After an unplanned overnight stay in Atlanta, I’ve finally made it to Tampa for the Connext show tonight. Just a reminder, if you’re planning on coming out the show is from 5:00-10:30PM at Coachman Park. I’ll go on around 9PM, all the details are here. See you out there.
I’ll be playing a live Tycho set and doing ISO50 visuals this Saturday (Nov.1) in Clearwater, FL for The Connext Project show in Coachman Park. There will also be an ISO50 booth with posters, shirts, CDs, etc. The show starts at 5PM and from what I’ve heard I go on around 9PM. Sorry for the late notice on this, but hopefully you can recover from your Halloween hangover and make it out for the show. See you all out there…
Tycho / ISO50 LIVE @ Connext Project 2008
When: Saturday, November 1st, 2008 @ 5PM
Where: Coachman Park – 301 Drew St. Clearwater, FL 33756 Directions
Admission: ALL AGES – $5 – Buy Tickets
This event is rain or shine.
No food or drink except sealed bottles of water.
Children 5 and under are free.
And here’s the TV spot for the show:
The poster print from the Terrabyte show in LA this summer is now available at the ISO50 Shop. Quantities are limited on this first pressing so get some while they last!
Above is the back side of the Terrabyte 3 poster from last week. Since this is only going to be on the small format hand flyer it was sort of a tight squeeze given all the info they wanted to include. I wanted to carry over the 60’s programming punch-card concept from the front, and considering the amount of text, I decided to use it as the central design element. Most of the type is set in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk (at various weights) and is all grid aligned with a piece of graph paper I scanned in and set on Color Burn overlay mode.
Incidentally, a couple people had mentioned an alignment issue with the left arrow on the front side. Thanks for the heads up, it’s been fixed and the finalized version is now up on the original post. There’s also more info on Terrabyte 3 now available at the Arboretum site.
Update: Tickets & info are here
Update: Poster Image updated (see above) and back posted here
I just finished up the poster / flyer design for the third annual Terrabyte event (click the above image for a large version). This is the first work I’ve done since the Obama poster and it was a nice chance to get the wheels turning again. The spec was pretty open, just had to include the themes of Nature / Technology / Art. I went for a sort of 60’s modernist infographic approach, like a page from an old physics textbook maybe. This was also the first chance I got to use one of my favorite new fonts: Hellenic Wide. The face was really a pleasure to work with, it cuts a nice line and sort of acts as it’s own divider so there wasn’t much need for all sorts of lines and spacing. Time permitting, I’ll post a small "making of" on this in the coming months. The poster will be available for purchase online in the next couple months and I am hoping to have some early copies available at the show itself.
For those of you into nuclear physics, the imagery is supposed to represent a critical mass, as in everyone coming together and then and explosion (of the aural/visual kind, not atomic). Poster design aside, try to make it out to this event if you’re in the Southern California area, it’s sure to be a great evening of music and visuals, I’ll be playing a set as Tycho and doing some live video / visuals as well.
Terrabyte is officially described as a "unique celebration of nature, technology, and art". Translation: A great evening in the Los Angeles Arboretum out on the green listening to live electronic music and viewing visuals on huge screens. All ages are welcome; it’s a $10 donation to get in and all proceeds go to the Arboretum preservation fund. There’s a bar for those 21 and up and a lot of exhibits to check out. An architecture school builds this massive array of projection surfaces that stand about 30 ft. tall to fire the visuals on to; it’s a pretty amazing sight. Needless to say, it’s a great time and well worth the ticket price. If you missed the past 2 years, now’s the time to make it out, this will be the best one yet.
Here’s this year’s live lineup:
Tycho (+ISO50 Visuals)
Test Shot Starfish
Dusty Brown
Eezir
Deru
More info at the Arboretum’s site
Date: September 14, 2008
Location: L.A. County Arboretum & Botanical Gardens
Time: 5:30-9:30PM
Entry: $10 Donation
ALL AGES SHOW
See you out there!
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There’s a new print now available at The ISO50 Shop. This is the poster I created for the 2007 OFFF Festival in Barcelona. A small number of full size posters were originally printed to support the event (the rest were handbills) so there aren’t many floating around (if any).
If you’ve ever been to the after party for OFFF you’ll know it’s always a pretty amazing event; lots of audio visual input going on. I tried to capture that vibe with this poster, making a foray into a color spectrum I rarely use. Given that the event was more of a party than a live show I felt a little more free to pursue a different vibe than usual. If you’re wondering, the fonts are mostly from the Chalet Family with some Trade Gothic thrown in for good measure. Get one at the shop for a closer look.
The prints you see above have all been reprinted and restocked over at The ISO50 Shop. Many were out for quite some time and they usually move fast once back on the shelves, so if you’ve been holding out for your favorites to be in stock, now’s the time.
I often get asked where I get my prints made so I thought now would be a good time to touch on that subject and go into a little more detail about the process. I have all of the small format posters done at a print shop in Sacramento, CA called Blue Moon Printing & Graphics. I found the place back when I used to live in Sacramento and even after moving to San Francisco I still use them as my primary printer. They are a relatively small shop so the service and attention to detail is far beyond anything you’ll find at some of the larger printing companies. I’ve found that personal attention to the output is the key element in getting your prints back looking the way you intended. It’s very difficult to make the transition from what you see on your screen to a printed piece of paper and no matter how well calibrated your equipment is you’re always going to experience a shift in color, saturation, contrast etc. The trick is to tweak the original file and the printer itself to try and compensate for these shifts and it’s important to find a print shop that is willing to work with you through this process.
I have the prints made on a digital thermal press which is essentially a toner-based process. I really like the output of this process because in the darker areas the toner builds up a thicker layer, giving an almost screen-printed effect when viewing an area of high contrast (such as a transition from cream to dark brown; the dark brown will appear to be painted on top of the cream background). The other advantage of the digital press (as opposed to offset) is that there are no plates involved so proofing and tweaking is a much quicker (and cheaper) process. You can adjust the file and run off a new proof in about 5 minutes as opposed to etching new plates and resetting the press as you would in an offset scenario. The only real downside of this process is the format limitation, the prints can only be 12"x18" at the largest. You are also limited to the type of paper you use as the toner won’t adhere to coarser papers; although I like to use a natural tone cover stock which is pretty smooth so this is not a big issue for me. The natural tone stock also has a yellow cast to it so that the yellow range in the lighter areas of the image is boosted. It gives the image a sort of aged, authentic feel which I think takes a bit of the edge off the digital output.
Blue Moon does have a traditional offset press but they just recently got it and I’ve yet to test it out. If you’re looking for a good printer I highly recommend them, and since they can do the whole proofing process via mail it doesn’t really matter where you’re located (my friend in New York does all his printing through them). You can find more information at their website: http://blumoonprinting.com.
I’ll be doing a post on monitor calibration soon in which I will go into more detail about preparing work to be printed and working with color profiles and printers…stay tuned.
While I was in Detroit for DEMF last month I taped a segment for Current TV as part of a feature on Ghostly International (the label which I record for as Tycho). The feature is a good introduction to what Ghostly is about and includes some interviews with a few artists (Osbourne, Kate Simko, and myself).
Yes, it was a bit early and I think I’d had one coffee too many for that interview; no, I don’t know why there are random clips of me taking pictures of dumpsters. A couple of the pictures I was taking in those clips are included in the Detroit DEMF post. There’s also a clip of some of the actual DEMF set towards the end. The whole experience was a bit surreal; I played the opening set at DEMF around 1pm after a long night, was weird to be playing outdoors, in the early afternoon like that. The coolest part was that you could see Canada from the stage (look across the river in the shot from behind).