Ed Studio - Ecstatic Blog

New Year Purging

With the overwhelming urge to start the New Year fresh and set resolutions to improve your well being, get ahead in life, workout more – or finally go through the mounds of clothes and junk that keep piling up in your closet, storage, basement or mezzanine – to start the New Year clean and organized just seems like the right thing to do for me personally. While ones persons junk is another's prize floats through my head while opening boxes I haven't touched in years, I find it difficult to let go of treasures past found that stir up memories of crazy adolescents or creative milestones I hold dear.

In my daily creative routine I recently stumbled upon Mac Premo's new work "The Dumpster Project". His claustrophobic solution to an overbearing mound was oddly a refreshing and honest take on what to do with those collected and somehow-sentimental objects that should be eventually discarded. Inspiration for the New Year or an excuse to hold on to things that you just can't let go of – you be the judge.

Links: The Dumpster Project / Mac Premo / Vimeo Link

projects artists

Letter Pressed Cookies

Though Christmas is past and checked, it is always handy to have sweet delights paired with a cup of coffee. Typographers can now bake themselves letter pressed cookies with Fred & Friends’ Cutter Stamp! Add food colour and get creative.

Links: World or Fred

product creative

Illustrative Hipster Nostalgia

The work of Chilean-born illustrator Fab Ciraolo combines re-imagined elements of nostalgic popular culture with fantastical sci-fi and beautiful space-like atmospheres. By melding classic cartoon characters and edgy political and celebrity icons, Ciraolo illustrates compelling and enchanting artwork with a hipster now attitude.

LOVE the modern day Che, Frida and Heman & Shera nod.

Links: Fab Ciraolo

artists creative

ecstatic will be closed
Dec 23-26 & Dec 30-Jan2

True to the motto by Dutch type designer Luc(as) van de Groot, designers are allowed to release their inner geek and test their kerning abilities online!

Kerning, the manual adjustment of white space between two characters, is often used to give words an aesthetic benefit and to achieve a visual pleasing result.

Go online and play the kerning game!

Links: KernType

design typography

Forever Bicycles

After the great exhibition at the TATE Gallery in London with Sunflower Seed’s Installation, the chinese artist Ai Weiwei come back with this unwriteble project.

Forever bicycles is included in Ai Weiwei’s new exhibit in Taiwan. It’s an incredible, arching layer of a thousand bikes and reflects’s Ai’s perception of the rapid pace of China’s social change.

Links: Ai Weiwei / Forever Bicycles

bicycles installations

Analogous Drawing with Inkling

This month, Wacom is launching its latest tablet gadget named Inkling. Like previous systems users handle a digital acting pen that transmits its movement via a reader to the computer. But unlike before, there is no need to be infront of a computer anymore. Now, Illustrators and Designers can sit by a coffee in a Café, scribble in their sketchbooks and bring ideas to real paper without the need to scan it in afterwards.

Inkling comes with a real ballpoint pen and a transmitter that receives the pen’s lines while drawing. Thanks to a little add-on, the transmitter can save the drawing in editable layers. Additionally it records not only the stroke, but also its applied pressure that later gets converted into different weights. After connecting the recorder via USB to the computer, the artwork can be open in vectors or pixels, compatible with Adobe’s Creative Suite and is ready for refinement.

Links: Wacom / Watch

Little Pet Project

Letterer, illustrator, and designer Jessica Hische didn’t expect that her little pet project, Daily Drop Caps, would turn into something so big and would introduce her to many of her current clients.

After working a regular 9-5 this Brooklyn based gal decided to go it on her own as a freelancer, and as a way to keep her creativity flowing she created a side project called the Daily Drop Caps.

Daily Drop Caps is a site dedicated to the art of lettering - showcasing one letter ever day. It started with Hische’s designs, but when the project was coming to an end she contacted other designers, illustrators and letterers to share their talent in a final “baker’s dozen” alphabet. Some of the creative contributors include Marian Bantjes, Keetra Dean Dixon (work shown above), Alejandro Paul, and Linzie Hunter.

Featured in this months How Magazine’s article, Accidental Promoter, Hische has plans for projects that are more than little pet projects. She is currently working on a book proposal, developing her online shop (full of beautiful letterpress prints!), and continuing to do more “side projects”.

