The Auteurs has a post on their picks for the top movie posters of the decade. Considering that the vast majority of modern movie posters fall short of the standards set in heyday of film, this must have been a difficult list to assemble and a boring task to complete. Nevertheless, they have managed to dig up a few gems. Good to see The Bank Job in there — always a favorite — but I was pleasantly surprised by Funny Games, hadn’t seen that one.
Everything you see in these stills and videos by Alex Roman is 100% computer generated. This is certainly the best CGI I’ve ever seen; I would normally say “virtually” indistinguishable from reality, but in this case the “virtually” doesn’t belong. The videos were created using 3dsmax, Vray, After Effects, and Premier. But what amazes me here isn’t just the execution, Roman crafts truly beautiful images with impeccable taste, something often missing from highly technical productions such as this. The man perfectly rendered a Mies van Der Rohe and an Eames, give him a medal! Maybe I can get some VR googles and map his work to the interior of my house and pretend to live in some modernist paradise.
I thought I had a bad workload trying to finish this new album, I can’t even imagine the man hours that went into just one minute of these videos. More videos at Roman’s Vimeo page and lot’s of stills and info at his portfolio site.
Beautiful shots of the original LP400 and concept models of the Lamborghini Countach before Crockett and Tubbs got back from Kragen with all the wings and spoilers. You may recognize some of the lines from the Bertone post, that’s because Bertone designer Marcello Gandini also designed the original Countach concept in 1971.
This is such a beautiful design, shame they had to go and muck it up with all the over the top junk. Although I guess if it didn’t have all that stuff we wouldn’t have such a perfect cliche ’80s car as a reference point in video games and movies.
I did an interview for the excellent Grain Edit blog recently and they’ve posted it up today. We covered a lot of ground from coffee shops and design to music production. There’s also a couple bonus shots of the studio in there. Check it out at the link below.
Thanks to everyone who made it out last night, I had an incredible time and the energy was great. I really appreciate you all sticking around until 2:30am on a sunday night, you’re probably hating me this morning though, wish I could buy you a coffee. It was great to be able to check out the other bands too, I’ve been meaning to see all of them live for a while now.
Shigeto turned in an amazing performance with his drums with some great backing visuals by Alex Headup, Adam Hunt, and Martin Thoburn. A Sunny Day in Glasgow came with some really dreamy stuff and they were a perfect counterpoint to the decidedly electronic vibe of the other acts on the bill. The highlight of the night for me was Casino Versus Japan’s set. He very rarely plays shows (I think the last one was like 6 years ago?) so it was a rare treat to say the least. I had the honor of doing visuals for him during his set which was really a great experience. I rarely get to just do visuals for other artists so it was nice to be able to focus on that side of things. As you might imagine, his set was super mellow and ambient. The energy ebbed and flowed perfectly and made for a very moving experience. Hopefully he starts playing more shows because I doubt you’ll see anything like that again any time soon.
All in all it was a great time, I hope to be back again soon. This was my last show for a while as I’ll be focusing on wrapping up the new album through the early part of the year but as soon as that’s ready I’ll be getting back out.
Update: Thanks Wilamagamid for pointing me over to Blanka, where you can purchase these prints.
Albert Exergian created this series of posters depicting popular television shows boiled down into their most simplified forms. He describes them as “A HUMOROUS VIEW ON TV CULTURE” but they don’t strike me as being particularly humorous. Intriguing is a better word, Exergian’s sense of efficiency is uncanny. This would make a great set of screen prints, if only he were selling them. I guess he might have some legal issues though. Although, he’s only really putting words on a page; does writing “Dexter” (my favorite poster by the way) constitute copyright infringement? I hope not. Anyways, if anyone knows where to get prints of these, please let me know.
Update: Found better images over at Blanka, but the following gripe still stands! Major tangent here: Sorry for the white lines around the edges, I got these directly from Exergian’s site and that’s how they came. This brings up a HUGE gripe I have with Photoshop: If you don’t flatten a file before you resize it, the edges tend to show through to the transparent background so when you save as JPEG, it ends up with these annoying white lines. I have no idea why this is so, but it is. I guess it’s time for another “Dear Adobe” post.
The new Tycho 12″ EP, “Coastal Brake” is officially out in physical (12″ Vinyl+Digital) and Digital (MP3+WAV) formats. You can get it directly from The ISO50 Shop, iTunes, or your favorite online retailer. There are very few copies of the limited edition 12″ vinyl (which includes the digital edition MP3+WAV) left, those can be had here.
On a related note, after their Forkcast post last week, Pitckfork did a full review of the track this week. Check it out here.
For those of you who already ordered the vinyl, those began shipping yesterday (some orders going out from Merchline). You should have received a download code with instructions for getting the digital files as well. If you bought the vinyl at a show prior to the official release, email talk (AT) ISO50 with the UPC code from the back of the cover and we’ll send you a download coupon.
Mid-Century Modernist posted a couple interviews with Dieter Rams. One is by Gestalten and the other by The Design Museum. It’s great to see this pioneer of product design is still getting the recognition he deserves.
By the way, can you believe this guy is still around? He’s the true definition of a living legend. That’s one of the coolest things about graphic design, our heroes don’t overdose on heroin at 27. They seem to live long, healthy lives, maintaining productivity well into later life. Must be all the sitting, or maybe all the designer reading glasses.
