Topic: Flotsam: Design Culture

: Mike Hinge

By: g | September 12th, 2009 | No Comments » |

Had this one in our bookmarks…

Anyone who remembers the days BEFORE Photoshop, Illustrator and all that which now seems to dominate the creative fields, will remember when illustration was done with pens, ink, paint and on paper and illustration board.

The 70′s and 80′s were the prime of Sci-Fi art and there were many great artists being published all over the place. Mike Hinge was one such artist, and his illustrations perhaps show the pinnacle one side of the period.

From Comicon:

“The New Zealand-born artist made Manhattan his home in 1966 and was a part of the science fiction and comics scene for the next few decades. He produced covers and interiors for numerous SF magazines and for mainstream venues, including several TIME covers. In the early 1970s, SUPERGRAPHICS published a collection of his techno-oriented work titled “The Mike Hinge Experience”.

Mr. Hinge’s super-detailed and elaborate art style predated the digital illustration revolution and many of the artist’s works foreshadowed the coming elegance and intricacy of computer art. In later years, PC technology caught up with him. According to friend Sanford Meschkow, “Sadly, the computer revolution in graphics in the 1990s was the effective cause of the early end of Mike’s professional career.”

Among Mr. Hinge’s last professional commissions was a cover for the large-format revival of AMAZING magazine in 1993.”

There is not much in the way of information online about Mike Hinge but there is a Wikipedia bio for him [here].

Sadly he died in 2003, aged 72.

: Deus Ex Machina

By: g | August 18th, 2009 | No Comments » |

The jury is still out on this one.

The Deus Ex Machina machine has been steam rolling through Sydney for a few years now, hard not to when you consider one of the guys at the helm is Dare Jennings, one of the Mambo originals. But it’s hard to figure out if Deus is the real deal or just a quasi, two wheel based ‘trend factory’. Certainly as a brand a Deus T-shirt seems to be the domain of the 30 something that feels silly wearing the surf brand he did in his 20’s.

Still there is a cool factor to what the guys at Deus are doing, because they do it with two wheels.

Most would associate Deus with Japanese-esque custom and restored motos, and kudos to them; what they are doing in this area is pretty damn unique. What many don’t know, at least if you’re not in Sydney, is that Deus is also one of the instigators of the whole SS/Fixie urban trend. Not the core set, like the SSSS or the SYDBMA, but those guys you see in skinny pants trying to push that fresh looking SS/Fixie through traffic up a slight incline, usually looking like a tool doing it.

As a side note, while I am a bit of a Nazi when it comes to this sort of thing, I don’t like fads and those that lap them up, I do wish what’s happening in this area would happen a bit more in the MTB world, which seems to have become so big box ‘oatmeal’ here in Oz….

Anyway, Deus does some pretty neat restorations and conversions and their site is showing some of them off; if the prices are any indication, I would say regardless of the ‘neatness’ of the bikes, they seem to be aimed squarely at the fad chasers.

If you’re so inclined, check it out [here].

: Brilliant

By: g | June 30th, 2009 | No Comments » |

Can’t find any info on the artist, but props to them.

[via]

: Boynq

By: g | June 27th, 2009 | No Comments » |

There’s so much ‘stuff’ around that  it’s refreshing when you come across a company doing something really different.

We came across Boynq recently, a European based design studio that designs and manufactures some very cool electronic doo dads based around your PC and audio needs.

Well worth checking out as thier offering is very different from what you see around the traps everyday.

[Boynq]

: Duchamp reloaded

By: g | June 26th, 2009 | No Comments » |

Brilliant! Duchamp Reloaded in NYC by Ji Lee

[via]