Take a minute to check out her site, maybe it will inspire your next pet project ... or you could skip the timely process and purchase one of Hische’s prints!

Links: Daily Drop Caps / Jessica Hische

typography artists

National 9/11 Memorial

Ten years ago, our world changed forever -- a mark in history that can never be erased. There is an undeniable importance to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and unquestionable sense of hope at the World Trade Center site.

Instead of building two towers on the site, a peaceful and serene memorial takes their place. Landscape Architects PWP, designed The National September 11th Memorial commemorating the victims of the attacks at the Pentagon, at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the World Trade Center site, both on September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993. The two gigantic voids – in the footprints of the Twin Towers – and surrounding forest of oak trees form the core of the rebuilt World Trade Center and provide a place for contemplation and remembrance within this revitalized urban center.

"The Memorial will be a constant reminder not only of what we have endured, but also of our ability to come together, in the wake of tragedy, with limitless compassion." - Joe Daniels

The memorial opens to the public Sept 11, 2011.

Links: PWP Landscape Architecture / 911 Memorial

landscape architecture

Above the Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design -- A must read for designers engaged in the web world. Above the Fold is a book about the fundamentals of effective graphic communication set in the context of Web design. Above the Fold is not about timely trends, it's about the timeless fundamentals of layout, usability and measurement that lead to a successful digital product.

Above the Fold focuses on the three phases of a Web project—planning, design, and analysis—with each phase aligning with the constituents of a Web site: the user, the designer, and the client. Author Brian Miller is an award-winning designer and lecturer who specializes in branding for the Web and print.

This book is a great summer read and will definitely sharpen your web planning, design and usability skills; great book to add to your design bookshelf!

Links: Above the Fold / My Design Shop

web online books design

A Delicate Character

Languages can be confusing. Having a letter in your surname that only exist in your mother language makes things abroad even more difficult. Recently I was deposing a cheque and the friendly teller behind the counter had suddenly a huge question mark written all over his face while processing. To redeem him from his distress I asked if there was a problem. He frowned more and said that the names weren’t identical. Showing him my German ID made things even worse because it had a third way of spelling. Finally he turned the screen and pointed out the problem: As it turned out, my account surname ended on a ‘b’ and not like in my ID on ‘ss’, or like on the cheque on ‘ß’ – yes, the problematic but lovely Eszett.

Back in the old days, most texts in German have been printed in Blackletter, a font style like Guttenberg has used for his Bible print. The German Eszett [ʔɛsˈt͡sɛt] has once been a ligature of that font for ‘ss’ and ‘sz’. The lowercase ‘s’ existed in two versions: the standard s and the so called long s ( ſ ). – which was often misinterpreted for an f. When during the 18th and 19th century more texts have been set in an Antiqua font, typesetters and printers were looking for a uniform replacement of the Blackletter Eszett. Despite dozen of proposals for an alternative, a common decision wasn’t made until the early 20th century when the Typographic Society of Leipzig announced the so-called Sulzbacher Form as the new standard in Roman type.

But the problem with that character isn’t its appearance, it is the non-exictence of a majuscule. Blackletter fonts were commonly set in sentence or lower case, so the need for capitals was out of question. Therefore in Roman fonts, the Eszett was generally transformed into a double s for printed characters. Though my heard is bleeding when I have to write my surname with ‘ss’ at the end when using uppercase, Typographers and myself cringe when a lowercase ß is used in an uppercase context. It looks ugly. Inconsistent. Destroying the type face. And abroad often misread as a ‘B’.

Undergoing an orthography reform in 2006, the Eszett has been banded from many German words and transformed into double s – in order to make writing easier. But the majuscule issue stayed and caused problems especially with peoples’ surnames on official documents like passports. Remedy came in 2008 when the form of a capital ß was proposed and declared in 2010 by ISO and the Council for German Orthography as the new Standard for name writing – but “use on one’s own will”. So, should that make things easier now?

Links: The German Eszett

typography germany

Released in January, but feeling like a good summer tune, The Decemberists' latest album, The King is Dead, is their sixth full-length album. After listening to this album on repeat through the dreary months of January I took a rest from it, until I saw the album cover last week and felt inspired.

This album makes me crave long weekends at my family cabin and the journey to get there. It makes me think of cooking over a fire and camping. I am well aware that this album is deaper than that, but it has a feeling … the folk rockin’, barn shaking, American (and Canadian) music feeling.

