gareth bouch :: stuff & things

Something I was working on quite intensively throughout December has finally come to fruition, with the Teletext Holidays iPhone application becoming available in the iTunes App Store.

Working closely with software development gurus Vivorum.com I designed the interface and sorted all the graphic and branding elements, and have to say I’m mighty happy with the result.
The interface is a very cool purple glossy experience, totally square with the brand’s “art of less” philosophy and has beautiful slick usability touches, such as swiping from deal to deal with a flick of the finger and a nifty “Saved” function whereby you can store off holiday deals (from the daily updates) to review later. Each deal also contains a handy button that instantly uses the iPhone to call the travel agent.
And each time the user launches the application they get a different inspirational image and brand message.

It’s a really nice piece of work, and it was a great experience working closely with Teletext and Virorum on it. I reckon it’s a huge and healthy jump in Teletext’s delivery and continues to move them from ‘analogue’ to very very very ‘digital’. And for me, an enthusiastic iPhone user, it was a revelation to get deep and dirty into imagining and delivering a completely new kind of user experience for a famous UK brand about which people tend to have very firm preconceptions.

There’s an info page on the application here – and the iTunes App Store link is here.
It’s a free download, and a great way to scout around for your next holiday deal.

Fab news for anybody attending the Scott Redding Appeal Fundraiser Event. As the day approaches – this coming Saturday January 16th (see the Scott Redding 2010 Event page for full details) – It’s been announced that another young British star and close friend of Scott’s, Danny Webb (shown in the pic on the left, with Scott on the right), will be at the event – so you can actually meet both of the guys. Don’t miss out on a rare chance to say Hello to another great up and coming MotoGP talent.

Full details of the event, options for buying event tickets and making online donations, and updates on all work by the Scott Redding Supporters Club can be found at ScottRedding2010.com

Silicon Alley Insider has some choice snippets, apparently from someone who’s actually seen the forthcoming Apple ‘tablet’ / ’slate’ device – about one of its (many) great mysteries… what it’s Operating System is going to look like. Is it iPhone-ish? It is OSX-ish? Is it a hybrid? How do you use it? What’s the interface metaphor and control paradigm?
Well apparently the best we’re going to get for now are…
• “It’s pretty.”
• “The UI has a good bit of new sexy to it.”
• “It’s a big iPhone, but it’s not just a big iPhone.”
Helpful, eh…?

Oh, and here, if you’re interested in the device, are a few artists impressions drawn from across the interweb of what it MIGHT be like (according to the voices in their heads). Some nice bits of ideas in there, but you kind of know the real thing is still going to exceed pretty much any expectations.
Roll on the end of January.

Very cool and leftfield design puzzle thing by the excellent Londonist.
If you’re having trouble working out what the “elements” actually are, then there’s clues, discussions and answers here…
Enjoy.

artvinyl.com – a company specialising in display systems for album covers – has just announced the winner of the 2009 Best Cover award. Industry experts produce a liast of 50 nominations which are then voted on by the public. It’s good that the art of the album cover isn’t dead in the age of downloads, given that it’s such a tangible, physical thing – something currently on my mind with the recent post on the aesthetics of “Avatar” and the album artwork of Roger Dean – and a good choice for this year’s winner; “The Resistance” by Muse.
You can see all 50 nominations at artvinyl.com

I’ve just finished up a couple of wildly different books that have kept me occupied over the Christmas break.
The first is the autobiography of footballer Fernando Torres, “El Niño” – possibly a surprise choice for anyone who knows me pretty well given that soccer isn’t really the centre of my world. The reason I picked it was that I’d had a number of emails and messages sent to my El Canto Del Loco website from Liverpool supporters saying that they’d been checking out the band because of it being mentioned in the Torres book; not a surprise perhaps, given the friendship of Torres with ECDL’s singer Dani Martin (and his cameo appearance in the promo video for “Ya Nada Volvera A Ser Como Antes”).

It’s been a thoroughly good, if easy read. In fact, surprisingly easy – not too heavy on match stats and the like – stuff that’s a powerful anaesthetic for me when it comes to football I have to admit – but more a genuine autobiography in that it feels very much about the man himself. It’s a journey, geographical and emotional from Madrid to Liverpool – and also a seemingly heartfelt love letter to the fans of both Atletico Madrid and Liverpool; two tribes that he feels are from exactly the same mould in many ways.
Torres comes across as someone who’s perfectly aware of his gifts and yet admirably modest and genuine, and someone who values where he comes from and those who helped get him to where he is.
Also it has to be said that the book is beautifully designed for something so ‘mainstream’ – and for an autobiography. Lovely spreads, great use of space, typography, grids and image texturing. I could get into this soccer lark!

