Giant Globes Inc.

04/05/2020

Poems in a time of plague. A little Philip Larkin... contains rude words.
https://youtu.be/4NQVDKLMvCw

08/20/2018

Looking for a New Year countdown with a bang, the sadly defunct Redmoon Theatre tasked Giant Globes with devising a unique confetti drop.

This is our kind of work!

We took six foot diameter balloons, put a cubic foot of paper confetti inside each, hung them from the ceiling, and then ran two wires from each to a 12v control board. Attached to the wires and the balloons was a tiny piece of Nitinol wire which would rapidly become red hot and pop the balloon when voltage was applied. (You can use fuse wire for this but it tends to melt and drop into the revelers’ upturned and open mouths...ouch!)

As a side note, confetti will fall in a clump when released, even with a bang. We fluffed the confetti by running it through a leaf blower until every flake was slightly crumpled and fluttered down in a widening cone.
The last seconds of the year were counted off like never before.

08/10/2018

Sometimes you need to see things from the inside, and building this 3’ globe for a school in the Sultanate of Oman gave Matt the opportunity. The globe had to fit around an existing 6” pillar, and since there was a building being held up by said pillar we had to cut the globe in half. It went back together thanks to 18 small studs and 18 tiny stainless set-screws, and the seam was invisible unless you knew where to look.

The globe was held tight to the pillar using a floating clamp that we designed with just enough play to allow for the thickness of paint on the pillar, and allowed the globe to be moved up and down in case the pillar ever needed a repaint. Thinking ahead and designing for all eventualities is key when your work has a lifespan measured in decades.

Also notable about this globe was the powdercoat, we masked the continents, then powder coated in Copper Vein, one of our favorite finishes, then removed the masking, sanded the overspray off and then recoated the whole globe in clear. For the finishing touch we made a tiny version of Oman, powdercoated the color of their flag, and attached it using a 3M flexible epoxy normally used to hold bits of satellites together.
Another advantage of having a globe break in two is that the halves nest, making shipping it 7,550 miles just a little cheaper.

Now can someone get an Allen wrench and let me out?

08/02/2018

When the folks at CERN who run the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland (and oddly, France) call wanting a globe, the only question to ask is “Will you be bombarding it with protons?”

Sadly not, they wanted a globe to show off the hundreds of data centers around the world that would be connected directly to CERN’s computing grid to crunch the 25 Petabytes of data they produce a year. (A Petabyte is... a lot, wikipedia will explain)

With time in short supply we made them a globe and they installed fiber optics pinpointing the computer centers doing the work, the more data the location could handle, the brighter the pinpoint of light.

Having just made their crazy deadline for the grand unveiling/blast-off we waited with bated breath for either:
A. A singularity, as they created a black hole, would swallow us like Trudy the shop Labrador does kibble.
or
B. A fleeting glimpse of the ‘God Particle’ (wikipedia again).

Thankfully Higgs and his Boson joined Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top and Bottom as favorite baby names and we all lived another day to wonder why.

We visited the LHC that summer and got the Royal Tour. When it is not being the star of a press conference our globe lives in a showroom at CERN, next to (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT desktop computer, where he created the world's first URL and website.
We noted there was a piece of tape stuck to it that read in his handwriting: ‘This machine is a server DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!’
Doing so would have caused the entire World Wide Web to vanish instantly.

Ah, simpler times.

07/25/2018

We made our first fiberglass relief globe for Cool Globes, the public art project highlighting climate change. Hand sculpting the continents is time consuming but rewarding. Once done a mold is made and then a globe is cast from that mold.

This 5’ diameter globe required a NASA ‘Blue Marble’ photo-realistic paint job, rendered in exquisite detail by Natalya Sturlis one of our gifted artists.
The client, Sun Toyota in Florida, wanted ‘World Class Service’ in aluminum letters around the equator and a hook at the North Pole. It now spins slowly above the service center, with a large storm perpetually just off the south-west coast of Africa.

