Banksy Street Art in Los Angeles

Venerable graffiti artist Banksy premiered his new and much anticipated street art “documentary” film “Exit Through the Gift Shop” Monday night in Los Angeles.

Even Minnie Driver showed up. Dear me!

Hoping to “do for street art what The Karate Kid did for martial arts,” Banksy’s film (which stars OBEY mastermind Shepard Fairey) opened in selected cities Friday, April 16th.

Experimental indie staple Animal Collective premiered their new album ODDSAC at Sundance Festival this past summer. Yes – Sundance. It’s a visual album directed by Danny Perez. I saw it at a screening in Chicago a few weeks ago. I suggest you get your hands on it – especially if you liked that creepy-ass VHS from The Ring.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that this film is good, but rather just completely expected. Films of this caliber seem completely immune to genuine criticism. Instead, it’s more appropriate to simply say that this album/film was visually and audibly accurate. If it weren’t for the fact that Animal Collective wrote the film’s musical score, or what seems more like hyperbolic folly with traces of music, I wouldn’t even mention the sound at all.

With a film this experimental and visual, this audio track seemed to be par for the course. You know what I mean – when people walk through the forest, the noise that their feet make as they walk over dry leaves sounds much more like the sound of someone crushing elephant bones, not someone walking through a forest of dry leaves. Conveniently, Animal Collective’s music already sounds a little like someone crushing elephant bones.

Having said that, no matter how atrocious the music or film was or could have been, it’s refreshing – and hopefully an indication of what lies ahead for the music industry. As years go by, I find myself continually bitching about how the future that I had anticipated never seems to actually be happening. However, as I was sitting in the Chicago screening of ODDSAC, I was reminded that flying cars aren’t the only sign of the world slowly becoming a Philip K. Dick novel.

Animal Collective and Danny Perez took liberties with an increasingly tired industry (music albums), and made a beautiful project that should be appreciated as true art. I’m looking forward to more of these “visual albums” (specifically if Atom and His Package starts making music again).

Just because print media has been decaying doesn’t mean advertisers have lost their touch. Check out these awesome and clever prints ads and be sure to head over to Web Designer Depot to check out more.

KayaKing Peanuts

Listermint Mouthwash

Utopolis Cinemas in Belgium

45 Rules for Creating a Logo (click picture for link to entire list)

Design is a bit like fashion, going through cycles where a particular style or ethos dominates for a time.

Check out Scott Hansen’s work as ISO50 for retro-organic, combining warmth with modernism (Hansen also records music as Tycho, which sound like the audio equivalent of his design — it’s worth a listen).

Hansen's work as ISO50.

Then there’s corporate America. Here are some logos from the 80′s and 90′s:

Notice any similarities? Do these adhere to the 45 rules?

Compare those to corporate logos of today:

Is it more important to stand out or fit in?

When it comes to rules for good design, it can helpful for guiding the process and making logo use effective and efficient (especially for the many uses of a logo in digital form). But, do rules for design kill innovation? And aren’t they fluid? 20-30 year-olds probably recognize the AT&T logo circa the 80′s and 90′s as distinct from the current one. Same goes for UPS.

AT&T and UPS: Old vs. New

Goodlogo.com is, well, a good logo site for comparing corporate design trends. Check it out. What do you think about logo design and these 45 rules (or should we say: suggestions)?

]]> http://internwhisperer.com/707/designers-45-rules-for-creating-a-logo/feed/ 0 http://internwhisperer.com/670/nubrella-because-you-dont-want-to-look-like-an-idiot-getting-wet-right/ http://internwhisperer.com/670/nubrella-because-you-dont-want-to-look-like-an-idiot-getting-wet-right/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:50:26 +0000 michael http://internwhisperer.com/?p=670

Nubrella: Look a fool. A dry, hands-free fool.

That’s right. You too can look like a pod person thanks to Nubrella (I’ll give $10 to the first person who takes a picture of themselves with an iPod in their Nubrella…whoa, meta — submit pics to info@internwhisperer.com).

These $35 new umbrellas (nu-brella!) are apparently, like, so much better than regular umbrellas because they allow you to use two hands instead of one. That, and the nearly full-body protection Nubrella provides will leave you feeling safe, secure and isolated from your environment and people around you like some kind of urban Bubble Boy.

Check out the demo video below. Good luck navigating New York City streets with an enormous bubble on your head. Though offering shelter from the weather to a lady-friend may offer new levels of intimacy if that’s your game plan you chivalrous dog, you.

Jake Gyllenhaal extols the virtues of bubblehood.

We can only hope when robots/computers take over the world, it’s this cool-looking.

Tim and Eric are my favorite. This is a purposefully broad sentence because it’s a blanket term for a large grouping of lists that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are at the top of in my world of preference. They’re my favorite comedians who use a green screen in everything they do. They’re my favorite adults who often times pretend they’re children for comedy’s sake. They’re my favorite candidates for the next California governor’s race. They’re my favorite talent scouts, having found people like James Quall and Richard Dunn. They’d probably be my favorite relief pitchers for the Cleveland Indians. They’d probably be my favorite members of a 14 piece big band. They’re my favorite at virtually everything they do.

NOW, they’re very close to edging out Tom Kuntz (my current favorite) in the “favorite commercial director” list. Of course their premier foray in corporate soul selling comes by the hands of Old Spice, who not only sponsor some of Tom Kuntz’s greatest commercial work, but also come in a close second to Sonic as having the best commercials in the world. Here are Tim and Eric’s Awesome new commercials for Old Spice. It looks like “attractive black man without a shirt, with large muscles, and a towel around his waste” could be becoming a recurring fixture in the advertising world. I sure hope this is the case, for the sole fact that that sentence would read hilariously in a college marketing textbook.

It’s not like street performers are a new thing (just walk down Pearl St. mall in Boulder), but every now and then, a true artist capable of truly unique, original and beautiful art will strike you.

Claudio Montuori is one-of-a-kind.

The advertising world totally bit it during the recession. For a while, just like in any profession, thousands of people were getting fired and slapped around by the giant state football championship ring bearing hand of “the man”. When people were getting laid off in the ad world though, that meant that some of the more (debatably) creative and interesting people in the world were out of work.

If interesting people are sitting around with nothing to do but watch reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and draw, their brains are going to expand with ideas until eventually they burst. In which case, the brain debris becomes documentaries, creative charities, and fine art. If you ask me, industry creatives should be replaced with scabs every 2-3 years to keep the DIY market fresh.

From one of these excessively creative brains came a new documentary/movement called Lemonade. It’s about exactly what I just described – creative people getting laid off because Goldman Sachs is irresponsible, THEN finding a way to do something cooler than they did before. Thus – taking lemons, and turning them into Lemonade. Good wordplay, director of the film. Maybe if copywriters would be fired more often, we’d have a steady flow of well-named documentaries.  Think about it.

Learn more about the movie by going to http://www.lemonademovie.com/.

This post can also be found at http://curated.culturejam.com

Want to know how the visually amazing Old Spice commercial was made? Check out this interview to find out. Check below for the commercial itself. Film and marketing students take note:

The Original Commercial: