Posts by Scott

Just a quick update for the Ghostly 10 Year Anniversary Show coming up March 6th. Fellow San Franciscan Christopher Willits has just been added to the bill (see updated flyer above). In case you don’t know, Willits makes all sorts of dreamy, shoe-gazey, guitar electronica and also drops audio science all over the placein the form of his “What You Talkin’ ‘Bout Willits” series for XLR8R TV. The tickets are selling out fast so get yours now!

Full Details
Presale $15
At the Door $20

Wired has an interesting article about the new F1 rules and the resultant car designs (McLaren MP4-24 pictured above). It details how new rules for the sport — which many expected to create a significant design challenge — have actually served to beautified the new models. These things are starting to look like they can fly and if it weren’t for the fact that your work would be ruined by about 800 ads, designing the paint for one would be a lot of fun. Check out the Wired article here.

Eley Kishimoto make some very well designed fabrics and wallpapers. Self-described “surface decorators”, the London based firm has been designing textiles since the early ’90’s. More info at their site and their blog.

The top two are meant to be wallpapers and while they’re incredible to look at, I’m not sure I could handle that pattern going on all day. Maybe one small wall in the studio?

I stumbled across this incredible piece by Michael Paul Young today. Young — the man behind Designgraphik and co-founder of We Work For Them — created this image for the band Omega Code. More info on Young and this piece can be found here. Always nice to see such incredible print work still being produced; sometimes I feel like the only good stuff is decades behind us and then something like this pops up.

A while back Computer Arts magazine asked me to write an illustration tutorial for an issue which focused on textures. The idea was to revisit the classic Bob Dylan Blowin’ In The Wind / Mister Tambourine Man poster. I really enjoyed the project and ended up using the resulting image as the basis for my Progress Austin concert poster. Computer Arts has made the entire article available on their site as a PDF which you can download here. They’ve even made the original source files available so you can follow along with the tutorial. If you have any questions feel free to post in the comments and I’ll try and fill in any blanks.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Raster and vector collide

In this tutorial we show you how to bring together both vector and raster elements to create a seamless piece that sits well in both worlds. The concepts we explore will lend a timeless, weathered feel to what would otherwise be a rather stark design. Relying on Photoshop’s powerful raster tools and quite adequate stable of vector tools, we can tap the strengths of both without leaving the familiar realm of Adobe’s most powerful graphics app. We can unite two styles of design by employing Photoshop’s powerful blending mode options along with advanced gradient masking techniques to produce an illustration style that is truly unique.”

Download Tutorial PDF
Download Support Files

Some classics via Helloairecords. It always amazes me to see such forward thinking design from this period. It’s 1955 and design this evolved already exists, it’s incredible. Of course, this is Europe. Unfortunately, most of us in the states were too concerned with Elvis and Marilyn Monroe to appreciate the finer points of the grid system or minimalist design theory. There is something very pleasing about such simple shapes and colors modulated by the quirks and imperfections of the analog printing process, it really brings life to the composition.

I’ll be driving up to Sacramento for the Dusty Brown show on Sunday, should be a good one. Word is they’re going to have a live drummer so definitely try to make it out if you can. Here’s the details:

Dusty Brown LIVE
w/ Musical Chairs
CLUB POW! @ Press Club
2030 P St. Sacramento, CA 95814
Sunday, 01-25-2009
Cost: $3

Update: The L.A. installment of the show has been set for Sunday Mar. 8th. More info is on the events page, get advance tickets here.

Ghostly International’s 10th birthday is fast approaching and they’re having anniversary shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles to celebrate. I’ll be playing the first date on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at Mezzanine in San Francisco. As far as I know, the line up will be the same for L.A., but I don’t have all the details for that show yet. This should be a great night filled with a lot of great performances by the Ghostly crew. You can snag some advance tickets for $5 off here. Hope to see you all out, here’s all the details:

GHOSTLY and MEZZANINE present

Mezzanine
444 Jessie Street @ Mint
San Francisco, California 94103

Beamer turned me on to the new Akai APC40 last weekend. It was just announced at NAMM and looks to be a great alternative to the Monome for Ableton Live. Seems like a safe bet as a VJ app controller as well. More Info

A couple more brilliant works from one of my favorite designers, Jacqueline Casey. Images via Eye Magazine’s Flickr