Let’s start things off right by saying this: Wow, did we love that Hand Job. Not that that’s an atypical reaction for us (we’ll take hand-drawn ABC’s over Photoshop-perfected ones anytime), but regardless, that book just felt good in our hands.
Well Happy Friday to us, because the man behind Hand Job — the creatively inclined, Brooklyn-based Michael Perry — has just given us another. Over & Over, a book of people-drawn patterns, stays clear of the sexual innuendo that initially got our attention, but still manages to keep our attention in the same way that (your favorite punny porno title here) does. Or doesn’t, or used to, or…hey. Sometimes, we just prefer a book.
A few months ago a film crew, photographer, assistants of all types and literally dozens of people with color meters, cameras and lights descended on my NYC office and later at my home to shoot a spot and interview for the Yahoo! Start Wearing Purple campaign. A unique experience to say the least, and one of the most exhausting days of my life. Lights, camera, action. Not my world, but interesting to be a part of for a day.
The interview and photos turned out pretty well I think– but it’s always weird seeing yourself on screen and wondering what was going through your head, and how they chopped and edited you together in that way. For people that don’t know me very well, it might offer some better insight into where I work and what I do all day.
The campaign is what they refer to as a “call-to-action’ by Yahoo! for people to live life as an individual, and with an exclamation point. The campaign emphasizes (despite any economic situation) their roots through the color and spirit of purple — it means individuality, imagination and innovation.
The program features four main components. Technology (a set of pretty amazing bikes that take photos every 45 seconds around the world and stream them direct to Flickr), personalities (the pioneers of purple), some products, and the improvisation work done by Charlie Todd of Improv everywhere. There’s a ton of content over there so I encourage you to check it out– but be nice.
Take some modern furniture, a liquor cabinet, and an endless supply of questionable ethics, and you have advertising in its heyday. Surround that with a white picket fence (and some very good bone structure), and you have Mad Men, AMC’s sparkler of a series that’s been making it okay to watch television again.
Dirty, juicy, and maybe even a bit creatively inspiring; Mad Men and its supporting characters have spawned a league of dedicated fans. But what happens when those fans start pretending to be employees of Sterling Cooper… and move into Twitter?
Ha. We interview them, of course.
Read on as Peggy Olson and I chat copywriting, office politics, and discontinued candy, then get in on the game here.
You’ve most likely seen writer Steve Dildarian’s work before. That is, if you’ve watched major league sports events in the past 10 years or any television in general. Dildarian worked as a copywriter for world-renowned San Francisco advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, where he created a series of spots about a certain set of amphibians for a beer company. After giving Budweiser lizards and an eager donkey something to talk about, he worked with girlfriend Leynete Cariapa to create the short film Angry Unpaid Hooker, a prelude to the new animated series The Life & Times of Tim set to debut on HBO on September 28.
Photos courtesy of HBO/ Jason Merritt; HBO/ TIMS LIFE PRODUCTION
Ah, Chuck Anderson. Fresh, brave, and brilliant from all angles, we turned our sights towards this self-taught, Michigan-based designer in 2005, when the then 20-year old’s portfolio was already competitive with those of players twice his age.
Since then, Chuck (aka NoPattern) has been filling his time with work for clients like Burton, Dolce and Gabbana, and Microsoft, and his light-filled designs have had us seeing stars all along. Graphic designer, digital illustrator, 23-year old basking in the glow he drew up himself; whatever he is, he’s good at it, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.
Initially, “painstaking” seems like the most appropriate term to describe his hyper-realistic paintings– after all, the detail is above the average human being’s level of artistic devotion. What else would describe the process? Focused? Acute? Zoinks? No matter. When words fail in an introduction, we always have the rest of the interview to suss it out.
Meaningful hippie ravings of the great John Lennon are brought to life by John Raskin in I Met the Walrus, an animated short using the audio from an unofficial 1969 interview by a 14-year-old Beatles fan in Toronto. The school age interviewer, Jerry Levitan, asks questions regarding Lennon’s being barred from the US, the role of the youth in the revolution, and messages in the Beatles’ music. The innocence behind the questions and the sincerity with which Lennon responds evokes a humanity often forgotten as a trait of icons. The awesome animation interprets Levitan’s questions, Lennon’s words, and incorporates random noises in the room (phones ringing, etc). You really just have to see it to feel it.
“Sure we’ve never been bears, but that doesn’t mean we’ve never loved one,” says Luke Chueh, the man behind some of today’s more recognizable pop-surrealist paintings. That’s one way that the SF-based artist tries to explain the world’s growing affinity for his toy-inspired work, and it may very well be the most significant. Of course, the fact that our eyes are so readily drawn to these paintings has as much to do with the subject’s masochistically demolished appendages as it’s place in our childhoods, but maybe that’s why we owe Luke so much credit. Yes, the plots are dismal, but it’s the familiar characters that catch our attention — and whether it’s the blood or the bunnies that keep it, the fact remains that the canvases of Chueh might represent a unexpected truth. Read on as we chat with Luke about revelations, evolutions, and all the beheadings in between.
If this were a celebrity gossip magazine, I would say this and call it a wrap: Mel Kadel lives with her boyfriend in an old Mormon stagecoach. Unfortunately, the just slightly higher journalistic standards of this site force me to fill in some blanks. (Or just skip the next paragraph and head right for the interview.)