07/17/2018

Friends of the Chicago River called us to design an Osprey nest specifically for local conditions.
Perched 80’ off the ground it needed to last as long as the very pricy 7500 lb. post it sat on. We examined multiple existing nests and in consultation with local experts and the frankly crazy folk who would climb them once a year, we came up with a design that was super durable, simple and ergonomic for both bird and human.
All hardware was either stainless or hot-dipped galvanized steel, the wood pressure treated with environmentally responsible ACQ and every point of attachment used a belt-and-suspenders approach. The plans were made available free to all, and so far 5 have been erected across Chicagoland and are expecting their first tenants.

07/10/2018

Our globes can be mathematically ‘unbent’ to make flat maps, which we call flat globes for some reason.
However sometimes the walls that our maps are mounted to are not, themselves, flat. When that happens we carefully bend the entire map to the correct shape, in this case a 10’ wide map curved to a 22’ radius.
Then we end up with what can only be called a Curved Flat Globe. Not at all confusing.

07/03/2018

We make a lot of globes, in a wide variety of sizes, finishes, materials and custom configurations. We also make what we call Flat Globes. These are not, unfortunately, the kind espoused by The Flat Earth Society, though we’d love to make them a ‘globe’. We use the Robinson Projection mainly for aesthetic reasons, and the result is a lightweight piece of decor that indicates global reach, in a more 2D form.

05/23/2018

We spend a lot of time making sure our globes are accurate and pleasing to the eye. We measure and adjust and consult all manner of authorities and resources to ensure fidelity to the planet we call home and to the conventions that allow us to navigate it.

Sometimes, however the client wants us to throw all that out the window, and we are more than happy to oblige. This lovely 5’ globe has a style more like a diagram of sub-atomic particles, and it grew on us before we sent it on its way, to a trade show near you. This globe hung from the North Pole, and to even out the very un-even distribution of the continents we filled the tubes on the lighter side with lead shot to keep her on an even keel.

05/10/2018

Part of the joy of being a fabricator is that people ask you to make crazy things, and if you also know people in the film business they will want them with just a few days notice.

For a major mattress retailer that meant they wanted a shopping cart that would take a king size mattress, the long way, for a TV commercial parodying their competition. Actually they wanted three of them, matching a specific cart, by the end of the week, and no, we could not use any of the existing carts as a base. So we bought 6 new carts, hacked, chopped and stretched them like a Vegas limo, with an extra set of wheels supporting the load and a metallic paint job to finish them off. Post commercial they have been spotted in the Chiditarod charity race, which may void the warranty they never had.

05/08/2018

Chicago Tonight is running the feature on Giant Globes again, CH 11 now!

04/14/2018

Thanks to WTTW 11 in Chicago and Jay Shefsky for this little feature on my globe business that ran on Chicago Tonight.
https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2018/04/03/giant-globes-founder-business-global-endeavor

Matt Binns is equal parts artist, inventor and businessman We visit his workshop to see how his company’s custom-made globes are constructed.

04/03/2018

Due to the fact we only had 8’ doors in the Dairy (so named because it was a Dairy until the 1950’s, we don’t sweat the small stuff) we had to up-sticks and move most of the shop down the road to the gentle embrace of Chicago Scenic Studios. Made from 1-½” diameter tubing it weighed in at 650 lbs. when complete, a third of what a steel globe would weigh, and naturally corrosion resistant. If a painted finish is required we normally powdercoat our globes, it is effective, efficient and environmentally friendly, but in this case we needed an oven 13’ square, which does not exist in Chicago. So bronze automotive paint was applied in expert fashion by Chicago Scenic. The globe now rests close to the entrance of the University after being transported on a flatbed with flags and flashing lights, carefully avoiding power lines, low bridges and traffic lights.

03/31/2018

When the twisted I-beams of the World Trade Center were removed from the rubble of the twin towers, some were dispatched around the country to feature in memorials. This one resides outside the massive blast doors of the NORAD facility buried under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs NM. Due to the difficulty of moving the huge piece of steel we flew to meet the beam near its intended final resting place. After taking meticulous measurements we took a somber flight home and built a 4’ globe that would sympathetically encompass the beam and its mounting.

03/29/2018

09/25/2017

After a visit to the powder coater the logos are installed and looking great!

09/20/2017

We used custom standoffs to keep the logos stable on the 8' globe.