The other book couldn’t be more different: “The Suspicions of Mr Whicher” by Kate Summerscale, which is very much a documentary account of perhaps the definitive and original “country house murder”. It is an amazing account; extraordinary in its scope and detail, a work borne of incredibly deep research that could easily have turned out dry and drab, and yet comes over as nothing short of a page-turner.
Full of atmosphere like a Wilkie Collins novel – not surprising as the case of Road Hill House influenced him in writing “The Moonstone”, it’s a grim and disturbing mystery of child murder and a dysfunctional Victorian family with dark secrets, and also an account of the birth/emergence of the detective as the centre of an investigation and the centre of attention – of the genesis of criminal investigation as a science, and of the explosion of the media’s fascination with crime and trials.

It’s fascinating to see how things have changed – how crime scenes are investigated, how evidence is gathered and treated, the timescales over how events unfurl, and the politics of local and metropolitan forces in handling media interest and public appetite.
A genuinely interesting historical study, and at the same time a gripping and creepy murder story.
Brilliant for curling up with in the warm with a bottle of the red stuff…

I went to see Avatar yesterday – basically seen posters around and the odd trailer online and thought it best to catch it in 3D on a big screen – and thoroughly enjoyed it.

If there were any misgivings they’d be about the lack of subtlety in the environmentalist and political / foreign policy / war on terror messages in the film; although it’s worth noting that given the mess we’re all in with the planet in general and also fucking people over for the resources they happen to live on top of, the time for subtlety might be gone anyway.

It was nice however that the film didn’t go totally overboard on 3D by insisting on pointing everything at you; a couple of guns and bows and arrows was enough. As with films like Jurassic Park, some of the most impressive visuals were not about action but about detail. Jurassic Park had a lovely longshot of herds of dinosaurs grazing on an open plain, which at the time looked breathtaking, Avatar has tremendous shots of slightly defocussed insects floating in and out of shafts of light, or brief glimpses up through fern leafs into the forest canopy and the sunlight. Every bit as amazing as the full-on action.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me, though, was how familiar the aesthetics were. Despite the contemporary politics and the bang up to date 3D delivery, the film actually took me back years and years. To the album covers of prog-rockers Yes, and the visionary artwork of Roger Dean (who also did their classic logo design).

It wasn’t only in the most obvious things like the floating mountains – a theme that Dean visited and experimented with on a number of occasions – but also things like the luminosity of Pandora’s forest landscape at night, the multicoloured dragons, and the arcs of stone surrounding the sacred tree (see the image attached for examples of Roger Dean’s originals; click for a larger view).
It could be said of course that Cameron has visited the territory of stuff like weird luminescence before in The Abyss – but there was a particular overall aesthetic approach to the whole ecosystem that had very very strong echoes of Dean’s artworks and worlds.

I have no idea if he was in any way a conscious influence or not, but it’s nice to be nodded into memories of another time and of such inspired pop art.
EDIT: Just found this website which tends to ask the same question, but is also worth a visit purely as a great selection of images of Roger Dean’s work.

And it’s not just James Cameron… Did anyone else think that the Ood’s homeworld in the Christmas episode of Doctor Who looked strikingly like the cover of “Relayer”?

First post of the new year – and perhaps appropriately – also the first day of a completely new look for the blog.
I know it’s only a blog and not exactly one of my “proper” websites but nonetheless it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while; I’ve really enjoyed working with WordPress for the main and commercial sites and even though I don’t really aim to do anything really clever with these pages I was beginning to feel that the old blog looked way TOO much like a bog standard Blogger page and that I wanted it to be something a bit more unique, and something that genuinely looked a bit more like the “Stuff & Things” title suggested – something a bit individual, a bit eclectic and a bit magaziney even.

And it’s a big new year – in a lot of ways…
The redundancy from Teletext is now complete and I’m working at getting Vroom Media up and running. A deep recession probably isn’t the best time to start a new business (unless it’s in repossessions or knee-capping I guess) but I didn’t have much choice.
Along with the new design business startup, there’s also the move. Living in London’s no longer an option – it’s always been overpriced and it’s now something that can’t really be afforded.
And to be honest, maybe it’s time to move away. Go somewhere more peaceful, somewhere with more room, more space outside, somewhere new for a new phase of life.

Teletext – and London – have both been good rides for the past 11 years; but despite the uncertainty and risks I’ve got to say that I’m really looking forward to shaping a new life as my own boss and doing work that interests me, being able (up to a point) to pick and choose good jobs and keep variety and interest alive – and I’m looking forward to doing it somewhere other than London.
At the moment it’s looking very much like Cardiff or Bridgend – almost certainly the Vale of Glamorgan. The idea of more time to enjoy the place I live, got out, get fitter, put time aside for music and writing – it’s all good.