For more inquiring minds, these are the details: The stagecoach really only represents part of the house (the kitchen), and the boyfriend is more commonly known as Travis Millard (also known as the man behind Fudge Factory Comics). Mel herself is quite literally known as Mel, but is also known as an incredible artist with a style all her own. If you had to place her in a category, she would land in the genre of art that is cooed over by Fecal Face (and their leagues of in-tune followers), but as the days go by, her breezy drawings have caught the eye of even wider audiences. You probably like to place yourself within the “in-tune” category, and if so — voila — a new interview with one of your all time favorite artists. If not, read up. READ MORE…
You can look at it one of two ways: Method was ahead of their time, or right on time. I tend to lean towards the former, because with a clear mission, a clear conscious, and a clearly obsessive attitude towards branding and design, the environmentally amicable cleaning products were progressive in nearly every way. They didn’t smell like future bouts with cancer, they didn’t scream “Earth Mother,” and — whaddaya know — they worked. Additionally, were one to “absentmindedly” leave ones cleaning products out, maybe in effort to say, “That’s right, I clean, and I’m so eco.” and “How jealous are you of my supreme perfection,” it suddenly seemed kind of sexy to do so. Rain drop-shaped, Sweet Water-scented sexy.
We love Method for their environmentally responsible approach, their non-gag inducing aromas, and their effectiveness. But most of all, we love them for making us feel good about buying them. We wanted to share our love with Danny Alexander, an industrial designer at Method, but he seemed apprehensive about letting us stick our tongues down his throat (obsessively clean, Danny?). So we just settled for a heart-to-heart.
Yesterday there was a lot of Shepard Fairey news to cover. Today we have an update from his better half. Shepard’s wife Amanda, the curator and co-founder of Subliminal Projects gallery in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, takes a second to explain in an exclusive interview with Karmaloop TV why this fresh art space focuses on promoting artistic diversity and discussion.
When I was 12, I really liked reading women’s magazines. A voice of wisdom in a world of tight-lipped adults, they offered up tantalizing life-lessons. Lessons like The #1 Best Sex Position to Try When on African Vacation, and How to Make a Low-Cal Salad Dressing Out of buttermilk and Gatorade Powder. However, by the time I reached 12 and a half, I realized there was mischief afoot. Weren’t the Backwards Cowgirl and the Foot-Facing Tigress the same thing? Hadn’t I taken the “Does Your Hair Color Match Your Boyfriend?” quiz six times? Who was writing these things, and who was editing these things, and what the f!@# was going on?
I turned to men’s magazines. GQ didn’t assume I was dumb, Esquire pleasantly figured I could handle 2000 word articles, and even fratty staples like Maxim managed to wrangle up fresh content for each new issue. But even though these publications were endlessly better than the ‘zines I’d cut my teeth on, the fact remained that they were for dudes and I was a girl, and if that was the only way that I could find happiness in a mag then something was deeply wrong with the world.
It’s been 11 years since I decided that girl mags sucked a huge one, and just over two years since Missbehave came to my rescue. Urban, multicultural, and more often than not, completely inappropriate, the now widely-distributed magazine offers everything that everything else couldn’t. We chatted with Missbehave’s well-worded editor in chief, Mary H.K. Choi, about all the reasons why this young quarterly is making magazines worth reading again.
The story of a rejected artist finally making it big time is as familiar as the tales our grandparents like to tell us: “I walked 17 miles, barefoot, through three feet of snow; I dog-walked in New York through rejection letter after rejection letter …” The similarities are noticeable, and the struggles equally ruthless. And while there’s a good chance that your aging grandpa has taken to spicing up his retirement with total B.S., the stories of struggling artists are mostly true, and there are only a few that come out of the fight still holding a paintbrush.
Casey O’Connell is one artist who has prospered, and even though she is finally content in her position as one of the West Coast’s most fawned over new artists, she’s too fresh off the track to have forgotten how she got there. Several cities, plenty of dog walks, and even more broken hearts paved the way for this young painter. But, we couldn’t be happier that she’s arrived.
Rebellion, in any form, has a few consistent characteristics. The color black, for instance, is a common accomplice, as are hot tempers, cool demeanors, and five o’clock shadows. However, the most important element to rebellion is the one thing that has nothing to do with its surface, and everything to do with its soul.
That thing is energy, and it manifests itself in art, words, sounds, and – we would argue – in the new men’s fashion line Public School. Founded by Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, two Sean John ex-pats, Public School embraces the attitude of young New York, utilizing the creative rebellion of the city’s well-cultivated steam as its source of inspiration.
As Public School draws closer to its second season, it has become apparent that the line’s expertly directed construction, touchable materials, and lust-worthy lines are here to stay. Join us as we chat with its two designers about their goals, their drive, and what it takes to make it all come together.
Joshspear.com: The way you describe Public School on the website is almost philosophical. Can you tell us a little bit more about the brand’s approach to culture, energy, and change?
Public School: Everything we do is a product of the culture we are immersed in. Music, film, art and fashion - its all energy, energy that we use for inspiration and try to put back into the world through our product.
Jan Willem Wennekes, also known as Stinger, crafts a killer monster. Well, “killer” in its most docile, endearing sense — because the creatures of this Netherlands-based designer have always had more success drawing aww’s than arghh’s!
As founder of Zeptonn Lab, Stinger cranks out his unique style of design for clients like PlayStation, Popcling, and Threadless, as well as a solid variety of art, design, and online publications. In between those projects, this eco-conscious designer spends his time creating some of the best books you’ve ever laid claws on, including one of our all-time favorites, Stingermania.
Just in time for the release of his newest book, Black & White Freedrawings (site coming soon), we chatted with Stinger about his work, his education, and how he’s using both to make his world a pretty wonderful place.
Let’s start things off right by saying this: Wow, did we love that Hand Job. Not that that’s an atypical reaction for us (we’ll take hand-drawn ABC’s over Photoshop-perfected ones anytime), but regardless, that book just felt good in our hands.
