Cherry

A couple of weeks back we headed along to The Book Club on Leonard St for the grand beginning of the Secret Wars Euro league. Good music, plenty of drinks and a room crammed full of people hungry for the long awaited battle led to a highly charged atmosphere. London came out on top, maybe helped by a slightly biased crowd, who knows? But the judges also swung in their favour. See the highlights below…

In 1631 Robert Baker, the King’s Printer, produced a Bible with the little word ‘not’ missing from the seventh commandment, thus instructing worshipers: ‘Thou shalt commit adultery.’

Known as the Wicked Bible, the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered the book be burnt and Baker was sent to prison where he stayed until his death.

Which all goes to show, type most certainly matters!

This is the first installment of “In our backyard”, a new blog feature that you will see popping up from time to time. When we see something worth shouting about within a stones throw of the studio we’ll be sure to let you know about it.

First off is Four Stories Tall which divides Homer’s Odyssey into twelve equal measures, split across the four pillars of modern storytelling – film, theatre, literature and music. Novelists, thespians, auteurs and musicians across the city have been developing their own unique ‘odyssey twelfth’. On the night all interpretations will be put back together to reform the story. How will it all turn out??

Head to Queen of Hoxton tonight at 7.30! See you there.

Four Stories Tall

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

This is real! No post production in sight!

Holographic projection experts Musion have joined forces with Director Chris Cairns to create a live performance based on his Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs film, which features a number of disembodied rapping heads…

Watch the live footage in the clip above.

If you made it down to Destinations travel show at Earls Court last week, chances are you stuck you best travel moments from 2009 on the massively successful Lonely Planet TravelWall.

The wall, part of the Lonely Planet stand designed by our incredibly talented Graham (“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever designed!”), created a fantastic buzz, with hundreds of stickers covering practically every available space by Sunday afternoon.

What a well-travelled bunch the Destinations crowd turned out to be. The Cherry contribution? A mere day trip to Amsterdam!

Alan Fletcher’s retrospective has travelled not just ‘north of the river’ but to the real North and is now residing in the CUBE gallery, Manchester. Packed to the rafters with some of the most highly regarded design examples of the last fifty years you certainly get your money’s worth at a very northern price of £4.50.

Significant highlights include video interviews with Fletcher as he guides you around the studio he built during a career that saw him help establish not only Fletcher/Forbes/Gill in the 60’s but also Pentagram in the 70’s. This is where some of the best work lies as business cards, letter heads and logotypes from countless projects adorn the walls. This more conventional but certainly no less spectacular work shares space with the playful ‘Fletcherisms’ many remember him for and makes for a jolly good afternoon of inspiring design gazing.

The exhibition runs until 3rd April
See cube.org.uk for details.

Lovely stuff.

Fingers crossed sometime in the near future we will be able to take our pick of fonts and use them as live text on the websites we design. Though Arial, Verdana, Georgia etc. have served us well, the thought of being able to “Cherry” pick the right one for the job is very exciting to any type geek (of which there are a few at Cherry).

The future is not here yet, but this article typography-on-the-web gives us hope that someone is trying to make it happen!

Let the bowling commence...

Fun was had by all as we enjoyed a little get together with the team at Lonely Planet. The most significant news of the day is that the Cherry Kingpins remain undefeated despite a rather shakey start to the evening’s entertainment. Needless to say the karaoke inspired many moments of hilarity that have been banished to the Cherry archive forever, this way we spare our blushes and more importantly your ears! Well, maybe one clip couldn’t hurt…

Cherry and Lonely Planet show their rage from Sarah Harding on Vimeo.

Treat me gently I'm a virgin

While walking home from work last week I spotted a new shop on Bethnal Green Road, near Brick Lane. The eye catching window display for the sexy underwear shop is sure to grab peoples attention!

Wafting through the dark entrance to Decode, into the glowing electro-cornfield of Daan Roosegaarde’s ‘Dune’, there’s a palpable sense of excitement from the anticipating masses. A feeling that we are leaving the everyday behind in the V&A foyer and entering into a colourful glimpse of the future.

So having been to the future, what’s it like? Well, people seem to laugh a lot. Adults become children and throw virtual paint at videowalls, blow virtual dandelion parachutes around the room with hairdryers and watch virtual trees swaying in time to the wind outside. In other words, it’s a bit of a laugh.

Decode brings together innovations in coding, networks and interactivity, and on the serious side, the power of networks and the influence of user-generate content is in evidence here. But a digital clock, where the ever-changing numbers are photographic contributions from the public, is as deep as it gets.

The visually inspiring Code section of the exhibition, showing off code as a design tool, includes Radiohead’s touchy-feely ‘House of Cards’ video by James Frost and Aaron Koblin.

The interactive section is where the real fun starts. Ross Phillips’ ‘Videogrid’ encourages every extrovert to make a one second contributuion to an ever-changing video wall of looped moments.

Mark and Phillipa become part of the exhibition

Throw your hands in the air!

Mehmet Akten’s ‘Body Paint’ had us jumping, waving and throwing shapes in front of a wall responding with bursts of colour to every movement. An interactive Sony Bravia ad just waiting to be ripped from the V&A and installed on every bus shelter in the country!

The exhibits on display here aren’t changing the world. But they are maybe changing the way we look at the world. And raising a smile along the way.