The Society Of The Spectacle

I recently received a few invites for the new start up Pinterest. It’s not like there are a famine of start up invites, but this one caught my eye for a few simple reasons.

Firstly, the design is sparky and super clean. Following on from the top notch user experience that Tumblr provides, this felt (and is) super easy to use. Tonally it follows on from this clean design with a cool little tagline. “Catalog, create, share”. The actual experience of using it, felt much easier than using Dropular, or FFFFound. But obviously as yet, do not have the same cachet that these two do in the creative community. This brings me onto the final, most compelling point. While something like Dropular acts as self curated, but increasingly long list way of finding things that inspire you, Pinterest has the potential to make that process much faster. The ‘pin it’ button that you are encouraged to have on your bookmarks bar makes the whole process of ‘pinning’ something that much easier and behaviorally, more compelling. In sight, in mind as it were. The tagging system also has the hallmarks of Tumblr (e.g dead easy) and each pin is linked back to the original source. Providing a useful journey back through your pinning process, in the end, it feels and acts like a less tucked away version of delicious (which for me, serves more and more as a backup archive)

The ability to set up specific boards related to theme instantly created little micro communities of shard interest. Similar to the way Spotify Social now can create little sub groups of interest and passions, based around the music people love. It’s the killer point of difference, that I hope with a little tweaking (customised pin boards templates anyone??) Could be turn out to be a real treat. You can follow the Pinterest team at their Posterous here. (There was a meet up earlier this week at the Droog store for ‘Pinners’ as well.) I’ll be expecting one soon in London!

Thanks to (@lueni for the original invite)

(Blue Source For Don’t Panic waaaay back.)

Hello friends, old and new.

As regular readers would have noticed, I haven’t exactly been setting the blogging world alight recently. (Well, since June 22nd to be exact) There are many reasons for this. But it has presented an opportunity to refocus and re-imagine what I want this blog to say.

The Society Of The Spectacle has evolved and grown hugely over the 18 months I have been writing and curating it. It started out as small snippets of creativity, as I found my writing feet. As the months rolled by, I got more into delving deep into my subjects. As my ‘voice’ has grown, I hope the Spectacle has become a richer and deeper experience to those that read it regularly, or those that stumble upon it in the gloriously random way the web operates.

The Spectacle offers what I hope is the best of the blogging experience, the chance to uncover, discover and be enlightened or inspired by the web. My mission has always been to uncover some of the more obscure elements of creativity, as well as music, film and fashion. Expressing my interests to the widest audience possible. Not out of an ego boost, but out of a love and passion for brilliant things that enter my world day in, day out. The stuff we create to stimulate our minds, our bodies and our soul.

The Spectacle has also offered the opportunity to embrace our increasingly ubiquitous social connections, and is my walking talking evidence to the richness of conversations and relationships that can be fostered and become hugely valuable. Writing and observing these developments has me assess the entire relationship between collaboration, creativity and what even the word ‘creative’ means. It has helped to question not only the validity of what I do, but, happy with my chosen path; understand and recalibrate this blog to create a clear and vital articulation for the wider world.

The Spectacle has also given me the opportunity to find out that I’m not just a designer, but something more, a thinker, a doer and an optimist. Both for our industries, and our collective ability to achieve great things. I want the Society Of The Spectacle to become the primary focus of this ‘goodness’. To give the site a chance to breathe, to take it’s next evolution. Hence the fact that I’ll now be using lots of other sites to spread my passions and clear the decks as it were for the this blog to breathe. Starting with Tumblr (for the music musings and yacht rock goodness)

So, say hello to REALLY REALLY SMOOTH MUSIC. Sort of does what it says on the tine really. Smooth music, smooth musings, and everything in between.

All of these sites will be going under some cosmetic changes to reflect this new approach (bear with me, I’ve got alot on!)  It is also an experiment. It may well be that the challenge of juggling an expanding network of blogging platforms might be just TOO much. But as ever in this age of experimentation, to not try seems more selfish and against the grain than trying and failing and learning more in the process.I hope you have enjoyed the journey so far, have found it inspiring and fun in equal measure, and will continue to enjoy it, in whatever size of chunk you desire.

Thekingmob.

Everyone should take a look at The Big Picture. Over the lat few years it has gained a large cult following each week with it’s stunning thematically selected images that are well, big. What the Big Picture reminds us is the power of photojournalism in provoking our senses or willing us to see a subject in a new light.

However, as with anything on the web, it is rather lampoonable, which is where The Big Caption comes in. This Tumblr blog takes the best and the worst of the Big Picture content, slaps some cool (and not so cool) typefaces on it, and wreaks havoc. It’s fun, irreverent, and actually the best ones provoke even stronger reactions to the images, (as above) others are just laugh out loud funny. You decide which is which. More after the jump. (more…)

Insanely, insanely simple. Nothing else, check them all out here.

Another week, another Tumblr…. But this one is a little different, digging up the basketball visual nuggets from Naismith to LeBron and everything in between in the always colourful world of the NBA. (With a little bit of the ABA thrown in.) Here’s a few choice cuts… (more…)

My new favourite Tumblr. Cosmic psychedelic coolness. Few of my favourites after the jump… (more…)

Well Mad Men season 3 is in full swing, and the buzz (as i mentioned in a post last month) has never been greater. So it’s good news that the ratings have spiked for the show and the shows fan’s continue to help fill in the gaps of the Mad Men world, but also fill in some of the contextual gaps. This development in particular is of interest. (more…)

A bit of morning inspiration for all you stylish gentlemen out there. Check out Nerd Boyfriend, another mysterious tumble blog (seriously, this one has no title at all, super minimal) Fantastic images of 20th century greats, from singers, to writers, to raconteurs and designers, a handy link through to these style inspirations is provided. Dead simple and very useful. Go see. (Cheers to @budcadell for the spot)

A little too close to the knuckle blog. According to Gawker, this guy just got a book deal. Here’s some highlights. (more…)

This is great little website, very much in the vain of Business Guys On Business Trips. There are some lovely little insights, and I love the simple drawing style. Kudos!