sundance

Another hub for affordable green homes: Corning, Iowa

If cost is no object, you probably look to the coasts for the latest in green building design. But when affordability is figured into the equation, the Midwest seems to be leading the pack: from Greensburg, Kansas to Reynolds, Indiana, the region’s turning into a laboratory of green building experimentation designed for the rest of us.

Dennis Hopper at MoCA

Double Standard, 1961

Dennis Hopper may be best remembered as an actor in roles like the nitrous oxide-sucking Frank Booth in BLUE VELVET (1986) or the mind warped photojournalist in APOCALYPSE NOW (1976) or free-wheeling Billy opposite Peter Fonda in EASY RIDER (1969), which Hopper also directed, but all throughout his busy career in cinema there wasn’t often a time when he was without a camera around his neck. For the past 60 years Hopper worked as a visual artist in a variety of mediums, from paint and assemblage to photography, sculpture and film installations. Paying tribute to his life outside cinema, MoCA’s exhibit “Dennis Hopper Double Standard” is the first comprehensive survey of Hopper’s artistic career to be mounted by a North American museum.

Iamamiwhoami returns

The unknown artist iamamiwhoami continues to release videos with little explanation surrounding them. For months now, these beautifully art-directed clips, mysterious and creepy even, have made their way onto YouTube. Bloggers began asking who the artist was. No one seems to know. The songs being released, on YouTube and iTunes, could very well spell out the [...]

Roland Roos, the handy man artist

In a project aptly titled “Free Repair,” Swiss artist Roland Roos traveled around Europe for two years and without permission, he fixed damaged things in public spaces and “to restore a particular detail to its pre-damaged state.” On his website you can view the before and after photos of each repair job. This project came [...]

Harvey Pekar Dies At 70

On July 12, 2010, Harvey Pekar, creator and writer of the autobiographical comic book American Splendor, was found dead at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  While the world may never have fully appreciated the richness of his talent, to those in the know, Pekar was one of the great American storytellers. His work focused [...]

When I do trashy, I do it right!

Rickey Medlocke and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd (Photo by Larry Marano/Getty Images) Ooof! So, it’s been a week — sorry ’bout that. I think Gay Pride killed me.  I was still feeling the spangly effects over the 4th of July, which, incidentally, was done red neck style! I decided to bugger off down to [...]

Insanely realistic models of defunct NYC storefronts.

Artist Randy Hage has been “documenting and replicating NYC storefronts that are disappearing due to gentrification and urban renewal” by creating insanely detailed, realistic and lifelike miniature models of these storefronts, including this (now defunct) donut shop in my old neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. I used to visit it for the occasional healthy breakfast [...]

Brownfield and landfill sites: Perfect for renewable energy development?

Yesterday’s Boston Globe took note of Canton, Massachusetts’ negotiation to use a capped landfill as an energy production site. While many localities have discovered landfill gas as an alternative energy source, Canton plans to use about half of the 41-acre site as a solar farm.

Guess whose high school yearbook pic?

Yep, Rachel Maddow’s. Out and proud Rachel Maddow of MSNBC’s kick-ass liberal politics show “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow, who wears as little makeup as the producers will let her get away with, who would never be caught dead in feminine jewelry (let alone pearls!), who’s always in jeans and sneaks under her television desk, who gets her haircut with what looks like a Flowbee. Don’t get us wrong — none of that is a dis. We love, love, love that Maddow refuses to abide by the strict beauty rules set for women in our society, especially in our society’s television media. Which is perhaps why this picture is so striking — it’s such a 180 for her, the epitome of the feminine ideal, even today: blonde, long-haired, tan, make-up-ed, and accessorized. We admit, our first reaction was: OMG! But why?

Girl Scout logo gets a bang up job

After more than 30 years of tried and true service, Saul Bass’ logo design for Girl Scouts has undergone a makeover. The new logo, designed by the New York-based firm OCD, features a neck job, nose job and bang trim for the three ladies gracing the original green trefoil. It’s all part of the Girl Scouts of America’s newly revamped marketing strategy to “communicate the power girls have to change the world through Girl Scouting.” This new plan doesn’t mention adding activities besides hawking cookies and calendars or quilting sit-upons, but it does include a Spanish-language ad campaign, so now girls across America can sell Thin Mints as well as Flacas Mentas.

All About Joshua Grannell

An interview with Joshua Grannell about his new film All About Evil.

Your directorial debut All About Evil is touring the country right now. Tell me a little about the film.

It’s a black comedy set in the world of an old horror movie about a woman who inherits her father’s failing old repertory movie house in San Francisco. In order to save the family business she starts grinding out her own homemade gore films that the public loves. What the audiences don’t know is that she’s actually murdering her actors.

You have a brilliant cast, many of whom have cult followings. How did you end up working with Natasha Lyonne, Mink Stole, and Elvira?

