On November 9, 2006 Jonathan Glancey started a blog at the Guardian Unlimited's Arts blog dedicated to the Classics of everyday design. The almost weekly articles keep going updated, and now there are 40 (and counting) Classics of everyday design.

Forget about icons, design of a kind that doesn't swank around in style magazines is all around us. Jonathan Glancey dedicates his blog to the finest examples - and he needs your help to point them out.

Among the classics listed, until now, many of them can be found on almost everywhere, and some are very British. My favourites would be: paperclip, the Swiss Army Knife, the Biro, or Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, Daleks, Lego, the Slinky and one of the greatest inventions of humanity, the anti-stressing Bubble Wrap. (Merci Bertrand!)

Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2008 10:17 AM in Blogs, Design, Gadgets, LEGO ||

After those LEGO® Ice Brick Tray to make your own pieces of iced LEGO, the Giant Zombie LEGO Men ATTACK! are great present for LEGO enthusiasts. Two models of those customizes and painted 19" LEGO zombies were created using plastic, resin, metal, paint, for the for retro-inspired art show, Back In The Day by Andrew Bell. They aren't available for now, but they would be great to re-enact a George Romero's film and playing of eating brains of another toys.

Posted by Bibi on January 18, 2008 07:28 PM in Art, LEGO, Toys, Weird, Weird ||

This made my day: Marcos Vilariño composed a brief panel of photography history through 11 recreations of historic pictures using LEGO. You will find the LEGO version of: the first photography taken by Nicéphore Niépce, the visual registry of life in Paris in the beginning of XX century by Eugène Atget, the photographic experiments of László Moholy-Nagy, and the impressive photo journalistic work of Robert Capa, among others. (via Coudal Partners)

Posted by Bibi on January 24, 2007 02:28 PM in LEGO, Photography, Photography ||

After the periodic table post about it's history and a post with a list of periodic tables I found more of them.

- A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management (PDF) by Visual Literacy. (via del.icio.us)

- Dynamic Periodic Chart: as the name says it's dynamic and it can be organized by properties, orbitals and isotopes. You can change the colours, print a PDF version or see it in many other languages, like Spanish, Portuguese or Swedish.

- Lego Periodic Table, the last Lego campaign "Make Anything", from adgoodness. (via Make)

- The Periodic Table of Science Fiction by Michael Swanwick.

Posted by Bibi on January 24, 2007 12:36 PM in Curious things, LEGO ||

Yes, one more post about LEGO, but this is the last for a while... I promise. Starting with Beatles covers made with LEGO: Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Let it be. After that nice introduction let me tell you a bout the Flickr user minifig. As his nickname, his photosets and the links on his blog shows, he loves LEGO. He has creations of minifigs of Famous People, like Dick Cheney and Jack the Ripper; minifigs of Bands, like Village People; Lego Vignettes - 6x6 or 8x8 scenes; and minifigs of Characters and Holidays.

If that is not enough take a look at the giant gallery of minifigs by Dunechaser based on characters from video games, TV shows, movies, books, history and music. Plus: he has many images of Vignettes. I specially liked the On Vacation scenes - The president responds to one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history...by staying on vacation for a couple more days. You can guess why.

Posted by Bibi on March 11, 2006 01:16 AM in LEGO, Photography, Photography, Toys ||

Art Craziest Nation Inventory is the on-line version of the past exhibition at Walker Art Gallery. The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave) immortalize iconic artists and their artworks in un-manipulated Lego. The recreations include works of Warhol, Dali, Jeff Koons, Anselm Kiefer, Rachel Whiteread, Carl Andre and Yves Klein. Neat! (via Unscathed Corpse)

Posted by Bibi on March 9, 2006 01:28 PM in Art, LEGO ||

The TechEBlog made a list of Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations. I don't think that all the creations in that list are strange. The LEGO Technic Difference Engine is brilliant, the Pinball machine is awesome, the Han Solo in Carbonite isn't the best work of Nathan Sawaya, but still being nice, and I liked a lot the LEGO PC. I like LEGO in almost any way. (via del.icio.us/popular)

