February 2009
55 posts
Cover band.
Check out all the Esquire covers (of all time!) online here. Now if I could only find large scale posters of these.
-J
Maybe the slackers had it right all along. →
J vs A
Who does book covers better, the Americans of the Brits?
Judge for yourself at themillionsblog.com
-a
New Jay-Z, for the previous post.
Best Life.
Grids is the blog of the Society of Publication Designers. They have an open call for publication designers to share new work. I especially like today’s work from Best Life.
I love the hope that nature will one day just fix all our messes (by killing humans off and destroying all our destructiveness). I think it rather selfish when people say that we are “destroying the...
Serpentine Pavilion
The designers of this years Serpentine pavilion have been announced, and the gallery has chosen the Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Sanaa to build their annual summer pavilion. Best known (to our readers at least) for their LES New Museum building.
Since I love domestic architecture so much, and since the pavilion is on a more domestic scale, I figured I would throw...
Viral Market
I’m not into the film (or the makers. sorry!) but this discussion is an extremly interesting one especially in regards to cheapsville marketing.
-J
Le Corbusier for Target?
This chair is $475.00 plus free shipping? At target? They have the sofa too. When Mies’s Barcelona chaise comes, I will freak out.
Via Nick Olsen who suggests going Steven Sprouse on it- kind of love that
-a (who is moving and loves chairs and is just finding out how many chairs she owns)
“Design is thinking made visual.”
– Saul Bass
Inside the Meltdown
For anyone interested in understanding the origins of the financial crisis (who have already listened to This American Life 5 times), Frontline has a three part series called Inside the Meltdown. You can watch it and all the Frontline episodes online.
Thanks Frank
-a
How the times T is designed →
VillaType
Type inspirationmost of us see everyday, photographed and collected.
Villatype
-a
Fish Phone
Unrelated to the normal posts, but something really neat that I want to share. My friend writes for a blog Pays to Live Green all about saving money while being environmentally conscious. Patrick is a genius researcher and every post is incredibly detailed and linked with just so much information. His latest post is really great, it is about the service from the Blue Ocean Institute where you...
I'd Like to Thank the Electronic Gladiator
Titles (again!)
“Titles have become wonderful bridges from reality into the cinematic world and back out again. At their very best, they are themselves innovative, emotional experiences, microcosms of their movies.”
In pointing out that there is no Oscar for title sequences NYTimes has just jumped on the film title love-in bandwagon. And all the better for it. It’s a fun wagon to be...
Vihd-Eei-Oh
From This is Tech
Tron by freres-hueon
I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang the other night and realized how much of a dork I was that the lame-o film references/jokes totally thrilled me. I have a somewhat obsessive relationship with film. I don’t consider a film really “seen” if I can’t clearly remember most of the movie (Who was in it? How did they look in the film?...
Shameless Self Promotion
So A and I discussed contributing to the Flight of the Conchords Really Arty Poster Competition, which closed at noon today. This was my final design.
-J
100 years of Futurism
100 years ago today The Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was published in the French paper, Le Figaro. Yeah, they were misogynist fascists, but they fundamentally changed the nature of aesthetics and poetry and virtually every other form of art.
“As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen...
Font and Yellow
From Etsy seller Lizzy House, depicting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12, via More Ways to Waste Time
Get Depressed
Comrade L recommended this site which illustrates deaths in Iraq from the start of the “War on Terror” up until October 15, 2007. Oddly it doesn’t include any Iraqi deaths. Make sure your sound is on.
-J
Ha! Models Rebel
via The Moment and Fashionologie
The finale of Brian Reyes featured these pretty feet, because, to quote Horatio Silva of the New York Times, “The is painful to watch. Lost count of the models who have taken a tumble at Brian Reyes.” The Fashionologie link has a slideshow. Good for them. I love high heels probably more than the next girl, but they are never worth injury for,...
Model-morphosis | Vera Wang Beauty →
Soulellis
I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with the NY based design studio Soulellis. They are Swiss influenced with a serving of awesome on the side.
-J
Make Your Own Money
The Royal Mint is calling for designs for their new 2012 Olymics 50p coin.
-J
“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
– Pablo Picasso
Sleeve
I was listening to NPR (har har har… A will get that) and they mentioned SleeveFace, the clever website, Flickr page and book. Described as “one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion” it basically plays on the interactive nature of record sleeves. I listen to music on vinyl. When in the car or subways,...
Womens Fashion vs Mens Fashion
Gosh, they both look like fun. Fall on your ass while wearing 6 inch stilettos, showing the world your panties, or stand around DRINKING BEER????? WTF?
A little bit of promotion and an invitiation...
