These top three signs were hand made by friends who have an online business creating custom tiki bar signs (PariArts.com). But ohh look, a lazy designer for the JoAnn Fabrics stores decided to turn them in as his or her own, and now they’re selling them in stores. Bad. Legal action to follow…

…and they’re currently for sale on ebay. The seller explains: “We purchased this group of related drawings and paper at a local estate auction. The estate sale was that of a designer named Aureli - according to the auctioneer who sold this he had been an architect and had taught at both Columbia and MIT.” (A quick search didn’t turn up anything on this name Aureli.) Let’s hope Disney’s recently announced “new” House of the Future will have interiors this super.

SEE ALSO: Looking At It’s A Small World, Seeing Modern Art

The iconic facade and sets of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction were designed in the late 1960’s and bear the unmistakable markings of that time (and the couple proceeding decades). But I wanted specifics. What had Mary Blair, the attraction’s main designer, been exposed to that may have inspired the famous styling of that ride? Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Top image below: Mary Blair, Small World concept art, 1965. And below, two pieces by Auguste Herbin, 1951 and 1950, that are undeniably similar to Blair’s work.Below is a collage by Ray Eames in 1949. Besides a similar styling to Blair, the collage technique and use of transparent layers was something Blair would later use in many of her Small World collages.Below is another Blair illustration, and below that, a Paul Klee painting, Burg und Sonne, 1928I saw many similarities between Klee and Blair, like the three images below. The first image, Klee’s Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1932, uses leaf shapes seen in the Blair piece below it. The third piece is also a Klee and has some subtle similarities to the work above it.The Small World attraction debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair with a an enormous kinetic sculpture at the entrance called the Tower of the Four Winds (second image below). Designed by Rolly Crump but I see inspiration in an unproduced Do Nothing solar-powered kinetic toy designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957 (first image below).And lastly it seems It’s a Small World continues to inspire others, like perhaps Rex Ray (second image below) whose work possesses the same sense of retro-whimsy seen in Blair’s art for the finale scene in the attraction (below).SEE ALSO MY: Patty Wickman Paints Women Wrestling and I’m All Hey that’s from Epcot

Video o’ the collection:

And look how much fun housework is in a Gareth Pugh original. I think that’s him, I found it on his myspace page. 

It’s one of the best things I saw in Vegas. It’s designed in-house under the direction of Audra Danzak, lighting design by Daivd Hersey, and scenic elements designed by Stephen Stefanou. The display is changed five times a year (but constantly refreshed) and takes about a week to change out.

Holiday show: Dec. 1
Chinese New Year: Jan. 12
Spring celebration: March 15
Summer garden party: May 17
Harvest show: Sept. 13

Someone over at Dior thought Victoire de Castellane’s new flower and insect-heavy jewelry collection needed it’s own island inside Second Life. I made a visit, filmed it, and set it to Philip Glass, resulting in overly dramatic virtual home movie.

The latest version of Disney’s Tower of Terror attraction opened this past fall at their Tokyo Disney Sea park in Japan and the façade is frickin’ amazing. Like the other Towers of Terror it’s just under 200’ and features a free-fall attraction inside. But who cares about that – the exterior is the show. This top-heavy architectural mélange of Moorish, Gothic, and Victorian styling clearly appears to be the work of a wealthy eccentric, and it was, according to the attraction’s storyline.

The official attraction website is exhaustively elaborate but heavy on back-story. For photos, like the ones I stole above, see here and this site for tons more info and full video of the attraction and grounds.

Just for fun, I’ve put together a comparison of Tower of Terror attractions from around the world in descending order of aesthetic appeal.

The super cute one is from Medicom.

The rabid Runaway Brain figure from Span of Sunset comes in a few colorways.
…Also a couple different colorways for Andy Mouse, a figure based on a Keith haring collaboration with Andy Warhol.

Span of Sunset also has a Cheshire cat series. Here’s the punk, Haunted Mansion, and Pirate versions.

Shag has a Pirates of the Caribbean Boy vinyl, and Medicom has a great Pirate Mickey to be released this spring.

Freshnessmag revealed Roen’s Mickey figure inspired by the iconic Clash cover art.

And lastly, My favorite, Mickey Mao by Frank Kozik.

