The first video feature of the event itself from Red Bull with some lovely footage. Nice to see the logo we designed in full effect on the track and on the specially commissioned sprocket trophys and Charge frame (with custom headbadge) for the winners. Good to see mountain bike and trial rider Chris Akrigg taking the win. Some great images by Roman Skyva here.
Lucas Badtke-Berkow has been exploring the world of the printed page in Japan for the past 16 years with his company Knee High Media, producing inspirational, independent and open-minded publications and consistently looking at things with new eyes and an infectious inquisitiveness of the world around him.
Starting with Tokion magazine (which I wrote about 11 years ago in Level issue 05—that’s the ‘part 1’ of this story) Lucas and his company have remained absolutely true to their values while developing new and exceptional places, products, events and publications for themselves and others—and most importantly, for this one-island Earth.
Here’s the full story of the singular Knee High Media I wrote for Level recently with a whole load of archive photographs and cover art, linked below. Part 2 of The In Sound From Way Out, The Story of Knee High Media, complete with slideshow.
Keith Haring (1958-1990) was a young American artist who, starting offwith “Subway Drawings”, became internationally renowned andrecognised. I didn’t know a great deal about this artist until I recently watched a feature length documentary on his life, directed by Christina Clausen.
His work was simplistic, Iconic and told a story, sometimes the storywas simple, sometimes it had an extra layer of meaning. But always in his unmistakable style, which had a universal appeal to art pundits and the general public alike. He sadly passed away at the age of 31 leaving more than a lifetimes work behind him.
Link to the Clausen documentary HERE, and a link to another documentary available online HERE.
We designed the logo for the Red Bull Mini Drome event recently and here’s the new trailer. Top fixed gear riders from across the UK are ready to do battle this Saturday, January 15, when the world’s smallest velodrome hits York Hall in London’s East End. Registration closes at 5pm, January 10 if your interested, I would but i’ve got gears. For more info visit redbull.co.uk/minidrome
As you know we are big game fans here and we like to keep on top of what going on behind the scenes at the publishers HQ’s. Unless you have been living under a rock the last year you will have heard of some of the killer release’s that Platinum games have dropped, Madworld, Bayonetta & Vanquish being some of their most talked about recent releases.
Here is a little peep behind the scenes of Platinum Games HQ. Check out the early concept art and the fan art is a must see too. Some fans are hell bent of giving us a run for our money on the advertising campaigns it would seem. Check out the PG studio Flickr here, and our recent Vanquish campaign here.
With a recent trip to Dublin over the Xmas, I had the nerdy joy of catching a touring exhibition called “GAME ON” Game on is a retrospective of videogaming since its inception in the 70′s, curated by the Barbican. The exhibition mainly consists of classic old console games, starting at the start with Pong and working right up to today. All the games featured in the exhibition were fully playable. It was pretty good fun having a blast from the past on the old Mario titles, Street fighter 2 and some old Atari 2600 gems.
A real bonus to the exhibition was the gaming marketing material and original ephemera, some original sketches of early Sonic were brilliant to see. It was amazing the development of his character through the ages, as technology and trends changed.
Another 10 on the geek factor scale was the original hand drawn flat plan level layout of GTA, complete with developers post-it notes. The GTA section also had early character development and a glass cabinet of collectors edition GTA promotional items.
Also nice to see quite a few publishers we work with in the exhibition, such as SEGA and EA, and even one or two titles we have previously worked on such as Ridge Racer. All in all, Worth a look, for the casual gamer and hardcore geeks alike.
Check it out HERE.
Sent myself to the concrete surrounds of Coventry yesterday to witness a neat little exhibition entitled Street Art: Contemporary Prints from the V&A at the Herbert Gallery. Its a touring exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London featuring a range of work from heavyweights such as Banksy, Jamie Hewlett and Shepard Fairey as well as new work under the title ‘Fresh Paint’ by six emerging artists including AsOne and Lucy McLauchlan. Catch it before it closes in Coventry on Sunday 16th January. Free entry.
I will be playing live on Wednesday night at this years Noisefloor festival At Stafford University,UK which runs from the 12-14th of January. The intention of the NoiseFloor festival is to draw together forms of exploratory electronic music from a range of disciplines and place them together in one single event. Visitors will be able to explore the muti-channel Electroacoustic concert situation, as well as the two channel club setting. Read more here and at NoiseFloor’s Facebook page.