I live in Southfields, South West London, which is where anyone who’s anyone will tell you is really where the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament is. It’s not actually in Wimbledon you see, it’s down the road from our house which makes Wimbledon fortnight a little bit like Dawn of the Dead, but instead of fighting off hoards of flesh eating zombies, I’m barricading myself in my house to keep out the American bumbag (fanny pack) wearing tourists.

Anyway, I digress. Every year they dress up the local tube station to within an inch of its life, and this year is no exception. Perhaps tourists think this is what every English tube station is like all the time.

This year HSBC has put up the usual tennis regalia, but the reason it’s featuring on this blog is that someone has gone and done some typography…

It’s not going to win a D&AD, but it is appropriate, unnecessary and fun. I like it. And from a bank too…

Now that Andy Murray has been served, please can everyone clear off and let me get to work on time…?

Where were you when you heard Michael Jackson had died? It really doesn’t matter I’m afraid. Sorry.

We’re living in a time when information is more mobile than ever and things happen FAST even in your pocket. You don’t need to be there, you just need a hotspot. The video above shows the news breaking on Twitscoop, which tracks Twitter trends. It’s fascinating, this is how information behaves in real time, it’s alive.

All of the frantic information, rumour and then iPhone scrambles for valid news sources to verify the story, led to a massive spike in internet data usage. Twitter was groaning under the strain, think of the poor birdies trying to lift that massive King-of-Pop sized whale…

In fact Twitter became the star of the show, as in addition to the turmoil in Iran, Michael Jackson’s death was something which offered one of its first true tests, the world was really relying on it to find out what was happening. It’s no good Googling “Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest” in the middle of the night when you suspect someone is surely pulling your leg, there’s no cached information to draw on. MJ hadn’t had the foresight to put out a press release or preschedule his multiple organ failure to coincide with the evening news (although Uri Geller seemed strangely available for comment). No, Twitter is the immediacy search engine™, the only way to find out what’s going on right now. No wonder so many important people are frightened of it.

And so maybe it’s fitting that Twitter also offers up the best tribute to Michael Jackson I’ve come across so far, the inspired Billie Tweets by 9Astronauts. I could try and explain but it’s easier if you just click this link and see it for yourself.

Amazing.

These really are fascinating times we’re living in.

Rest in peace Michael.

I have an alibi, you can’t prove anything.

I went a long to the private view of Wallpaper magazine’s Type Tart exhibition last night to see if my contribution had made the cut among some of the more well-known contributors.

The idea was to create a tart card – those things in London phoneboxes advertising *ahem* ‘personal services’ but dedicated to a typeface or letter of the alphabet. Lots of great *ahem* ‘entries’ there were too. I think the one below was my favourite…

Now I know I’m getting old as some were definitely a bit *ahem* ‘graphic’…

Click here to see all the pictures I took on the night.

You can also see all the entries and contributors on the Wallpaper website. There’s still a few days left to catch the show at KK Outlet, and it’s all in aid of the St Bride Library.

Oh, and yes, my design was in the show, even if nobody noticed it due to bad Feng Shui. That’s my excuse anyway…

If you’re a graphic designer and you’ve designed a poster, you have to photograph it being held by the top two corners. Don’t ask me why, it’s the law. Clean under your fingernails and get to it.

This trend has long since jumped the shark, in fact even this blog post is passé, but now you can follow the evolution of the meme and keep up to date with various attempts to keep the art of poster holding alive, lest it dies out forever at Poster Goatse. We must not let it go unrecorded for future generations.

There’s graphics, there’s ingenuity, there’s careful finger placement, forgery and unbuttoned cuffs, there’s even titillation…

And they are doing sterling work, tirelessly researching the origins of the phenomenon…

Take a look at the site, the acerbic commentary alone is worth it. What’s a goatse? You’ll wish you never asked…

Last week I went along to see Wim Crouwel give an iSTD talk about his work and clients. It was a celebration of the iSTD being 80 years old, but the most staggering thing is that at 81, Wim still stands as one of the most interesting and progressive designers and typographers. He’s a nice guy too.

This guy was excited about pixels before there were pixels:

He showed us a lot of his work, which he was producing from the 1950s to the present day, and it’s amazing to see things that this guy was doing 50 years ago still look cutting edge. You don’t have to have a Hoxton fin and listen to Hot Chip to be knocking out devastatingly original work, reassuringly you can just be yourself and care about getting it right.

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