the small stakes (aka jason munn) has a new graphics series for insound: 20 graphics for 20 bands on tshirts, sweatshirts, and limited edition posters.
grain edit has a nice little feature on the jose gonzalez concept, from sketch to finish:
although some of the old popstick crew have never forgiven me for the impulse moments of all girl summer fun band hopping (the place needed just a dash of girlyhood once in a while), I bet they will be thrilled to learn that the all girl summer fun band is back with their third album after a hiatus of five years.
I, for one, am counting down the days until september 23 when the album is released. perhaps I can pull at the family ties to get an early release album (the lovely and talented kim baxter is my cousin’s cousin!)?
one day I happened upon my friend johna’s flickr photosteam and noticed these incredible images. beautifully situated inside a curved frame, with some interesting artifacts and weathering, some soft focus around the edges: what are these images? turns out, it is a brilliant method: through the viewfinder photography! take an old press camera (mine is an argoflex 75, bought on eBay for $5), set up your digital camera to shoot through the viewfinder (some build a box, which I haven’t tried yet), and voila! plastic camera interesting images with great ambiance. I love it!
Building a little light box will help with the framing and hopefully holding the focus. I am really excited to try more of this!
(my pops gets pretty excited about camera related experiments. hence, he shot these images of my mom and I heading out on a little kayak adventure)
while on the topic of contests, I am belatedly challenging the precinct to the this american life tshirt contest. I may be submitting something very similar to my corelle plate concept. ha! or might try using this as inspiration for an impulsive photoshoot tomorrow while on a run on old route 10.
Here are the guidelines. You have one week!
Deadline: Midnight - Monday, July 28, 2008
Design Guidelines
Corelle dinnerwear and Domino magazine are holding a contest to design the perfect plate! Submit original artwork, pattern or design for plateware and one winner will be selected for Corelle’s next line! Artwork submissions are due (I believe) by mid-August, so get your thinking caps on.
I am thinking of doing a texture series of the real items that would appear on the plate, such as…
which would, of course, only count if I baked the items myself. Good thing there are four pounds of plugra butter in my freezer!
My current commute to visit the nice folks at Modernista! a few days a week has me walking past this at least twice a day. A nice way to not look at the temporary wall of green plywood at 460 Harrison Ave, miniaturized posters of the work sell to benefit ARTcetera (for AIDS Action) at the gallery across the way. Scattered “like garage sale signs on a telephone pole,” the monopoly cards are distributed throughout the South End and downtown (although I’ve only spotted one on a street sign, across the street from Gaslight).
Is it a new fad, or is it a solution for the reference or morgue file clippings that I have scattered all over my work area (and desktop)? Hello, image bookmarking! Hopefully, this will be the answer to my inquiry two years from now about the great info graphic in the Sunday times magazine (right now, my best bet is a combination of del.icio.us and google image search), if enough kids start using it loyally (or kids with good taste).
FFFFOUND! :
We heart it :
Potentially an interesting ideation tool, there are two image bookmarking sites that I’ve been looking at. One, I have access to! One, I am angling for an invite to… offering even cupcakes on newstoday for the coveted access. FFFFOUND.COM (ffffound.com) is the headliner, a limited access site (each member gets three invites) with a sophisticated bookmark technique (who doesn’t love smart toolbar tools), and careful consideration of the fact that you are “collecting” other people’s work/images. We heart it (weheartit.com) is an open access site with clean and simple interface, allowing tagging of images. Both (I believe) offer the standard web 2.0 social aspect of friends, etc.
here’s a sample page from ffffound. the conscious effort to represent these images as “reference” and not one’s own is made clear in the “Quoted from:” title. Randomly generated alternate images are listed below.
Here’s a nice article from Speak Up on the ffffound phenomenon!
Indulging in my ongoing obsession with wildlife-inspired graphics, I recently came across Charles Harper. In a style he called “minimal realism”, Charley Harper looked at nature as a series of shapes, patterns and textures, all amounting to a colorful phantasmagoria that inspires his simplified and controlled compositions.
“There’s some who want to count all the feathers in the wings and then others who never think about counting the feathers,” said Harper. He describes his paintings as “an ecosystem” in which all elements are “interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts.” Sounds like a good goal for creative work in general (although I confess to having a weakness for the “trimmings” every once in a while).
Read more in Dwell, or see his work (thanks to grain edit) The ABC’s, The Giant Golden Book of Biology, or in The Ford Times. Or, Todd Oldham just edited a definitive monograph of Harper’s work, lovingly designed, and list priced to move (sold out on Amazon, in fact!) at $200.
Check out this wonderful piece Chris Ware animated for the This American Life TV show. The way the scene builds in the beginning reminds me of the great TV spot from a few years back featuring March of the Penguins (or March of the Emperors in France). I think I like it so much because it’s so true to the way I build a scene in my head when I hear a story. I guess we all do it.
March of the Penguins:
I remember Chris Ware did another animated piece for the TAL TV show. Are there others?
In celebration of over 333+ posts and over two years of comeraderie, it is time for the next phase of the 47th… To start a magazine! John and I are putting together a project involving: accordion folds, paper cut-outs, secret formulas, and brilliant submissions from YOU! HURRAH! I am including the submissions letter and some funny pictures of my first glimpses of spring below as food for thought on the theme of our first issue, appropriately: AT FIRST
*admittedly, the spring pictures might not be all that funny, but think of pretty pink blossoms bundling down onto the sidewalk, bandaged trees, etc. and your starting in on just one of many ideas that should be a part of the magazine*
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the 47th precinct* is starting a magazine! Appropriately titled 47, the magazine is going to be a 4×7 conglomerate of cultural curiosities, based around a central theme. The theme for our first issue is, fittingly enough, focused on firsts. At First kicks off 47 with an exploration of what is first and foremost, first experiences, first sightings, first descents, first discoveries and whatever else first means to you.
That’s right, you!
We’re looking for contributors for 47, and are thrilled to take all kinds of submissions (the only requirement is some thematic relevance and our ability to convey the idea in 2 dimensions on the printed page). Some ideas to wet your whistle are as follows:
#1: Your first haiku
#2: A drawing of the first finisher of the marathon
#3: A painting of the first half lion, half peacock
#4: The first paragraph to a mystery story
#5: First signs of spring
#6: Impressions of your first __________
#7: What is the first thing you think of when __________
#8: What you saw first
In any case, those are just a few ideas, and we’d be happy to generate some more if that encourages your contribution. 47 is a bit of a work in progress, and we are super excited to know and work with such talented and creative people (if you know anyone that would be interested, please send this note along). Hence, we promise to launch the magazine with fanfare and festivities!
Submissions can be mailed, posted (write for ftp information), or dictated (well…). Let us know if you’d like to participate! Finally, the initial submission deadline will be July 4 (7/4 of course) 2008. HURRAH!
all the very best,
Ann + John
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mail address:
47 c/o pinkcomma
81B Wareham Street
Boston, MA 02118
email address:
info@the47th.com
*Just in case you haven’t heard my chatter about 47 or the 47th: 47 happens to be a lucky number, the 15th prime number, the atomic number of silver, and (perhaps most importantly for our purposes) the quintessential random number. Being the number that occurs with the highest frequency than all other natural numbers, 47 embodies the idea of haphazard discovery yet elegant patterns. In short, order in chaos, which is (very much) the 47th precinct.