Alexander Graham Plane 1978
Alexander Graham Plane 1978
As the era of novelty telephones took hold in the 1970s, third-party phones of all shapes and gimmicks began finding their way into homes. Most telephone companies were still discouraging the practice of customers connecting third-party phones to their lines, but interestingly-shaped phones caught on regardless. Canadian phone company Northern Telecom addressed the issue with their own cute airplane-inspired phone.
The Alexander Graham Plane, part of Nortel's “Imagination” line of contemporary telephone designs, was one of very few novelty phones of the period to be actively manufactured and made available by a telco.
Acrylic on canvas, 7x5″. From my series of paintings of historical telephones.
More Posts from Robtfirefly and Others
K8 Red Telephone Box 1968
The noble Red Telephone Box is a British institution, inspiring warm thoughts and a distinctively British style across the generations. The K8 marked the final generation of the classic red booth before the range was retired.
Bringing the classic phone box style into the modern era, the K8 took a turn for the minimalist; multi-pane windows, hard right angles, and wooden doors of the past gave way to single large glass panes, rounded corners, and aluminium doors of the future. While the silhouette still evoked the distinguished red boxes of old, the updated details brought the range to a close with a thoroughly 1960s flair.
Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″. From my series of paintings of historical telephones.
I subtly altered a scene from the Blake's 7 episode "Bounty." I wonder if you can spot what I changed.
An excerpt from my lies-about-Doctor-Who book.
An excerpt from Doctor Huh?!, a book in progress.
3 September, 2004: The Making of a Logo
“Right,” said Russell T Davies, pouring himself another mug of tea before turning back to his art team. “Now, on to the next issue; the logo. Suggestions?”
“Let’s reuse the Diamond Logo,” said junior...
My BFF Grey has a listing on the Internet Movie Database.
As you may know, if someone listed on IMDb wants to upload a photograph to their listing they need to buy a pro membership on the site. While I couldn't do that for her, I did the next best thing: I redrew my Fairey-ish portrait of her in smileys, and posted it to her IMDb message board.
I can't help but think the potential of message board smileys as an artistic medium has barely been scratched.
chiaestevez:
I definitely put my faith in Blast Hardcheese.
I made this remix at least 100 years ago, it never fails to make me happy that other folks keep circulating it, making it into videos like this, etc. It's the reason I ended up choosing the domain SpaceMutiny.com for my music.
They have lots of new gTLDs you can put a website on nowadays.
I acquired ascii.bike and put an ASCII bike on it.
This is a new variant of Scrabble I'm working on which is fairly mean to its players. Rare letters are no longer rare, point values are rendered mostly meaningless, and you have to make valid plays without actually seeing any of the words on the board. Please click over and share your thoughts, I'd love some input on this. Would it actually be any fun to play this way?
It's National Draw T-Rex Day, as started by crashsuit and spread around by nedroid over on Twitter yeterday. For my contribution I riffed (very badly) on this guy.
The President's Red Phone
The Moscow-Washington hotline which existed during the mid-20th-century Cold War was a teletype-based affair, not a telephone, but that didn't stop the imagined concept of a red emergency phone in the White House catching on in popular culture. One example of this is the Red Phone's starring role in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; indeed, the film's Spanish title is ¿Teléfono rojo?, volamos hacia Moscú, which means “Red Telephone? We're Flying to Moscow.”
The iconic “Red Phone” image continues to grip the public imagination today, appearing regularly in fiction, art, and even Presidential campaign ads.
Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″. From my series of paintings of historical telephones.
Hello there. I'm Rob. This used to be my art blog until I left Tumblr; here's why you won't see me around here anymore. This is my website, you can find the rest of what I do from there. Here's a bunch of social media I do still use. Here's how to contact me directly if you wish, please feel free. All my original artwork posted on this Tumblr is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Feel free to reuse, remix, etc. any of my stuff under the terms of this license.
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