Stumbled upon a handful of really great posters by Ross Gunter, a London based designer. The posters were designed for Bridging the Gap, a club night and blog in London. My favorites of this set were the 1st and 3rd because of the clear showcase of grid as well as the sheer visual stimulation in each.
Images via Behance.
Artwork for Com Truise
Someone kindly suggested Com Truise the other day in a comment, man this stuff is soo soo good, instrumentally its super tasty like biting into a 7 layer cake made completely out of honey in slow motion.
This Emeralds track is epic and beautiful, I should of also posted its album cover, the under saturated VHS screenshot like photo is pretty nice.
When I first heard this Gold Panda intro I immediate thought it would draw the Passion Pit crowd but that reference is something that is more relevant to hip teens today. For the long time electronic fans that I think that will enjoy this are the ones that loved early Four Tet magically working with The Field, the samples have a happy tone plus there is more diversity in the back and forth the song offers in the sequencing.
JDSY’s track Lighter has hints of beauty sprinkled all thru the song, the backing for the intro are these shakey breathes, his singing might be the best from a post IDM’er plus the subject he’s singing about isn’t just stuff that makes people want to party but he actually has some substance , and the melody is made up of just oddball sounds that he puts to work and makes them sound great.
One of the things that turns me away from products is when they are slapped with something saying it’s “environmentally friendly” or “green” when its not. If cutting down trees and mining the soils for ore is environmentally friendly then this PC by Design Hara, is exactly that. I get that you could recycle this but do people really buy products (namely electronics) just because they can be recycled?
My initial thought about this PC was of course the design. It fits into the mid-century category by the materials choice. The option of Italian Cypress wood, Canadian Rose wood or even sheep leather really give this the computer it’s substance. The keyboard and even USB drive also really add to it. Maybe next we’ll see a wood-framed monitor. But as cool as this is and as much as I love the mid-century design aesthetic, I would probably only use this as a decoration (enter Mac vs PC debate).
Images via Yanko
I don’t know quite how to describe Feric Feng. His site describes his work as a “surreal blend of the natural and mechanical” — which is an apt description, if only lacking in deserved adjectives of praise. ‘Gorgeous’, ‘innovative’ and maybe ‘spell-binding’ would be my additions. For me his renderings conjure aspects of the work of Si Scott. Something about the complexity and super minute detail. Such detail that most people probably don’t even perceive the intricacies of the work; rather it just looks “complicated” until you look further and realize how much consideration and attention each element has been given. I have my eye on a few of his prints.
Artwork unrelated, anyone have any ideas who did it?
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B88iSdBNoik
I’m not following the World Cup (sacrilege, I know!). Partly because I’m American and not much of a sports fan to begin with, and partly because I just can’t seem to muster the strength to pretend I like a sport every four years and then watch a bunch of guys roll around on the pitch holding their knee in agony only to pop up a few moments later and sprint around like a fucking gazelle (seriously, what’s the deal with that? I swear that’s the number one thing holding me back from appreciating football, this theater of feigned injury). I’ve honestly tried to like it, my friend Jorge Calleja took me to a FC Barcelona game while I was there a few summers back. I had a blast and Ronaldhino even scored a goal (which is apparently sort of rare these days). The crowd was amazing; every movement of the ball (even movements that, to my untrained eye, didn’t seem to have any kind of significance) was met with a rush of electricity that filled the entire stadium. Sadly, this feeling has yet to carry over to the TV viewing experience for me.
But I digress, this isn’t about sports, or football, or even pretending your leg has been amputated at the hip when a stiff breeze from the guy running by ruffles your jersey. This is about the fact that despite having watched exactly zero World Cup games, I somehow have an intimate knowledge of the ball used in them. This is because no one will stop talking about it (or those plastic horns for that matter). I found it rather intriguing that it’s being roundly panned by the players — both the winners and the losers. It made me think about all the R&D that must have gone into designing this ball only to have it be put on center stage and incessantly ridiculed. Designing high performance sports equipment has to be the most difficult gig in industrial design. It’s a sort of alchemy of engineering, physics, and craftsmanship that, to fulfill it’s intended purpose, must perform equally well for an extremely diverse range of end users. Just designing a jersey probably involves a few parts rocket science, so imagine designing the central element of play for a game, the results of which can make or break the hopes of entire countries. I don’t envy these designers.
