If youâre around my age with a similar interest in model cars, this mural, Re-collection, by Leon Keer on a block of flats in Grenoble, France, will appeal.
Leon has Tweets with the before and after, and one about the process.
Itâs sad that Lesney (Matchbox) went down the fantasy route to compete with Hot Wheels, whereas the 1970s Corgi and Majorette castings that are represented here are so much better, in my opinion. I had a good childhood; I certainly couldnât complain about the model collection that my parents and grandparents indulged. And what great work from Leon to bring back this sense of nostalgia.
I don’t know if Instagram does this on all phones, but when I make multi-photo posts, it often leaves behind a very interesting image. Sometimes, the result is very artistic, such as this one of a LotusâFord Cortina Mk II.
You can see the rear three-quarter shot just peer in through the centre. I’ve a few others on my Tumblr, but this is the best one. Sometimes technology accidentally makes decent art. I’m still claiming copyright given it’s derived directly from my work.
Two of my friends have books coming out. I’ll discuss one for now, as it’s been a long long weekend.
The first is my Medinge Group colleague Nicholas Ind’s Meaning at Work, which has now made it on to Amazon, and is getting wider distribution.
You can get an idea of what Meaning at Work is about from Nicholas’s own article at the RSA’s (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) website. But if you’ve followed Nicholas’s work over the years, it’s a logical continuation of his inquiry into making businesses more human and engaged. Living the Brand, for example, was an early look into organizations that had successfully implemented their brand at every level. The concepts are familiar to most branding practitioners, but Nicholas brought them to life with real-world examples and analyses of those successful organizations. Fast forward to Branding Governance, and there are useful discussions about corporate citizenship and corporate participation. Meaning at Work looks at what attitudes people need to find fulfilment in their work, with engagement and challenge being the keys. I’ve managed to secure chapter one from Nicholas, who in turn got it from the publisher, minus the illustrations (omitted due to copyright reasons), so you can get a better idea of what it entails. In this first chapter, Nicholas discusses what meaning is, and brings to live numerous examples from literature, art and film. If you’ve ever wondered about some of those works you have heard of but not inquired in toâVirginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse or the real meaning behind RĂŠnĂŠ Magritte’s La trahison des imagesâNicholas draws out the necessary meanings for his book in a very accessible fashion.
It’s interesting that Nicholas discusses the depth of meaning in this first chapter, because if you take his works over the course of the 21st century, they are getting deeper and deeper into what makes usâand successful organizationsâtick. Each can be read independently, of courseâNicholas isn’t out to sell us a series of booksâbut there is a natural progression that he has as an author. As someone who has only written one book solelyâthe rest were joint worksâit’s a record I admire. Download chapter one of Meaning at Work here, and order it from the publisher or Amazon UK.
I keep telling people, most recently Mark Westerby, the producer, at last night’s Pecha Kucha where we both spoke, about âa cartoon strip that’s written by a six-year-old and drawn by his 20-something brotherâ. Except I encountered it so long ago that, beyond a few initial Tweets and a long browse of their website, I had forgotten its name.
A quick search on Duck Duck Go located it: itâs called Axe Cop, and can be found at axecop.com.
It’s a work of genius. Malachai Nicolle, who began the Axe Cop saga when he was five, comes up with the ideas. His older brother, Ethan, 29, gets his younger brother’s ideas and draws them up as a comic strip. So for those who ever wondered what rests in the mind of a five-year-old boy, Axe Cop answers that question.
Many of us, while we admire the thought processes of a child, might not be able to use our own imaginations to appreciate fully what he or she has drawn. The Nicolle brothers solve that problem: while the interpretation still has a filter, this one’s probably finer than many, since the pair are related and a big brother is far more likely to be sympathetic to his own kin in ensuring that his execution is faithful.
Below is a video made just under a year ago showing the writing process.
Episode 1 has been turned into a motion comic by Axe Cop fans, and gives you an idea of how the saga began:
I really admire the work of the Nicolle brothers. It also helps those of us who are grown up to try to recapture the thought processes that we had when we were children. The obvious benefit is to innovation and product-development, freeing us from the rigour of standardized methods. It could go even further: remember when we were innocent, free from notions of racism and prejudice?
Sometimes, we have a lot to learn from children.
I canât find much by way of biography for artist Tsang Tsou Choi (ćžçśč˛Ą), the self-titled âKing of Kowloonâ (äšéžçĺ¸), but the following gives a good summary about how most feel about him:
Since his death, some of his work has been destroyed by the Hong Kong authorities, though others have been preserved. (Initially, the government promised to preserve Tsangâs work, but Iâm sure Beijing would frown upon even an artist claiming that he was the rightful ruler of the territory.)
What is interesting, and not found readily online, was Tsangâs claim to an imperial bloodline. If you follow the story, as told decades ago in a newspaper there, he said he was playing as a child in a royal courtyard, and found himself going through a portal, and meeting monks on the other side. They told him that it was a miracle that he had made it through there, as mere mortals generally could not. Eventually, he was given directions to return, but wound up penniless in Hong Kong. When turning back, the monastery had disappeared.
The original story was told with a great deal of clarity (or embellishment).
Many people dismissed the story as apocryphal or, worse, that of a crackpot, especially in an age when Tsangâs work was considered more a nuisance than art.
What do you reckon? Did Tsang have a Bermuda TriangleâLife on Mars moment, or was he a bit loopy? (The official story sees him coming out of Guangdong as a teenager to join his uncle in Hong Kong, which is far more likely.)