Some of the cast were friends of mine like Mink Stole and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) who I’d known through doing shows together as part of my Midnight Mass event. I just called them up and sent them the script and they said they’d do it. I love them both soooo much! And I am really grateful for their friendship. Thomas Dekker I met through producer Darren Stein and when I met Thomas, we really hit it off. We love all the same weird stuff. Natasha Lyonne was introduced to the project through our fantastic D.P. Tom Richmond who’d shot her in The Slums Of Beverly Hills. We also did auditions in both SF and LA for remaining parts and I’m really proud of the whole cast.

Running on Empty: Los Angeles sans people and cars

Running on Empty from Ross Ching on Vimeo. Inspired by Matt Logue’s “Empty Los Angeles” photo series, which I had previously blogged here, Ross Ching compiled this time-lapse video titled “Running on Empty” of neighborhoods and roads in Los Angeles totally empty of people and cars. It’s as if the entire sprawl of LA was [...]

Comic sans comically rears its head during LeBron spectacle.

The spectacle surrounding LeBron James’ nationally televised decision to leave Cleveland for South Beach had something for everyone, including graphic designers and aesthetes. After LeBron’s LeBum’s announcement, Dan Gilbert, the jilted majority owner of James’ former team the Cavaliers, wrote an open letter tirade on the Cavs website which had the Internet and Twitterites abuzz (currently a top trending topic) not only for the content, which called his former star “narcissistic,” “heartless and callous” but for the particular infamous and comical typeface Gilbert used. Journalist Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, her middle name is awesomely a number) tweeted this older WSJ article about Vincent Connare, the creator of Comic Sans, the much used and equally hated typeface popular not only in “grade-school fliers and holiday newsletters, Disney ads and Beanie Baby tags, business emails, street signs, Bibles, porn sites, gravestones and hospital posters about bowel cancer,” but also with owners of professional basketball teams.

In 1994, Mr. Connare was working on a team at Microsoft creating software that consumers eventually would use on home PCs. His designer’s sensibilities were shocked, he says, when, one afternoon, he opened a test version of a program called Microsoft Bob for children and new computer users. The welcome screen showed a cartoon dog named Rover speaking in a text bubble. The message appeared in the ever-so-sedate Times New Roman font.

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Comments: Posted by: Matthew Rodriguez

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Tags: comic sans / designers / lebron / meme / sports / typeface

Sex degrees of separation

We, Em & Lo, worked with and are friends with (and Lo was apt-mates with) Jessica Baumgardner, who married Irad Eyal, which is our connection to the new book “Sex Degrees of Separation.” Irad has just turned his unhealthy obsession with celebrity hook-ups into an exhaustive encyclopedia that combines the idea of “six degrees of separation” and the game “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” with an emphasis on romantic ties and bodily fluids. Any “Us Weekly” subscriber (that would be Em) will be awed and amazed by the scope of this book, which includes extensively diagrammed connections between everyone from Paris Hilton to Diddy to, yes, Kevin Bacon. The graphic designers must be relaxing in a mental institution after this complicated project, which Irad compares to untangling a thousand iPod headphones that have been in your bag for a week.

FULL FRONTAL FASHION highlights

Designer Makin Jan Ma It’s time for your summer reading list! Here are a few books, new and old, that will feed your brain on the trains, buses, assorted beaches and backyards where you’ve been escaping to. You wont want to miss this fine selection of stylish summer reading. Find out why (capsule) is the [...]

Examples of usage of Wagner’s music in 10 films

Jon Burlingame for The Los Angeles Times lists ten different films from 1940s to present that utilize Wagner whose scores have been used by directors to convey and emphasize a variety of moments and sentiments. Burlingame states: Perhaps the most famous modern-day use of “Ride of the Valkyries,” which opens Act 3 of “Die Walkure,” [...]

Shadow art

Artist Joe Penrod has cornered the market of painting shadows of objects using the common blue painter’s tape. The effect is pleasing. Penrod’s work also reminds me of this older New York Times article about a Brooklyn artist, Ellis Gallagher, who back in 2005 outlined chalk shadows of “fire hydrants, street signs and bicycles all [...]

Green tech finds (7/8/10)

Industrial hemp… you can’t smoke it, but, apparently, you can run your car on it. That and more at this week’s green tech finds.

• Recycle your iPod, buy an iPhone 4: Apparently, that’s what a lot of people are thinking. UK recyclables buyer MoPay has seen a 70% surge in iPod recycling since the release of the new iPhone. (via IT Pro Portal)
  
  
• The solar smart phone: Puma’s new smart phone can run on solar power, and displays how much energy a user is saving when in sun power mode. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Europe right now… (via Springwise)
  
  

Brian McKee and the 2014 Olympics in Russia

15 new works by photographer Brian McKee open at the Vogt Bernal gallery in New York today. Called “The Power Suites,” these photographs track the progress of the building in Sochi, Russia for the upcoming 2014 Olympics, with a focus on the impact on the natural environment. