Ethel, Agnes and Dorothy

Old Ladies Noggins

Three old ladies, Ethel, Agnes and Dorothy are sitting in a cafe, having a chat. Ethel says, "You know, I'm getting really forgetful. This morning, I was standing at the top of the stairs, and I couldn't remember whether I had just come up or was about to go down."

Agnes says, "You think that's bad? The other day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I couldn't remember whether I was going to sleep or had just woken up!

Dorothy smiles smugly, "Well, my memory is just as good as it's always been, knock on wood," she says as she raps on the table. Then with a startled look on her face, she asks, "Who's there?"

Vintage Coasters

We love a good coaster/beermat - under-exploited these days surely? Anyway we came across these in a shop the other day, and thought we would share them with you. If anyone can enlighten us as to what DD Q4A is, we'd be most grateful.

James Brown

No, not that James Brown, this James Brown. An illustrator and printmaker in London with some nice stuff available to purchase from his gallery. He also illustrates under the alias Jim Laurence with a different style. You can see his (Jim Laurence) Eminem illustration in this months 20th Birthday edition of GQ. Which reminds me, it is still October and the new edition of GQ is December, that really bugs me. What happened to November?

Old Mrs. Ross

The quality journal The London Paper featured on it's front page tonight the suspension of Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand from the BBC. But what caught my eye was the picture that accompanied the article. It appears some wag has superimposed Jonathon Ross's head onto the body of a well-dressed elderly lady.

**Update: we've now narrowed it down to being the body of a late 80's era Edwina Currie.

Thats mister to you

Top Five Tuesday returns this week with artists beginning with Mr.

1. Mr. Mister


2. Mr. Big


3. Mr. Oizo


4. Mr. Bungle


5. Mr. T Experience


Previous Top Five Tuesdays
Handlebars & Moustaches
Brian & the Brians
Songs from 80s Soundtracks
Classic Sweets
Film Titles

Retro Fantastic

Just stumbled across this super showcase of vintage typography over on smashing magazine. Some brilliant stuff here and it's worth digging a little deeper too.

A Koi dollar

A lovely selection of origami made from dollar bills. I'm not sure who they are by or anything else as the site I found these from is in Spanish. Worth a gander though.

Monday Morning...

Blue sky, nice cup of tea. What more could you ask for?
Have a cracking week everyone.

3 Hard Mice

3 Hard Mice.

Three mice sat in a pub, having a bevy, discussing who's the hardest.

First mouse says "I'm the hardest. I go up to mousetraps, rip the cheese out and as the bar comes down I benchpress it 30 times and throw it across the room."

Second mouse says "You poof, I get rat poison, crush it up and snort it."

Third mouse finishes his drink gets up and walks to the door.

"Where you going?" ask the other two mice.

"Home" he replies "to shag the cat!"

Get laid tonight (but not with us)

Get laid through the power of positive tipping. More tip-inducing goodness from our favourite local coffee place. I think the clarification in brackets was added later.

Previous efforts here.

Times are hard

'I was going to be an A0 poster with gold foil block & embossing but times are hard'

These have just arrived in the post from Loz at Because Studio. Two lovely little screen printed postcards he kindly sent us. You can check out the process & some better images of it here. I'm hoping that once the posting process is sorted out he can send me some Glitter Herpes too.

Cheers Loz.

Advertising Design from Print in Britain

We got this great supplement from Print In Britain magazine (June 1957) sent to us by one of our kind readers. It's about the Layton Trophy and awards, presented to advertising agencies for "advertisements which in the opinion of the panel of judges were the best produced during 1954'. The images are big enough to read if you click on them, it's quite interesting if you're into that kind of thing. We are.

Nice posters

Some excellent posters over at the ISO50 shop. You can check out more of Scott Hansens retro style work here.

Handlebars & Horseshoes

It's that day of the week again, Top Five Tuesday. This week we have five iconic moustaches.


1. Tom Selleck (Magnum PI)


2. Salvador Dali


3. Albert Einstein



4. Daniel Day Lewis (Bill the Butcher)



5. Adolf Hitler

We would like to clarify that we have included Hitler purely on the basis of his moustache. And give our full support to the Handlebar Club of London ahead of next years World Moustache Championships.


