Meanwhile No. 201

Posted inCreative Voices

After months of hearing good things, all of a sudden both Godzilla Minus One and Scavenger’s Reign have appeared on Netflix, and thankfully the wait has been worth it. We watched ‘zilla in black and white1, just to give do the whole “what if the 1954 film was directed by 1975 Spielberg?” vibe justice, and it looked gorgeous.

Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken – a new collection of Yorgos Lanthimos’ photography from the set of Poor Things. Well worth checking out Void’s other wonderfully-titled photography books, including Joselito Verschaeve’s If I call stones blue it is because blue is the precise word and Maria Sturm’s You Don’t Look Native to Me.

Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal, I’ve been mindlessly tapping that little bookmark button on my instagram feed for so long, I forgot the images actually end up somewhere. So last week I had a delve into this scrapbook abyss, and oh the joy! So much stuff I’d completely forgotten had caught my eye. It’s especially lovely when otherwise disparate items find themselves nicely sequenced together. For example, this cluster – a New York Times illustration by Mike McQuade, branding design by Frank Wo and a 1958 advert designed by Ladislav Sutnar – is too good to live on my own private grid, so I’m sharing it here.

Left: New York Times illustration by Mike McQuade Top right: Branding design © Frank Wo; Bottom right: Advertisement designed by Ladislav Sutnar, 1958

New art direction goal2: pulling a Gravillis Inc. and having a poster turned into a dress that is then worn by the Zendaya.

Why did 17th century artist Frans Hals paint monsters in his friend’s portrait?

From the distractingly playful Otherwhere Collective, Poly Mono is a “game font” made of shapes that creates Karel Martens-inspired prints. I love that it has no specific purpose, it just invites users to do something with it.

Why I love the newslettiverse more than any other corner of the internet: the very first email I got this week wasn’t about a deadline or a sale or a war, it was lucy sweet raving over a brand new flavour of Soreen2. Filling your inbox with carefully curated smatterings of joy beats the doomscroll any day.

After years of defaulting to a reliable white background, my website has entered its blue period.

That is all.


This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

  1. Not the official Godzilla Minus One / Minus Color version; we simply delved into the telly’s inner gubbins and turned the colour down to zero. ↩︎
  2. No wait, not goal, challenge. ↩︎
  3. Also confirming that the strawberry variety is naaasty. ↩︎