Archive for April, 2010

One of the very first articles I ever wrote for this blog lamented the careless proliferation of Archer, the slab serif from H&FJ. At the time, I was specifically reacting to the unfortunate redesign of the San Francisco Chronicle. That was in February of last year. Since then, the typeface has spread itself ever further, and continues to pop up just about everywhere.

Lauren Adams wrote a article about this very topic over on the AIGA blog. She states, “Archer’s instant stardom raises questions about its appropriateness. Can a font with such a defined character properly suit so many purposes?” She goes on to point out numerous recent examples of Archer’s continued domination of the ‘friendly’ typeface sphere. I was excited to see her article, as this issue continues to bug me the more I spot those little ball terminals. (Be sure to check out the blog she mentions, Archer Alert, for recent examples of Archer in the wild.)

At the end of my article back then, I asked if “Archer was the next Papyrus” — a polarizing contention to be sure — but maybe now my question doesn’t seem so far fetched. Before you get all crazy on me, let me say again that I am a *fan* of Archer. It looks good. I have nothing against the way it is drawn and actually think that it is quite amazing (like all of H&FJ’s work). Though as Lauren states, “an elegant typeface doesn’t simply translate to universal functionality.” I would add that such a distinctive typeface shouldn’t translate to ubiquity.

Like Papyrus, Archer shares a unique personality and the aforementioned “defined character”. Just as Papyrus became the go-to font for “exotic” or “earthy”, Archer has become the easy choice for “friendly” and “approachable”, which makes its misuse all the more prevalent. The more Archer is used in scenarios where it’s vaguely appropriate, the less effective it becomes in situations where it actually makes sense. As Christopher Simmons points out in the comments over there, “In unskilled hands even a Stradivarious will only make noise”. With Archer being clumsily wielded as frequently as it is, it’s this “noise” that has rendered unbiased viewings of the typeface impossible.

So I’ll ask again and this time duck for cover, is Archer the next Papyrus? Is it just a matter of time before the next summer blockbuster uses Archer for the movie poster?

You probably won’t hear a record like that using guitars that is this good ever in your life I bet, The Sight Below marries devastation with beautiful at a syrupy tempo, a must have for late night no talking get togethers.

A new album from Eluvium is always welcomed with open arms by my ears, here’s a short and fluttery piano piece by the highly talented artist, also make sure to pick the LP for the vocal material as well.

Kaito‘s makes trance okay to listen to because he sounds educated to the sounds he chooses, its not clubs and bad taste here its about a lush composition, i’d go as far as just demolishing the whole genre and letting Kaito just own it and if you want trance you just have to put on a Kaito record.

New York’s Post Wave Wierd Records has a solid artistry and newly added all analog(yes, thats right no computers just synths and even hardware sequencers) Led Er Est was a treat to see live the other night. Their sound expands way beyond this CC Exit track but I had to post it because they ended with it in an epic manner by speeding up every synth until it was just a wall of sound, I hope to have more material for you soon to expand on this.

Saw this set of Cintiq unboxing photos on Engadget today and even though the concept of documenting a retail product unboxing seems ridiculous, I couldn’t resist. Ever since I saw a Cintiq (a combination LCD display and tablet) on demo in Barcelona (OFFF) a few years back I’ve been wanting one. I’m not sure that it would benefit me that greatly but it would be fun to find out. Maybe not $1,999 (msrp) worth of fun, but definitely something I’d like to try.

The problem is that this kind of device relies on a mode of interaction few of us are very familiar with so it’s tough to make the leap without knowing if it will work for you. It’s not like you find these on demo anywhere; the only place I know of that stocks them in San Francisco is Calumet and they have them tucked away in some back corner, there’s not even a floor model out much less a working display last time I checked. I wish they had some sort of trial period but I suspect that would be a bad thing for me; I’m pretty convinced if I really spent some time with this thing I wouldn’t want to give it back. The only drawback I heard was poor color representation due to the touch surface over the screen, hopefully they’ve remedied that issue with this latest iteration.

Some questions: Anyone using one of these? Care to share your feelings? Everyone else: Are you planning on getting one? If not, would you use this if someone gave you one? How much cheaper would it have to be to make you consider it? Current Wacom users, does this seem like an improvement or would you rather stick with your regular tablet? Discuss in the comments

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As you can see guys and gals i’m a photoshop ninja, give me a project and i’ll make it happen, you want a dorky kid to look like a jackalope? no problem, you want ferns cut out in 2 minutes using an eraser at 48px? no problem, rocking CS3 over here and using it to about 1/1000th of its potential, don’t blame Scott or Alex for the bad design work here please hah.

So, yes thats me above, I did this mix of some songs for The Mixtape Club that were all at 94 Beats Per Minute, a short mix that is only clocking in at about 34 minutes. I named it The Black Bear Caught The Crystal Deer Surfing With A Pitchfork because all the hip bands have some key words in their names. You see if your band was Flamingo Fantasy you probably won’t get much love, maybe in 2014 when flamingos get really cool but for now you better have a surfing bear or make noise and use the word hair in your band name, that way you can take cuts and get on some reviewers priority piles. Well enough with my banter, here are some great songs that I have posted already probably in the past month or so that I like as a collective, as always thanks for reading and listening to the material on the blog.

NOTE: There’s an exclusive track on here, the last song by Shigeto who recently remixed Tycho, it will be out on 4.20.2010 on Ghostly International.