The King is Dead doesn’t have the epic historical or folkloric story that past albums have had. Instead it is more like a collection of short stories. Lead singer Colin Meloy describes it in a press release, "Over the last 11 years or so, since I moved to Portland, I feel like I've been mining mostly English traditions for influence. I guess I've kind of come back to a lot of the more American music that got me going in the first place-- R.E.M. and Camper Van Beethoven and all these bands that borrowed from more American traditions like Neil Young and the Byrds... Sometimes I kind of miss the epic-ness of the other albums, but it's nice to get all of the information across in three minutes. It's like going from reading a novel to reading a bunch of short stories."

The album was recorded in a bar outside of Portland, OR. Meloy commented on how the experience added to the album, "No heat, no indoor plumbing, so if you had to go pee, you had put on your Wellies and go to a freezing outhouse. But I think that, in someway, it adds a nice vibe to the record."

Looking at the album cover it shares the same vibe. The Decemberists’ album covers have always been unique with hand drawn illustrations and lettering depicting the album’s folkloric story, but there is something special about this one and the intricate sun motif that sits above a skyline of trees.

The King is Dead was designed by Jeri Heiden of SMOG Design Inc. SMOG Design is a witty and creative team located in Los Angeles that have many musicians and recording companies on their client list. The lettering and illustrations are by Carson Ellis, who has also worked on past album artwork. Carson was born in Vancouver, but now lives in Portland and has a style well suited for the Decemberists.

For those who want to see the story of this album unfold at a live performace, The Decemberists will be playing at the Malkin Bowel on August 23rd.

Links: The Decemberists / Malkin Bowl / SMOG Design Inc. / Carson Ellis

Take Action For Our CBC

I have to say, I'm a full on CBC radio junkie. I wake up to the Early Edition with Rick Cluff, get my culture fix listening to Q with Jian Ghomeshi, end of the day on my way to pick up my daughter it's On the Coast with Stephen Quinn, and if I'm lucky, on the weekend I'll get a little DNTO with Sook-Yin Lee. All these great hosts and shows, and this is only on Radio One - There are many more stations to this fine Canadian network.

Tuning into these great shows is easy and while CBC/Radio-Canada serves the second largest and most diverse country in the world, it would be such a loss to loose this important commercial free, national broadcaster–not to say that we would but, we need to show support when needed.

Anyone wanting to broadcast on radio or television in Canada needs a licence from the CRTC to do so. With that licence come terms and conditions to broadcast particular types of programming. In short, CBC's broadcasting license is up for renewal and needs the support of Canadians to chime in on what they think the role of a public broadcaster should be. CBC has developed a new strategy promising to provide even more Canadian content and to improve and expand it's digital platform to ensure it's growing and changing with the times. This is one of those important actions that needs the support and interest of fellow Canadians to ensure stable and predictable funding for years to come.

If you've never gotten into CBC I urge you to tune in for a week straight; you might get as hooked as the rest of the nation and learn something new, broaden your political outlook or simply find a local restaurant gem you never new existed.

Links: CBC / Support CBC/Radio-Canada

OFFF is one of the most forward moving post-digital culture festivals featuring some of the most relevant artists of our time. I recently took some time watching and getting to know OFFF through their site, next step is attending this amazing festival and experiencing it first hand.

The festival has been hosted in Barcelona, New York, Lisbon and Paris which has featured renowned artists such as Joshua Davis, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Neville Brody, Julien Vallée, Paula Scher, Vincent Moon, Ze Frank, Alex Trochut, among others. All of them started attending OFFF as spectators. Today, they take up its main stage. Their creative work truly inspiring and forward.

OFFF has also produced the creation of an extensive international network of artists, developers, theorists and even more importantly, people who love art in all its multiple expressions: students, fans, professionals and the curious. People who want to show what they do, to discover what others do and, above all to share their knowledge and their desires to inspire and to be inspired.

OFFF was born as a festival, but today OFFF is a way of understanding art, a way of life and constantly evolving and transforming.

Links: Offf

design artists art

Spring Break Snowboards

Bored with the current direction of mainstream snowboarding, artist and professional snowboarder Corey Smith decided to do something about it. The resulting line Spring Break Snowboards brings the activity back to the basics with handmade wooden snowboards meant for making beautiful powder turns and reviving a love for nature.

