Tourists’ photos all look the same don’t they?

That’s what Corinne Vionnet thought, in fact she went and proved it by overlaying hundreds of tourist photos from the internet. The result is a series of ghostly images of famous landmarks. They’re really lovely and make you wonder how people assess the optimum view of the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. There’s a sort of collective agreement that they should be seen from a certain perspective. Perhaps it’s something to do with symmetry or an obvious vantage point.

But she must have been pretty selective, as we all know most tourists prefer to stand in front of iconic landmarks they’ve waited their lives to see and obliterate them with the head of their mum/dad/daughter/son who they see every day. Funny that.

Whenever I come back from holiday and offer to show my snaps to my Dad, he always asks me if there are any with people in them this time, knowing that otherwise he’s going to have to sit through hundreds of bits of found type, buildings, signs and overhead wires. Perhaps I should stick my head in the way more often then…

Found via Design Taxi

As regular readers to this blog might remember, I do like the patterns on public transport seats, specifically those on the tube. I even tried to do some design with them once and had my fascination outed by Design Week.

Anyway, Transport for London have this quirky tube campaign running at the moment, which invites you to guess whether the statements lovingly recreated from vintage patterns are true or false:

If you can’t bear not knowing the answers, check out the TfL site, where a little story sheds light on each one.

Also, feel free to join my neglected Flickr group to collect new patterns. And if you’ve taken a picture of a seat pattern, it probably qualifies for this group too…

They’ve been redeveloping Blackfriars station forever now. Hopefully the kerning is on their to-do list.

I love this new 8-bit map of London by Brett Camper, showing what happens when the vintage graphical power of the NES meets the cutting edge GPS data of Google maps. You can zoom in and out and search for your house, although obviously it doesn’t really have the resolution of the Google original, so you’re not going to be able to see your car parked outside or wave to your Mum. (or see your house.)

He’s also done New York…

Here’s a little typographic treat for the World Cup. Tweet your messages to @thefootwall and we’ll show them on our giant scoreboard on the side of The Brand Union in Farringdon, London.

It’s typeset in Supporter, the typeface I designed for the England 2018 World Cup bid. The letters are inspired by shirt numbers and electronic scoreboards, so they can be stacked and built with like a Lego set.

It’s visible every night and will hopefully be up for the duration of the World Cup… (…or at least England’s participation in it)

Thanks to all of the guys for making it happen – Back of the net!

The shortlisted entries for the Metro Wrap design competition have been put up on the D&AD blog.

The brief was to take over the front outside and inside cover of commuter paper Metro for one day in April to give Londoners an inspiring and motivational message to start their day. It’s a great that the space usually reserved for desperately flogging a new mobile phone or deodorant is given over to something needlessly creative for a change.

The entry above which I really liked is by Clare McKenzie/Clare Theophane, Miranda Bolter, Freya Defoe & Steve Hickory of The Partners and requires readers of the paper to fill in their own news and doodle their own cartoons. Lovely.

I’m afraid most of the rest of the entries were a bit disappointing, many opting to print a rhetorical visual pun on the front cover instead of actually getting to grips with the brief itself and thinking about how to communicate with Londoners, let alone what to say to them. One of The Partners’ other entries (they dubiously have 5 out of 10 shortlisted) is a newspaper printed like an umbrella, to hold over your head in case it’s raining that April morning. Yawn.

One entry has the paper covered in knitting. Presumably because the designer, erm, likes knitting. Each to their own.

Another entrant has printed transport upholstery patterns on the cover, which I heartily approve of, but I’m not sure how thinking my false teeth have fallen out, or that I’ve dropped a quid is going to set me up motivationally for the day ahead. If you were stupid or partially sighted enough to fall for it, it seems to me that it would just make you anxious.

Anyway, all of this is most likely sour grapes, because you see, despite my previous emotionally scarring experience of a Metro design competition, I entered this one too and my entry didn’t make the grade. I’ll dig it out and share it with you once I find my false teeth. Now where did I put them…?