It’s Friday! This week’s Mixcast is both fun and kind of silly. It’s fun because there’s a theme, which about oceans, beaches, water, surfing and those kinds of things. The reason is because I’ve noticed that a lot of bands these days are taking their names and titles of songs/albums from these sorts of themes. For the past 10 years or so it was animals, but I think that’s starting to change…

The reason the mix is silly is that I honestly don’t know a lot about these bands, they’re all pretty new and I never really had a good chance to learn about them yet. So if I sound like a fool you have my sincere apologies. I guess it’s also kind of silly because I basically made a summer album in the middle of winter… well, it was 70º again here in LA, so I suppose I have a good reason.

Enjoy the mix.

Here’s this week’s tracklist:
Let’s Go Surfing by The Drums
It’s Kate’s Birthday by Washed Out
Over The Ocean by Best Coast
Daydream by Beach Fossils
Bird of Paradise by WIndsurf
Punk Spirit by Wave Machines
To the Love Within by Megapuss
Friends by Ducktails
Asleep at the Party by Memory Cassette
Black Lake by real estate
Slow Jabroni by Surfer Blood
Take Care by Beach House

Bobby

“These photographs document several of the various types of mould which can be found growing on your average loaf of bread, given enough time and neglect.”

So says Martin Scott-Jupp, the photographer behind these amazing photos. They’re from a series called Colony featuring the beauty and wonder you can find in decaying matter and growing fungi. If you weren’t told that these were molds you probably wouldn’t have ever known, thinking they were some kind of tiny flowers or a set of miniatures shot in a sort of tilt shift way. Who know something so gross could be so beautiful?

Bobby

Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new album seems to be shaping up nicely, especially now that I’ve heard her new song Heaven Can Wait. Beck, who produced her upcoming album IRM, is also featured on this track and the two of them sound pretty great together. But it’s funny because it’s not only the song, the video is equally creative and amazing.

It was directed by Keith Schofied whom also did the video for BPA’s Toe Jam, where the people make fun shapes out of the censor bars. I’ve watched this video like 10 times now and I”m still catching new things. It’s funny how it seems like such a weird and bizarre version of Los Angeles, but not that far from the truth. How rad is the part where the guy is being chased by the ax?!

Amazing track and an amazing video, definitely one (two?) of the best of the year.

Bobby

I received an email earlier today from Mr. Josh Cochran letting me know that him and his studio mates have created a fun little project called 15 Uses For Newsprint. It’s like a little newspaper filled with art on one side and tips for what you can do with it if you happen to get sick of it, like writing a ransom note, wraping a fish or covering a hole in a wall to escape jail. The artists participating are San Weber, Jillian Tamaki, Leif Parsons, Jessica Hische, Chris Silas Neal, Ted McGrath, Grady McFerring, Rachel Salomon, Gilbert Ford, Jennifer Daniel, Alex Eben Meyer, Zach O’Hora, Kim Bost, Joel Speakmaker and Josh Cochran himself. It’s a really cute project and it’s only $10.

Bobby

I was browsing through FFFFound when I came across the work of Albert Exergian, who might have the coolest middle ages/King Arthur sounding name ever. What I found him through was his Popular TV Shows Poster Series but what really caught my eye was this short series he did around Mathematics. Yet again I’m writing about math concepts that I don’t really understand, but when you visualize them like this, kind of like Michæl Paukner does, it’s pretty awesome. This makes me hate math a fraction less.

Bobby

You know when you’re having coffee or tea, and the dregs end up settling at the bottom? It’s kind of gross and designers Florian Dussopt and Julie Girard have come up with a way to counteract this. They’ve come up with a self-stirring cup. The idea is simple, it’s a glass which at the bottom is a wider reservoir that contains a ceramic ball. Once you spin the cup the ball spins in the reservoir, mixing your drink up more successfully, or so is the hope.

I like this idea a lot but I see two potential problems, the first being that there’s no handle to it. This is meant for hot beverages and grabbing hot glass is not fun in any way. The second more obvious problem is that someone is going to swallow that damn ceramic ball. It’s made purposefully so you won’t dot that, but some damn idiot is going to swallow the whole thing and find it two days later.