Not only do these wooden beasts look like a blast to ride, Smith hand shapes and paints each for a one-of-a-kind board worthy of hanging on a wall. The "business model" is unconventional too; rather than buy a board, Smith asks interested parties to donate to Spring Break to replenish materials and otherwise keep the company alive. Five hundred bucks gets you a board of your choice from the "collective" quiver, but existing and future work will sell at to-be-announced Spring Break art shows next fall.

Smith, current Art Director of COMUNE clothing, has always been a strong presence in the evolution of style and individuality in snowboarding (pioneering today's "tight pants" movement), and may very well spark another trend with his newest venture of boards.

Links: Spring Break Snowboards

product industrial design

Cultural Places With a New Meaning

One of Germany’s largest urban agglomeration, the Ruhr Region, is located in North Rhine-Westphalia. The area covers about 4,450 sq meter and inhabits over 5 million people, the Metro Region more than 12 million. The Ruhrpott is a real melting pot, not just because of its variety of its residents but also due to its structure.

The Ruhr Region is polycentric and a vast industrial landscape: during the industrial revolution coal mines and steel factories rose, a broad network of waterways and railway systems were installed and neighbouring districts grew together into one large complex. The Region was a focus of the country’s economic miracle of the 1950s and 60s until its decline in the 1970s. Due to the economic and structural crisis of that time, mines were shut down, steel became expensive and unemployment hit its numbers.

During the 1990s many industrial facilities were abandoned and run-down. A structural change set in. Still visible in the landscape, those mines and iron works created a unique image and culture in that region. Nowadays many of those areas have been regenerated into garden and recreational parks. Factories are turned into cultural centers and museums for art and design. The Ruhr Region hit its cultural high point in 2010 when the Region and the city of Essen as its capital became the European Capital of Culture. This gave the area the opportunity to show its unique heritage.

Links: Zollverein / The Ruhr

design Germany architecture

It started with a quick glance to see what was new and now it is a full-blown addition of mine! At first glance this site looks like just another way to waste time, but after watching a few of the beautifully composed videos and looking a little deeper, it is not your average time-waster!

The NOWNESS is a collaborative site dedicated to storytelling. Designers, creatives and thinkers contribute their stories every day in a variety of categories such as culture, global lifestyle, music design, travel, gastronomy, photography, art and film.

It is not only the creative content that makes this site so unique, but the tailored user-experience and the interactive ways to explore the content. Once you have viewed a story you can choose to LOVE or DON’T LOVE the content. From your selection suggestions are made on what you may also be interested in. This is all based on what other people LOVED who also LOVED the original content you LOVED. On the other hand if you DON’T LOVE the content they offer “Something Else”.

What I really LOVE about this site is the different ways to search for content. Choose from the menu of Categories and you can search in a traditional blog-like layout. Use the Explorer to browse through content in more interactive ways, such as the Discovery Channel, Where in the World?, and NOWNESS’s Most Loved. The Discovery Channel links stories through an interactive web of tags. Where in the World? allows you to explore content through an interactive map with categories and popularity visually represented by colour. And my personal favorite, NOWNESS’s Most Loved, illustrates the popularity and categories in a large colourful typographic grid.

With all this interactivity the site has won The 15th Annual Webby Awards Best Fashion Website.

Take a little time and explore the NOWNESS, you might just find something you LOVE!

Links: NOWNESS / Webby Awards

design online fashion

Modern Architecture on a Historic Harbour

Herzog & de Meuron are a Swiss based architectural studio famous for their minimalist creations. Their most recent structures constitute an original organic construction; the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, the Allianz Arena in Munich, and currently in construction, the Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg.

“They refine the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques” ~ A. L. Huxtable, Pritzker Award juror.

The Elbphilharmonie is located in one of the oldest areas of Hamburg’s harbour, the Kaiser Quay. The base of the new Concert Hall is the 19,000 square meter large historic Kaiserspeicher. It is a brick stoned warehouse built in 1875 that once stored tea, cocoa and tobacco until it was abandoned.

Built on top the modern creation of Herzog & de Meuron, is a cube in the shape of waves assembled in reflecting glass. The new landmark is not only home of three concerts hall but also inhabits a 4,000 square meter Plaza, a 360° observation deck, a hotel and 45 apartments.

