NOTCOT is having an ISO50 giveaway including a couple Studio Giclee Prints, the new Syv shirt, and the Tycho Coastal Brake 12″. I also wrote a short piece on how we print the posters here at the studio and posted up some pictures of the process.
→ Read on and enter to win here. Good luck!
I’ll be playing a show in Portland, OR next Friday (Dec. 4, 2009) at The Crown Room. I’ll be playing some new music and visuals on the new system I used in Toronto last week. Fellow San Franciscan Welder (aka Eskmo) will be playing as well so it should be an interesting night. Hope to see you out, all the info is here.
On a technical note, I switched from a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol1 interface to my MOTU 828MKII for live work and it’s made a huge difference. The NI box had all sorts of latency and drop-out issues, which can obviously be a nightmare in a live setting. I had tracked down most of the bugs and things were running relatively smoothly, but the specter of a crash looming over you during the whole set can put a damper on things. The MOTU is so smooth I’ve stopped even considering the possibility that something could go wrong and it’s cleared things up so I can concentrate on the set. Unfortunately it’s a beast made for a 19″ rack. It just fits in my flight case though so it’s ok for now, just a bit wasteful on the weight side. I’m going to get a MOTU Ultralight MK3 which is basically the same thing but, at less than half the size, it’s a more practical form factor for live applications. Luckily I had the 828MK2 laying around because I switched it out of studio duty for an RME Fireface800 a while back. I had meant to sell it but I’m glad I gave this setup a shot first.
Friday, December 4, 2009 – Portland, OR
TYCHO Live A/V Set (Ghostly International SF)
WELDER (Ancestor Media, Surefire SF)
Dj Devon (Abstract Earth PDX)
Coyote Beat (Feat. PlumbLyne & Ana G PDX)
The Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave
9pm 10$
There are a some new shirts up at the ISO50 Shop and I thought I’d announce them here before they go out in the newsletter next week. First is “Syv”, which is printed on the new American Apparel Tri-Blend “Coffee”, which is sort of a dusty version of the normal heather grey tri-blend with a slight coffee tint. When I first saw samples of these I was immediately hooked. The color and feel are exactly what I have been wanting for a while now and they compliment the design I had in mind well.
Next is the new Vuela colorway, black on black. I have been using American Apparel black shirts for a while now and while they have their own thing going on, I wanted to be able to work with a shirt that felt a little more vintage. I found a company called Alternative Apparel (no points for originality on the name…) who offer some pretty interesting colors. I like how their swatches aren’t truly red, or blue, they’re sort of a distressed version with a little color shift. For the Vuela shirt I went with their “Earth Coal” color, it feels sort of like a vintage concert tee, nice and soft with a slim cut. Definitely of the most comfortable tees I own.
All designs are available in men’s and women’s sizes. Quantities are limited so if you’re trying to get in on these before the holidays, now would be the time.
It was a pleasure as always to visit Toronto, I really appreciate everyone who came out to the Function 13 gallery and the show afterward at Nocturne, I had a great time at both. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera (it’s a long story, but some last minute baggage issues didn’t leave room) so I don’t have many pics from the night. Luckily, Sean Pollock from The Buzzout Room (a great radio station by the way, you can stream it here) brought along his Canon 5D MK2 and got a couple shots of the gallery (shown above).
A couple others brought out their cameras — among them Bram Timmer who also has a 5D MK2, I was pretty jealous — so I’ll try to get some shots from them and post up a full set of the gallery. If anyone has some decent shots let me know.
As you can see I went with the bulldog clips for mounting the prints. Thanks to everyone for the great suggestions in the original gallery post. I experimented with neodymium magnets but had some issues with grip, the posters kept slipping from between them. I ended up spray painting bulldog clips white and hanging them over long, thin nails so that the piece stood off the wall a little. There is a strip of 2″ tall foamcore that runs the width of the print clipped behind each at the top and bottom. This helped straighten everything out and give a “mounted” feel without the need to damage the back print. I was really pleased with the results, under the gallery lighting the whole thing really came off dramatic. The lack of a frame and the inch between the wall and the print really made the piece feel more accessible and hilighted the texture and feel of the Hahnemühle German Etching paper. Thanks again to the guys from Function 13 for helping out with everything.
If you missed the gallery opening night you can still catch the show, it will be up until mid-January at Function 13 Gallery, 156 Augusta Ave Toronto. If you were there and missed out on getting a piece before it sold, some of the designs can be had at the ISO50 Studio Shop or the ISO50 Merchline Shop.
Thanks again, see you all again in April at FITC Toronto.
I made it in to Toronto tonight, pretty easy day of travel. Unfortunately there’s a little bit of rain but I hear it will let up by tomorrow evening. I went over to Function 13 Gallery tonight to get started setting things up, I’ll be hanging all the artwork for the ISO50 show tomorrow.
