find for several months. I first watched it back in the summer, but could never remember who did it or what it was called. It’s a black-and-white short made by Studio Smack, a Dutch design group that has created some interesting animations. Their description of the project . . .

“Kapitaal (Capital) is a typo-animation about legible signs in a city, it’s an impression of the enormous amount of visual stimuli that we are harassed by every day. The amount is so big that it’s commercial effectiveness has become utterly dubious.”

Check out the Studio Smack website for a high-res version of the video, as well as their other work. There is a youtube link of Kapitaal after the jump.

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Carri Munden’s fashion label Cassette Playa is something truly special. It’s as though a bunch of candy-kids met up with the mooninities and were munching on funny gummies and decided to do some clothing sketches for Cross Colours with neon crayons, and then one day Carri found them hidden in a secret level of Rad Racer and decided to start actually making them. There are so many reasons why Cassette Playa is great, but not everyone will agree. First of all, the Cassette Playa website is low-tech AMAZING. Second, the video for the 2006/2007 autumn/winter collection is dumb-fresh, backed by some breakcore from shitmat. Third, Carri played a big part in M.I.A.’s galang video, which is equally intense. So there, you should check it out. You will either hate me for wasting your time, laugh, or be in love with it. Hmmm, probably not the latter of those three.

I just discovered a wonderful, catchy stop-motion video dedicated to one of my favorite typefaces, Akzidenz Grotesk. The link comes from Type for you, where they have an excellent post on the history of the typeface along with plenty of relevant AG links.

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Grafik Magazine and Designers are Wankers are currently accepting entries for their Future Perfect writing competition. The aim of the competition is to discover the latest and greatest in design writing talent and is open to all previously unpublished writers. There are five possible topics to select from, including ‘Graphic design’s best kept secret is…’ and ‘Designers are Wankers. Discuss’. There are also some interesting prizes involved, including a MacBook and the opportunity to interview an international design studio for an upcoming issue of Grafik.

‘PSST! Pass it On…’ is a collection of films where designers, directors, and animators collaborate to create shorts based on every art-nerd’s favorite game, Exquisite Corpse. The first PSST! project contained six films and was released in July 2006. The next installment, PSST! 2, contains nine films and is to be released online March 10th. There will also be a screening held in Tribeca on Wednesday, March 14th.

Dutch design studio LUST has recently opened the Generation Random: 10 Years of LUST exhibition at the <> tag gallery in The Hague. For this event LUST has created a new touch-screen interactive catalog to present a decade’s worth of work. To coincide with the event there will be various workshops and events happening while the show is up through the month of March. This includes a two-day workshop by David Reinfort on Semi-Automatic Generation and a city tour led by LUST and Luna Maurer that looks at physical locations where design, interactive media, architecture, and urban development overlap. I really wish I was in the Netherlands right now.