RHETT & LINK T-Shirt War, 2010
Over 200 individually designed and one-of-a-kind silkscreened T-shirts were used in the making of this stop-motion video which is, by far, the most innovative thing you will watch all day. Also, 200 T-shirts wouldn’t fit in their closets so they’re selling them. (via)
INTERACTIVE CD COVER by Hubero Kororo
There isn’t much to say here that the video won’t perfectly illustrate, but in terms of conceptual CD packaging in 2010 — it’s not dead! You can’t do this with an MP3.
If Michael Deal would like to sell prints of some of these stunning Beatles infographics, I’ve got wall space for them. But even if you just want to read them, the work here is pretty amazing. Above: a chart of Beatles songs that reference or allude to other Beatles songs. Because, really. When you’re the Beatles, there’s not much else to talk about besides being the Beatles.
Here’s a non sequitur thought I just had: There are certain things that I revise or simply do not write here because the font family I’ve chosen to use for this site is a serif typeface. Seriously. Like, for example, when Matthew Gallaway writes, “‘You’=’me’ in that last sentence, obv,” his use of the slang “obv” makes sense to me because you can say that in a sans-serif typeface and get away with it. Similarly, Matthew Perpetua can say, “OMG!” and I won’t blink because — again — he says it in Lucida Grande. Sans-serif families also work better for all-caps posts, like this one from Maura, who writes: FIVE DAYS TO GO Y’ALL. (Recognize how I have to use the HTML code for small caps in order to even feel good about quoting her vebatim in a serif font.) There must be a subconscious instinct at work.
The point here is that a lot of internet slang just doesn’t look right in Georgia. I can’t explain that exactly; it’s just a feeling I get every time I hit the PREVIEW button and realize I need to reconsider my language. Even the New York Times knows this — which is, perhaps, one reason why you’ll never read Frank Rich say something like, “Obama was totes right on healthcare.”
It’s like we’re living in a post-LOL age of design principles. I’d say “WTF,” but it wouldn’t look right.
• DOWNLOAD | DEPECHE MODE “Photographic” (Rex the Dog Dubb Mix) Remixes: 81-04, 2004
I found this print, and five others just like it, at the Brooklyn Flea last weekend while rummaging through a box of vintage photographs. Each photo depicts what appears to be a different window display — selling refrigerators, dishwashers, lamps, or in this case, electric water heaters — and, according to their dated ink stamps, the collection was taken between 1956 and 1963 for the Philadelphia Electric Company. This image was the first to catch my eye: I loved the grainy black-and-white texture, the painstakingly hand-drawn type, and the Mondrian-styled painting in the background — which comes, seemingly, from nowhere.
I’m writing about these photos because they somehow articulate the relationship between mid-century aesthetics and the culture that adopted them with endearing clarity. But as a writer, I’m also inevitably piqued by the language of this period, and the implications of its unpretentiousness. These were a people so unfazed by hyperbole, for example, that the word ECONOMICAL felt like a complete pitch in itself. In another image, the Philadelphia Electric Company reflects the modesty of its customer by humbly gloating over the “adequate” food storage their refrigerator provides. A third display, for table lamps, rejects notions of luxury for the decidedly pragmatic claim that your home will have BETTER LIGHT!
This was, of course, in the B.C. Era — before Cribs.
The visuals are clean and uncomplicated, and the pitch follows suit; the word “economical,” it seems, also applied to the unhyped application of message and medium. I want to believe that, on some level, this still works. But I feel like, one day, it will seem amazing to own evidence that it ever worked at all.
Austrian designer Albert Exergian recently drafted 28 posters for a series of modernist design takes on iconic television programs. The geometric motif is vaguely reminiscent of the visual identity for Bedrock Records — which itself takes some cues from the Bauhaus style — but hey, I’m a record collector with a European design fetish. Clearly, this is more of an asset than a problem.
