Symbols of identity

Along the information superhighway we trundle. Today I have some favicons for you. Favicons are the little icons you see at the top of your web program, in the tab next to the title. Here's our new www.keshco.co.uk favicon:

On the old version of the Kesh site, it was this:

Which do you prefer? Is it wrong to focus on the trolley symbol; will it further confuse music seekers?

With luck you can see the one at the top of this blog, which makes our purpose a bit clearer:

Would you like to design us an alternative one for Sunday best? (We'll pay in muesli.) Or, would you like us to design one for you? Yes, your site can have one too, perhaps created at www.favicon.cc.

The new Bleak House site - www.bleakhouse.eu - has a favicon, too:

What are your favourite favicons? To me they bring back the fun of the Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit (where the resulting game was pretty fixed and samey, but the great excitement came in the sprite design), or before that the Character Generator program on Horizons, the ZX Spectrum introductory cassette. Small is beautiful, working within restriction to create an impression of something with the minimum of signifiers.

Talking of small, beautiful things creating an impression of something, let's take a radical left turn, with a guest poet. Old Keshcologist Andrew Walton from Clydebank has two neat collections of poetry: Little Red Poetry and, most recently, Little Green Poetry. He recorded an episode of Poetry Hallway for our uStream channel in Autumn 2013. Here is one of his current political verses, which I like a lot.

Little Scotland

The Celtic knot, a twin S.

Adorned Ravenscraig’s gate.

Long empty, the husk. Silent, brooding,

Still casts a shadow.

Where there was industry,

Let us bring job seekers’ allowance.

Where there was militancy,

Let us bring sad resignation.

Steel-town of rusted girders,

Work transplanted wholesale.

Puerile promise of prosperity,

Evaporated,

Like the last dregs

In a once-proud steel can,

Our other national drink

Now lies crumpled

Beside  a torn up

Slip. A frustrated bet

On a winded nag which failed to

Deliver. A ballot

Thrown on the ground

To the skirl of pipes.

A cross beside “YES”,

A faded pencil saltire.

A broken outpost, aside from the battle

Where Sheridan tours,

Denounces the rule of capital

In stentorian tones.

Words echo around halls from

Alloa to Inverness.

They cannot carry

To far-off Northamptonshire.

Notes: Tens of thousands of workers from Scotland came to Corby, Northamptonshire in the 1930s and 1960s, on the promise of jobs in the steel industry. Thatcher destroyed much of the manufacturing industry in Britain, and British Steel was privatised – the jobs have long-gone. The town recently had a mock-referendum on Scottish Independence during the town’s Highland Gathering. Unlike the Yes campaign in Scotland, which is gathering momentum, the town voted No. Might this reflect a general mood of bitterness, anger and resignation to fate?