Archive for category General Design

The flower power movement started in the 60′s as a symbol for passive resistance and non-violent ideologies and was rooted in peoples opposition to the Vietnam War. It became synonymous with hippies and images of psychedelic, colourful flowers became the norm and it has been the stereotype for many hippy ever since.

The term flower power originated in California in 1965 in an essay by beat poet Allen Ginsberg who said protests should be more like a form of street theatre and advocated giving out masses of fresh flowers, toys, candy and balloons to police and to spread love and peace instead of violent protests.

Three symbols normally make up flower power images and they are the peace sign, a hand doing the peace sign and of course flowers. Things like rainbows, the word love and smiley faces are often used as well, basically anything that is ‘nice’.

The flower power imagery has been used to great effect to evoke certain time periods and films, most notably in the TV show ‘That 70′s Show’ which often had cut scenes which would be flower power images being put on screen with some ‘groovy’ music to show that the scene was changing.

Nowadays the style is used mainly as a stereotype for the 60′ and 70′s and hippies but you can still find some old school hippy shops and houses that are adorned with lots of flowers and peace signs if you look hard enough. Of course you could always just look at the faux hippy style that goes to Glastonbury every year…

Because I’m a bit of a nosey friend and I love checking out peoples houses so much, I seem to have got myself into the classic situation of volunteering to help my friends move house – just because I want to see their new place so desperately.

So next week I will be up at the crack of dawn and going down to the rental van place with my mate to get the biggest van they have and then I have a fun day of removing countless boxes and things that I will somehow manage to break from one house and putting them into another. I’m pretty sure I only wanted to see the house…

Oh well it is still quite exciting, even though it isn’t my new place I can’t wait to do it and check it all out. Obviously I will be straight in there with lots of ‘suggestions’. I’m not sure how long they will be able to put up with me giving them such helpful suggestions as to how they should decorate and arrange everything but I’ll guess at about 5 minutes!

This is the 4th time this year I’ve helped somebody move house and the fifth if you include my own house move! Maybe I should just sell my little car and check out the local vans for sale section and then charge people for my help. My own little house moving business. “One man, a van and a whole host of decorating tips while your at it!”

One of the hottest (you will groan at that in a bit) fashions and trends at the moment is the racing bike and ‘fixie’ bike scene with every hipster worth his skinny jeans riding around on the coolest new fixed gear bike or retro bike they have saved from the scrapyard.

This advert from Neil Pryde Bikes is possibly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while! The bike is so hot it is literally ON FIRE!