graphiquillan |

A warm evening and alfresco om-nomming in a small escape from madness.

Om-nom rating: Uber-yummy.

Eat, drink and feel elegantly stuffed full of goodness here.

I wish I’d had the chance to grab a shot of the house nameplate I passed on the way back from Evesham today. Not having a camera with me was always going to be a hinderance, though. It was a perfect example of when signs go wrong.

When you see a sign, whether it be a signpost, bossy ‘do-as-I-say’ sign or just a signifier of place, the moment you add an image (or numbers) and words together you implicitly produce expectations of your audience, irrespective of whether or not they choose to actually pay due attention to it. The ‘Men at Work’ label is generally accompanied by a stick(ish) man with an absurd, far-too-regularly circular head using an oversized trowel in a destructive manner. Yes, we expect people to be working when we see that sign. Not having a cup of coffee, jabbering on their mobile or checking themselves out big-time in the wing mirror of their van (I witnessed the latter today. Almost offered him some mascara); just destructing away the road with a big spade.

When the sign on the roadside says ‘Birmingham 8′ I generally anticipate this to mean that Brum is about 8 miles away from where I am, and actually expect it to be 8 miles away (as opposed to it being a quasi-sign made out of a bedsheet with some mad exclamation of an exciting afternoon’s score at an unnamed local football ground - and before you lot start, I’m not a footie fan).

Remove the words ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ from taps and we’re automatically conditioned to assume the temperature of the water by the colours red and blue. And we rightly get a bit miffed if our expectations aren’t fulfilled.

So, please someone tell me how in name of sense and logic, someone thought it fit to nail a sign depicting the name of their house ‘The Poplars’ and line it up with the image of a German Shepherd dog? The closest explanation I’ve reached so far is the puntastic and groan-inducing ‘trees and bark’, although I fear this is taking word associated design into a more disturbing league. Any better explanations?

Two things that tickled me today…..

Hat’s on for Boxer Design’s Millinery Manic Friday:

Mandatory Hat Friday: the campaign begins. Campaign mascot is the geezer in the North Sea fisherman’s headwear. Cromarty, Dogger, Biscay….

14K faux pas with the new Office of Government Commerce Logo:

Sometimes you need to shift your view to realise the error of your initials and super-tight kerning:

Oops.

Perhaps the Government need to set up an Office for Young Offenders to produce a counter-response. Think about it, because I’m not drawing you the typographical diagram…. ;)

Up until about a few weeks ago, I’d often shied away from using Adobe Illustrator because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Then I figured out how to biff about with the live trace option, with varying results. Today, I learnt it’s a far more friendly beast than I’d given it credit for. A nice bout of Sunday slumming goaded me to open the lid more fully of my perceived Pandora’s Box.

I’d already decided I wanted a day where I would be at least a little bit creative, but was initially scuppered because I couldn’t find a pencil sharpener (some people will find any excuse). Undeterred, I ransacked my sketchbook for a quick line drawing I did a while back and sat back as the scanner got to work:

Still in the United States of Slumdom, I lazily shunned the Wacom for the mouse (I know) and set about tracing the image in Illustrator. First off with the basic brush and some point-nudging, progressing on to playing with the scope that the brush settings offer.

I can’t believe I’ve been so evasive of using Illustrator! Whilst it’s a different way of drawing and does require some adaptation, it offers me a whole new box of treasure to get distracted with and start to learn properly.

During a simple discussion with my boss about plans for the weekend I managed to verbally devastate a key setting for the Lord of the Rings via a spoonerism. After 20 or so years, Perrott’s Folly is open to the public. Follett’s Perry being the inspiration for the twin towers in Tolkein’s trilogy. LOTR fans now have the opportunity to see Pollett’s Ferry in all its glory.

So I broke it.

If only I could actually pronounce the words ’Perrott’s Folly’. Instead, my linguistically challenged attempt manifested itself as the bumbled ‘Ferret’s Polly’. Mispronounced Birmingham: a new era in ballsing-up Birmingham name places:

 Perrott’s Folly Ferret’s Polly

As you can see, this very swiftly and very poorly rendered visualisation has a somewhat different impact to Mr. Tolkein’s take on life in Moseley in Hobbit-Time.

Use a dose of twisted imagination to picture Frodo as a squirrel, Aragorn in hedgehog form, Gandalf parading as a peacock, Sam flapping about as a sugarglider and so on. In Middle Earth, ferrets are mighty beasts who feast on bricks and recruit parrots to act as vividly-coloured messenger pigeons who secrete the One Ring on their avian ankles in a relay race pretending they are identification bands. Hobbits are hamsters.

Advance apologies if any visitors to the Furry Forrage Folly are disappointed to find that there’s no giant elongated, carnivorous mammal of the usually small disposition with a bird on its back intermittently whistling the Laurel and Hardy theme and randomly telling you to p*ss off.