As a Birmingham-based agency we like to support initiatives from our fellow residents, and this week saw the launch of online boutique Library from the Birmingham-based design agency Family. Featuring a great offering of prints from designers and illustrators, many of them sharing our impeccable choice of geographic location… these prints aren’t available for sale anywhere else.
Take a look at http://www.wearelibrary.co.uk.
Police log comics is the brainchild of Owen Cook, who has scoured the archives of the police department in Carmel Pine Cone, California and turned unabridged log transcripts into excellently paced comics. Petty crime takes on a mysterious edge as most of the stories are left to hang with no conclusion – the text is exactly as it appears in the transcript and each makes for a strangely good, eerie short story.
Read them at http://policelogcomics.com/
There are a few blogs I keep coming back to time and time again for inspiration and a little read, plastic circles is one of those blogs. Plastic Circles is mainly about music visuals – predominantly artwork and packaging. It’s updated regularly with a well curated selection of new and visually interesting releases, and whats more it give some insightful background information on the artwork and also relevant links to the artist, designer’s and photographers involved in the creation of the artwork so you can dig a little deeper on the subject if you so wish. Get it on your blog roll for 2013. Check it out HERE.
Of late I’ve taken to tumblr to collate and curate my daily findings, It’s a moving mooodbard that I update most days with whatever is visually grabbing my attention at the time, there is no rhyme or reason behind the curatorship just images that are a little more stand out that others make the cut. I try as much as possible to add some additional information about the images and artists I post but sometimes this isn’t always possible. Jump in HERE.
A very nicely curated Tumblr, of Set design, Graphic design, Small animals, and the occasional bum, from the Birmingham freelancer with the very long name Charlotte Audery Owen Meehan. Click HERE to be transported to this weird and wonderful world. Enjoy.
Forward Strategy Group are a UK duo that make dark brooding techno, infused with a slight tinge of early industrial music. They have been making tracks for quite some time now and have released on numerous top teir techno labels. This year see’s the duo release their first album on Perc Trax. The album ‘Labour Division” is due for release on the 28th of May.
Jonny from Fluid has worked with the artists to create the Sleeve art and campaign identity. The artwork ( pictured above ) took numerous twists and turns during the concept development stages and ended up in a visual place we can safely say we had never visited before.
The Quietus music magazine wrote a small piece on the forthcoming album. “rain-soaked, dirt-encrusted minimalism and slightly mechanistic feel” Sounds like my kind of thing alright. Check out the article HERE. More Forward Strategy Group HERE.
Always keeping busy the lovely girls over at inky goodness have pulled together another fresh batch of talented illustrators to exhibit at a recent design event in Antwerp. The exhibition was part part of a larger design event, The Fiend Project Art Festival which runs until the 28th of January. They have posted a little update on their blog here and this concedes nicely with the opening of the inky goodness online shop where various prints from this exhibition and others can be purchased.
Keep up the good work Inky Goodness.
A lot of Graffiti talk going around the office this week, especially after the Robbo Vs. Banksy documentary. The documentary was shown as part of the C4 Summer Street art Programming. The program entitled Graffiti Wars, is worth a watch, but also quite cringe worthy in parts. A lot of street art is pretty mediorce at best, A spectrum of hype bubble’s with the value and credibility rising and falling at the drop of a hat.
Lets spare a tough for a man that gave his life to “street art” art on the streets. Kase2. This man only had one arm and one leg, He Came from the NYC School of hard knocks and told it like it was. If you want to know more about him check this link, worth knowing about, but the video above should give you a nice taster of how a true legend rolls. Unfortunately this great artist passed away this week, Kase2 king of styles, RIP.
Whether we know it or not, we all grew up with Michael Manoogian’s design work in our lives. Since the late 1960s, Manoogian has been hand-crafting stunning and time-tested typographic logos for clients in the music and entertainment industries. Kenny Rodgers, Stevie Nicks, Lionel Richie have all had the Manoogian touch.
His sketches and concepts are what really grabbed our attention, Some amazing designs and an insight into the working of a design legend. See the interview in over HERE, and be sure to check out the rest of the blog, It’s a well curated collection of graphic design artifacts and inspirations from the 1960′s – 1980′s
Image subversion and collage is at the heart of what we do here at fluid one artist who I’ve always found inspiration in is british born John Stezaker, He recently had a major exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Though it has now finished. An online collection of 37 of his most famous works are available to view at theapproach.co.uk
Here is what White Chapel had to say about the man in question – “British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.
His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention”
Collage has seen somewhat of a revival in recent years with a number of books being published on the movement, Cutting Edges being one of the most comprehensive, But don’t forget to check out the master of the new age collage ( in my opinion ) artist and musician Bjorn Copeland.