Posts in Events

Pantone has just announced that PANTONE® 15-5519 Turquoise is the Color of the Year for 2010. I gather that they are predicting its heavy saturation throughout the fashion and interior design worlds, but I’m not entirely sure what “color of the year” is supposed mean. Besides gut feelings and casual observations, I’m not sure how on earth a color of the year would be chosen. Perhaps there is some magical color metric that I am not aware of. Personally I think the color of the year is grey but that might be a little too depressing for Pantone. Last year was yellow after all…

An interesting aspect of this story that I’ve been struggling with is which version of PANTONE® 15-5519 to trust when you come across it reblogged on the web. I’ve seen some pretty divergent interpretations of the color that are clearly the result of some wacky color profile. Even the one I’ve saved above looks a little darker than Pantone’s website to me. Anyway, you get the point, turquoise is the color of the year. Now paint your walls and buy a new shirt.

Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.

More info here.

Design Matters, the long running design radio show by Debbie Millman, is making the jump to the small screen. SVA is producing a TV version of the show and will be taping the pilot episode this Friday. The first two guests are Milton Glaser and Stefan Sagmeister. To top it all off, the show will be directed by the wonderful Hillman Curtis. I’m not sure where the end result will be available, but I’m sure those details will be revealed in the coming days. I’m hoping for the Thursday 8pm slot on NBC.

If you’re in New York, the taping is open to the public — more information can be found on the Facebook event site. Why don’t I live in New York. Sometimes I want to defollow all of the New York designers on Twitter because all these cool events make me jealous.

I recently met Debbie Millman when she was in town to give a talk at school. Her talk was terrific and I’ll try to do a short write up later this week after I go over my notes. I also participated in her workshop about visual storytelling, which she led having just released her new book. She had each of us write a short story, which she reviewed and then set us on our mission of illustrating the story using all sorts of fun tools. It was fun to write fiction — I’ve become rather used to this “blog style” of writing that I forgot there was a whole other way to go about things. (My story is here if you’re feeling adventurous.) The workshop was great — I love periodically going back to the drawing board, literally, and breaking out the pencils pens and crayons. It was also great to just let loose creatively with no rules, objectives, or criteria. Something I certainly don’t do enough.

via swissmiss

Artwork by Alex Cornell

US DATES
Aug 11 2009 – 11:00P Plan B – New York, US w/ Pilooski, In Flagranti
Aug 12 2009 – 11:00P Low End Theory – Los Angeles, US

TRACKLIST
Free Spirits Intro
Sweet And Innocent – Express Your Love
Iron Butterfly – It Must Be Love
The Moody Blues – I Don’t Mind
The Manhattans – Follow Your Heart
Birtha – Feeling Lonely
The Bee Gees – To Love Somebody
ELO – Telephone Line
Joni Mitchell – Solid Love
The Four Tops – Still Water (LOVE)
Let’s Kiss Blonde Coeds Interlude
Adrian Baker – Is This Love
Ned Doheny – A Love Of Your Own
Tony Grey – She’s My Love
The Koobas – Woe Is It Love My Dear?
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – More Love
Free Spirits Outro

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Bullion – Mixed Up In Love II

After my narrow victory over Jason Koxvold (really should have at least been a tie, great match Jason) last week in the first round of the Layer Tennis Play-Offs I’ve advanced to the Semi Finals which will be played out tomorrow at 12 noon Pacific time. I won the 3D coin flip so I’ll be serving. Hope to see you all out there! Details:

LATE MATCH FRIDAY
2pm Chicago time (Noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern)
Scott Hansen vs Shaun Inman
Link to Match

I’ll be battling it out against Jason Koxvold in the Layer Tennis Playoffs today at 12 noon west coast time. See you all there! Link

I’ve been working on a new poster over the past week and it’s very near completion. It’s a limited edition for the August Ghostly 10 Year show Chicago installment. If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen a sneak preview of the poster (the image above is a cropped snippet). The one up on the Ghostly site is a very early draft though, we just needed to get something up as a placeholder while I worked out the final version. There will be two versions: one with the artist names and one without. Bot will be available in large format offset and Giclee in the coming weeks. I’m hoping to post up the finals very soon here, could be as early as tomorrow but might hold off until Monday to make sure everything is dialed in.

