Hoffman-La Roche commissioned this ad featuring photography by René Groebli for the anti-anxiety drug, Esanin. At first glance I really didn’t grasp how amazing this composition is. If you really study it you’ll see some incredible typography and layout. I love the image, the various faces blending to create these almost psychedelic colors is very striking. Those crazyGermans, why do they have to be so good? You’re making us all look bad.
I’m at Continental Colorcraft in LA for the Obama printing. The proofing is complete and the presses are running at full tilt. As the title suggests, they aren’t playing around at this place, the press is the size of a small house. Some really cool 80’s era industrial design going on, great knobs and dials (the first shot looks like a Moog Modular, can’t go wrong with that). Not trying to be a tease (as some of you commented on the last post) but you can catch a couple small glimpses of the print up above.
I came across a nice cache of Jauna Gaita cover scans on Mikus Vanags’ Flickr. Some of the scans are better quality than the ones on the official JG site which I posted yesterday.
I’m sitting at San Francisco International right now waiting to fly out to Los Angeles to proof the Obama poster. I’ve got the Epson soft proof in hand (pictured above) and it’s looking good color-wise; here’s hoping they can match that with the litho. I’ll be getting a lot of shots of the process while I’m down there and, from what the campaign told me, I’ll be able to start releasing pictures of the poster within a week as long as everything goes well today. I plan on doing an in depth study of the whole process with images from various stages of the production from concept to finished product, I’ll be posting that here once the print is finished and as soon as I get the go-ahead from the campaign.
I don’t think I have been this excited about design in a long time; to me this is as close to perfection as is humanly possible. I was checking out Grain Edit before bed last night and came across a post about the Latvian magazine, Jauna Gaita (The New Course). I’ve never seen so much great design collected in one place for one purpose. The magazine is still in print and you can view over 50 years of covers here. Thanks so much to Dave at Grain Edit and his sources for turning me on to this great source of inspiration. This is the sort of stuff I am compelled to re-design in large format just to print up some posters for my house.
Incidentally I am flying home from Lisbon in a couple hours; sort of sad to leave as I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked teo really take in the city. But there’s a lot of work to be done back home so it’s time to go. On Thursday I fly to Los Angeles to proof the Barack Obama poster so I should have some shots from that posted up soon.
Apparently Super Bock is like the Budweiser of Portugal; it’s literally everywhere. Caught these kegs stacked up in the warehouse behind the OFFF festival at LX Factory. From the right angle the name reminds me of a nice album by a certain Scottish music duo.
The festival has kept me pretty busy since we arrived so I haven’t had much time to walk around and get some pics. The first day / night I was able to get a few though, they are all from the Campo Pequeno area. We’ll have a couple extra days after OFFF is over to really explore, planning to get some bikes and ride all over this place. Really excited for that, from what I’ve seen there is a lot of visual stimuli out there just waiting to be shot. Still sort of limping along here with my Nikon D80. I’ve found ways around most of my big gripes with it but being at the OFFF I’ve seen a lot of people toting around their 5D’s and D400’s, been getting jealous.
Shepard Fairey has re-designed the covers for two of George Orwell’s classic novels: his dystopian masterpiece, 1984 and his totalitarian allegory, Animal Farm. I can’t think of a better artist to tap for such a task, these two concepts fit nicely with the decidedly cynical slant of Shepard’s work. I really like his take on the covers, but must admit that the minimalist / modernist in me is still partial to Art Brenner’s original for Animal Farm (above).
Here’s an incredible video of Elliott Smith apparently recording Angeles live in a living room. Amazing that they’re getting such great sound from one mic picking up both the guitar and the vocals. I use 3 mics just to capture one acoustic guitar, which might be overkill. I have been experimenting with mic’ing drums using just one condenser room mic placed at a good distance and a dynamic on the bottom of the snare only with decent results. (thanks to Dusty Brown for that technique)
I’m not sure "liveblogging" is even a word but I’m posting this from the booth at OFFF Lisbon so I suppose it’s fitting (the WiFi actually works this year!). All the above images are from today’s festivities, it’s about 3pm right now so we’ve a bit to go still. The beer is flowing and the sun is shining so come out; even if you don’t have a ticket you can hang out in the main area where there’s lots of people, food, and drink. So far Lisbon has been great, judging by the things I saw out the window on the cab ride from the hotel to the event I have a lot of walking around to do once I have a spare minute.
We just got into Lisbon, already amazed. We had the good fortune of sharing a bus with the KDU on the way to the hotel, good people. I’m traveling with my youngest brother this time around, that’s him up there in the pics. This place definitely looks like a great town for photography so I’ll be doing my best to bring home some good shots. We’re here for the OFFF which starts tomorrow, we’ll be at the ISO50 booth all day so stop by and say hello if you’re in the area.
Chris clark, to me, is like Boards Of Canada, Aphex Twin, and a bit of Autechre thrown in for good measure (no wonder he’s on Warp, right?) His album Clarence Park is pretty much solid wall to wall. This track is a stand-out if not only for it’s Aphex slant. Sorry for the small cover art, couldn’t find a proper sized version. Also, I’m at Newark airport having some beers with my brother so not all that concerned with Jpeg resolutions at the moment.
Headed out for Lisbon tomorrow morning for the OFFF. I’ll be bringing my camera and hopefully getting some good shots. I’ve never been to Portugal, just heard a lot of good things. If it’s anywhere near as great as Barcelona I’ll be happy.
There will be an ISO50 booth at the OFFF Festival complete with shirts, prints, CDs, etc. Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area, the Mercadillo is free admission. See you out there!
70’s prog-rock band Yes are really hit and miss for me. I enjoy a lot of their earlier work but they shifted gears later on and started making the sort of music we now mock when lamenting the cultural shortcomings of that polarizing age known as The 80’s. That aside, they have contributed some amazing work over the years; their eponymous first album is largely considered to be the first Progressive Rock album and it’s certainly a classic. One of my all time favorite songs is the track Survival from that very same album. The production and musicianship on these earlier songs is, to me, perfection. It’s these sort of songs that really make me miss the hot summers of my home. It’s funny how the context of your first experience with a song colors your perception of it from that point forward. Although it is an incredibly beautiful song, hearing Survival usually gets me a little down, I start missing home and getting all nostalgic. The first minute is something altogether transcendent. Being an electronic musician who doesn’t use traditional vocals, the instrumental parts of songs like this are great reference points for building emotion into a song without the need for vocals.
Yes - Survival
Yes was also a visually interesting band. The top five images are paintings by Roger Dean, some of which were used as Yes album covers. The second image is some random shot I found on Flickr while searching for Yes covers. This guy came prepared for whatever he’s about to get into: Portable tape recorder, box of tapes, joint, football, paper towels and of course, a Yes T-Shirt. The final image is from a series of Yes logos also by Dean.
