Video: Alan B’stard, the sleazy British politician brilliantly portrayed by Mayall in the 1980s sitcom The New Statesman, proposes shutting down the healthcare service.
Beloved comedian and actor Rik Mayall has died at 56.
Guardian columnist Mark Lawson pays tribute.
@UKComedyNews has collated video clips from many of Mayall’s best performances (here).
A spine-tingling, theremin performance by Carolina Eyck.
(via richhickey)
I was fortunate today to stumble across an out-of-print edition of Voices, The First Book (Penguin Education, pub. 1970). Striking cover design by Alan Spain under the directorship of Germano Facetti.
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change
Victor Papanek’s 1971 polemic against frivolous and useless (product) design.
Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide
Paul Oliver’s fascinating anthropological survey of domestic, community constructed architecture.
Sugru silicone rubber
Hack the stuff you own to make it work better for you.
Spielzeug Kraul products
Smart, educational toys and games from Germany.
Pencil sharpener
This gorgeous Faber Castell 42 pencil sharpener (c.1970) is currently available on Etsy.
Museum or art gallery gift membership
A standard Friends of the Royal Academy membership (£100) permits free entry to Royal Academy exhibitions for one year, plus one adult family guest and up to four family children under 16 years of age. Worth every penny.
Gift a charity
A no brainer. Boing Boing’s annual Charitable Giving Guide lists over 30 fearless organisations.
The iconic design of Star Wars celebrated in this notebook collection from Moleskine.
(The Force is strong in this one.)
Apocalypse Now, 1988, Christopher Wool
Can the UK government afford to be complacent over the debt crisis that is currently happening in parts of Europe? Why we ought to care.
(Image via ArtsJournal)
(I've attended OFFF, New Designers and RCA degree shows in the past — I can't recommend each event highly enough.)
Due to Blogger downtime over the past 24 hours, several D&DN entries which I posted yesterday might appear again in your RSS feed readers. I have to republish these posts. Sorry for any duplicate content.
I stumbled across the flow chart above in the opening chapter of Elementary Statistics for Geographers (1996, Guilford Press). The diagram illustrates a research modus operandi (based on scientific method) for quantification and verification of real world spatial structures and patterns.
An itinerant designer ought to have at least one dotWebbie notebook in his or her travel bag. Besides, who wouldn't fall in love with dot matrix paper and a distinctive orange cover!?
(Available to order soon from here)
Congratulations to Attik. The global creative agency yesterday celebrated quarter of a century in business. This is a milestone achievement for the design studio which launched from an attic bedroom in 1986 with a £2,000 grant from The Prince's Trust Business Programme. Happy Birthday!
(Check out Where We Came From)
This is my first read of art essays by French poet Charles Baudelaire.
(My second-hand copy is published by Phaidon Press 2001, though I much prefer the playful jacket design from this more recent edition by Penguin Books, above.)
The BBC has today reported that deaths in Japan's Miyagi prefecture alone could be as many as 15,000 as a result of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated many eastern regions of the country on 11 March.
A total of 350,000 people have been evacuated and are staying at shelters.
Many survivors are enduring Japan's freezing winter temperatures without water, electricity, fuel or enough food.
International aid has been pledged but surprisingly little has been forthcoming to many villages.
Nine days have passed since the earthquake struck.
21,000 people are reportedly dead or missing.
The call to action could not be more clear.
(via Reuters, BBC Asia Pacific and Google Crisis Response)
