Things that caught my eye this week

1 minutes estimated reading time

Frank Herbert was interviewed in 1965 about the origins of Dune. He started researching an article on the control of sand dunes. He makes the fluid mechanics of sand dunes sound fascinating. That was the start point for him creating a science fiction epic. In the interview he covers a wide range of issues including environmentalism, colonialism and philosophy. He also talks about his process of working through is copy as an oral product that happened to be in books.

Herbert is very self aware of his own writing and analytical in his process. He is also critical of people recording, rather than experiencing events. This was fascinating to read some four decades before Instagram culture.

Here is a later talk at UCLA from 1985 with Frank Herbert as a bonus.

Palace the streetwear brand have collaborated with the Happy Mondays for a capsule collection. It’s interesting to see Shaun Ryder and Bez still inspiring and being relevant some 25 years after the peak of their cultural relevance. More streetwear related content here.

https://vimeo.com/457691937

COVID comes to Sesame Street. Oscar The Grouch stars in a mask etiquette. Admittedly this comes with a grouchy reason: that he doesn’t want to see children’s happy smiling faces. Sesame Street hits out of the park again on content.

Sesame Street – wear a mask with Oscar PSA

George Carlin mashed up with Mad Max: Fury Road. It completely changes the feel of the film and is a stinging indictment of human behaviour.

Finally an amazing collection of 1980s TV advertisements and station idents Beta MAX – YouTube. What struck me about this channel was the variety of categories that used television advertising extensively for brand building and activation. Some of the creative would still stand up today and were strikingly similar to work that I did for Unilever.