An hour into a plane ride from Salt Lake City to New York last night, this song, “Walk a Thin Line” from Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, stopped me cold. I ended up listening to the song on repeat for an hour and a half straight, loving it more each time. It has this great lurching rhythm, a burdened gait, layers of falsettos, this whole mess of elements that congeal despite themselves. As my friend Kendel pointed out planes make us more prone to emotion — maybe that’s what it took for this song to hit the way that it did. But even here with my feet on the ground I can’t think of anything better.
Funny to say, but Tusk is well under rated imho. It is hard to get a fresh ear on it what with all the thrashing each track has had over the years, but yeah, worth it.
Also, agree strongly about the plane/emotion thing. I also noted in my transpacific days that since they can’t play movies with action, or sex, they tend to the little nichie emotional headtrip fdup-what-is-this-movies. And plain bad ones. In those days teh choice was limited to dull or overwrought. Still my worst movie on a plane was The Mexican, which managed to be both.
Lego - Story Bricks
The ads appeared on four consecutive pages. LEGO is a company that has fostered imagination, invention and creativity for over 60 years. So it is unusual for these ads to feature only long copy with minimal imagery. However, upon reading each of these scenarios the ad comes to life in a way that is unique only to the reader and how they see these playtime scenarios in their mind’s eye. Typographic elements of kerning contrasted with tracking allow the reader to almost get lost in the copy selecting keywords for their imagination. The fourth ad in the series, “Yellow Brick” features a notepad with the tagline “Every LEGO brick tells a story. Build yours.”
Advertising Agency: Pereira & O’Dell, Brazil
Chief Creative Officer: PJ Pereira
Creative Director / Copywriter: Aricio Fortes
Creative Director / Art Director: Paulo Coelho
Account Executive: Lo Braz
Illustrator: Eduardo Gomes
I was into Lego before it mainstreamed.
‘Ready’ by Elizabeth Rose
This 21 year-old from Sydney is more than capable of being 2012’s Ellie Goulding. She touts a similarly slick, instantly marketable pop sound that lends well to remixing, but unlike Ellie, Rose produces all her stuff herself. Ready’s crystalline synthwork, mid-tempo thrust and powering chorus likens to a song like Lights, but comparatively holds much richer production value. Not to mention Rose’s pleasing voice, which hits an absurdly gorgeous wow-moment 3 minutes in. Throw Me To The Stars was also an unjustly overlooked 2011 single.
Feels like its waiting for the remixes.
Circle Jerks - Beat Me Senseless (by bert2099)
This was in my Top 5 summer ‘87/’88. Got the vinyl under my stairs still.
‘Going Back to Cali (Viceroy “Jet Life” Remix)’ by Notorious B.I.G.
Viceroy takes Caribbean steel drums back to Cali in this seafoam green take on Biggie’s ghetto tourist ad. Download it at Viceroy’s Facebook.
This works.
jstn:
Robot and Frank is the feature film debut of Jake Schreier, my friend and longtime Francis and the Lights co-conspirator (you may know him as the director of the incredible video for The Top). It stars Frank Langella as an old man with a slipping memory whose kids (James Marsden and Liv Tyler) give him a caretaker robot that he initially loathes but gradually forms an uneasy alliance with. It just premiered at Sundance this week (see some clips here) and will likely be coming soon to a theater near you.
It also features a number of near-future devices with fictional user interfaces imagined and designed by myself, which was one of the funnest projects I’ve ever worked on. I have a new appreciation for the needs of a real, functioning interface versus the kind you see in the movies. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you wind up seeing it keep an eye on Frank’s TV and everyone’s cell phones and tablets.
So, clearly I’m biased, but I saw a rough cut of the movie a couple months back and truly loved it. I couldn’t be more proud of Jake, who’s been working slavishly on this for a long time (he talks about the genesis of the project in this interview) as well as Francis, who wrote the film’s beautiful score.
If I never get to work on something cooler I’ll die happy.
Dude.
“Web design isn’t about technology. Web design is graphic design, built on a interactive platform. It is graphic design with limitations, but mostly graphic design with endless possibilities. A graphic designer needs to understand the web. Information Architechts states that web design is 95% typography, purely because web design is the same as graphic design – to present content the best way possible. The last five percent you ask? They’re about having a unison mindset, and being able to design for all surfaces.
Web design is graphic design.
”
Now we’re talking. Reformat. (via jarredbishop)
Is this a troll?
