Gismonda - Sarah Bernhardt - by Alphonse Mucha - 1896

Before the Modernists, there was Art Nouveau | Part 1

“Nature is a big book from which we can draw inspiration, and it is in that book that we must look for principles.”Hector Guimard – Art Nouveau Architect – Architectural Record, vol. XII, n° 2, 1902 The name was sort of generic, as opposed to something like Expressionism. Art Nouveau just means New Art, but […]

Saxxon arcade video game illustration and logo

Early 3D games and isometric digital art.

You can look at it two ways, either isometric designs are a way of simplifying 3D, or, the way i see it: an idealized way of looking at 3D. An interesting abstraction of perspective. Now, if you want to get technical, isometric perspective is incorrect. It’s not really how the three dimensional world works. The […]

The Earthsea trilogy.

“Ogion went on a halfmile or so, and said at last, ‘To hear, one must be silent’.” A Wizard of Earthsea You might know the story, the one about the boy who had magical powers, who lived with his uncle and had a face mark? A mark given to him by a life threatening situation. […]

The art of infinite creativity: Moebius.

In the mid 80s, me and a buddy of mine from high school used to read this Argentinian graphic novel magazine. It would contain lots of different works by both Argentinian and European authors. This was the first time I came across Moebius and his beautiful out of this world graphics. He did work with […]

Atari 2600 Adventure Cover art

Time to talk about Adventure.

The Atari 2600 is one of my favourite gaming consoles. It’s definetely the one I feel the most nostalgia for. Actually, its both the Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600 that give me goosebumps when I remember the good times I had with them. But we’ll leave the Commodore for another time. I’ve played tons […]

Heaven 17, a British band you probably missed.

They might be well known in the UK, but in North American and around the world Heaven 17 went under the radar. But I tell you, if 80s synth pop is your thing, then you must read on. Heaven 17 came to be out of an idea called the British Electric Foundation. This was supposed […]

Wired Magazine in the early 90s.

Wired magazine these days is just a Big-tech positivist propaganda machine. But it wasn’t like that 30 years ago. In the 90s Wired Magazine was “super hip”. First off, the layout was pushing the boundaries of design, like lots of things back then when computers started to get used as design tools. Actually, its layout […]

Before the web there was Hypercard.

It begins with a title card. Dark grey colour over a white background. The title card could have been anything. A game, a story, a contact list, a journal of someones travels, history, geography, and so on. A card had (has) images, text and clickable areas or text which will navigate to another card. This […]

Pump up the Volume.

We see a room full of artifacts belonging to a teenager. A teenager from the early 90s. There’s a red switch that gets turned on, and this causes a buzzing sound to be heard. The buzzing sound of a radio going live. A pirate radio. That’s one of the first scenes from the film Pump […]

Record player

The Rise of Vinyl.

“Yet the people who do still buy physical media are audiophiles who are able to appreciate vinyl,” said a friend from a community I belong to. Yes and no, was my answer. It wasn’t in those words, or short, though. Vinyl has been picking up steam for about 10 years now. Maybe more, I don’t […]