Posted by Bibi on March 7, 2006 02:11 PM in LEGO, Toys ||

You don't need to believe in Tarot, just need to like LEGO to enjoy the Reasonably Clever's Tarot, a LEGO based Tarot made by Chris Doyle. The cards were made to his own personal enjoyment and as a tribute to all things LEGO. Since he hadn't seen a LEGO tarot deck, he decided to make his own. If you like it, enjoy the pictures, post a link, share with your friends, because it isn't available to sell - yes, it's a pity. (via Cynical-C)

Posted by Bibi on March 4, 2006 04:53 AM in LEGO ||

Brokeback Mountain is a great film. I watched it in October, when it had already won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Since then it has won more prizes and acquired more popularity, specially for the "polemic" theme. Brokeback Mountain is conquering the internet too, with many parody versions of its trailer. IFilm has a list of those videos - Brokeback Spoofs: from Stand By Me to Dumb and Dumber, passing through March of the Penguins, Star Wars, and Back to the Future - the first and most popular version, created by Chocolate Cake City (available at You Tube too).

I didn't do a search for more Brokeback recreations on the web, but I bet that there are much more. Cinematical points to a gallery with LEGO Brokeback Mountain scenes, created by Daniel Brown. What can be more cute that a romantic story recreated in LEGO? Claymation? That would be great. I don't know if there is a plan to make a claymation version, but I know that Angry Alien Productions is planning to release a version with bunnies in 30 seconds in March. Until there enjoy the LEGO set, the videos, the film and the book.

Posted by Bibi on February 23, 2006 02:43 PM in Cinema, Fun, Fun, LEGO, Video ||

The British company Spite Your Face Productions makes illustrations, animations and LEGO short-films. Their stop motion films with LEGO include Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock, One: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars: The Han Solo Affair and Monty Python and The Holy Grail in Lego. The last one, that comes with the special anniversary edition DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is a remake in Lego of the 'Camelot' musical number from the film. The Daily Llama Monty Python's site says:

The deal with the Python film started when either Terry Gilliam or John Goldstone (not sure which) found this great Japanese website where the guy had made a bunch of LEGO models of scenes from Holy Grail.

You can watch the film in high resolution here or at IFILM, that also has a LEGO Films Collection with the Spite Your Face films and more. (Thanks Sizi!)

Posted by Bibi on February 21, 2006 01:24 AM in LEGO, Video ||

What can you do when you want to kill some time with friends, you have a camera and a combination of a morbid sense of humor and LEGOs: The Lego Suicides. I'm starting to thing that I need a LEGO. (via Kottke)

Posted by Bibi on February 9, 2006 09:09 AM in LEGO, Photography, Photography ||

A collection of links about Frankenstein, including the book, film versions and more trivia.

Boris Karloff This is the only Internet location authorized and maintained by the descendants of Boris Karloff, the great Master of Horror.

Cryptoys Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein action figures, hand puppet and other toys.

Electric Frankenstein! featuring over 180 of the world's best illustration Artists! Book review and some illustrations.

Frankenstein Films: From Mary Shelley to Kenneth Branagh and beyond.... A fabulous site with a session of Frankenstein comicsfrom Marvel.

Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature. A National Library of Medicine exhibition. Don't forget to check out the sessions The Modern Prometheus Home and Celluloid Monster

Frankenstein Jr. the 18 cartoons episode guide on the Big Cartoon Database.

Frankenstein pictures in high resolution here and here.

Godzilla-Germany site has posters, lobby cards, stills and movie programs from the classic version of Frankenstein and an alternative version made in 1965.

Hallucinations featuring Frankenstein. French novels and comics written by Benoît Becker, the pseudonym of Jean-Claude Carrière.

