Websites / Design the impossible
Just what goes on behind the closed doors of the adidas design studios has been anyone’s guess,’til now. Yes, these sport loving, fashion luminaries from Portland, Oregon have pulled back the curtain for the first time ever to reveal just what it is like to work for one of sports super-brands. In this unique window into adidas’ creative world, you will find blogs that discuss anything from bras made of toilet paper to the next generation of sporting gloves and football cleats. For any aspiring vanguards of distinct design, you are also able to submit your portfolio — regardless of whether your creative pallet be tennis chic, street ball fresh, olympic cool or urban polish. Oh, and you might just land yourself a dream job.
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Portland animation and motion graphics maestro, Stefan Nadelman’s website is a cornucopia of genius (heck, he even composes his own music to go along with his animations!). You may have already stumbled across his popular animation, Food Fight, but be sure not to miss Terminal Bar or his dog Duke as Orsen Welles. Or anything else on his site for that matter.
Stephanie Simek’s Portland workspace
I just caught up with Portland artist Stephanie Simek about her unconventional work and living situation: ‘I live in Portland, Oregon, in a former Hare Krishna temple that my partner Adam and I turned into an art and music space called Rererato. We host events about once or twice a week’. Read more
Zia McCabe: ‘My Secret Playlist’
Each week, we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs or albums right now. This is their words on the music that inspires them. This week it’s Zia McCabe from The Dandy Warhols who personifies everything The Dandy Warhols stand for: sassy, cooly detached, and dripping in attitude. The keyboardist adds a lush sonic wash to the Dandy’s inherent popism, and keeps the lads in check as they wind their way through the stadiums of the world. Well, kinda. To be a fly on the wall on their tour bus! Some folk have all the fun. Read more
Also by CASPER JOHANSSON
Collaborate with Spike Lee on a mobile film
I’ve just seen a fun Nokia clip about the making of a collaborative film to be directed by Spike Lee. The tagline is simple but direct: ‘For the people, by the people! No, we’re not establishing a democratic government, but talking about the latest Spike Lee film. Throw out the billion dollar Hollywood budget for production and do it all with your phone — special effects are definitely optional’. Intrigued? Check the site for details.
The Teddy Bear’s Picnic is a series of art works which place a sinister twist to popular fairytale characters. Within this world, Gretal discovers something more delicious than candy, Little Red Hiding Hood undergoes a ghastly transformation, and Repunzel uses her long, golden locks to commit atrocious acts. It is a world where button fetishes are contagious, childhood nursery rhymes are interwoven with macabre themes and happily ever after is anything but. Read more
Spelling Change was developed by a group of creative professionals to spread awareness and passion about the Obama campaign. Its goal is to encourage one-to-one communication by creating tools that help people get out the word on issues that are important to them. Artists and designers were asked to create a letter of the alphabet inspired by the Obama campaign. These letters were then printed on t-shirts and distributed to photographers, who shot Obama supporters from all walks of life wearing them. The result is a living alphabet that shows the incredible breadth of Obama’s appeal and a widespread desire for real change in Washington. Read more
YOU'RE SAYING (1)
HAVE YOUR SAY
I was rulking (half-run; half-walk) through the inner city a little while back, killing time and thoughts with mindless banter (yes, one way conversations have their benefits) when I noticed a grown man crying hysterically on the opposite side of the road to me. Read more
No Age are doing something different to the mass of noise-laden, guitar-drum duos canvasing the lo-fi airwaves at the moment. I’m just not sure quite what. Their album, Nouns, is receiving top-rate reviews after sell-out crowds after screaming, obsessive fans. The music is simply massive: a vast landscape of heat haze, somehow both tranquil and manic, punctuated by singer Dean Sprouts backdrop of barely intelligible vocals and Randall’s distorted, archaic sounding drums.
Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.
We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
Spelling Change was developed by a group of creative professionals to spread awareness and passion about the Obama campaign. Its goal is to encourage one-to-one communication by creating tools that help people get out the word on issues that are important to them. Artists and designers were asked to create a letter of the alphabet inspired by the Obama campaign. These letters were then printed on t-shirts and distributed to photographers, who shot Obama supporters from all walks of life wearing them. The result is a living alphabet that shows the incredible breadth of Obama’s appeal and a widespread desire for real change in Washington. Read more
The Highline railway track is a 30 foot high, 1.45 mile long disused piece of infrastructure threading its way through 22 blocks of downtown Manhattan. Read more
It doesn’t transform or actually play music, but this watch with a face that looks like a cassette tape, is still pretty cool. Read more
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
I like Roots Manuva because he tells stories. I know that sounds simplistic, but honestly, have you noticed how rappers, certainly American rappers, have stopped narrating their lives and are purely focused on how great they are? I know, I know, hip-hop is all about word play, slang, and blah blah blah. But I listen to music for stories and heart-felt sentiment. Roots Manuva gets that. He’s old school that way. His latest album, Slime & Reason, is still rooted in the UK grime scene (does that still exist, or has it gone the way of electroclash? I’m earnestly asking), but a lot of it is more overtly dub than anything he’s done so far, and he’s got some beats and samples on this record that are as dramatic and epic as some of the metal bands I listen to. He talks about real sentiments and earnest emotions and believable and relatable experiences, which may make him uncool amongst the sneaker-collecting kiddies, but even though this isn’t his best record, I still like where it’s coming from.
Alison Malone on her Daughters of Job photos
A couple of weeks back we featured the work of New York-based photographer Alison Malone, who went into the secretive environment of the Job’s Daughters to photograph the girls who are direct blood relatives of the Master Masons. This is the second part of that interview. The portraits of girls [below] are angelic. What was your intention of photographing them in this light? ‘There are many reasons that I chose to photograph the girls in this way. The first is the simple love I have of the straight photographic portrait and its ability to transmit the subtle nuances that come from an individual. When a portrait is made there is an opportunity for a delicate exchange between the photographer and the subject that creates a place to examine how one holds oneself in a moment’. Read more
I’m so digging the work of Santa Monica artist Andrew Hem. Painting seems to have become relegated in the illustration world these days, so I’m pleased to see Hem rocking it in a big way. His bold brushwork, lush colors, puppet-like figures and painted type make for a body of work that really hits the painted spot.
Some friends and I serendipitously stumbled across the work the artist Hiro Kurata the other night and we have been jointly obsessing over it since. Kurata’s work is torrid, moody and fragmented like a restless dream. Bursting with texture and patterns, it’s simply brilliant. As my friend Andrew Degraff accurately put it, ‘It’s like Savador Dali thrown through a plate glass window’. Indeed. Read more
Amanda Yoakum is the creative whirlwind behind YoaKustoms, customised sneakers which stand as ‘an artistic expression rather than just a factory look’. We dig these kicks like we haven’t dug kicks in a long, long time. Read more
Warning at Work is a silkscreen mini-print from Sussex based illustrator Andy Smith which comes in a limited edition of just 50. Dimensions are 20cm x 15cm. We have them available through the Lost At E Minor store.
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Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.
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Anti-Consumer said | 6 July, 2008
God, I’m so sick of sneakers and people who care about sneakers.