There’s been some sad news too at the turn of the year; hearing out of the blue from an old schoolfriend that one of our friends from back then has just died. He was something of a soulmate at school – we were in a band together – an awesome one – and he was a magical guitarist with an ear not just for the obvious, catchy and rocking – but also the offbeat, the sonically adventurous and the ‘out there’; someone I owe a lot of my love of genuinely interesting and engaging music to.
We hadn’t seen each other for years – that’s what we all seem to do nowadays; and it’s only awful jolts like this that remind you what a fucking wasteful stupid thing that is – and I think that the urge to do positive things, to make the most of what lies ahead may well be in part down to that news.

The coming weeks are going to be fairly messy, juggling new pieces of work alongside trips down to Wales for house hunting; it’s all fairly hectic and I hope I can make the excitement of seeing the houses and surroundings outweigh the stressy bits of it all.
Happy new year anyway. There’s lots of possibilities ahead – and I hope great things for all of us.

Pic: the Roman god Janus (January, geddit?) – looking back and looking ahead

Whilst the Indy looks ahead ten years, French website Nowhereelse.fr points us towards the very near future with these clips of what some take to be a glimpse of the forthcoming Apple tablet device (iSlate, iGuide are amongst the names mooted) which is rumoured to be associated with a ‘big’ media event in late January.
Not sure about this though – something about it is iffy (or a few things are iffy) – not sure I can put my finger on it exactly. But it’s a very nice fake nonetheless if it is indeed a fake.

UK newspaper, The Independent, stumbles slightly tackily into the next decade with a twee but nonetheless interesting vision of how far things will have changed for us all by 2020…
(Part 2 tomorrow apparently).

Just wanted to put this up – a pic of me that I like (they don’t come round often…) – it’s me sitting, waiting in the infield of the Circuito Ricardo Tormo, Valencia, on the morning of Tuesday November 10th – watching for Alvaro Bautista for come out of the Suzuki pits where he was conducting his first tests on a MotoGP bike, immediately following the final race of the 2009 season.
Thanks to Michaela for the pic. Top job. :-)

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough good news around at Christmastimes… Don’t know why – (maybe it’s because we tend to try and happy ourselves up for the occasion and the world doesn’t stand a chance of living up to that), but there just doesn’t. And that’s broadly been so this year too – ongoing whitewashy shambles of an Iraq inquiry, total cop-out and big finger to the planet from Copenhagen – but at least today has flagged up two stories that have really genuinely made me incredibly happy.

The first is pretty obvious – Rage Against The Machine taking the Xmas number 1 slot from some vanilla X-Factor prettyboy singing some crappy banality at the order of his master.
Thank Fuck, quite frankly. Brilliant news.
The X-Factor may be enjoyed by millions but that doesn’t make it good of course (and it isn’t good – it’s fucking evil) – and contrary to the bafflingly poor thinking of some absurdly biased BBC newsreader/interviewers over the past days, it does NOT set up winners in long and glittering and important careers; so far they’ve been largely shortlived. For which one can only be thankful given the tripe, pap and worthless formulaic shite they put out. The BBC people actually were pretty annoying – completely glossing over the Rage profits going to homeless charity Shelter, having been corrected on a point about making money from the single, and also accusing the song of not being about Christmas…. er, like the X-Factor song then… Muppets.

Anyway – they did it. WE did it. Brilliant. It’s not a cynical act (as described by the cynical Simon Cowell in an act of breathtaking cynicism even by his own magnificent standards) – it’s a genuine authentic act of championing authenticity over cynicism. And I hope it’s only the beginning.

I also hope it’s only the beginning for more coming out and acceptance of gay sports stars following the announcement by the Welsh rugby star – Cardiff Blues player and the most capped player for Wales and former British and Irish Lions captain, Gareth Thomas. Sport can be a macho and misogynistic animal, and of course homophobic too. Yet statistically, it’s blindingly obvious that there should be quite a few gay sportsmen out there – who knows, maybe great ones – great role models. And that one of them has had the guts to come out is great news…
“It has been really tough for me,” he told the papers, “hiding who I really am, and I don’t want it to be like that for the next young person who wants to play rugby, or some frightened young kid. I don’t know if my life is going to be easier because I’m out, but if it helps someone else, if it makes one young lad pick up the phone to Childline, then it will have been worth it.”

Let’s hope this might just be a moment of genuine shift like the Rage Xmas number 1. Today has definitely been a good day. Hopefully the reasons why it’s been a great day can lead to more great days to come.
Good on you Gareth Thomas, good on you Rage Against the machine – and good on you all who bought the single :-)

REFERENCES:
Rage Against The Machine article
Gareth Thomas article

Many thanks to Apple’s Garageband for flagging up this helpful little gem whilst I was (successfully) installing a Jam Pack.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Fascinating mag (and also ‘tablet experience’ in general) by Bonnier, and Berg.
If Apple’s tablet device ever appears I hope it’s content could work something like this…