I’ve been focusing a lot on music lately so this has been a nice chance to get back into design for a little bit. It’s definitely been a challenge wrapping it up though. I feel like the older I get the harder it is to decide when a project is complete; I just want to keep going through every possible permutation and variation until the finished product presents itself to me. For this particular poster I’ve been finding success in bouncing the different versions off of friends to see how they react. I’m still not sure if that’s the best idea, but it seemed to work this time around and it probably cut down a lot of the time I would have spent second guessing myself. Stay tuned for the final versions…

Moodgadget Summer Tour 2009 – Part 1 from Alex Koplin on Vimeo.

“This is the first chapter of the Moodgadget 2009 Tour compilation video, with video and photos of wacky antics and performances from Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago and Cincinnati with Shigeto, D. Gookin, Charles Trees, Mogi Grumbles, Calmer, Worst Friends, Guardian, Mux Mool and more! Stay tuned for the next chapter, with full-length footage from shows in Brooklyn and Baltimore!” – Alex/H34dUp

Some of you know Alex/H34dUp on the blog from positive comments on Scott’s topics, well he went on tour with some of the musicians we post on and took some good photos and video from the shows. The video includes: Mux Mool, D. Gookin, Charles Trees, Shigeto, Calmer, and Mogi Grumbles and a lot of unreleased material that I thought some of you might get a kick out of. Some of the best parts are the Adult Swim style bumpers which you can read along to and enjoy the layout. Scott actually came to the Detroit show which is mostly just a collection of photos from that night. There are some awkward moments at times which kind of show you how crazy you might get driving 9 hours a day.

Highlights
– D. Gookin’s cover of Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
– Mux Mool / Shigeto live collab
– Shigeto’s drumming style
– New Charles Trees song
– New artist Dubstep artist Guardian
– Photos of the tour flyers
– The credits

Ten years ago, I was a lowly, heartbroken college freshman, working with my friends Disco D and Matthew Dear on our first single, “Hands Up for Detroit”. Now, after a decade of hard work, finding an amazing team, and a little bit of luck, we’re fortunate enough to celebrate with our artists and friends.

And the Ghostly 10-year hit parade continues. After we bring the venerable Telefon Tel Aviv to this week’s Detroit date, we’ll be hitting Toronto with Ghostly favorites Tycho, Lusine (who has a bomb new single coming], and Michna along with our very good friend and collaborator, Milosh.

Toronto will be a special date: the Drake Hotel is one of Tycho’s favorite venues (Scott said it was one of his best shows yet.) We always have a great time whenever the team plays there. Tickets are on sale now and discounted here.

Here are a few tracks from each of the Toronto show’s artists – including a Tycho debut.

Lusine – Two Dots

[audio:twodots.mp3]
Lusine has a new album on the way, and (perhaps non-objectively) I’d venture to say it’s his best.
Here’s the first single, featuring the lovely voice of Vilja Larjosto.

Secret Frequency Crew – Neon Bridge

[audio:neonb.mp3]
Here’s a song from Adrian Michna’s old group, Secret Frequency Crew, who were on the classic Schematic label. Forest Of The Echo Downs really caught my attention and made our best-of-the-year list back in ’04. It was a good preview of what was to come (busted jazz, stabbing horns, skittering Miami machinedrums) with Michna.

Milosh – Move On

[audio:moveon.mp3]
Mike Milosh occupies a very distinct space in electronic music with his subtle programming and weak-in-the-knees vocals. He just released a new EP with Paul Phisterer which will make you want to plant a tree it’s so pretty.

Tycho – Coastal Brake (Manual remix)

[audio:cbmanual.mp3]
There’s this guy Tycho who’s pretty good too. He’s got a new single coming out this summer with some great remixes. Here’s an exclusive debut of Manual‘s remix of the forthcoming “Coastal Brake.”

After a very early flight this morning I made it into Tampa, FL this afternoon. Loving the weather, hopefully it’s a little sunnier tomorrow though. I’m in town for the Back in Black 2 T-Shirt Exhibit which is going down this Saturday (May 16th) at Czar’s in Tampa (Ybor City). I’ll be playing a Tycho/ISO50 live set around midnight to cap the event off.

The event will feature special limited edition shirts from several artists including myself. You can check out all the shirts here, they’re only available through the end of the month so get yours while they last. The shirts can be had for $25 online and $20 at the event.

Click here for full event info

On a side note, I’d like to thank everyone or the kind comments in the 1000th post, it means a lot. Good luck with the giveaway!

Just a quick heads-up that I’ll be battling it out with Folkert & Atley from But Does It Float today at 12pm PST. I think our styles will make for an interesting match, and looking forward to keeping my undefeated (2-0) Layer Tennis record intact. Don’t miss it!

Layer Tennis