During the Now we are talking Festival the third edition of the CorelCup took place, the one and only football tournament for Dutch Designers (edition 01 & 02). Because of the beautiful weather it was the first time that it took place in the open air. Maybe we can blame the surface at the beachside of Scheveningen, but the average level was disgraceful by any standard. Luckily all participants perfectly understood that the CorelCup is not about winning. It’s about style. It’s the perfect opportunity to gain and loose respect. #winning was definitely not a trending topic at the CorelCup.

The final between team “Ampersand” and team “Weet Ik Veel” was miserably won by team “Ampersand” through very effective defensive football & masculine counters: 6-2. Clear numbers. Lousy style.

Winners of the CorelCup 3.0

Team Ampersand (Bart-Jan Verhoef, Jan-Paul Koudstaal & Res Zangger). They have won the petty challenge trophy, and are invited to defend the trophy at the fourth edition of the CorelCup.

Consolation prizes:

Category Best Bicycle Kick*:

Team Pilsner (captain Ozhan Ates)

Category Best Gallery Play*:

Team Weet Ik Veel (captain Lukas van Buuren)

The consolation prize is a unique, 100% legal software package called CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5*. Both these teams are invited to design the poster and announcements for the next CorelCup with their new software package. Can’t wait to see what you can make with this €700-package. Remember, it’s all about style.

Dear Bas/Sami,

This is Pound in Yiwu, China. It’s nice to know you here.I got your information from the internet, and be tempted by your funny and attractive website. So I want to contact with you further.Our com. is specialized in the production of medium and high end seamless garments.We has become one of the largest seamless manufactures and exporters here in China mainland.

For more detailed informations, pls look through our website or contact me directly. We hope we can have a trial cooperation, maybe it’s a good beginning of business between us.

Poldercup, the movie. For those who don’t speak Dutch: a goal isn’t really a goal if you didn’t first dragged a women, a girl or a lady into the water. Men say.

We love football. We love subcultures. Sometimes these two meet, for example when Pied La Biche organises three-sided football, invented by the Danish artist Asger Jorn. Not extreme enough? Try swamp soccer, once made up by Esa Romppainen. And again another fascinating variation is blind football.

Recently our love for football and subcultures perfectly came together at the Poldercup. Football on a Dutch meadow with ditches and channels crossing the pitch. Scenery: cows, clouds, windmills, church towers. The pitch remained a battlefield, the water an extra opponent challenge as leaping ditches wasn’t allowed.

Where the crossing of channels should have forced teams to come up with new tactics for playing football, everybody was just struggling with the muddy grass-plot. That became a welcome excuse for not being able to do our Aurelio-tricks. Quote we heard after another failed shot: “my right leg had a perfect shot, all went fine, should have been a goal. The problem was my left leg, that got simultaneously stuck in the mud”.

Doesn’t matter we got kicked out in the semi-final, doesn’t matter Bas got a light concussion, doesn’t matter there were as much cameras as players, it was a beautiful day. Thank you Maider López, we love the horizon as much as you do.

In 1986, Leon Grellutch would become the first Belgian astronaut. Unfortunately, the trip sponsored by Jupiler will never see the day and Leon will land forever. He’s always visiting Belgian universities to give lectures about life on Mars.

WTF? More here.

From: Jonathan Perez
Date: July 20, 2009
Subject: Liza and Elsa

…there are probably not many things you could learn from me in type design, BUT maybe I could learn you some things about “lettres d’amour” for your classical education.
The three most important French poets, when we speak about “lettres d’amour”, may be : Alphonse de Lamartine (main book : les Méditations), Guillaume Apollinaire (Poèmes à Lou for instance) and Louis Aragon (most beautiful book: le Roman inachevé). (You could also have choose for the name of your font the name of one of their 3 main loves: Julie, Lou or Elsa).

I think the poems of Aragon for Elsa are the most beautiful things I have ever read in French litterature, so, I don’t know if you read French but here it is the last poem of the “Roman inachevé”, probably one of the most famous and the most beautiful lettre d’amour. Furthermore, I think it is perfect for type designers and your project Liza, as the last lines of the poem are (approximatively): At the end there will be only one name on the wall / And under the portrait of the love / My words are painted
(more…)

On the 5th of February 2009 we got an email from Alex with this picture. If you have more information about this (or discover yourself on the picture), please let us know. Thanks.

Love language by Sasson Kung

Sasson Kung graduated in 2006 at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. His final work Love Language is dealing with the problem: how can people with different languages (writing systems) communicate (and fall in love) with each other online. He has chosen for Chinese and Latin as basic languages. On the search for the perfect love-communication-tool he developed his own writing system which is combining both writing systems.

By choosing love as subject he narrowed the amount of words which you actually need to communicate (chat) with each other. His final work consists out of an online chat tool, and a keyboard mask. Each key is not representing a letter but a whole word. The whole word is displayed on the keyboard mask, so you know what you are typing. He merged the two languages in a kind of hermaphrodite sign-system. Half chinese half latin. Readable by both readers.

Here are some films:
Why is it so difficult to learn a new language?
Love Language System

More work by Indian sign-painters from Himachal Pradesh, northern India. For a more personal approach, go and take a look at the other sign painting examples in this blog. There you can for example see the work of Manish Kumar, who politely painted Underware’s logotype in a small town street in northern India.