I’ve been at Disneyland Paris this week, and it’s compelling. Every element, whether it is the sight lines, the architecture, or the set dressing in the queuing areas, has been carefully ‘imagined’ to create an immersive experience.
And yet the same time the place is weirdly discordant, because the spaces are too close to their Platonic ideal. The real ‘wild west’ could never have been as co-ordinated and compact as Frontierland; and the actual Paris, just a few miles away, has far less consistent architecture than the Ratatouille-themed Parisian square in Walt Disney Studios.
I think these contradictions are what fuels so many people’s obsession with the Disney theme parks (there are four five, the others being in Los Angeles, Orlando, Tokyo and Hong Kong). That, and the non-trivial logistics required to move and cater for thousands of visitors while staging a daily carnival and a several Broadway calibre song-and-dance shows, seven days a week.
Amid the co-ordination of the cast and the chaos of the crowds, I latched onto an obsession of my own—specifically the way in which an iconic design element can iterate its form and its meaning. I am of course talking about the Mickey Ears. Continue reading “Mickey Ears”
Framing
A simple twitter bot made by Russel Neiss does one thing: convert each of President Donald Trump’s tweets into the format of an official presidential statement. Here’s one where which confirms that his Executive Orders are indeed intended to be a ‘Travel Ban’ (which is odd because his own Justice Department are currently embroiled in a court case arguing that they are not).
https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/871674468896194560
This speaks to last week’s post about content shorn of attribution. How information is presented is crucial to how the message is interpreted. And tweaking the way in which something is presented might actually reveal an hypocrisy or two. Continue reading “Framing”
59 Productions to produce City of Glass for the stage
This week 59 Productions (the radical design and production company than I had a hand in setting up) announced their latest project. Its an adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass by Duncan Macmillian, the acclaimed writer of People Places Things. The show is directed by my friend Leo Warner and is a co-production with Home and the Lyric Hammersmith.
City of Glass (part of Auster’s New York Triology) is an intriguing post-modern detective story that plays with ideas of reality, identity and imagination. I think its a perfect fit for the kind of art that Warner and the remarkable 59 Productions team create. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, he outlines their approach. Continue reading “59 Productions to produce City of Glass for the stage”
Fashionista Philip: The Sartorial Choices of Mr May
Societal progress moves at a glacial pace. Sexism didn’t go away when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and it’s still with us even though Teresa May now occupies Number 10 Downing Street.
Still, it’s interesting (to me, at least) to watch our societal attitudes change, even at the quantum level. In fact, I think it is particularly worthwhile to note the most granular changes in our discourse: in this case, how we talk about women and men.
Many people have shared this article by Nicole Morely in the Metro: ‘Theresa May’s husband steals the show in sexy navy suit as he starts new life as First Man‘.
Continue reading “Fashionista Philip: The Sartorial Choices of Mr May”
The Typography of Labour Resignation Letters
Am I the only one to be interested in the various typefaces, typesetting and margin choices of all the Labour resignation letters?
— Robert Sharp रॉबर्ट शार्प (@robertsharp59) June 27, 2016
This tweet of mine garnered a few fav-hearts and re-tweets, which suggests that this is the sort of thing people are interested in.
Of course, the content of the letters is the really important part, so far as the authors are concerned. But design and presentation is incredibly important, despite being 99% Invisible when done right. We can gather some insights into the thoughts of the authors by how their resignation letter is laid out.
I compiled a Storify of a couple of dozen Labour Shadow Cabinet resignation letters, and added comments about their design. Continue reading “The Typography of Labour Resignation Letters”