Hasta La Ideas

When it comes to stereo systems, I definitely look for sound quality over visual aesthetics (naturally). The Expressionist Classic speakers from Altec Lansing remind me of bass cannons attached to panes of glass, and for some reason I like them. If the performance matches the sleek look, I wouldn’t mind having them on my desktop. 

CR’s February cover, illustrated by Letman

The February issue of Creative Review is out on Wednesday 21 January, with features on Luke Hayman, Letman, Indian advertising, The Guardian’s new home, The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms and more…

Our Work section features first sight of the logo for Condé Nast’s forthcoming Love magazine, Dougal Wilson’s puppet-tastic video for Coldplay and Spin’s identity for Argentina’s PROA gallery

Features include an interview with Pentagram’s Luke Hayman in which he reveals the secret of his success – CR, of course (ahem)

A profile of Job Wouters, aka Letman, hand-lettering artist extraordinaire and brother of our former Creative Future, Roel. Job also designed our cover this month, which carries on our theme of basing the design around a listing of that month’s content. Also, our guest typeface this issue (as seen here) is Dessau Pro Stenzil Variant by Gábor Kóthay, distributed by Fountain

How The Guardian’s editorial design has grown, almost accidentally, into an all-encompassing visual language for the paper, which now includes signage at its new home (by Cartlidge Levene)

A look at why The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, shunned by the mainstream gallery world, has given street art a home

And an examination of the role that advertising can play in ensuring that India doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the west in the face of growing consumerism

Plus, in Crit, we have all the usual discussion and comment including a look at advertising’s love of pain

And the all-important findings of our research into studio snacking and listening habits

Plus, subscribers will notice a change to Monograph this month. We are now using this rather beautiful Stephen Sultry Grey cover stock

Inside this month we feature Paul Belford’s collection of vintage Bollywood posters

And here’s the back cover with a key to the various pens that Letman used to design the front

It’s out on Wednesday 21 January. Enjoy.

If you’ve ever had any DJ aspirations, then this cute little turntable lets you mix in preprogrammed sound effects and let you live your dancefloor dreams. Just plug into your MP3 player via USB and you can be DJ Blandy-Bland in the comfort of your cubicle. |via 7Gadgets|

Preloading screen for Nvidia: Speak Visual site by Odopod, 2008

Ah the humble preloading screen, you kept us entertained (or tried to) as our crappy connection struggled to cope with the latest Flash-tastic websites. Now, at last, you have your chance to shine…

Brooklyn’s Big Spaceship has set up Pretty Loaded, an archive of website preloading screens – the visuals that come up while you are waiting for a website to load. The agency’s Michael Lebowitz describes it as “a history/gallery/short-attention-span-theater of preloaders”.

For The Detective, 2009, AgencyNet

Most of the work on the site so far is from Big Spaceship themselves, with a few contributions from Firstborn, Agencynet and Odopod, but Lebowitz wants to encourage contributions from the entire industry “to make it a living, growing little piece of internet history. It’s also a nice way of agencies showing fraternity instead of the usual acrimony.”

As connection speeds increase, Lebowitz says that the site will act as “a tribute to a vanishing art form amid a constantly changing digital landscape”. Although, judging from most of the sites we visit, the preloader will be around for a while yet.

For Sony Pictures’ Stranger Than Fiction site, 2006, Big Spaceship

For Office Max Arcade Print Jogger, 2007, Big Spaceship

Details of how to contribute are on the site

Or, Death To Trolls…

So far, on CR Blog, we have limited the moderation to anything that is openly offensive or potentially libellous. However, of late the quality of the debate here has been suffering from a rash of comments that really contribute nothing.

We don’t mind swearing, but to post a comment along the lines of “shit. the lot of them” or “that’s crap” does nothing to generate the type of informed debate that we hope the site can foster. We are all for criticism but, if you don’t like something, we want to know WHY.

So, as from now, we are instigating a more active moderation policy. Anything that, in the opinion of the moderators, is pointlessly abusive or adds nothing to the debate will be deleted.

And, as a reminder, here are the other criteria that we would ask you to observe:

“CR encourages comments to be short and to the point. As a general rule, they should not run longer than the original post. Comments should show a courteous regard for the presence of other voices in the discussion. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to this standard.”

Thanks