The Large Concert Hall, center of the building and visible from the outside, contains more than 2,000 seats that are winding in a vineyard-like architecture around the center of the auditorium. In order to improve the acoustics a special material was developed that covers the hall’s wall – the White Skin which reflects the sound better into all directions.

Hamburg’s new cultural center will open in the beginning of 2012.

Links: Herzog & de Meuron / The Elbphilharmonie

Architecture unique modern

Shopping Revolution

Online shopping is nothing new, but recently I have been thinking more about it. Maybe it is the fact that most of my favorite stores are opening online shops, making shopping easy to do at any time of day … or night.

To me online shopping doesn’t feel the same as wondering through a boutique. There is nothing like being able to see how a silk dress falls perfectly, or how peep-toe pumps slide on the foot. This feeling cannot be replaced by online shopping ... or can it?

The excitement of having something arrive in the mail (that isn’t junk mail) does come close the satisfaction of walking out of a shop with a bag full of new loot.

Online retailers ARE changing the way we shop and making it more of an experience. If you’re looking for a steal of a deal, or just something unique, it’s out there. Skip the change room line up and small talk with sales associates … just click away.

One site to mention is Net-a-Porter.com, a luxury fashion retailer, which began its venture in 2000. With over 400 lines to choose from Net-a-Porter is the largest online retailer of its kind. Founder Natalie Massenet sold the company last year to Swiss luxury group Richemont for more than $500 million and remained executive chairwoman. She must be doing something right! They also have a sister site, The Outnet, which is perfect for finding killer deals on high-end items.

Thinking that your days of lining up at cash registers are over? Not likely that the brick-and-mortar retailers are going anywhere. Most are finding ways to reaching a broader audience through e-commerce sites, social networking, and handheld devises.

A new venture called Pose is combining the brick-and-mortar shopping experience with interactive technology. They have created a free iPhone application that allows you to snap a photo of yourself in your great find, tag its price and retail location, and share it with your friends via email, facebook and twitter. Friends can comment on the product virtually instead of being in the store with you.

Just when you thought shopping was being made simpler you can have 200+ people comment on whether you should buy that new frock!

Links: Net-A-Porter / The Outnet / Pose

fashion online product

Creating Green Design with Function

With Earth Day approaching on April 22nd I begin to think of lush green, clean water, blue skies and warm wind- so cliche (or maybe that’s just my desperate feelings for summer to come quickly). Wanting to have warm toes open to the air I dream of sandals and sexy open toed pumps.

While in the this dreamy state a friend passed on to me a link to the Moss Rug. We are talking a living bath-mat! Who doesn’t love something that brings the outside indoors. Hoo design along with other distributors have taken the “Moss Carpet” to market after the online buzz it created when Nquyen La Chanh created it during her degree program at Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

"The humidity of the bathroom and the drops flowing from the body, water the mosses. This vegetation carpet procures a great feeling to your feet,” says Nquyen La Chanh. ="The idea was to a new way of having your plants inside. Not only plants in pots quietly standing in the corner of a living room but alive plants, evolving in the house."

This eccentric bath-mat is made out of 70 balls of moss held together in a latex frame has gone on sale after a prototype creation became a hit online.

La Chanh’s creation made me interested in what other designs she has thought up. After checking out her portfolio I was drawn one of her other ideas: the Kitchen Garden. Have fresh aromatic herblets in your kitchen. Just cut them when you need some. They can grow vertically.

I am inspired by her youthful creativity and ingenuity. I am hopeful about our future generations creating green designs that cross function and modern design.

Links: Earth Day / Hoo Design / La Chanh

product green design

Customize your iPhone - Please

We were just in Whistler this weekend for the opening of the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival - free music, snow, art and fun. We shared a condo with 9 other friends in the Village and while everyone had there rooms set upstairs, cell phones and chargers lined the kitchen island and table downstairs. There must have been over 5 iPhones, 4 of which had the same case – all black. I must have mistakenly picked up the wrong phone several times before moving mine away from the others so I wouldn't get mixed up.

Later that weekend we hung out with friend and artist Taka Sudo at Pecha Kucha. When taking his iPhone out to show some photos I noticed he had a custom case-cover with his artwork fused onto the white case. Immediately I asked where I could get one and told him the story of too many iPhones with black cases. Taka told me about Society6, a website that not only sells his artwork prints but showcases other fantastic artists and fuses selected work beautifully onto iPhone cases. There are hundreds of artrist to peruse; from locals to accross the boarder and international.

