You can just imagine all the Russian cool cats bopping their booties to this tune in the 70’s. Incredible

I’m fairly sure I’m not alone as a child who had a tall pile of wonderful, if with sometime dubious intentions, little Ladybird Books. Covering all bases from nursery rhyme to the natural wonders of the world they were and possibly still are an English institution.

Just now I found the Ladybird Print Archive where you can browse through a massive collection of absolute gems from the series. I’ve put some below which I remember so vividly from growing up it’s almost scary.

Working solidly in digital often has its drawbacks and probably the biggest is that nothing you do actually exists in the can-you-prod-it-with-your-finger kind of way. It’s all little bits of code and pixels and leaves one feeling rather empty and with a mild sense of lack of achievement… every now and then though the perfect opportunity pops up to make something tangible and in this case it’s my wonderful sister’s wedding invite and it just got back from the printers.

She let me caricature them and mess about with as many typefaces as I wanted. A perfect client and brief if you ask me. I have a hankering for victorian playbills and love the way they’re composed to highlight chunks of info. An ideal candidate for a tasty invite I think… just have to wait for the big day now. Very excited - it’s gunna be amazing!

It’s been very quiet on the outward facing side of Wavish Industries recently. Apologies for that but I assure you it’s been for all good things. A couple of months ago the Pirates were treated to a peach of a brief from BBH to build a site letting families and friends put on a panto in the comfort of their home courtesy of Robinsons… who love a good panto and sponsor all the national biggies.Put On A Panto Our impresario Robin Heuser (world famous panto producer) is your guide for the site and he’ll take you from script right through to the Autocue 5000 T. A marvel of technology is that. Have a go… it’s worth it for the brilliant voicing alone.This is the first project where all pirate hands were on deck for pretty much a month solid and I reckon we pulled off a stunner…Fantastouch!

I’m usually no fan of data visualisation techniques. People reinventing graphs is not something that should be celebrated so frivolously as I think it leads to the whole of the internet looking like a 3rd rate design degree show. Having said that however… when something mildly useful or intriguing pops along one can’t help but be amused.

This wonderful if fairly, lets be honest, dull website highlights the differences in the editions of the late great Charlie D’s masterpiece in a lovely quick way. I like it a lot… the graph that is. And the book of course… it’s wonderful. What makes it so wonderful though - back to the book - is that there’s no idiotic gumph around it. Not one piece of detectable papervision. Have that - a fucking miracle!

A sure sign that you’re in England, according to my friends from off the island, is our proclivity to apologise profusely for almost anything… to the point that we’ll say sorry to the very person who charged into us, scuffing our shoes and spilling our drinks. Of course this won’t stop us muttering ‘toad’ under our breaths.

I saw this traffic thing this morning on the way to the studio;

Even I was baffled…

A long long time ago I was given a video for Christmas that probably changed my life forever. I’d watch this relentlessly when I was back from playgroup (preschool etc) eating wonderful things like cheese and tomato sandwiches. I don’t think any other piece of design or illustration or art or anything has had such a profound effect on what I am

This is the first episode of the 16 year series of shorts; please enjoy as much as I do

Following from my previous observations regarding espresso at Pret-A-Manger outlets in London I’ve noticed a quirk. A quirk which gives me the basis to conspire. Delicious conspiring.

Regardless of the provenance of your humble prat, be it a well-healed sloany pony or an eastern european student, they all call out, upon hearing my order of a double espresso; ‘SdrawngEzbraaayssoah’ which sounds almost like ‘Strong Espresso’ but not.

Have they been told to address things like this? To converse with fellow staff members in some kind of PratSpeak? Are these people masons? It really sounds like the blast furnace of european dialect has deposited its slag ready formed into a training manual for these poor team members.

Incidentally, and what I think strengthens my cause, is that if you spot the floor manager type person they say ’sdrawngezbraaaysoah’ absolutely pitch perfect… faultless… like it took practise. Like Victoria Beckham’s pout.

It’s a crying shame that these videos weren’t commissioned for more respectable acts because they’re both glorious. So unless you want your aural sensibilities ruthlessly battered by Bono and Bono Jr with 2 musical outings that could generously be described as relentlessly insipid, I’d give your ears a break and turn down the volume. Go on… you might here some birdies chirping.

First up is a staggeringly cute and heart rending animation from David O’Reilly for U2;

And here’s Shynola’s latest for brrrr… Coldplay…

I watched these 2 with the studio stereo pumping out a bit of early Cinematic Orchestra which is much better all round…

Cheers Kat