Creative Think

Another Odd British Government Logo

Question: have you looked at your logo from a number of different viewpoints lately? Maybe you should.

Last week I reported on seeing the London 2012 Olympics logo while I was there. It's a bit controversial: among other things, some say it looks likes the Lisa Simpson performing a sexual act. Anyway, I hope the Brits have fun with it.

Today, my sources have sent me another odd British logo (hat-tip to Alex), shown below.

This one, done at a cost of £14,000, was done for the U.K. Office of Government Commerce.

What does the OCG do? According to the Times (of London), they are "responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement."

So, what do you think of the design? Certainly looks modern and clean. Although it's kerned a little too tightly for my tastes.

Logos are seen from a bunch of different angles, especially when they're on mouse pads, pens, and the like. What happens when you rotate this 90 degrees like so?

My goodness, the logo takes on a whole new life! It's practically an icon to Onanism.

Despite many titters and much laughter from the public, the OCG is using it anyway. A spokesman for the OGC said this:

"We concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of letters 'OGC' and is not inappropriate to the an organization that's looking to have a firm grip on government spending. The logo presents a very clean, uncluttered and modern identity."

Firm grip, indeed!

 

The Logo I'd Forgotten About

With the Beijing Olympics fast approaching, I had completely forgotten that it was just a little over a year ago that the London Olympic Organizing Committee publicly unveiled their logo for the 2012 Games.

However, my memory was refreshed this afternoon when I saw a taxi drive by bearing the London logo on one of its door panels (I'm in London).

Seeing the logo made me smile. That's because when it was publicly announced, public criticism was almost universal, with such comments as:

• "It looks like a broken swastika."
• "Origami meets high explosives."
• "Surveillance video of Hugh Grant and Divine Brown."
• "Naughty Lisa Simpson logo."
• "Man bent over with back pain."
• "Car skidding out of control."

But if the logo is appearing on public transportation, I guess they're keeping it. (They paid $800,000 for it.)

I still think it's ugly. I liked these renderings better:

Getting to Know You!

Here's something fun! This is a photo of a piece of outdoor sculpture I took last year in Berlin (when I was at the Berlin Film Festival). I think it's quite evocative.

Creative challenge: think up a fun caption for this photo!

London's Underground Menagerie

It's always fun to stop over Tim Siedel's Bad Banana site for a nice dose of visual stimulation and creativity. His recent post about animals whose outlines can be made from route lines of the London Underground system caught my fancy. These animals were first "discovered" by Paul Middlewick in the late 1980s. Go here to see the full list of animals.

These delightful animals are a great example of creative thinking: "Looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different." (Albert Szent-Gyorgyi)

UpTake Announces Public Beta

My son Alex's company, UpTake.com, has announced their Public Beta is now up and running. Check it out!

Want to get away? Looking for the best places to travel?

Family vacation? A few days off to recharge? Perhaps a mancation? (But not a staycation)?

All the travel information you need: UpTake.  I typed in "Banff" and got some get-away ideas. Interesting stuff.

Founded in 2006, UpTake has collected and organized more than 20 million traveler reviews, ratings, blogs and articles from across the web to help travelers to make better decisions about where to go, where to stay and what to do.

UpTake uses a travel ontology and natural language analysis to extract meta-tags from the collective intelligence it has collected and returns unbiased, personalized recommendations based on travelers’ facts and feelings.

The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with global engineering teams in Beijing and Moscow.

Father of the Acid Trip is Dead at 102

Albert Hoffman, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD, died this past Tuesday at the age of 102 in Switzerland.

Hoffman discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while working as a chemist at Sandoz, the pharmaceutical giant.

This is a great example of the unpredictable twists and turns of the creative process.

Hoffman thought he was looking for medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat. Instead, he helped to create the 1960s!

So, now in death, Hoffman is entering the "mother of all trips."

So what was an acid trip like?

By sheer coincidence, today my son Alex sent me the following link about High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) pictures.

This is what the blurb about HDR says:

It can create incredibly beautiful pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion. . . . [Sounds like an acid trip to me!]

The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows. . . .

Interesting technique. See for yourself. Go to the link for more examples.

This is a cosmic landscape (God is getting ready to reveal Himself from behind the clouds).

Yes, those childhood memories! It was all innocent and warm.

I feel transported back to antiquity (how ya' doin' Plato).

Something is about to happen to the Golden Gate Bridge (feels like something out of an Indiana Jones film).

Your dinner guest has been transformed into a bass (Kafka would love it).

Watermelon Butterfly

What do you see in the Photoshop art below?

Well, it depends on who you are.

If you're a swimming coach, you might notice a few things other folks don't.

Tim Edmonds, head coach of the Stanford Masters swimming team had the following comments about it:

The "underwater recovery" butterfly drill which works on, among other things, getting the breath really early in the stroke was nicknamed the "watermelon seed spitting" drill by [Stanford men's assistant swimming coach] Ted Knapp probably 10 or 11 years ago. 

He thought the movement was similar to how you would move in order to win a watermelon seed spitting contest. 

This is a great, if slightly ironic, image....The fact that this little fella's head is "in line", his chin is "neutral," and his arms are about to exit into a quick recovery (but aren't out yet) is just about perfect technique.

Personally I'd prefer if his movement was a little less vertical, but it's still pretty great.

You can tell he is a Noon swimmer by his dark goggles and his sunburn.

Thanks for the analysis, coach. It just goes to show that inspiration is all around us!

Anyone know the source of this image, and others like it?

Name This Decade Contest!

Update: We've got some winners! Go to the bottom.

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Well, this decade is almost gone (or 82% gone to be precise). And still no name!

A little over eight years ago in January, 2000, I thought this decade would be known as the "oohs" (pronounced "ooze") because it every year in it had two (or more) zeroes and they looked like the "o's" in "oohs." So obvious!

If that didn't happen, then at the very least I thought this time period would come to be called the "ohs" (pronounced like "those" without the "th").

Well, neither of those caught on. Hmmm.

I guess we've got an opportunity.

Flex your creative muscles and come up with a fun and/or descriptive moniker for this decade. (I'm interested to see what you come up with.)

*** *** *** *** ***

Thanks for the great suggestions (keep 'em coming). My two favorites are:

• "The Double Ohs" (I think I'd even use this one, such as five years from now I might say, "Do you remember what you were doing with Jim back in the early double ohs?"
• "The Pre-Teens" (This is just plain clever and funny. I don't know, though, if I would actually use it.)

Beautiful Lunar Eclipse

Beautiful lunar eclipse — at least that's what I hear. Unfortunately for me, it was rainy and overcast in my northern California vantage point. But I did not go without! Here's a montage of photographs I took from my deck six months ago during the last lunar eclipse in August 2007.

By the way, Tuesday was Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' 535th birthday. As you know, Copernicus invented the solar system, and without him the sun would still be circling the earth. Happy birthday, Nicolaus!

Four Fun Questions

Here are four fun questions. Answer them quickly.

1. You are running in a race, and you overtake the second-place runner. What position are you in, now?

2. Different race. If you overtake the last-place runner, then you are in . . . ?

3. Mary’s father has five daughters: #1 is Nana, #2 is Nene, #3 is Nini, #4 is Nono. What is the name of daughter #5?

4. A mute person goes into a shop to buy a toothbrush. He imitates the action of brushing his teeth, thereby clearly expressing himself to the shopkeeper, and the purchase is made.

Next, a blind man comes into the shop who wants to buy a pair of sunglasses. How does he indicate what he wants?

(Answers in comments. Source: Sondrak.)