Found through Daily Mail

Bobby

I haven’t heard much from Jordan Crane lately, so I was excited to see that he illustrated the cover of the last issue of Cinefamily. The cover is an illustration of Coffin Joe, who I believe is a host some Cinefamily events a not to be confused with that kid from The Horrors. It’s an awesome illustration and it caught my eye immediately. I’m trying to figure out some place to hang this in my house now…

Bobby

I wrote about the last book I finished, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishigura, exactly a week ago and since then I finished another book, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. A couple of weeks before I read Never Let Me Go I read Neverwhere and absolutely fell in love with it, so my boyfriend suggested that I read American Gods as well.

The book is set around a man named Shadow who’s about to get out of prison for a crime you’re not sure of. As he’s about to be released tragedy strikes and his life is thrown into chaos. On his way home he meets a mysterious man named Mr. Wednesday on a plane, who offers him a job, telling him that he knows his life is in ruins and that he can help. Shadow eventually accepts the offer and thus begins a journey through America and running into the old and new Gods that inhabit it and preparing for a might storm that’s approaching.

I really love how Neil Gaiman writes, both American Gods and Neverwhere served to show just how great he is. I knew of Neil because I read Sandman a long time ago, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy his novels as much. Turns out I definitely did. They’re definitely about fantastic stuff like magic and Gods, but he does a good job of not being overly showy or flashy with it. He definitely presents the books from a mundane point of view and you get to witness these brief moments of wonder. It’s this restraint that definitely keeps the books integrity.

Bobby

The people over at Mind Design created this really amazing and graphic branding scheme for a club called Paramount in London. The created an identity system filled with repeating shapes that slowly grow larger, causing the shapes to create new shapes and patterns as they increase in size. They took this idea and applied it to large window screens in the club as well as on the business cards and other assorted paper goods.

The overall effect is really rad and is so simple it makes me jealous. Everything is so clean and simple but the shapes really add a lot of character to the overall designs. They also worked with Helene Bangsbo Andersen and Tom Dixon on the interior design, as you can see by the stunning chairs and lamps.

Bobby

Earlier today Google announced their newest shiny toy, a Chrome operating system (or OS) that will appear as a competitor to Windows and Apple. What’s kind of exciting about this new OS is that Google has decided to make it a web desktop of sorts. So you’ll login and then be immediately connected to your Gmail, surf through Chrome (the browser) and have a number of other services you’d use online like contacts, a notepad etc.

The idea is that everything you do on your computer can live online, which is definitely where things seem to be going. It also let’s you plugin in external devices as well. Let’s say you have a photo on a memory card. Plug it in, import it into Photoshop.com, then upload it to your Flickr or a server. I’m guessing there will be some kind of music player for music as well, but Lala is built in if you want to use that.

I know very little about this, so if I screwed something up, sorry. But I can definitely see the potential in a system like this. I’m curious to see what Apple does next and if they incorporate any similar ideas. No matter what, this is some next level thinking.

Bobby

Yesterday ended up being one of those non-stop days so to regain a little bit of sanity I decided to walk down the street to the Farmers Market at Barnsdall Park where the Border Grill Truck was parked. Los Angeles has a food truck for every type of food you can imagine, but most of the time they don’t come near where I live, there’s really nothing around me that would draw them. So I took this as an opportunity to try some yummy food!

I ended up getting three items. The Yucatan Pork Taco, the Cilantro Chicken Taco and the Carne Asada Quesadilla. My favorite of the three was definitely the Yucatan Pork Taco which has “braised achiote pork, black beans, pickled onion and orange jicama slaw.” It was a crazy mix of flavors and overall was delicious and at the time wished I had 4 more. To wash it down I ordered their Iced Mexican Coffee which has cinnamon, star anise, orange zest and piloncillo syrup. It was also delicious.

My only problem was the price tag. I ended up spending $13 at a taco truck. It’s definitely above and beyond a normal taco truck, but it still stung a little. Nonetheless I’d definitely suggest checking them out.

Bobby

This week features one of my favorite lady artists out there, who goes by the name of Mel Kadel (or as some know her as Travis Millard’s better half.) I met Mel at a Poketo party a while back and since then had been meaning to ask her to contribute to the DWP, which she kindly did, as you can see above.

When she first sent me this image, I stared and stared at it. Slowly I started to realize that the image isn’t mechanically flipped, that she actually drew both sides. That’s friggin’ dedication. The image comes from a little zine she produced called Spacing Awake. It’s a full-color, 40 page zine and it looks amazing, she was rad enough to send me one so I could check it out.

