A few rejected book covers by Klas Ernflo. Beautiful typography at work here — I especially can’t get over how amazing the uppercase G is in the top image (looks like Didot, but I’m not positive). Surprising (and not at the same time) that these were rejected by the publisher. I would have bought them on the spot, regardless of their contents!

Recently I’ve been trying to determine my favorite occurrence of each letter of the alphabet. I’ve picked a few, like the “G” seen above, but most letters remain up in the air. The eventual goal will be to have a list of 52 shapes; representing my absolute favorite renderings of each letterform, upper and lowercase. After that I guess I’ll move onto symbols and numbers (I already know my favorite “7” — Clarendon). A few other examples might be the “W” from the Westinghouse logo, the lowercase Avant Garde “a”, and maybe the “H” from Scott’s recent post.

Would love to hear everyone else’s favorites! It’s hard I know, to narrow it down outside of the context of application, but I’m sure there are some standout letters for each of you. Let us know!

I know i’m not the person that should be writing this since some of you who follow the blog sometimes have to snowshoe/pull your hair/wade through my odd writing style, but I just need to get all this off my chest. It started off with this Facebook post I wrote because I was just so bothered after putting on MTV for the first time in I don’t know how long:

“Took a peek at the MTV’s music video awards tonight to see if pop music has stepped it up but still no luck at all especially instrumentally, christ! What do they do with their money? Big time creativity/musicianship/entertainment fail. Let’s just hope people like Fever Ray, Matthew Dear, Atlas Sound, SVIIB, Erlend Oye, and Benoit Pioulard keep pushing forward because that was embarrassing to watch.”

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Some very nice scans of 1960’s and 1970’s Scandinavian logos from Oliver Tomas’s Flickr. As great as these logos are, it’s always amazing how much better things look when scanned from a well printed page. The texture and imperfect edges really take it to the next level.

Via Oliver Tomas

My most recent assignment for my MFA program is a pretty exciting one. Our task this semester is to pick a dead, dying or defunct brand and revitalize it. We are free to choose pretty much whatever we want so long as we can make a case for its need of a makeover and/or repositioning. The goal is not only to develop a new identity system for the brand, but also to extend its focus into untapped commercial avenues. For this part especially, we are encouraged to let our imaginations go wild. At the end of the project we will have an overhauled identity system, new product extensions, and an imagined history starting from wherever we picked up — the only thing that must be carried over is the original name.

Pan Am, a most beloved brand, would be a great example of something that would work really well for this project. Picking something that is familiar to people and in the public consciousness is always a good strategic choice. Although, you do run the risk of competing with a powerful history and a previously very effective identity. Another good example that Scott and I discussed was General Dynamics.

Today in class we went over everyone’s choices and there were some pretty cool ones; some very random, and most with lots of potential for sure. I am still on the fence with my choices, but I think I’ll come round this weekend when I have more time to think of potential futures. Right now, I’m thinking it might be fun to try and make No Fear cool again. They obviously aren’t an extinct brand, but if you visit the website you’ll see there is room for some…improvement.

Anyone think of other brands that are in desperate need of a renovation or rebirth? We found this list, but most I had not heard of. I’m sure there must be some others out there just screaming for an overhaul. Sound off in the comments.

UPDATE: The brand I ended up choosing was Playboy. Read about it here.

Some very nice vintage Braun Catalogues from Thimet. Looks like Braun’s influence on Apple extends beyond just hardware; I’m pretty sure that last one came with my Macbook. The site also has some great shots of classic Braun calculators (bottom of page) —one of which you will recognize if you’ve ever used the iPhone calculator. My favorite will always be the ET11 though, which clearly influenced the Omron 86R’s design.

I keep seeing all this among friends kind of “press” on Memory Tapes and a ton of remixes by him so I bought his Seek Magic LP to see if I could find something I like and i’m not so surprised I found a couple great tracks. The one that stuck the most with me is Swimming Field, its full of airy slow melodies and builds to an outro with these huge lo-fi drums, woodwinds, and a fantasy spaceship sound, I know it doesn’t sound that good of a description of something you’d want to hear but i’d suggest you give it a listen.

The Beat Konducta needs to do a soundtrack stat, give the man a cool mill., what are you movie directors doing not hounding this guy for music daily.

Reggie Dokes was brought to my attention by Tom Croose a few weeks ago and I just got around to listening to his catalog. The sound of Chicago Pimp might actually define what I love about calssic sounding House music, it has that militant kick that has a ton history behind it from the Detroit and Chicago original heads, a looped key melody thats stripped down, these stretched out open ride cymbals and hi hats, and this gradual feeling that the song is taking over the space you’re in. All these together is a recipe for what makes a huge Detroit crowd lose their minds without yelling, pure body music.

Okay I can’t get enough of Bradford Cox as you can tell if you follow any of the recent music posts but there’s nothing wrong with that, I mean listen to this song from his upcoming Logos album, holy crap its like he’s serving me my nostalgia in a glass and its thick as syrup, I feel i’m just lost in a stare while watching large amounts of pink taffy being made, so lush, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Memory Tapes – Swimming Field

Madlib – The Payback (Gotta)

Reggie Dokes – Chicago Pimp

Atlas Sound – Washington School

Alexandra Valenti has a very diverse portfolio of photography. Two of my favorite things — Hawaii and recording studios — are frequently portrayed. Her work reminds me of what I imagine to be the perfect day; adventuring around some abandoned island all afternoon, then coming inside and recording deep into the night. What a combination.

The chosen subjects and processing style remind me a bit of some of Neil Krug’s work.

via do it for the fame

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQkEF4WhJk
This is one of those things where I am in awe of the technical achievement but the whole idea behind it makes me want to drive off a cliff in a ’78 Blazer playing Sgt. Pepper’s on 8-track. It’s easy to say John Lennon would be rolling over in his grave if he saw this, but then again time does funny things to people. At any rate, The Beatles have always been idols of mine so this is still a treat, even if it is some cynical alternate reality where they’ve all been recast (two posthumously at that) in their prime as hucksters for some half-assed video game cavorting around with Hollywood-extra hipster stereotypes and generally making my whole childhood feel nauseous.

Anyways, it’s worth a watch as long as you hit stop right around the 22 second mark at which point is devolves into the zombie-mation 3D stylings that are the reason Rock Band makes me cringe. Although it could be worse, far worse.

Via Sorry Mari

I just came from one of the most delightful shows I could ever even dream of seeing and hearing which was a small show with Kings of Convenience live with about 15 people in the crowd. To be honest I can’t even describe how good this album is going to be in October, if you have tickets to the Bowery Ballroom tomorrow then you’re in for an amazing time, i’m still soaking in what I just heard. Erlend even came up to me and told me “hey look its you” and pointed to his shirt of a drawing of a boy with glasses on and I kinda laughed since I KINDA have pink glasses similar to his. At one point there was this high pitch sound coming from the walls or piping in the room and KoC just decided to take the private show into the staircase and played an encore in the stairs which sounded really good for some reason for how huge this stairway was.

Sorry for the fanboy post but it had to be done, i’ll never lose that star struck part of me when it comes down to true talents.

More songs from Kings of Convenience’s LP here

Kings of Convenience – Boat Behind

The Ghostly Discovery App has been garnering all sorts of praise and even more downloads since it’s July launch. When we first posted on it a lot of you had noted that it was not available overseas. Well the announcement just came down that with the release of version 1.05, the app is available internationally. The best part is that it’s still free! Get yours now