The current show at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is incredible. Yes, I work there, but if you have a way or reason to get to Baltimore, do so before May 24th. The St. John’s Bible is a a contemporary manuscript, hand written and illuminated using Medieval techniques (and since we post A LOT about fonts here, they developed their own script and each of the 8 or so calligraphers...
Graphic Death
NYTimes is getting a better reputation for visual displays of information than actually news journalism. That being said, this certainly covers both bases (and hits a little too close to home). Happy Valentines Day!
-J
Damian Hirst vs. 16 year old Artist
As if selling a bejeweled skull for 50 million pounds and calling it art didn’t make him enough of an ass, Damien Hirst sued a 16 year old who used an image of the stupid skull to make some actual art. But artists united and if you have some cash, buy this actual art. Support a good cause.
“All of the works below are for sale and once TWENTY MILLION POUNDS has been raised ALL...
Layer Tennis
Volley 1
Volley 2
I particularly violent match this week. Friday the 13th versus Valentines Day.
Watch the recap now. Log on Fridays at 2 for live natches. Great fun.
-a
Friday the 13th
J’s post reminded me of this
99Rooms
which was so much cooler 5 years ago when I spent all my time avoiding doing senior project
-a
Street Art
Roadsworth Trailer.
Clearview
I drive on i95 everday which generally sucks except i can drive 90 everyday, which is exhilerating, and … actually I love to drive really fast and weave in and out of traffic, so it doesnt suck at all unless there is an accident.
But thats not the point. The point is they have just gotten around to replacing all the road signs with the Clearview font. There was a big hubbub about...
Halston Fall '09
Making art in the recession continues…
In a sort of cost cutting, sort of really cool move, Halston has decided to skip the tents this year and instead send out a video of their Fall ‘09 collection. The video, which is produced by creative agencies Blink Productions and Colonel Blimp and directed by Nez Khammel, will be e-mailed to editors, retailers, and other fans of the brand. I...
Frank Gehry’s Software Keeps Buildings on Budget →
humanity
A scared, crying child garners universal compassion.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
-a
more logos
J and I have been going over and over if this is for real or not.
How the new Pepsi logo was made? via gawker
Also “What I think of when I see the new Pepsi logo”
-a
Logotype
I had a crazy good link to share with you but lost it to the world wide web. Some designer had kept a step-by-step recording of a logo design process, from the very beginning sketches to the finished letterhead image. But no ammount of running through search history can call it back to me, so I present you with a few interesting (if inferior) walkthroughs.
MyNiteLife
Just Creative Design
Metro...
Done
Do you ever feel like you don’t create nearly enough? Jonah is a designer who set out to make one new piece of work every day for a year (a leap year at that!)
“DONE is my personal daily design workout for 2008.
Every day I will flex my design skills by creating one piece in 30 to 60 minutes. The presented works range from scrap and sketches to photos, typographic experiments and...
Font Design
I Love Typography has a fantastic article about what goes into font design. Which happens to be a lot more than one would think.
-J
Great (text)
NYTimes continues to have great font. Even if they are going overboard with the whole interactive media thing.
-J
Rem Koolhass Building in Flames
I like that the man on the right appears to be chuckling. (“They bulldozed our whole 500 year old neighborhood to build this stupid Olympic complex and one lousy firework ignites the whole thing!”)
Seriously though, the building was uninhabited and hopefully completely empty and I really like Rem Koolhaas, but I thought buildings were supposed to be much more fire resistant than...
Swagger like her.
I watch Masterpiece Theater on Sunday nights. Period. But I kept hitting the recall button just to see this.
Seriously there is only one woman who can hold her own on a stage like this, with these four. And she did it on her due date. She is awesome.
-a
"A Girl World Closes, and Fans Mourn"
This is why I dont care that Domino is dead:
Sandee Royalty, a stay-at-home mother in her late 30s, living in Houston’s outer suburbs. “Domino was my major resource for anything practical. I would get my 100-calorie M&M’s and my hot cup of tea and my Domino and go through the whole thing cover to cover.”
Anyone who eats 100-calorie m&ms deserves to be miserable. Welcome back to...
Making Art in the Recession
Two really interesting recession themed stories today.
First, the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington has announced a free counseling service for performance arts groups that are struggling in with finances. From their website:
Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative is a program designed to provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the...
Flash
I am an admittedly mediocre Flash designer/programmer. I can get by with what I know though it really is early days yet (having only been using the thing for three years and CS4 for a month or two) but I use the program in a very basic fashion. Traditional animation or web design, that’s what I stick to. But online you can find some really beautiful examples of where flash can go and...