If you want to pick one up for yourself or a friend head over to Fudge Factory and click under the BUY section.

Bobby

The brilliant painter Ryohei Hase, who I posted about last year, is back again with some new pieces. There are three in total and they continue to show just how damn talented he is. I’m not sure what the title of the piece above is but it’s incredible, and dare I say it, he’s starting to give James Jean a run for his money. I love the elephant head on the right and the interplay that’s going on with the hand below him, almost as if he’s stumbling out of the little girls imagination.

Bobby

I was browsing the portfolio of Ben Schaefer, aka seek&speak, and came across these imaginary covers he did for Blu-Ray versions of movies. The point was to distill the films into a simple image, showing only the basic components of these movies. I love that he chose to go with black, white and gray, as obviously you don’t even need colors for these and they look amazing all together. Be sure to check out the rest of his work as well, I’m sure you’ll recognize some of his movie posters as well.

Bobby

BLDGBLOG posted a nice write up of a project by Studio Lindfors called Aqualta which imagines New York and Tokyo almost entirely covered by water. The images are pretty crazy and inventive, giving you a peak at a time that could possibly happen if global warming continues and the ice caps continue melting. My favorite image was the one above, featuring Times Square still lit up brightly with boats passing by and gondolas floating by above.

Click here for a Flickr set with large images of the project.

Bobby

Looks like Levi van Veluw is back with a new series, this time titled Veneer. What’s different though is that instead of wrapping himself in odd materials he’s chosen to make a bust of himself and take photos from the same angle as he normally would. This allows him to get into more complicated materials like wood , which I couldn’t imagine doing these kinds of crazy things to himself. They’re really great pieces though and he’s definitely continuing his creative streak.

Found through today and tomorrow

Bobby

I’m kind of behind on this, but somewhere in the past couple weeks I posted my 2000th entry. I started the blog on April 1, 2007, which was 1004 days ago, or roughly 2.5 years. Since then I’ve written about an average of 2 posts per day, which seems kinda crazy to look back at it like that. I just want to say thanks for reading the blog. I’ve met so many rad people and I’m looking to meeting a lot more as the years go by. Thank you for being a friend.

Bobby

Jason Santa Maria asked the Communicating Design class he teaches at SVA to create currencies inspired by local New York neighborhoods. The students randomly drew boroughs out of a hat and were then told to research that area, drawing upon it’s culture. The results were pretty awesome with students coming up with some pretty creative ideas.

My favorite is the image you see at top, which is a currency for the Chelsea area, but more specifically the Chelsea Market. It was designed by Eric St. Onge who ended up basing the shapes and patterns on Nabisco products. As it turns out the Chelsea Market was the former Nabsico Factory:

“Rather than designing a currency for the large and diverse neighborhood of Chelsea, I decided to focus in and design a currency for one building in that neighborhood: Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market was built as a factory for Nabisco, but it now hosts offices, grocery stores, retail shops, and restaurants. The building’s architecture is inspired by its factory roots, so I thought it would be interesting to design a currency inspired by its former factory products. Each denomination in my currency adopts the form factor of a Nabisco cracker: Nilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Oreo Cookies, Ritz Crackers, and Saltine Crackers. The geometric design from the face of the Oreo Cookie is used to tie all five of the designs together.”

You can click here to see the rest of the designs.

Found through design:related

Bobby

Apolis Activism recently teamed up with the folks over at Filson to create the Philanthropist Briefcase, a bag that’s not only perfect looking but helps people at the same time. They’ve created 400 of these bags which utilizes the entire years yield of cotton from three farmers in Northern Uganda. With the help from the folks over at Invisible Children, who are some of the nicest, most proactive people ever, they’re helping these communities grow larger and increase their local economies.

So not only is helping people it’s a beautiful bag. The shape and style is absolutely perfect and I want one desperately now. The dark blue canvas with the brown leather is a perfect combo and the gold details on the zippers and buttons are classic.

Bobby

I haven’t posted about a t-shirt in a while it feels like, mostly because I stopped buying them a while back. But then an amazing look shirt like this one from Always With Honor comes by and gets me drooling. The design features a rad looking black bear, simple and geometric. What really makes this shirt something are the colors, the combination of red, blue, black with touches of yellow makes this amazing.

They’re only $25 and are limited to only a 100, so you better get a move on.

Bobby