These aren’t terribly new, 2007 I believe, but I’ve been reading my way through Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books after one of these wonderful covers caught my eye. The books themselves are brilliant, far better than I expected – I think we’re brainwashed with expectations of the deerstalker hat and “elementary my dear Watson” which is never said, and the hat which is never worn.

The books make a beautiful set and I’ve been treating myself to a new couple every few months when I get a chance, and the designs perfectly lend themselves to the real spirit of the books and the characters, not the parodied cliché of Holmes.

The full set continues after the click.

Designer – Coralie Bickford-Smith (www.cb-smith.com)
Illustrator – Mike Topping/Despotica (www.despotica.com)

This is my new toy, a Philips LivingColor light. Looks pretty doesn’t it, it also and this is the bit which makes me giddy, changes colour according to a small remote control which lets me adjust the colour using a colour-wheel, the depth, intensity, brightness. Basically like letting me have a bit of Photoshop in the real world, terrible idea… ;)

My Christmas tree from last year which I bartered with Habitat staff for as it was the last one in stock. Pretty glass red thing.

Assorted glittery lights.

Links
Philips LivingColors on Amazon
Philips LivingColors Homepage

Oh and also – I’ve recently upgraded scrapbook to Wordpress 2.7, the admin interface is now very sexy indeed – however my fancy font titles have stopped working, not sure if it was a recent Flash update or the Wordpress upgrade – will fix it when I get a moment hopefully!

Nothing to do with me, but I ran across it on good ol’ NOTCOT.org, and think it’s lovely. A low poly CGI German movie. Lovely doomed plot talkover towards the end of the trailer. Some of the physics grates slightly, but love the look and feel.

Links
ryu offical site
ryu high res trailer (90 meg wmv)

This lovely shot was taken by Matt Cox, aka Coxy (He’s fairly insufferable at photography – his flickr be good), as we were wandering back from a gig – clouds of dust were billowing eerily across Oxford Road, and we found this building being ripped down at a very odd time.

Though speaking of photography I do now have a flickr account full of some pretty terrible photography :D

I have recently purchased myself a bit more of a proper camera – planning to get more into it as a hobby so hopefully I’ll upload something a wee bit prettier in the future. And a big thank you to the various people sending me some very lovely emails lately, not sure where my site got posted recently but seems to be going down a treat :)

Behold! :D

In other exciting news my site has relaunched with lots of lovely new work, with more due to go up in the next month :) Take a peek :) – www.sreski.com

The site was designed by me, and developed by Rihards Steinbergs.

Anyway this has been knocking around for a while but I still love it so much I’m going to mention it, the Reyka vodka adverts… bottles… site… I’m generally not a big fan of advertising – much if not most of it is crap. But everything about this appeals to me, despite the fact I stopped drinking vodka years ago – the lovely woodcut style illustrations, the quirky simple no nonsense funny statements:

“In Iceland, we have the best water in the world, but water on its own is not the most exciting type of thing, so we turn some of our water into vodka. Just like Jesus – he turned water into wine. We’re not saying we’re like Jesus. We’re not. We don’t talk with god, and we don’t wear sandals… it’s too cold.”

See more of the adverts here - The bottles themselves have great design work too, they’re bottled depending on different things which apparently happen on the day a certain batch is made, it’s a lovely touch – whether true or not, it gives a really great sense of the personal touch and something being made crafted and cared for but in a quite modern way. It’s nice and tactile and well it clicks for me, in the same way as Innocent do (and did with their hats campaign I linked to early on scrapbook). Unpretentious, simple sweet and funny…

Credit where it’s due – I first ran across the ads at the wonderful NOTCOT.org/NOTCOT.com and they have some great photography of the bottles too.

And yes this is probably the start of me posting more things I like instead of just my own work – I’m not about to turn scrapbook into notcot or The Serif though will probably post more often :) I have quite a few updates coming up over the next few weeks too.