Two magazine covers by Donald Brun

From the playful, humorous side of Swiss modernist graphic design: two covers for a recipe magazine, 1957 and 1960. The world of Donald Brun (1909-99), one of the most successful graphic designers and illustrators of his time, is full of smiling faces. Thinking of ladling soup from the blood red interior of granny's head does kind of confound me though.

Okay Okay. Der moderne Tanz.

Christoph Dreher and Heiner Mühlenbrock's "Okay Okay. Der moderne Tanz" is (probably a bit too) exactly what I expected from a debut movie by film school punks in West Berlin in 1980: urban decay & mean modernism, concrete, scrap yards (incl. junk press action), garbage dumps etc., set against a soundtrack of Pere Ubu, Chrome, Wire and co. A fine movie, beautifully photographed. It contains some fantastically filmed footage from a Wire concert at the legendary SO36 club (picture above) and the following haunting final scene with music by the Residents. Luckily one minute of it was used in a TV documentary and put on YouTube:

Chilton Computing photo archive

Ancillary Equipment Room
Julie Bryant, John Baldwin, Eric Thomas, S I Milne, Murial Herbert 11.06.68

Scanning Lab 26.07.68

Susan Hockey Font Defining on the VT15 31.10.72

Think Room. M Beran, Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford
and Stuart Smith, Univ of Southampton (right) 00.01.73

Chess on the 360/195. Alex Bell, Geoff Lambert, Peter Kent,
 John Birmingham and J Waldron 01.11.74

CAD Centre Stand. Peter Lever (later ICL) on left 09.09.76

Families Day 06.06.78

DCS Systime 5000 used for Unix Development-
Gill Dancey and Liz Krausselar 01.01.80

Arrival First ICL PERQ- Bob Hopgood points out the label 17.02.82

Joe Roberts Retirement
Bob Hopgood makes the Presentation 30.04.84

Cray X-MP Computer 23.12.86

The photos in the archive of Chilton Computing (1961-2003) create a fascinating narrative, not only telling the history of a technology, but also of the people working with it. They have names, they are real people who get presents from their colleagues when they retire. They are excited when new machines arrive and when committees visit. They are always properly dressed (and quite often have impressive beards). We can also see them play chess, football or table tennis and enjoy the lab's own arts and crafts show.
I'm trying to avoid simple reblogging, but this post was made because this post on the wonderful Diamond Variations blog made me take a deep dive into the Chilton archive and I couldn't resist showing some of my favorite photos here. I hope that counts.
The captions are the original ones from the archive.

Trish Keenan

A terrible loss. I can't find the right words, but Unmann-Wittering and Between Channels did here and here.

the letter e

Jean-Michel Wicker's wonderful "eiermann ee's board" (an Eiermann table full of the letter e, cut out of cardboard with added strings and other material) currently on display at the New Jerseyy art space in Basel made me think of Timm Ulrichs' concrete poem featuring nothing but the lovely lower case e as well. It's from the same concrete poetry in the classroom book from 1972 that I featured in my previous post.

The Giampiero Boneschi Group - Musical Fantasy n°3

GPB-Allemande-Guitar

GPB-Crazy-Guitar

My statistics say that you like Giampiero Boneschi - this post was the most popular post of this blog last year. So why not start the new year with two other bits from one of his records on the rather unknown "Broadway" library label, the guitar&synth-themed "Musical Fantasy n°3". "Allemande Guitar" is the outstanding track here (think of robots with baroque wigs), but I'm also a big fan of the addictive little melody and the laid back disco groove of "Crazy Guitar". Enjoy and have a good start into 2011!