“Styling and the Experimental Car”

Sponsored by Ford Motor Company in 1964, this consummate design process piece manages to be both expressive and promotional whilst educating its audience about sophisticated ideas such as product design, branding and styling.

I particularly like the segments that focus on the value of design and how the separate disciplines work together — something that still needs defining fifty years later! These design fields are also positioned as something that the audience may not be aware of but consciously or subconsciously respond to, and that these instincts have existed as cultural phenomenon since the ‘dawn of time.’

The film goes on to leverage the company’s design prowess further by saying that it is this attention to detail, embodied in a culture of innovation that makes their products the obvious choice in an evolving consumer marketplace that demands quality, style and [aspirational] luxury.

Enjoy…

Instagramin’

Some of my recent posts from Instagram — I’m focussed on selecting inspirational imagery rather than camera uploads…

#BrunoMunari

#MattaClark

…philosophical instantiations probing a range of ideas—site-specificity, the ephemerality of art, presence and absence, life and death, being and nothingness and on and on and on—they also, in hindsight, seem to be about the texture of New York City as it was then. – STATION TO STATION

#FritzLang

#Solaris – BWV 639

The Trial (1962)
#OrsonWelles #Kafka

#EgonSchiele

#JosefK

#JulieChristie “Petulia”
‘…set against the mid-sixties San Francisco scene’

Luxurious Minimalism

I’ve been obsessing (a little) over the architectural interiors of Joseph Dirand. His attention to the details of space, light, form, materials, objects in the pursuit of what’s been called luxurious minimalism is a source of inspiration for me.

But the way in which Dirand refers to his work, claiming that he is not interested in style or design as a passing, temporal pursuit but instead is merely seeking to honor the traditions of the great minimalists (Rams, Le Corbusier) seems like an unnecessary denial of a natural ability as an accomplished stylist. Being a spiritual crusader in pursuit of aesthetic purity and a hip, style arbiter du moment do not need to be mutually exclusive.

The work I have been doing lately is spare, formal and restrained, and attempts to solve complex UI/UX problems within a business application that uses science to predict customer behavior (the perfect place to apply minimalism in it’s most luxurious form?). And within that framework of restraint, that essential need for ease of use and the expression of complex data points, there are abundant opportunities to add style, elegance and aesthetic purity.

(Initial screens for the Preact product redesign.)

(Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” – final scenes in an interior that juxtaposes classical and modern elements–cited as an inspiration for Dirand.)

The Pelican Project

Pelican book covers from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s–courtesy of Things Magazine.

So inspirational!

Work at MASS MoCA

Mass MoCA poster

I designed this poster for a show that Anne was in at MASS MoCA. She showed her video work Cracked Actor which was part of Moyra Davey‘s One Minute Film Festival which is being celebrated with this exhibition:

The One Minute Film Festival took place annually in a barn outside of a small town in upstate New York, on the first Saturday after the 4th of July, from 2003-2012. On that day, artists, writers, film- and video-makers would arrive in the afternoon with food and drink and a one-minute movie. After sunset, everyone took their seats and the movies began, usually lasting two or three hours, and afterwards people danced. The festival was organized and hosted by artists Jason Simon and Moyra Davey.

The Old Country

Just back from our annual trip home to see family, friends and for Anne to do some networking in preparation for her CCA residency in Glasgow this Fall.

This photograph was taken shortly before my father traveled to Los Angeles as a young man with his uncle who had been posted there by the Foreign Office. Also in the frame are my grandparents, my uncle, and my grandfather’s beloved gun dog Tosh.

Neil Mackintosh

Style