I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be playing at this year’s Sacramento Electronica Music Festival. I’m shouldn’t really be playing shows right now as the album’s due date is rapidly approaching, but I can never pass up an opportunity to play a show in my home town. There are lots of great names on the bill including Dusty Brown, who I’ll be playing some songs with. All in all it’s shaping up to be quite an experience: three days of great music for $10, I’m pretty sure you can’t beat that. And if you’re from the bay area, try to make the drive, it’s only 90 minutes and as you’ll see there’s something about live shows in Sacramento you don’t often get out here.

And for those who know their Sacramento electronic music history, you might notice that this is a partial Command Collective reunion of sorts. With the exception of Chachi Jones, all the original members will be playing during the festival: Dusty Brown, Tha Fruitbat, Lifeliner (aka Park Avenue), and myself.

Tycho: Saturday, Jan. 30th, 2010 – 11:30 PM
Festival: January 28, 2010 9:00 PM – Jan. 31, 2010 2:00 AM

Townhouse Lounge
1517 21st Street
Sacramento, CA

Price $10.00
21+ (sorry!)

More Info | Buy Tickets

I got my first couple days of skiing for the season in last week right after some nice snow up at Heavenly. Skiing always reminds me of being really young and going up with my parents, Sacramento is only an hour from the Sierras so we’d get up a few times a year. I loved all the design associated with ski equipment and I found that when I first started out in design I was always trying to emulate that style in my work.

My latest trip got me thinking about vintage ski graphics so I set out to track down some good examples. Most of what I found were from magazine ads, this first set focuses on racing imagery. I’ll be posting some more in the days to come, hope you enjoy this first batch.

I have been flying a rather insane amount over the last few weeks. I complain about a lot of things when I’m traveling: the food, babies, people that insist on stuffing overhead luggage when it will NOT fit, etc. The one thing I have never considered is the boarding pass. Tyler Thompson has written an excellent article on why the boarding pass is indeed worthy of scrutiny. Take one look at the old Delta pass above and you’ll see why. As he states, “It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random”.

Tyler has done Delta a big favor and redesigned their boarding pass, the design of which you see above. I think it’s obvious that aesthetically, these are much more pleasing to the eye. I would want to hold onto these after my flight was over just because they look awesome. Now of course, the design of a boarding pass has to be more than just beautiful. There are a number of criteria and limitations in place that might prevent your boarding pass from becoming a little piece of art. Worth mentioning in this regard is Timoni Grone’s response to Tylers inital designs. She runs through a meticulous process to come up with a redesign of her own, taking into account all the necessary “practicalities and priorities”.

The cool thing about his project is how he opened it up to others to submit reworkings and suggestions, a few of which he’s posted as you scroll down his page. He’s provided the Illustrator file for download and tweaking. Make sure to head over there and submit yours if you’ve got something brewing. And feel free to sound off if you too feel like the boarding pass design is indeed a fail.

I must say my favorite part of any boarding pass is the little scribbles the security guards make when you pass the initial check at the metal detectors. They do it with such purpose and apparent deliberation, that I think the scribbles must mean something. I always wonder what would happen if I augment their scribbles with scribbles of my own (or scribble before they do). Would I get sent to Homeland Security? Maybe two scribbles on your boarding pass = terrorist. Anyway. I feel safe knowing we have such a complicated system in place.

I could write a similar article about the terrible design of movie tickets, which I feel have slid drastically in the past few years. Since when is a movie ticket printed on receipt paper worth saving? I used to love hoarding all of my movie ticket stubs — now, calling it a “stub” would be an absurd misrepresentation. I call my movie tickets trash.

Thanks @rohrsh

We are back to the regularly scheduled program everybody, 4 songs a day. So today I woke up like usual which is one eye open reaching for my iPhone and checking email, twitter, and facebook before heading to my email and deleting the emails I just read from bed but one thing I noticed was a ton of twittering about a new song by The Knife which was a nice jolt. The song is amazing, it has a great experimental build into this well composed orchestral piece which really relies on these muted beautiful steel drum melodies and outstanding vocal ranges, everyone making pop music should feel some sort of shame after hearing something that is musically moving in a creative direction but keeping their sound and taking chances.

Coworkers have been telling me about Sub Pop’s Avi Buffalo for months now, I found this song from a Daytrotter live session and I blew me away. Lately if i’ve been listening to anything like this its only been slower stuff from Kurt Vile, Bon Iver, Elm From Arm or Midlake so this was a nice change in gears.

Wow what a great remix by Nosaj Thing, so thick and warm with a nice pop but it must be easy though if you have Charlotte Gainsbourg vocals to work with, can’t really screw that up.

