Syntaks ➡ Blue Sunshine

I just found out about the Danish duo Syntaks today as I browsed Ghostly International. This beautifully hypnotic video is for the track Blue Sunshine off of their debut Ylajali. The colors, layering, imagery work so well with the video to create a gorgeous visual experience.

Here is the pairs approach to their music: a wash of color, fleeting glimpses of half-remembered imagery both heavenly and apocalyptic, and vertiginous shifts in scale superimposed over its creators’ faces. Syntaks’ Jakob Skott directed the clip, and his clear love of its subject matter (his musical collaborator and romantic partner, Anna Cecilia) is apparent throughout.

FREE AT LAST

Wow! If all newspapers looked like this I would probably be broke from buying them all. My friend Liz sent this to me today and I just had to post it. The print was designed by Brianna Johnson for her MLK Jr. Free At Last project. She did an brilliant job creating a type-only spread with a retro feel. I just love this. I don’t quite know if it was actually printed or if this was her student project but If anyone knows please leave a comment. Check out more of her work from this project at Typography Served.

SACRAMENTO ELECTRONICA

Sacramento’s Electronic Music Festival was a great success. The energy there was like nothing I have ever seen before in Sac. I managed to get a few shots during The New Humans show on Friday and a lot of Saturday’s show of Paper Pistols, Sister Crayon, Tycho, and Dusty Brown. You can see more of the photos from the festival on my flickr photostream.

ISO50 shows some love.

SAC.ELECRONICA.FEST.

EXPLZN

Click the image above.

Via acreativeuniverse.

PAPPELTALKS

Hubero Kororo designed this interactive CD cover for the band Uceroz. What makes this a unique design is that when you open the CD packaging on the side, ink is set free and bleeds into the cover. What an absolute genius idea. The idea of this is executed really well and creates a unique package with each individual CD. The music industry needs more marketing like this to encourage more people to buy the actual CD rather than download it illegally.

Via Today and Tomorrow.

TNHZ ➡ SAC STATE

The New Humans will be performing live at Sac State Wednesday February 3rd at noon in the University Union Redroom. Their concert will include new songs from there upcoming Avalanche EP. The event is absolutely free so there is no excuse not to see one of Sacramento’s best bands. Not to promote playing hooky but even if you have class you can be a few minutes late and check out TNHZ.

For more info check out sacstateunique.com

Saul Bass ➡ Making Money vs Quality Work

The fact of the matter is, I want everything we do, that I do personally, that our office does, to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything.  It’s worth it to me.  It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares. —Saul Bass

Ditto.

MOODGADGET

The Moodgadget logo is just simply amazing. I love the retro feel the logo-motion clip has which reminds me of the old PBS motion logo. Jakub Alexander runs the Moodgadget record label and is also a heavy hitter down on the ISO50 blog.

THE THIRD & THE SEVENTH

My friend Jack shared this video with me today…all I can say is that I am still speechless after seeing this masterpiece. It is usually hard for me to call a short film/video a masterpiece but Alex Roman really capitalized with this one. He captures the essence, in a unique manner, of some of the worlds most breathtaking designs from furniture to architecture through the lens of vintage camera(s). The compositions he creates within each frame take on there own life as well suck you in to this dreamlike world.

The videos were created using 3dsmax, Vray, After Effects, and Premier. But what amazes me here isn’t just the execution, Roman crafts truly beautiful images with impeccable taste, something often missing from highly technical productions such as this. The man perfectly rendered a Mies van Der Rohe and an Eames, give him a medal! Maybe I can get some VR googles and map his work to the interior of my house and pretend to live in some modernist paradise. —Scott Hansen/ISO50

Roman is able to create nostalgia attaching emotion with these stimulating visual compositions. As you are watching the video you realize that all of the subjects, that are sometimes surrounded by nature, have been created by human beings and are some of the most highly studied and admired in art and design history. Roman took supposedly took a year off to create this film and I have to say it wall all worth it!

This video really inspired me and really took my mind to another world. It also really made me appreciate the timeless objects we have created around the world. To really appreciate all of the wonderful effects Alex Roman created to compliment these wonderful designs and architecture I would highly recommend that you watch this at full screen on Vimeo to get the full experience. WATCH IT HERE!!!

Oh and I forgot to mention this video is a FULL CG animated piece so that means it was created entirely on the computer. You probably won’t believe me until you watch this but don’t watch it unless you’ve watched the one above:

Compositing the Breakdown (T & S)

Noel Martin ➡ Identity Programs

Noel Martin, who was a renown self-taught typographer and designer, studied drawing, painting, and printmaking at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He later became an instructor there and was the long-time designer for the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as a prolific free-lance designer. Martin was celebrated for modernizing museum graphics and industrial trade catalogs with his wonderful blend of classical and modern typography. In 1953, he was featured in MoMA’s landmark design exhibition, Four American Designers, along with Herbert Bayer, Leo Lionni, and Ben Shahn.

His spiral-bound self-promotional piece, Identity Programs, presents some of his iconic minimalist logos. I absolutely love the simplicity and timelessness of his work. His color choices are quite interesting as well using de-saturated warm hues in most of his work.

Found via grain edit.