Blog by Ben

How cool are these. No – really. Just look at them.

Having been tucked away for months these lovely, box fresh, Lucienne Day print Converse are getting broken out for the impending spring.

Lucienne Day was an amazing and influential textile designer. Her work first came to the attention of the British public and the world stage at the Festival of Britain in 1951, with the magnificent ‘Calyx‘, and has remained an important part of Britsh design culture ever since.

The print on these Jack Purcell’s is ‘Larch‘ designed in 1961 for Heal’s.

Lucienne sadly passed away at the start of this year at the grand age of 93, but her work and legacy live on and every time I wear these I wear a piece of design history out in to the world.

Probably my favorite book ever is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and it has been since I was a teenager. Perhaps I was just the right age when I first read it but Orwell’s description of a bleak dystopian landscape, epitomised by the omnipresent totalitarian ‘Big Brother’, thought crimes and the dreaded Room101 made a lasting impression on the young me.

The original book was published in 1949, but this edition (a gift from my girlfriend for my birthday) is a first edition Penguin paper back, published in 1954. The graphic design geek in me loves the design aesthetic of the Jan Tschichold/Hans Schmoller cover and the patina of age only adds to its appeal.

What this? A blog post?! Yes, yes my friend, it is. I have actually written something and posted it on my blog. Sadly its a post about writing more posts, but you’ve got to start somewhere right?

So what’s all this about objects and project 52 I hear you ask? (If you didn’t I’m sure you were going too…). Well, its a happy combination of a few things I’ve been pondering recently – ‘How do I make sure I update my blog?’ and ‘You really should spend more time appreciating what you have you ungrateful little…’

Project 52
I really want to start writing and blogging consistently – this is where Project 52 comes in. Simply its a group of like minded individuals that have the same goal as me – to blog more, in this case once a week (52 times -gettit?). Hopefully being accountable, and having someone look over my shoulder to see if I’ve posted will be enough to actually make me do it!

Objects
I’ve committed to post more – but what do I write about? Recently I’ve been thinking about all the really cool stuff that myself and girlfriend have picked up over the years – we love cool items and limited edition shiny things, but after a while they sit on a shelf and gather dust. No more – the idea behind the Objects series is to take one object a week, take some nice photos and write about it. Simple huh.

Will it be interesting? For me it will, and hopefully at least a few items will be for you too. You can probably expect lots of books and music popping up as we’ve been collecting since we were kids. I’ll try and get a bit of variety in to it too though .

Its going to be an interesting experiment to see if I can keep this going to a whole year. I’ve much admiration for a friend that is currently doing the 100 days project. He’s not slipped yet, so if I do I’m sure he’ll point it out . I’m not sure which would be harder – 100 days in a row or 1 a week for a year. I guess we’ll find out.

So – Post number 1 done. Just another 51 to go….