Posts in Causes

The fire last week in Oakland has been a huge shock to the artist community here in the Bay Area with ripples far beyond. Sadly, as is often the case, it took a tragedy of this magnitude to start a dialogue about the issues and conditions that precipitated it.

I first discovered electronic music in the ‘90s through the Bay Area warehouse party scene. Later I moved back to Sacramento where I started making music myself and playing my first shows at underground parties. I owe a lot to the community and history of this area and it’s disheartening to know that fewer and fewer artists have the opportunity to benefit from this richly diverse community.

This Wednesday I’ll be participating in the Oakland United event at the Fox Theater. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to Gray Area Foundation For The Arts Oakland Fire Relief Fund. Christopher Willits, whose Overlap Studio is based in Oakland, and I will be collaborating on a short DJ set and a lot of other local artists will be playing as well.

I’ve created this poster to promote the event and as a tribute to the victims of the fire. We will be selling prints at the show and online afterwards, proceeds of which will go to the Fire Relief Fund.

I hope you can support in whatever way you are able; more information about the event and the relief fund can be found at Oakland United.

To donate directly please visit Grey Area.

Most days since 2007 i’ve posted music from unsigned artists, well known artists, and demos from email links(keyword there is links not attachments) from musicians and readers. Since then not many people or articles have explained promotion to musicians the way Anthony Fantano did it here on his youtube channel, really worth your time if you’re making music and your frustrated with your following.

I’m not really sure what to link you to first…everything about this project is exceptionally well executed. Local design firm I Shot Him put together a very slick project (maybe “experience” is more fitting) surrounding the issue of marijuana legalization.

The project is made up of a lot of pieces: a website, a video, a process box, the list goes on. Really blown away by the complexity and creativity at work. And these guys aren’t a big shop! I Shot Him is made up a just a few MFA Academy of Art grads. Well done guys!

In addition to all of the final deliverables, they’ve outlined their process in this very detailed and thorough process piece. I am a sucker for design process articles and this one is among the best I’ve seen. I’ve included some images above, but definitely check out the full piece.

OpenIDEO is a web platform for facilitating social innovation. It launched this past Monday and was developed by IDEO. It is designed as a collaborative creative space where everyone (designer or not) can come together and participate in the design process, through inspiration, concepting and evaluation. It is based around design challenges which start out as simple questions but tackle significant global challenges. Watch the video above to learn more. To really get a sense for the site, sign up on OpenIDEO and start adding inspirations!

The first challenge is for Jaime Oliver, the winner of this year’s TED prize and flag bearer of the Food Revolution in America. The goal is to find ways to raise awareness about the benefits of healthy and fresh food, especially for children. You can watch Jaime introduce the challenge in the video above.

I’ve been working as an intern at IDEO for the past 2 months and was able to participate in the first OpenIDEO internal challenge: to design the logo for the site. It was a really exciting process and I cannot wait to see these other challenges get put through the same paces. By breaking up the design process into these three easy phases, it ensures that important milestones are accomplished. I found the inspiration phase especially helpful, even for projects unrelated to the logo development.

I’ll be at IDEO through mid-September, when my master’s program begins again.

10,000 Year Clock Prototype

The idea behind the Clock is to be an inspiration for long-term thinking, to help make thinking long term automatic and common, instead of difficult and rare. It is hoped to be an artifact to connect its visitors to the future in the same way relics from ancient civilizations connect us to the past. Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well-engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think. [link]

The clock may reside mostly underground, near Van Horn, Texas, and will tick once a year. There is a fascinating set of principles guiding the construction of the clock. I enjoyed the various options for timing the clock: piezoelectric oscillator, pendulum, orbital dynamics and etc. “Sounds made up” as my roommate is fond of saying. Currently there is a prototype design at the Science Museum of London.

By the way I titled this post “10,000 Year Time Machine” because any clock that will work for this period of time is much more than a clock, it is a giant MACHINE. Apologies if you were expecting a post on an actual time machine like a Delorean.

Big Ant International created these posters for the Global Coalition for Peace. The series has garnered significant recognition of late, including a Silver Pencil at the One Show Awards, and nominations for both the D&AD and CLIO Awards 2009. The posters are wrapped around street poles and achieve that ever so illusive “aha” moment when viewed in this circular manner.

I would imagine a poster series depicting soldiers essentially pointing guns at themselves is bound to be met with some controversy, but it seems clear to me that the “target” of the campaign is the US foreign policy and not the soldiers themselves. The metaphor is clear. Hopefully as the work competes for further acclaim, opinions about the message won’t get in the way of recognizing the work as a successful piece of graphic design. The series is a great example of a simple and brilliant concept executed very effectively.

See the rest of the campaign here.

Stephen Shirley — a family friend — has been battling Hodgkin’s disease for over 2 years now. The cancer has been unresponsive to chemo so Stephen and his family are trying a new treatment center in Houston, TX which has had great results with patients affected by his particularly difficult to treat form of Hodgkin’s. Some friends of Stephen recently launched a website to chronicle his struggle and to raise money for this prohibitively expensive form of treatment. I am sure most of you can relate as cancer is a disease that touches all of our lives in some way. You can check out Stephen’s site here: savingstephen.com

Thank You

Saw this on FFFFOUND today, really very clever. Loving the vignette on the flag photos and the concept is spot-on. Using the flags as information design in this context is so poignant. Incidentally, I used to be obsessed with flags, had them hanging all over my room as a kid. Guess I’m still a sucker for them.

"Icaro Doria is Brazilian, 25 and has been working for the magazine Grande Reportagem, in Lisbon, Portugal, for the last 3 years. He was the author of the flags campaign "Meet the World" that has been circulating the earth in chain letters via e-mail…"

– Quoted From Brazilian Artists.net