Er Hu – chinese violin

The erhu is a two-stringed traditional chinese violin, with a much smaller resonating chamber. Watch first a traditional chinese song played in duo with a piano. Lang Lang and his father at Carnegie Hall – “Horse”:

(thanks Toma >:D<)

and now played in a very violin-like way, by Wang Ying (the piece is from Carmen):

GK Graphics – japanese design since…

GK Graphics have been doing design for almost 40 years now. Packaging, identities, wayfinding, you name it, they’ve done it.

(via PingMag)

Kashiwa Sato – Japan is another planet

This must be it, japanese are aliens. Otherwise they wouldn’t come up with crazy stuff like this, website, work, everything. Very interesting how each photo has its own color-strip presented. Take a look at Kashiwa Sato.

Their eye-popping site:

and some of their work:

(via Pingmag)

Ben Webster – sax

Thanks to Guerrilla Radio, I’ve discovered Ben Webster, a great tenor saxophonist. It goes very well with the rainy autumn, warm, thoughtful, melancholic (reminds me of Cowboy Bebop).

Ghostco updates

Mathew Woodson (aka Ghostco) updated his site with a few more great looking illustrations, as well as some inside info on his blog. He’s also featured on Juxtapoz.

“Late dinner”

While Kit was probably enjoying a late dinner, I was fascinated by the ceiling :) (around 4am).

Those bloody brit designers – part 2

Another british design studio, The Partners (yes, naming doesn’t seem to be a british trait, even Pentagram got its name because Alan Fletcher was reading some ocult books). Nevertheless, their work

Design Matters says Capsule

I’ve received this week a lot of design-related books from Amazon. Among them was Design Matters: Logos 01, edited by Capsule, a design firm from Minneapolis, US. I wanted to find more about the book’s writers, since the book was quite good, well-written and with a lot of good examples. No wonder, check out some of Capsule’s work:

Those bloody brit designers – part 1

Lately I’ve been looking at more and more british design firms. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that half of Britain’s population must be designers, and a quarter of them excellent ones :P. Take a look at Alexander Design Associates (well, they do design, not naming).

Thanks Alin.

About freelancing

A friend (thanks Flo) showed me this picture and I was delighted to see how well it catches the most important reason why freelancing as a full time job is not tempting (at least for me, at this time in my life). I love the hand-drawn type, goes very well with the subject, as do those cardboard boxes:

(picture from here)