iancul

A priceless one from Savage Chickens. No other words are necessary :D

Joel Sundberg created these fascinating characters, called “Dark Odors”. A bit creepy, but funny nevertheless. They do remind me a lot of the “Jojo In The Stars” (you can view the short animation here).

Larger image here

Jaw-dropping nature photography at Extreme Instability. You definitely have to see the aurora ones. Here are some apetizers:

(thanks uncle Peter for the tip)

Always inspiring. Still hard to understand. But, God’s permit, we’ll have a lifetime ahead of re-reading and re-watching until we’ll come to understand Mr. Rand. Dying trying is not that bad either. After all, there’s more than just one way to reach Rome, right?

Description from YouTube: A short film by Preston McLanahan interviewing Paul Rand, the great American Modernist designer. Filmed in 1996, shortly before his death he talks about his process, art, aesthetics, and design in general. A very inspirational video and soon to be released on DVD.

(via Swiss Legacy)

The “well-dug-in-the-ground-reaching-for-help” Bruce

Illustrator Martijn Rijven wrote several weeks ago about his involvment in redrawing Akzo Nobel’s “Bruce” during the rebranding project started by Saffron and finished by Pentagram. It was a beautifuly-written article about ups and lows in the design process, about the final version proposed by Saffron and the final-final version approved by Akzo under Pentragram’s watch (probably a “design-by-comitee” solution) and its short-comings. A rare-to-read insight in the development of large rebranding projects.

Unfortunately, Akzo (or Pentagram, who knows) felt that the article was not the kind of PR their new logo needed so they brought in the big-mean-law-guns and forced Mr. Rijven to censor the article completely. It’s a real shame. I can understand commercial interests, hell, we are working with them in mind on daily basis, but freedom of speech and design ethics should not be trampled under feet. In the end, we’re graphic designers, it’s not like we’re saving lives every day, we just make people’s lives a bit easier and more pleasant—or, if you prefer the empty side of the glass, we just help sell things people don’t really need.

But I guess nothing else matters when big money is involved.
It’s the cold, chilling truth.

Last year I had the pleasure of playing with a “brush pen”. The beauty of its lines blew me away. Writing and drawing with it was such a pleasure! Drawing type, logos, sketches, everything looked different from a normal pen, free, vibrant, ever-changing in thickness, ranging from hairline-thin to broad, thick brush strokes. And everything without the hassle of dipping it in ink every three or four strokes. Just cap it back and put it in your pocket. I had to have such a wonderful tool.

Several weeks of searching on the web only brought me frustration. Sure you could find it easily. But finding someone that would ship it to Romania was a different story. After a few months, a colleague told me she was going to Tokyo. You can easily guess my plea :) She brought me some brush pens—thank you Delia—and I was finally able to enjoy drawing with them every day (another friend brought back from Paris a big Corto Maltese poster, one could not ask for a better subject to copy and practice the brush pen). But the pleasure would’ve soon ended, since you can’t refill them (there are other refillable brush pens, a little more expensive, but the problem is the ink, you have to use special ink since other types would dry and make the brush tip useless).

Fortunately, last weekend I showed the brush pen to my sensei and he told me its real name: fude pen (”foo-day” pen). Searching again on the web, this time with the proper name, gave me the much expected results: someone that would ship fude pens to Romania. So here you are, JList ships almost everywhere in the world a lot of Japanese merchandise, fude pens included. Be sure to check out the wide variety of fude pens. I’d recommend the bold line one, the others I still have to test (the shipment’s on the way, can’t wait).

So, if you’re an illustrator, any kind of designer or artist, or just an asian-caligraphy enthusiast, the fude pen is a must have—no other drawing tool will ever compare (ok, fineliners excepted) :)

(foto taken from wikimedia commons)

Watch in awe as these two “kyōdai” (brothers in japanese), kimono&hakama-clad but hair-died, masterfully fuse the traditional shamisen with modern music. The Yoshida Brothers are celebrities in Japan and they’ve also begun to be promoted in US and the rest of the world as well. So much that some even compare their shamisen-skills to Jimi Hendrix’s.

Enjoy a simple tranquille ballad and a ravishing waterfall-like song:

(thanks go to otaku)

Touching and thought provoking story by Shel Siverstein. Admire it here.

(thank you Estera)

(view larger on flickr)

Superb concert last night in Bucharest. It thrilled me to see that not only did they know in which country they were (this may sound odd, but many artist coming here for the first time mistook us for Budapest—a big mistake, considering the ancient national issues between romaniand and hungarians), but most of their impressive type&image screen kept rolling strong headlines in romanian, among some being facts about our political problems. It really showed how serious Del Naja is about his campaigns and how much it means to him to fight for an idea through his music and shows.

And the music… well, it was enchanting, hypnotising, hair raising. Can’t wait to get the new album :)

It would make a great every-day reminder :)

(thanks Oana)