DOWNLOAD THE MIX HERE FOR FREE

High Wolf – Don’t Fuck With The Tropics
Paul White – Highlife
Phantogram – As Far As I Can See
Kerri Chandler – Crazy Bonus
Jay Electronica – Exhibit C
Mux Mool – NAFE
Alan Parsons Project – I Robot (Pilooski edit)
Gorillaz ft. Bobby Womack & Mos Def – Stylo
Giorgio Moroder – To The Bridge
Shigeto – Embrace The Cold

A few weeks ago, Scott gave a lecture to my fellow Academy of Art students. The talk was part of the Designspeak lecture series and was open to students and faculty (and 20 lucky blog readers). The room was jam packed, with a bunch of people even crammed in on the floor. The talk covered a wide range of topics: early influences, current design process, Tycho, the blog, and much more. We even got a glimpse of the first poster Scott ever designed!

The lecture was about 1.5 hours long, with a 30 minute Q&A at the end. In addition to the Academy film crew, I was on hand with my 5DMKII to capture some of the evening. Given the massive file size, and limited continuous shot duration on the 5D, I only recorded sporadically, and wasn’t able to capture everything I would have liked. I shot until my memory card filled up and was able to capture a total of 30 minutes of the talk. I selected the shots you see in the video above from this sample.

As I said in my intro that night, it would be hard for me to convey how much I’ve learned from Scott over these last two years interning at the studio. I consider myself enrolled in two design schools (Scott’s, and the Academy) and it was really exciting for me to see these two worlds combined. I’m very glad that everyone at the Academy was able to get a glimpse into Scott’s world and I’m also really excited now to be able to show you all at least a little bit of the talk. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to see one of the talks in person, I highly suggest you make that happen (I think Toronto is your next opportunity). In the meantime, hopefully this video will tide you over.

Recording the talk was another great test run with the 5D and I learn something new each time I take it out. This time, audio was the main issue as I wasn’t able to find a suitable solution before the talk. What you hear through most of video was from the Academy microphone — at the end is what it sounds like off the internal mic on the 5D. Basically the on camera mic is completely useless. It helps for syncing external audio to the video, but that’s about it. For future excursions I am definitely going to look into some form of either a mounted shotgun mic or wireless LAV.

Video Link

Warp Films has done it again with a great film on All Tomorrow’s Parties, below are the first 10 minutes of the film and also its available on Warp’s new Download Store, i’m really digging the live footage of The Battles and Belle & Sebastian.

All Tomorrow’s Parties (Opening 10 Minutes) from All Tomorrow's Parties on Vimeo.

You may have noticed that I’ve posted quite a bit on the subject of SSD drives over the past couple years. The speed this technology can afford has the potential to finally set us free as artists so that we can focus on our work and not beach balls and hourglasses. The main bottleneck of modern computers is the hard disk drive, which has inexplicably been frozen in time at speeds which have remained constant almost as long as I can remember. Remove this bottleneck and a whole new world opens up.

The problem with SSD so far is it’s failure to truly deliver on it’s promises of speed. Sure, 250MB/s is fast, but only marginally quicker than a standard HDD. So I was excited to see the announcement from OCZ that a new version of their Z-Drive, the “R2” is due out soon.

The original Z-Drive was somewhat of a disappointment but — at least from the specs on this one — they seem to have learned some lessons from that initial attempt. The new model sports an 8 way RAID 0 setup (basically like 8 SSD drives in RAID 0 on a hardware controller — beats the heck out of my setup) — and speeds around 1.4GB/s. In case you didn’t read that correctly: 1.4GB/s. Insane speeds. And that’s both ways, read and write.

Imagine having this thing set up as your Photoshop swap drive (or, as the Engadget article suggests, editing raw 1080p footage in real time). In PS, I’d imagine you could tear through 24×36″ @ 300dpi with hardly a delay. And at 2TB (the largest possibly configuration), the Z-Drive is truly massive for an SSD. You could fit your entire OS and your data on there for quick file open/saves. And with 1.4GB/s of overhead, I wouldn’t think twice about using the drive as my OS and swap at the same time.

Now for the price (which hasn’t been announced yet): expect ridiculous. The original model ranged from $1500-$2700 and I don’t see this one coming too far down from that. But for performance like this, you have to pay. And when you consider the potential cost of eight SSD drives totaling 2TB and a hardware RAID controller the Z-Drive starts to sound a bit more affordable.

OCZ Product page
Further reading at Engadget & Hot Hardware

A nice collection of old train stations in East Germany by Holger Schilling, I always love this kind of material documented, also I like to search for the slight detail of where they add bright color to the building like a red roof or a aqua pole thats among mostly manila colored walls.

And you thought Real Estate was chill(wave) for summer lazy days? try a bit of Sun Araw, its makes falling asleep fishing on a calm pond sound like a monster truck rally.

Take does a nice edit of the classic Fall In Love by Slum Village, short n sweet.

More from Detroit, Moodymann isn’t really a blog musician, I like to imagine him as vinyl only and buying his stuff strictly from his site. He has stuck to his sound and might be one of the more pure musicians out there, enjoy this one, its dirty.

A new EP from Sbtrkt this week, one of the few artists i’ve found out thru just direct emails and him posting comments on the blog. 2020 seems to be maybe a new direction for the whole dub sound, its more straight forward like early Detroit House, if that’s whats happening then i’m really excited for things to come.

A few selections from the artwork portion of these Science and Technology adverts. I often like the text layouts on these old advertisements, but in these cases it was the artwork that caught my attention. I see a little Matthew Lyons in that first one. Be sure to check out the rest of the set.

via Ministry of Type