So don't get caught with the black case cattle. Support local artists and customize with original artwork. The cost is only $35. and the quality is great - now it's just deciding which case to buy.

Links: Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival / Pecha Kucha / Taka Sudo / Society 6

Tea Time - A Kettle with A History

Alessi, an Italian company specializing in stainless steal production, founded in the 20‘s has gained great recognition for the design of their products. Their products are now in more permanent museum collections than any other product.

Alessi collaborates with designers outside of their company to create unique household products. They have been doing this since the 50’s and have had a lot of success by collaborating with influential designers.

The bird kettle came out of Alessi’s collaboration with architect/ designer Michael Graves. Graves was selected from a contest Alessi held for architects.

First introduced in 1985, this whistling bird kettle combine Italian high-end production with American design and is still Alessi’s number one seller.

The simplistic stainless steal kettle combines great design thinking and mass production methods. The handle and bird are now available in a few colour options, but the first design used the symbolic red and blue. Red - warning that the bird is hot and blue to represent that the handle was cool enough to touch.

HGTV’s Design DNA featured the kettle - watch how it’s built.

Links: Alessi / Design DNA

product industrial design

Draw a Line and Get Lost

It started as an exercise looking for their company’s Corporate Design. During the creative process they found a visual affinity for lines and developed different interactive modules to create patterns and unique compositions.

Britzpetermann is a three-man design studio in Germany’s midwest. On their homepage you’ll be able to test, draw and build your own line compositions. But be sure you don’t have anything else to do – because once you start it's hard to stop!

Links: Britzpetermann

The Design of Politics

With Canada's 41st federal election campaign confirmed Canadians will be heading to the polls on May 2 to cast their vote. It seems we've been in and out of the polls quite a bit since the Conservatives have been in power and I started thinking of how Canadian political campaigns try to reach the masses on a visual basis, especially to the younger demographic. After hours of google searching there was little Canadian artwork that was as innovate and inspiring as the European and American political design, both current and past. Looking back at the Obama campaign particularly, showed how a candidate used art and design to bring together the American people—capturing their voices in a visual way. Obama Design Director Scott Thomas, collaborated with artists and designers nation wide to create a truly historic campaign.

No matter what political party the design is for, the pressure is always to win. Successful campaign artwork can show conflict and contrast while focusing on message, design and colour. While the design may not sway the voter one way or the other: a talented designer may create a piece strong enough to entice the opposed voter. The donkey and the elephant have engaged in more than one head-to-tail combat on who is more educated, who can drive a point home better but most importantly, who will win.

Canadians can expect to see federal party leaders out as early as this week campaigning for votes. I hope to see Canadians reflect on the importance of this election and artists and designers to use their skill to help young voters gain insight on the power of voting and the key message; this is your future, this is your country, this is your vote.

Links: Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign / CBC Politics

politics design Canada

Lovely Day for a Guinness

Oh the iconic Guinness posters … witty and encouraging.

Guinness ads have changed a lot since those early 1930’s poster with messaging like “A GUINNESS a day, is good for you.” or “Guinness for Strength”. Gone are the days of beer advertisements convincing you of drinking your way to better health.

You can find all of these posters on the Guinness website. Within their Gallery of Ads there are posters from the 1930’s to 1980’s illustrating the evolution of Guinness advertising.

Personally I love the nostalgic posters of the 30’s and 40’s with John Gilroy’s humorous animal illustrations. The 1936 “My Goodness, My GUINNESS” Ostrich is a classic example of what Gilroy brought to Guinness. This poster caused some concern, as several people pointed out that if the ostrich had drunk the pint, the glass would have been the other way up. In response Gilroy stated, the ostrich had been trying to balance the glass on its beak when it slipped (copying the seal’s balancing act of course!).

John Gilroy was an English artist and illustrator, who worked for S H Benson's advertising agency. In 1928 Benson’s won the Guinness advertising account and Gilroy became the creator of the iconic advertisement art featuring the Zoo Keeper and animals. Gilroy apparently found inspired for the first poster when watching a seal at the circus.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

To view the collection of posters visit: www.guinness.com

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