I normally don’t post “cute kid” videos here on Dangerous Minds, but this is my exception because this kid is one. Graphic designer Adam Ladd showed his 5-year-old daughter various brand logos and recorded her amusing descriptions. 

As one YouTuber points out, “Americans: always know their Pepsi, McDonald’s, and cars. The rest are cheetahs.”
 

 
Via Laughing Squid

 
Ossie Clark was a master cutter, who could run his hands over a figure and cut a dress to fit perfectly. He liked his dresses to lie next to the skin, nothing in between, capturing the wearer’s form, beauty and shape. Clark’s inspiration was dance, his idol was Nijinsky, and the movement, flow, and freedom of dance inspired his clothes to enhance the female form. At the height of his success, in the early 1970s, his clothes were worn by some of the world’s most beautiful women - Ali MacGraw, Patti Boyd, Gala Mitchell, Twiggy and Elizabeth Taylor. His leather jackets were worn by Keith Richard, while he designed a jump suit for Mick Jagger to wear during The Stones Exile in Main Street Tour. His favorite model, the beautiful Gala Mitchell said in 1971:

“Usually I lack confidence, but when I wear Ossie’s designs I know I’m beautiful and sexy. His clothes are like a play. I act to suit the mood of the dress. Fashion now is very sophisticated - as always Ossie had that feeling first.”

The magic of Clark’s fashion was the cut, the shape, the heart-tugging style, and the beautiful prints designed by wife Celia Birtwell. Together, Ossie and Celia brought a fabulous, ethereal beauty to fashion in the late 1960s, early 1970s, which has often been copied, but rarely equalled.

Here’s a small selection of Ossie and Celia’s fashions from German TV, circa 1969. Painting above David Hockney’s Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1971).
 

 
More of the Clark’s beautiful fashions, after the jump…
 

 
Fans of Japanese graphic design, rejoice: René Walter, of Germany’s Nerdcore website, has amassed an amazing collection of vintage Japanese advertisements on Flickr. He’s certainly found a lot gems.

Here’s a taste of René‘s Vintage Japanese Advertising (Misc).
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Here’s something quite lovely, a tour inside of Salvador Dali’s Spanish home.

Open Culture provides some history and description:

Along the Costa Brava in northern Spain, in the little seaside village of Port Lligat, sits the house that became Salvador Dalí’s main residence in 1930. It started off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalí went to work on the structure, renovating it little by little over the next 40 years, creating a living, breathing, labyrinthine home that reflects the artist’s one-of-a-kind aesthetic. Writing about the house, the author Joseph Pla once said:

   The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.

For many, it’s a long trip to Portlligat, and only eight people can visit the house at a time. So today we’re featuring a video tour of Dalí’s Spanish home. The interior shots begin around the 1:30 mark. If you love taxidermy, you won’t be wasting your time.

Nicely photographed. But I find the music a bit distracting.
 

 
Tonight in New York, revered graphic designer Milton Glaser (do a Google Images search if that name doesn’t ring a bell) will take part in a panel discussion with Mirko Ilic about the creation of powerful politically driven graphics. The event is hosted by Reality Sandwich creative director, Michael Robinson

This panel discussion features graphic design legend Milton Glaser and award winning designer/illustrator Mirko Ilic focusing on graphic design’s ability to convey how power is effectively used and distributed, and justice is fulfilled. Based upon Glaser and Mirko’s book The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics, the authors will discuss how today’s image makers and corporate shamans can use design to create the more beautiful and just world we all know is possible.

This event is co-sponsored with Evolver/Reality Sandwich. Hopefully they’ll put a videotape of the discussion online soon.

Thursday, January 26, 8–10pm at The Open Center, 22 E. 30th St., NY

Below, a delightful portrait of Milton Glaser by Hillman Curtis:
 

 
Milton Glaser’s Graphic Influence: 14 Iconic Images (Fast Company)

 
If these were the movie posters, would you still go and see the film?

Find more here.
 

 

 
A few more samples, after the jump…
 

 
A new and as-always fun and functional project from New Orleans genius musician/inventor, Quintron. It’s really a beautiful idea, especially the rain drop trigger. In my perfect parallel universe every home would come equipped with this set of devices.
 

 
Thanks Stephen Fishman

 
New York-based Graphic designer Mike Joyce made a whole slew of super-clean versions of old punk, post-punk, hardcore and indie flyers which he appropriately titles “Swissted.” The concept comes from “his love of punk rock and Swiss modernism, two movements that have absolutely nothing to do with one another.”
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Now we know…it was those cigar-chomping traffic managers, with their difficulties over volume that led to the flat-pack sofa. Or, so it seems in this stylish film S-73 by designers, artists, and film-makers, Ray and Charles Eames. Interestingly this 1954 film shows the Herman Miller flat-pack sofa pre-dates Christian Gillis’s idea of ready-to-assemble furniture by 2 years, which would mean IKEA owes it all to Miller, and their team of designers, which included the Eames, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Propst, who gave us the “Noguchi Table,” “Eames Lounge Chair,” “Marshmallow Sofa,” “Ball Clock,” and Nelson’s own “Hang-It-All,” and the “Sling Sofa.”
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
I mean, just look at it! It’s an exact carbon copy of him!

The Steve Jobs 12” action figure is manufactured by toy company In Icons with a U.S. release date in late-February. Steve’ll be retailing for $99.00.

(via BuzzFeed)