Due to the response from the brilliantly designed 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag seen in my previous post, I’ve dug out this beauty. If you, like myself, were an aesthetically astute child who visited Disneyland in the 70’s, then you’ll remember how captivated you were by this print and how you didn’t care what souvenir you got as long as it came in this bag. Because I like you, I’ve scanned and created a big desktop wallpaper version of it.

Here in LA, Universal Studios has launched a new ad campaign seemingly inspired by hitchhiking, panhandling, and homelessness. The billboard on the corner of their property at Barham shows a family holding a sign reading “A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES” – a bit unclear if that’s what the family was looking for, or had already achieved (and felt the need to tell you by scrawling it on cardboard?). When I saw it I thought it had to be the all-time worst ad I’d ever seen for a theme park. But after scanning their site for a photo of the billboard (because I HAD to blog about it) I discovered they’d shot a whole commercial with the “people holding cardboard signs” concept – only, the people in the commercial look gloomy and we never see a vehicle or magic Universal Studios bus come to pick them up, the camera simply drives past as if they were just another Mexican selling oranges in the median.

So I shlepped down the hill in the rain to photograph the billboard when – oh heaven – there was an actual homeless person standing on the corner holding his own cardboard sign in front of the fake family holding their cardboard sign. His name was Ruben and he hadn’t noticed the ironic nature of the composition he was part of. (I took his pic then gave him five bucks.)

Which brings me to the moment when I offer Universal Studios my own free bad PR idea: Go guerrilla marketing with this and pay the panhandlers of LA to hold your cardboard signs. They’re already standing at the busiest intersections, only now, instead of spare change, they’ll be begging to be taken to the “Jurassic Park River Plunge” – and just like the people in the commercial, everyone will ignore them.

In other theme park advertising news, Disney, wisely deciding to take their campaign in a more upscale direction, hired Annie Leibovitz to shoot celebrities playing dress up in designer versions of Disney character costumes. (A $325,000 Harry Winston tiara and Steuben glass slippers for Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella.)

It’s a smart idea and the execution is brilliant. Mostly so because they’re a tad dark in tone but also because the celeb’s expressions are more complex than the beaming smile one would’ve expected in such an ad. Look at Beyonce in the spinning teacup, she’s not squealing like a little girl, she reclining in a VIP lounge, teasing you with that hand on her lap. Granted, I don’t see a conceptual reason it had to be celebrities, but it does ensure more press and one can hardly fault a company for trying to get that.

The print versions will run in Conde Nast publications including Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue, with the aim of attracting an older more sophisticated audience.

The decision to represent the Disney parks as high-end adult amusements is not a new idea though.
John Hench, Herbert Ryman, and other designers of the original Disney parks consistently saw a day at Disneyland as such. In a 1960’s Hench rendering of the Circlevision 360 theater in Tomorrowland, women clutch their furs as if it were a night at the opera. And a late 1970’s Ryman concept painting suggests a visit to Epcot was worthy of nothing less than your Sunday best, then in 1988, he painted formal evening attire on those watching the fireworks over Euro Disneyland.

But my favorite example of promoting Disney parks as more adult fare is a 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag (it hangs framed on my wall) with a spectacular graphic design featuring Mickey (the walk-around version, not the cartoon) and the castle, but not a single child. There’s a couple clinking wine glasses over lobster, a chef, jazz musician, hula dancer, and nightclub singer, a man golfing, a couple in a canoe,  a woman on horseback, another playing tennis - and everyone riding Dumbo and Space Mountain, they’re all adults.

Interesting aside: When Walt was planning the Florida parks, which he didn’t live to see, he’d imagined they’d be visited primarily by a sophisticated east coast clientele which would require a more elegant theme park experience than the casual west coast atmosphere of Disneyland. Boy was he wrong about that one.

But that’s a whole other tangent, so I’ll just say, I hope the Leibovitz promos do change any perception that the Disney parks are all cotton candy and culturally empty calories because there is an elegance, maturity, and complexity built into those parks (maybe not always maintained, but there nevertheless) and it’s refreshing to see it acknowledged again.

It sells for $75 at Karmaloop. It’s from CLH, which, according to UrbanDictionary.com is an acronym for Creating Limitless Heights, and describes CLH as: “A tight ass urban clothing line worn by none other than Cash Money himself. The hoodies they do be so fresh to def dat dem bitches be all up on you like stank on sheeeit.”

I don’t know who Cash Money is and I don’t need bitches up on me like stank on sheeeit, I just think the hoody is pretty.