So after hearing about this ball for the better part of a month, my interest was piqued when I came across this video detailing the ball’s construction on Abitare. I’m always a sucker for manufacturing videos and this one is exceptionally well done. I really enjoy the style and tones and it’s always amazing to see these giant, purpose-built machines doing such specific tasks. It always makes me wonder how mechanized manufacturing is ever cost effective.
So I know we have a pretty internationally diverse readership (hence the fact I haven’t used the word soccer once, until now), who are you rooting for? Also be sure to remind me of what a terrible human being I am for not liking soccer (yes, after the disclaimer earlier in this paragraph, via an obscure UN sanction, I am now legally entitled to call it soccer).
Also, the first year I moved to San Francisco some guy with a bus put up a gigantic LED screen (seriously, like stadium sized) in Dolores Park and played the World Cup on it. There were like 30,000 people at the park and it was completely awesome. If that guy comes back this year I will watch soccer.
I missed seeing the Warm Ghost play the other night with School Of Seven Bells but luckily a friend turned me onto them via the magical internet. The lo-fi wobbly piano part is beautiful especially when its accompanied by the vox and it comes together like if The Doves did something with a Tom Waits that hits high notes. If you like this then you should check out their EP.
I can’t believe i’ve never shared any Ashra on here, this stuff is pretty much what i’d try to make if someone gave me a room of synths but i’d probably go even more New Age with it and obliviously i’d grow a ponytail as well.
One guy that’s holding down the Detroit sound is Black Milk, since he was like 18 people in Michigan swore he was going to be amazing, this track shows that he’s pretty damn amazing in my book, don’t miss the last 20 seconds either.
I know i’ve already post this song on the blog but here’s the video for Bicycle by Memory Tapes.
As evidenced by the various posts I’ve made on the subject, I’m quite fond of all things surrounding the World’s Fair Expositions. So when I found this gem on Ian Henry Smith’s Blog, Smallcano, I was pretty blown away. For someone who has fetishized all manner of official documentation since childhood, seeing an artifact that somehow combines the ideas of a passport and a 60’s-era World’s Fair Expo was pretty much the holy grail. The stamps send this thing over the top; it really doesn’t get any better. And check out the Habitat 67 stamp on the last image! I swear I’m going to get a tattoo of one of these.
According to Ian from Smallcano, he found this thing while “rooting around in [his] parents’ basement”. For me, this is basically the equivalent of those old stories about digging up a cigar box with a Honus Wagner in it. My only gripe is that the images are scans and not photos; scans don’t do objects like this justice. So Ian, if you’re reading this (I found the link through a comment he left here), thanks so much for posting these, but please shoot the passport on a nice wood table or something, a’la Insect54. That is, if you have the time, we’ll all thank you!
Via Smallcano
catalogtree is a multidisciplinary design studio based in Amsterdam. Their work is instantly recognizable for its complexity and exceptional clarity; a combination not easily achieved. Their ability to compress large amounts of data into these gorgeous infographics is unparalleled. Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross are the designers behind catalogtree and I had the pleasure to ask them a few questions before I left for Tokyo. Their answers and some example work after the jump.
What were your goals when you initially set up shop?
We never really set up shop and in a way this is our goal. To not have a shop and be amateurs at what we do. Right now we’re working on a 232 meter long radio antenna and are building a crystal radio to receive a local pirate station. We have never done this before and have no idea if this project will succeed.
Thomas Scholes is a digital artist out of Seattle who uses Photoshop to create painterly landscapes sort of in the vein of Roger Dean and more recently, Dan McPharlin. I love his color use and the texture; it’s really incredible that this is all being done within software.
Thomas also does a lot of process videos showing how he works with various imagery and textures to get these effects. I particularly enjoyed this one which shows him modeling a landscape from a photo of a woman (see video below). I love the idea of incorporating unrelated imagery into a composition as texture or distressing — or, in this case, as a framework.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f9D9Fvh2pM
You can check out more of Thomas’ work and videos at his blog