Graham Smith’s brilliant Unevolved Brands is “A progressive study on brand & logo simplification“. It’s also a lot of fun; we sat here for quite a while going through each logo and trying to guess the brand it represented. They run the gamut from completely obvious to frustratingly cryptic and all the while Smith strings you along with vague hints as to the logo’s true identity. The fact that I recognized any of them is sort of a sad testament to the pervasiveness of the modern global brand. They’ve drilled these things into our heads to the point where all we need are a couple colors and basic shapes.
Unless some sort of Mad Max / Waterworld situation goes down and people start just wearing leather suits and fish skin canteen holsters, brands aren’t going anywhere. But it would be nice to see more companies start shifting to simpler, text-free versions like these (Nike and Apple are good examples of brands who have already gone pretty far in this direction). A lot of Smith’s simplifications are really nice to look at actually.
Be honest, did you get most of them? I feel like UK people have an advantage, a few those I’ve never even heard of.
If you love the world of mailorder labels then look no further than the catalog from Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks, beautiful limited vinyl only release with a diverse roster. I already have The Soft Moon S/T album in my top 10 for 2010 but thats just one of many releases that you should pick up.
Beautiful Bells doesn’t just sit down and work on one song, he experiments past what most producers even try to make and rides that out until he feels that journey has hit an enjoyable time for himself. That journey can be 20 mins or hours i’m sure but when it comes down to having a song I have a feeling its kind of fun digging thru that material, seems like an satisfying process. When it came down to picking a song from his album it was a bit hard since I think of the album as a listening session but I do find myself nodding my head to one of his more straight forward beats called Purple Topped and Flagrant.
Atlas Sound is giving away a free EP right now – DOWNLOAD IT HERE
My favorite live techno act is Portable, he’s miles ahead of most producers in that world, last time I saw him singing in a CV radio and in a Cosby sweater on a Manhattan rooftop in the rain. I saw Alan Abrahams aka Portable/Bodycode in 2005 in Detroit, he had long braids and had this amazing techno/tribal dance he was doing while he was playing, pure body music, dancing better than anyone that was on the dancefloor, so happy to see him remixing The Knife.
Banjo or Freakout, if your band name was different I would have probably checked you out earlier but i’m glad I finally did thanks to a few friend recommendations.
I have only 2 tickets to giveaway for Matthew Dear // Games // Noveller tonight in Brooklyn, NY at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Doors at 8:00 PM and show starts at 9:00 PM and its $15 day of show but not for 2 lucky ISO50 readers. The first 2 people to name off his 3 alias projects (besides Matthew Dear) in the comment section will get one ticket to the show TONIGHT. Good luck and make sure you leave your contact info in the comment section.
Studio Parris Wakefield has some shots from the Joy Division box set up featuring the classic Peter Saville-art directed, Howard Wakefield-designed covers. Reminded me of just how good restraint can look.
We’re happy to be able to share this beautifully directed video for School Of Seven Bells of the song “I L U”. This video comes at a perfect time where many videos these days are very experimental and wonder off to something that usually is just visually appealing while the makers of I L U went straight in and grasped at what the song stood for and definitely put together a strong emotional piece of work.
This is ISO50 Studio Edition #009. It features an edit of the artwork I did for Casino Versus Japan’s self-titled reissue this year. Each edition is printed on 310gsm Hahnemühle German Etching paper using the Epson 9900 10-ink HDR system and is available in four signed formats, three of them being limited.
