design history in a box

I was bumbling along the markets at Brick Lane, right 'round the bend from that warehouse/cafe/gallery alcove which houses the glorious but defunct OVEN, when I came upon the most fantastic thing.

It was an old type box, and in it was a funky relic of a watch, a couple penguin bath-gels, a stale Oreo cookie, and a moon.

As I fidgeted with the dials on the watch, I found I could travel through design history! That's right, though the elements retained their identities (as a watch, penguin, moon and oreo, respectively), their appearance began to shift through the many eras of design. The penguin snapped from a hieroglyphic to a medieval illumination to a fat-pixel web creation, the moon from an ancient Kenyan shield to an international typographic style icon, the oreo from a Celtic rune to something out of a Wim Crouwel alphabet.

See for yourself...