Previous Top 5 Tuesdays:
Brian & the Brians
Songs from 80s Soundtracks
Classic Sweets
Film Titles

Those Lovely Farmer's Daughters

Those Lovely Farmer''s Daughters

A farmer had 3 beautiful daughters who were getting ready to go out on dates. The first beau came to the door and said, ''I''m Eddie, I''m here to pick up Betty. We''re going for spaghetti, is she ready?''

"No," the farmer said.

The second beau came to the door and said, ''I''m Joe, I''m here to pick up Flo to take her to the show. Is she ready to go?"

"No."

The third beau came to the door and said to the farmer. ''Hello, my name is Chuck.''

The farmer shot Chuck.

Andy Smith in the post

Not literally Andy Smith, that would be silly. But rather a very nice package from Andy arrived today. This lovely screen printed poster contained in an equally splendid envelope, to let us know that he has some smashing new work up on his website. Have a look at it here.

Worn by

Some classic T-shirts as worn by famous people but available to buy here. These still look as good today as they did originally.

Retro Patterns

1970s wallpaper patterns to be exact. More imagery found while researching. If you're feeling nostalgic and fancy freshening up your front room you can get some here.

Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian & Brian

Introducing the top five Brians. Not a definitive list by any means, but an eclectic collection.

1. Brian Cant


2. Brian Blessed


3. Brian May


4. Brian Cohen


5. Brian Griffin


The best of the Brians we think.

Previous Top 5 Tuesdays:
Songs from 80s Soundtracks
Classic Sweets
Film Titles

Really good bad publicity

Spotted this photo of a Fiat van over on Noisy Decent Graphics.
Obviously the driver/owner of this van has had a tough time with it, and has taken a very public and direct approach to getting his own back. I think this is what they call 'consumer feedback' in stale rooms with powerpoint slides.
You can't help but admire the effectiveness, clarity and chutzpah of it.

Great spot and shot Ben.

Shop found frozen in time

A boarded-up shop in Lancashire was found to have been left in exactly the same state as when it stopped trading more than 40 years ago.

Found this on the BBC at the weekend, watch it here & here. There's some real gems in there. Hope they go to a good home.

Vintage Ephemera

Whilst doing some research last week I came across this selection of vintage boxing ephemera. Nice stuff.

Photosaturday: FotoRAMBLAS at Crane Kalman

Following the Photosaturday theme, I went to the excellent Crane Kalman gallery in Brighton today to see the FotoRAMBLAS exhibition being shown as part of the Brighton Photo Fringe.
FotoRamblas is "a collection of portraits from the extraordinary archive of a photographic portrait studio situated on Las Ramblas in Barcelona dating from the mid-20th Century".
The studio specialised in photographing actors, performers and musicians, as well as figures from the worlds of boxing and wrestling - it's a fantastic collection, with loads of character and humour - and well worth seeing for yourself in the large prints in the exhibition. Find out more here.

Photosaturday: Photos that changed the world / Cody Brothers at Ivy Brown

We found this collection of famous and powerful photographs from throughout history. Including Tiananmen Square by Stuart Franklin, and Eddie Adams' Pulitzer-winning Execution Of A Viet Cong from 1968. Some of them record key moments in history, others brought the desperation and reality of war and famine to the wider world (a warning for the squeemish, if you do click through be prepared for some shocking stuff).



The Ivy Brown Gallery in New York is showing Wide Open, an exhibition of Cody Brothers' great shots of New Mexico.

The Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection is a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films on DVD. A catalogue of greats restored to pristine picture and sound quality. With every DVD in the collection getting an original artwork designed for it. I've put a few favorites below.

Port of Shadows — Marcel Carné

Missing — Costa-Gavras

8 1/2 — Federico Fellini


This is one of our favourites here...

You can view 50 of the best covers over at WellMedicated. And a selection that Criterion designer Eric Skillman has designed here.

Every film and its artwork is available on their website. Excellent stuff.