Came across this nice set from World of Logotypes on Raoul’s Blog. You may recognize these from the great book Eric Carl scanned in way back when. I’ve never seen them presented this way though, nice to be able to focus on them in individually.
Via Jetstreamprojector via Grain Edit
Launch 2010 is going down this Saturday, July 31st and I’ll be displaying some design work as part of the event. I should have a good number of the giclees from the Studio Editions series up along with some unreleased stuff.
In case you missed it last year, Launch is Sacramento’s indie design and music festival. They sort of cover all the bases, showcasing the best of Sacramento music, design, and fashion. Being from Sacramento myself — a town I feel is often very much misunderstood — it’s great to see events like this that bring all the incredible talent this place has to offer together in one place.
The event goes from 6pm to 1:30am at the Artisan Gallery (1901 Del Paso Blvd, Sacramento). Admission is $10, a total steal considering the lineup. If you’re in the Sacramento area, you have no excuse not to go to this — besides all the art and music, it’s just a really good time. If you’re from the Bay Area or beyond, I urge you to make the drive out and get better acquainted with the art scene in Sacto, you won’t be disappointed. Hope to see you out there!
This has to be the best concept rendering I’ve ever seen. Saikat Biswas designed these mock-ups to illustrate his concept for an open-source camera platform based on the original Holga camera. But unlike the original, Saikat has applied some tried and true Rams/Braun-esque styling to the exterior that’s sure to inspire lust in the hearts of design geeks everywhere.
Check his full post and you’ll see he’s really thought the whole thing out. Apparently he’s received quite a bit of interest so hopefully this thing makes it to production someday. I’m not sure, but didn’t Lomography buy the rights to the Holga a while back? Saikat might have an easier time if he gave it a different name.
Via Minimalissimo
I posted on Neil Krug a while back (original post link) but I stumbled on his Flickr again today and was pleasantly surprised by some great new work he’s posted since then. From what I’ve heard he uses expired Polaroid film to get that vintage look. I think someone needs to forward Neil’s portfolio to Tame Impala’s manager.
You can check out more of Neil’s work at his Flickr.
Marian Bantjes is one of those designers whose work I’ve seen often but never put it all together as being from the same artist. Browsing her very deep portfolio you’ll find everything from high school savant ballpoint pen drawings to hyper-maximalist pattern collages. Everything in it is overflowing with passion and Marian’s unwavering reverence for detail is truly something beautiful. Check out her portfolio for more. Also check out Marian’s TED talk (via Leigh)
Via @Nopattern, which is perfect because it’s interesting to note the overlaps between some of their word art.
It’s been almost a year now since I wrote my first post on data backup so I thought I’d do a follow-up and detail the backup scheme I ended up going with.
The original scheme was fundamentally flawed in that the off-site backup was still pretty susceptible to loss, damage, or theft and wasn’t truly off-site in the broad geographical sense. I was simply storing it at a house about three blocks away. Given the spacing (or lack thereof) of buildings in San Francisco, a few blocks means very little considering the ever-present threat of earthquake and/or fire.
So with that in mind, and after reading through the comments of the original post, I took Eydryan’s advice and looked into Backblaze. Backblaze is an online backup service for PC and Mac that allows unlimited data storage for $5/month per machine. This seemed a little too good to be true but I gave it a shot anyways. Much to my surprise, the service not only works, it works flawlessly and is about as dead-simple as anyone could ask for. It’s a little oversimplified for my tastes — being a PC user I’m more accustomed to layers-deep menus with infinite settings and options — but it does its job and does it well.
Backblaze in action (Also available for Mac)
As for local backup, I’m running an internal mirror drive which I then backup to an external which is still stored off-site. That’s a total of three physical copies of the data to which I have easy access. Backblaze is great for peace of mind in case of catastrophic loss, but when you just screwed up a 3GB PSB and need to go back a version, you really don’t want deal with the downtime involved in pulling it down from a server.
I’ve never felt this confident in terms of data security, the combination of local and online backup is virtually foolproof and gives me the best of both worlds in terms of ease of access and security. It’s actually sort of scary looking back at that first post and realizing how long I lived with the old system, catastrophe was just a careless neighbor away.
How many of you are now using online backup and what services are you using? Let us know in the comments
UPDATE: eydryan has some more info on the subject in the comments
Brent Couchman has some great design/illustration work over at his portfolio. Love the style and his color palette is perfect.
More work over at his Flickr (thanks Matt for the link)
Now that you have the free EP, you need to check out Dusty Brown live. Lucky for you it just so happens they’re playing a show as part of the CD release event for This City is Killing Me this Saturday. After attending countless Dusty Brown shows I can tell you it’s one of the most entertaining live sets around. As good as the recorded stuff is, they really take things to the next level with the live set and I think it’s where the music really shines through. You’ll also be able to snag a limited edition CD version of the EP which won’t be available anywhere else.
I’ll be making the drive down from SF, hope to see some of you out there.
Dusty Brown CD Release Show
Saturday, July 17, 2010 10:00 PM – 1:30 AM PDT
The Townhouse
1517 21st st
Sacramento CA 95814
Gain Directions
Stylepark has some beautiful photos (shot by Thomas Wagner) from the Mercedes collection at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. The show goes until Sep. 14 and features some incredible examples of the German auto maker’s inspiring creations.
I love the wall treatments, and the license plate in that second shot is incredible. Now compare that to this, and you start to understand why so many great designers come from Germany. It’s like those stupid faucet commercials (which I hate simply because of how the piano starts playing when she pulls a faucet out of her purse all dramatically and slams it down on the guy’s desk like it’s the most profound thing he’s ever seen when somebody starts throwing plumbing components around his office. What the hell does it even mean. Did you see how confused her husband looked? I felt the same way. She damaged the finish of that desk and I bet it wasn’t cheap considering how pretentious successful architects are.), I could seriously design a car around that license plate. I bet if you told the Mercedes designers they had to design the car for the US style plates they would just quit and throw a wrench or some molding clay or something. Also, if I moved to the states from Germany and had to do this, I would just drive the car of a cliff because the whole thing is ruined. I have a feeling the “California” font only looks like that because the state couldn’t afford to license Papyrus.
Also check out these posts for some more vintage Mercedes action
Stylepark via Simon Smith
Hulger makes some very well executed VoIP handsets with a nice retro slant. I’d have to say my favorite is the PIP*, it’s dripping with 80’s rich guy nostalgia. The Pappa is a little heavy-handed and leaning hard into 60’s Bostitch stapler territory, but it would look nice on the right desk if I had a second office that smelled of rich mahogany and a pipe was somehow involved.
More shots over at the Hulger site
