It doesn’t seem too far off. Have a look at these videos created by Kanye and video editor Derrick Lee that were used as backdrops during last year’s listening session for Graduation. They’re condensed versions of the classic sci-fi flicks 2001: A Space Odyssey, Akira and Tron. Peep:
Stronger (Akira) and I Wonder (Tron) after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
We all knew the banned “Hunger Strike” episode of The Boondocks would see the light of day sooner of later, but who knew we’d have our neighbors to the north to thank for it?!
The Canadian cartoon network, Teletoon, aired the episode in its entirety last weekend, and also plans to air “The Ruckus Reality Show” (a spinoff in which Uncle Ruckus gets his own show on BET) on March 23rd. That’ll be hitting the web shortly after it airs, I’m sure.
I’d still like to know why The Cartoon Network refused to air this episode in the U.S., although they claim they received no pressure from BET or others to remove the episode from its schedule. Afterall, BET does airs in Canada, so I guess it’s safe to say they had nothing to do with U.S. ban, right? Right?
Peep the second half of the episode after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
No pun intended. However, to be sure that fans don’t misinterpret the artwork from their upcoming album Rising Down, ?uestlove of The Roots delivers a bit of background info to put things into perspective:
This drawing is entitled NEGRO RULE. and it pretty much sums up the feeling of the Confederate Union towards the newly freed slaves and the idea that if given power they would reek havoc and chaos on the country.
That was 1898. Ironically, here in 2008 similar feelings are held towards Hip-Hop and even a *certain individual* in the current presidential race. But you already knew that, I’m sure.
You gotta love The Roots for consistently coming through with relevant, thought
provoking album covers.
[via Okayplayer]
Portraits of Kanye West, 50 Cent, Russell Simmons, and other heavyweights of hip-hop are featured in painter Alexander Melamid’s Holy Hip Hop! exhibition, currently on display at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
The life-size portraits of twelve icons of hip-hop culture capture the larger than life personas embodied by these men, who are among the wealthiest and most influential individuals of our time. Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Common, Kanye West, Reverend Run, Duke, Lil Jon, Don “Magic” Juan, Whoo Kid, Marc Ecko and Russell Simmons are portrayed by Melamid as they are in life ‚ serious, ambitious, powerful and compelling. The twelve, dressed in their everyday clothes, are rendered with Old Master style and quality, providing a provocative visual context and an association with masterpieces of the past. In these paintings, Melamid explores art, power and commodity, as well as displaying the wit that has long elevated his work.
There’s communal blogging, and then there’s communal blogging.
The NY Times chops it up with a group of young bloggers that live and blog from their D.C. crib known as “The Flophouse”.
Normally I wouldn’t use words like cool and clever to describe a computer virus (a few *expletives* here and there would be more like it), but The Newton Virus definitely manages to pull these two words out of me. Instead of booting your precious files into oblivion, or sending your machine into a state of perpetual shock as most malicious codes do, Newton simply introduces the forces of gravity to your Mac computing experience. When transferred to a machine from its custom usb drive, the virus causes your desktop icons to crash to the bottom of the screen, and move freely in response to the earth’s gravitational pull. Peep the video demo.
The Newton Virus was create several years ago by London based design studio Troika to showcase ‘virtual gravity’, and not by some random group of computer hackers looking to exploit a weakness in Mac OS as most would think (then again…). Either way let’s just hope no ones gets any crazy ideas from this.
Staying on the theme of innovation…If you have a some innovative ideas in mind that you’re dying to share with the world, and you just so happen to find yourself in the vicinity of Monterey, California this weekend, make an effort to stop by the Bil Conference. Unlike many of the super exclusive tech/design/idea-sharing conferences that we sometimes hear about, Bil is open to any and everyone and its completely free to attend. The official site sums up the general idea behind Bil like this:
BIL is…
an open, self-organizing, emergent, and anarchic science and technology conference.
Nobody is in charge.
If you want to come, just show up.
If you have an idea to spread, start talking.
If someone is saying something interesting, stop and listen.
Pretty simple. In the meantime, have a look at this tentative list of presenters and presentations.
Convinced that “systematic branding efforts” have much to do with Barack Obama’s appeal to voters, Newsweek’s Andrew Ramano called on veteran graphic designer Michael Bierut to examine some of the key branding and design elements that set Obama apart from the competition.
He’s the first candidate, actually, who’s had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it’s more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.
The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham. [See "Change We Can Believe In" sign, above] If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they’re all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged. Trust me. I’ve done graphics for events –and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, “Oh, we ran out of signs, let’s do a batch in Arial.” It just doesn’t seem to happen. There’s an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.
Then if you go to the Web site, it’s all reflected there too–all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system.
Aside from being two very unique subcultures that spawn their own internal trends and movements, Skateboarding and Go-Go share very little in common. Recently, however, Kickballers DC and Shut NYC blended the two together to create these limited edition skate decks that feature none other than “The Godfather of Go-Go” himself, Chuck Brown. This is definitely a first for go-go and skate culture. Get familiar with Chuck after the jump.
[via HS]
Over the weekend I stumbled across this interesting series of world flags that have been reinterpreted as graphs using real data taken from Amnesty International and UN reports. No photo editing was done here, just a clever, factual play on the original flag designs. In case you’re slacking in the geography department, that’s Columbia’s flag pictured above. Peep the full series here.
[via Brazilian Artists]
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