Paul Mawhinney is the owner of the world’s largest vinyl record collection, if you’re a music fan of some sort i can’t see how this short documentary won’t touching you in some way.
Logitech’s new MX1100 mouse has been getting some glowing reviews and I’m pretty excited to get my hands on one. I have been using an MX Revolution for a couple years now and the battery is failing, so this new model with replaceable batteries will be a welcome addition. The ergonomics on the Logitech mice are great, but the hyperscroll wheel is reason enough to switch (so handy when you’re way zoomed in on a PSD and want to move around quickly). I have tried to make the switch to Wacom pads before without much success. How about everyone else? Do you use a mouse or a tablet, or both? Do you find either is more conducive to design or is it just a simple issue of ergonomics? Let us know in the comments
My brother Kirk is a sophomore at San Francisco State University. He’s planning to study design but has been experimenting with photography a lot over the past couple years. He showed me some of his recent stuff recently and it was really impressive so I thought I’d share. All of these shots were all taken with a Lomo LCA and cross-processed, bringing out all those nice colors. My favorite is the top one, it’s like a book about growing up in Sacramento boiled down into a single image. You can see more of his work at his Flickr page.
Last night i went to see Norwegian DJ Todd Terje, the man is a machine, a 6 hr set and most of the time he just plays edits that he did himself of songs, mostly that deep slow motion disco but with a lot of tribal elements which is always is a win-win situation for me.
Brought out a old favorite, Nightmares on Wax, i think if you do graphic design and you’ve listened to lounge music at some point in your career, this is probably played as much as Thievery Corporation or Air.
Grovesnor is a Hot Chip favorite, he toured with them in the UK, its kinda cheesy but has a great keys being played at the beginning and has a good feel to it.
The artwork above is from Fleet Foxes, i woke up with the song playing in my head and i’ve only heard the song a couple times. The overall color when you step back look at their cover is really appealing to me, it reminds me of Monty Python’s Holy Grail but really crowded.
Dolle Jolle – Balearic Incarnation – Todd Terje’s Extra Doll Mix
My first interest into Krautrock beyond Kraftwerk. I found NEU! ’75(1975, duh) when I was 17 and have yet to stop listening to it eight years later.
NEU! was the brainchild of Kraftwerk’s Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother. Anything Rother touches, I like; which you will see in future posts.
This track is off of NEU! 2 (1973) and is a fine example of Rother’s melting guitar melodies, and (along with almost every other NEU! song) displays Dinger’s self-invented Motorik beat.
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.
Caught this ad on Paleofuture. The RCA Two Thousand was a TV set released in 1969 with a price tag of $2000 (roughly $12,000 in today’s market). It leveraged then nascent computer technology to, among other things, store favorite channels electronically and automate tuning. The interesting thing to me is how much it resembled a modern flat panel when the cabinet was closed (top and bottom left). Unfortunately, those are just doors; when in it’s opened state the Two Thousand looks a lot like any other old tube set from the 70’s. At any rate, the top image is wonderful to look at and downright prophetic when you consider this was designed in the late 60’s. It seems ripe for some sort of Ive-esque re-purposing a’ la the Dieter Rams inspired iMac.
The Okada Noriaki-designed B&D Messenger is a device that helps blind and deaf people communicate via SMS text messaging. I love the design of this thing, the cardboard housing they used to bring costs down ends up providing a very nice looking surface while keeping it inexpensive. They’ve also made the unit much smaller than other Braille phone devices currently on the market. The system is based on a set of twelve points that raise and lower to create braille letters which are translated from SMS texts received by your computer (USB connection required). It’s great to see someone using technological innovation to make a device that benefits people more accessible. More info and pictures can be found at the B&D site.