If I could hear one song live and it to keep growing and building it would have to be this Casino Versus Japan song, I heard it live at the Tycho NYC show and I had to roll my tongue back into my mouth and hold my jaw from hitting the floor. The sounds that you get when you’re half way thru bring back so much nostalgia for me, they’re so gentle and dreamy but in a whole different way than what shoegaze does for some people.

I only post one image by itself when I think it’s worth it. This one, advertising the Hvass&Hannibal show at the Kemistry Gallery, is such an image. I like the layout, sure, but the main reason I found this so captivating is the color combinations. Each little circle has a different (and often bizarre but terrific) color combination. Each could easily jump off this poster and onto whatever project you happen to be working on (assuming the word “fun” might describe your client…) Pink and green? Why not. Lime and red? Let’s do this. My favorite is 6th row down, 4th across. Reminds me of a Deth P Sun type palette.

Now I’m inclined to think that H&H had everything to do with the design of this poster, but I cannot find the credit information anywhere. It looks like something they would drum up, but if not, let me know and I’ll be sure to link out. If you’re in London, be sure to check out the exhibit! Here is the invitation.

With a copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium on the line the stakes are high for second prize in the Holiday Giveaway. The lucky winner takes home one copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium Mac (US$1,799 Value), one ISO50 shirt of choice, the Tycho Coastal Brake 12″, and a Tycho MP3 Collection.

So without further ado, drumroll please… The second prize winner for the 2009 Holiday Giveaway is Jared Pendergraft. Congratulations Jared, we’ve emailed you at the address you provided. If you do not receive an email in the next couple days please contact us with an alternate email address.

We still have another copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium and ISO50 prints and shirts to giveaway so be sure to enter now before the final winner is picked. Just make any purchase at the ISO50 Shop to be automatically entered to win, or you may enter at the Holiday Giveaway Page.

Good luck!

I’m very excited to announce that Pop Ambient 2010 is out on January 18th, 2010 on Kompakt which will mark the 10th release in my favorite compilation series of all time. Here is one song from each year, I hope it relaxes you and you end up finding a few new favorite ambient songs.

Yes! League! When I look over my ffffound over the last few weeks, there has been one dominant style I’ve been gravitating towards for its beauty and sophistication. This work by League sums it up perfectly. It’s often imageless, utilizes type in some unusual way, is bold and graphic, and has some crazy asymmetrical balance at work that makes me want to practice graphic design forever and quit it immediately…simultaneously.

I love layouts with many scattered elements, all necessary and unable to be removed, but you’re not sure exactly why. For example, those tiny thick black lines on the CFP AA poster above — wee bits like this are amazing to me.

And by the way their home page might be my favorite single page on the web right now.

via Dirty Mouse

Mux Mool just dropped his new single this week called Lady Linda which features 2 tracks from his upcoming LP Skulltaste on Ghostly International coming to us in March 2010. If you like what he did for Adult Swim or his Drum EP then this track has a mixture of that with hints of fantasy video game music specifically Zelda for the Nintendo 64 with a hip hop wobble.

With Lusine’s recent remix of Tycho’s Coastal Brake becoming played so often here at home I decided I needed to up my back catalog of some of his older releases. I have so many favorite tracks of his but I felt Risa was a nice replacement for a 5 hour energy drink on this hectic Monday.

…okay get ready, this might be the rowdiest track i’ve ever posted on ISO50 but its soo soo good, it puts Diplo and MIA deeper in the old news section of Spin and Billboard. Sleigh Bells will take over Brooklyn any second now, I can already feel the rumbling.

Matias Aguayo had a great 2009, his label Cómeme is one of the more forward thinking labels that are taking chances out there. I looked at his style and I always think of Weekend At Bernie’s clothing and that color palette from the VHS cover art meets maybe what Ibiza was in the early 90’s maybe thats because the intro to this song reminds me of Pump Up The Jam by Technotronic.

Recently I’ve been obsessing over an often overlooked part of web design: the login form. There are few sites that have aggregated examples of login forms for perusal; this one by Design Reviver is pretty good. I’d prefer the list to be more like 500 examples, but it’s easy to go in search of other cool login form designs. The ones above are fun, but I’ve yet to find one that really knocks my socks off. Anyone know of some really superb login forms?

One of my favorite trends is the use of oversized text in the forms. Tumblr was one of the first places I saw it. Scott and I discussed it a long time ago in reference to the Nike login form, pictured above. Still not sure what it is about the giant text field that feels so right — maybe it just seems to reinforce what you’re writing. Like “Yes this IS my email address. BAM.”