The gallery show will feature a lot of new work along with some old stuff. I ended up going back and reworking everything, pulling out the text and just leaving the artwork. It was a pretty fun process stripping things down to their core elements, it’s always a nice test to see which images stand on their own without the accompanying type. A couple posters — such as 1971 and Madrone — couldn’t do without the type so I just tried stripping out some other extraneous elements. Going back through some of the older files was pretty surprising, it was interesting to see how much my technique has changed over the years. Some were just a mess, it felt like restoring an old house removing all the heavy handed distressing and randomly placed elements. It was great to see the results, I feel like the core concepts of a lot of the pieces can breathe a lot better now.
I’ve also got some new stuff in store for the live Tycho set; a few new songs, some remixes, and reworked live visuals. It’s been pretty stressful over the past week getting ready for this but it all came together over the past few days so now I’m just excited to get it all out there. Hope to see you out tonight. Click the links below for more info.
Also, if you enjoy all the music posted on this blog (which is pretty much all Jakub), then you will enjoy Jakub’s DJ set tonight. He’ll be playing as his DJ alter-ego Aarnio tonight at the show.
» Scott Hansen / ISO50 Solo Show @ Function 13 Gallery, Toronto
» Tycho Live – ISO50 Gallery Afterparty @ Nocturne, Toronto
As promised, here’s the final poster for the Analog Visions show on Friday in Toronto. In case you missed it, I’ll be doing a solo show at Function 13 Gallery this Friday, November 20th. I’ve been working out concepts for how to hang the posters throughout the past week, I’ve decided against frames and want to go with something a little more raw feeling for this one. The work that I’ll be showing are all printed on Hahnemühle German Etching paper which has this incredible texture. I don’t want anything to get between the viewer and the piece. I have been working with Bulldog clips and nails, spray painting the clips matte white and using longer nails to let the piece stand off the wall a little. I think it’s going to look nice, but I’m still open to any suggestions, if you have any ideas for alternative poster hanging methods, let me know in the comments.
As for the poster design itself, I spent way longer than expected on this one. It was meant to be a quick promo poster for the gallery but the deeper I got into it the more I realized I had to finish it off properly. Once you hit on a concept you kind of have to decide whether to go all the way with it or save it for when there’s time to do it right. It was a stretch, but I was able to get it done in time (deadline was this morning) so it’s pretty nice to finally see it in it’s completed form. As you can see, this is another take on the Nocturne poster, featuring the same model. Seeing as how these events are the same night I wanted them to be related, but not exactly the same. I wanted the Nocturne design to be a little more divergent from my earlier work while this one was meant to sort of bridge the gap between new and old given the nature of the gallery show. You can see a larger version of the image over at the studio site.
The version above is probably the fifth or sixth, not counting the various in between states. The final file ended up around 4GB, 24×36″ at 300dpi but I did most of the heavy lifting with low resolution smart object stand-ins so it wasn’t too slow. In case anyone was wondering, this is the project I was referring to in the Photoshop Question / Problem post. All of the circles were smart objects based on the same photograph. As stated above, I worked with a model I shot here in the studio for the silhouettes, but I worked with another photographer for some elements of the background. I used some shots from Jacob Sargeant’s beautiful Experimental Set on Flickr for the detailing and color shifts. Thanks to Disign Police for turning me on to Jacob’s work.
Time for a day off and some much needed rest, hope to see you out in Toronto.
» Scott Hansen / ISO50 Solo Show @ Function 13 Gallery
» Tycho Live – ISO50 Gallery Afterparty @ Nocturne
I’m doing a solo exhibition at Function 13 Gallery in Toronto next Friday where I’ll be showing some new work and large format stuff. I’m still working on the main poster for the event so I’ll be posting that on Monday probably. For now, here’s all the details:
Gallery Opening: Fri Nov 20th, 2009
6pm-9pm
FREE
Function 13 Gallery
156 Augusta Ave Toronto, ON M5T 2L5 [Google Map]
I’ll also be doing the live Tycho set afterward at Nocturne.
The new Tycho Coastal Brake 12″ single is now available for pre-order at the shop. This 180 gram vinyl pressing is limited to 1000 copies, the first 50 of which are signed and numbered. Each order includes the MP3/WAV version which will be immediately downloadable on the release date, December 8th, 2009. Here are some audio sample clips:
[audio:https://blog.iso50.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tycho-Coastal_Brake-Lusine-Remix-CLIP.mp3]
A limited edition lithograph featuring the alternate artwork is folded into each sleeve. Printed on 100# Superfine Eggshell Text, White paper.
You’ll find more pictures and info over at the shop.
I did an interview with Norway National Radio while I was there last week. It’s brief and you’ll have to speak Norwegian to understand most of it. They seemed to focus in on the political aspects of our conversation, most of the questions centered around the role of graphic design in American politics in the wake of the 2008 elections. Also, I had a cold so that’s why I sound like I just inhaled 3 packs of Camels.
On a side note, check out that logo! Love it.
[audio:https://blog.iso50.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nrk.mp3]