Cosmic Excerpts is a collection by Ryan Todd from Darklord. The collection is a result of many years of disco, funk, and cosmic record hunting. What makes this collection unique is the way Todd documents only a portion of the record sleeve in order to create a gestalt of new perspective for some of these bizarre designs. Todd had this to say, “I would buy a record and if it happened to have weird, sci-fi artwork then I photographed a portion of the cover for the set, avoiding any words or identifiers as best as possible. If the record turned out to be terrible, then at least I was able to take away a cool image from the experience before donating it to Goodwill. It also turned into a little bit of a game, with random people showing up to see if they could identify records based on the bit I chose to show.”
Alexander S. Budnitz of Sametz Blackstone Associates has compiled a fantastic collection of cover designs for books dating all the way back to the early twentieth century. Go ahead and judge a book by its cover. Below are some of my favorites.
Record Makers is a label founded by the French duo Air and is celebrating their 10 year anniversary by releasing a rotoscoped animation for Sébastien Tellier’s “Look.” They are also releasing applications for the iPhone as well for the same occasion. Cheers!
Alexa Meade is a poly-sci major from Vassar College who works with acrylic paint on three dimensional objects. Through her perception altering technique, Meade attempts to compress a 3D space into a 2D plane. She masks found objects and her human subjects by applying paint directly to the surface without ever using a traditional canvas. The documentation of her work has a great balance of reveal as well.
Mount Fuji Architects Studio designed this home office for a couple living in Tokyo, Japan. The residential neighborhood in which the building lives is considered one of the richest in terms of cost. The studio saw this opportunity to confront issues about spacial openness in a dense area full of other buildings very close to one another. Using perforated steel in floral patterns, Mount Fuji Architects modeled the facade after the way a forest lets in sunlight. Imagine waking up to the unique shadows created by the morning sun pouring through the walls. Such a beautiful concept.
thesixtyone (t61) is a streaming media website founded by James Miao and Samuel Hsiung in 2008. Since then it has received further funding and lots more support. Initially, the site design wasn’t unlike other streaming media sites and online playlist makers. They recently unveiled the new and improved t61, which completely changed my impression of the service. It has turned into this digg + slideshow for independent bands and musicians with a clean minimal design. The new interface includes fullscreen photos and small bits of information like show dates and artist bios while still keeping the focus on just playing music! Brilliant.
Curious Displays is a product proposal for a new platform for display technology. Instead of a fixed form factor screen, the display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½ inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface.
Despite having worked on older projects including the music video for “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley (with director Robert Hales), Mothership has only recently established themselves as an official transmedia studio representing sunny Venice, California. The young collective has hit the ground running partly due to its affiliation to the Academy Award-winning powerhouse Digital Domain, whose visual sorcery you may have experienced in films such as Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Through their work, Executive Creative Director Alejandro Lopez says Mothership will demonstrate how “transmedia offers brands the opportunity to integrate directly with entertainment properties instead of standing alongside them.”
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