It's A Real Monster Mash When They Clash: Essential Monster of Frankenstein, comics reviews. (via The Groovy Age of Horror)

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: essays, links and sources.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the online version of the book.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Art, Illustration, and Sculpture This page is meant to highlight the works of artists depicting the book true to its intentions in non-cinematic media that are without similarity to the 1930's Karloff-type images that are inaccurate.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Chronology & Resource Site - Scholarly Resources, Romantic Circles.

McFarlane's Monsters: sketches, sculpture, and images of his Frankenstein action figure.

Frankenstein video animation made with LEGO by Nosniborus Productions.

Original movie trailers from The Bride of Frankenstein, The Evil of Frankenstein and Frankenstein. (via o zombie)

Project Gutenberg version of Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to download or read online.

RSS version of Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. With a feedreader, you can be served a small piece of the text every day. That way, you can even read large and dense texts without any problems as they are being doled out 'a cup at a time'.

Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein - No institution - society, religion, marriage, or heterosexuality - was safe from the penetrating queer eye of James Whale.

Technology and its dangerous effects on nature and human life as perceived in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and William Gibson's Neuromancer by Orlin Damyanov.

The Frankenstein Monster: description, origins, story, Shelley, movies and symbol.

The Gallery of Monster Toys - Frankenstein toys from 60's, 70's and 80's.

The New Adventures of Frankenstein by Donald F. Glut, review by Curt from The Groovy Age of Horror.

The review of Frankenstein version of 1931 and The first cinema Frankenstein (1910).

Wikipedia article about Frankenstein.

Update: the zombie Jorge found a gallery with Frankenstein Images by Bernie Wrightson. Cool!

Posted by Bibi on September 20, 2005 05:50 AM in Books, Cinema, Comics, Culture, Illustration, LEGO, Literature, Toys, Video ||

JP Brown's Serious LEGO, a site with robotics robotic creations made with LEGO. There are bipeds robots, dog, boatman, pneumatic creations, Rubik cube solver, Hanoi solver and some more.

Posted by Bibi on July 28, 2005 09:06 PM in Geek, LEGO ||

Oblong Pictures is an imaginary film company which specialises in making short stop-motion films using the popular children's toy, LEGO. (via SnarkySpot)

Posted by Bibi on July 15, 2005 03:17 PM in Animation, LEGO, Video ||

Last Supper Collection: 17 versions including origamis, LEGO, Chinese students and Mao. To see the Star Wars version click here. (via IWR)

Posted by Bibi on May 24, 2005 08:38 PM in Fun, Fun, LEGO, Photography, Photography ||

Darth Vader has as blog: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. The posts are very curious, but my favourite part are the links. Some great links founded there: The Star Wars Collectors Archive, Star Wars Origami, Welcome to Star Wars Chicks, TheForce.Net, darthvader-starwars and LEGO Star Wars. (via del.icio.us)

Posted by Bibi on April 28, 2005 03:41 AM in Blogs, Craft, LEGO, Toys ||

Brickshelf Gallery: Disneyland in miniature made with LEGO. Incredible. (via Boing Boing)

Posted by Bibi on April 15, 2005 12:44 AM in LEGO ||

Nathan Sawaya - The Art of the Brick. He is a professional LEGO artist and former LEGO Master Model Builder with a gifted skill set that he's been honing since the age of five. My favourites between his fantastic works: Rabbit Ambulance, Han Solo in Carbonite, Liberty Jedi, Alfred Hitchcock and Magic Monkey.

Posted by Bibi on March 28, 2005 11:18 AM in Art, LEGO ||

LEGO Starwars: the Star Wars saga (episodes IV, V and VI) played with LEGO bricks. Maestro S. Fujita created all the LEGO scenes without help. Maybe someone can try to do the first three also (after the III will be release). Very cool work.

Posted by Bibi on March 17, 2005 02:45 PM in Curious things, LEGO ||

Stephen Wroble Castles: medieval fantasies made with LEGO blocks. European castles, other places and people of the medieval History reconstruct with LEGO.

Posted by Bibi on February 19, 2005 10:24 PM in LEGO, Toys ||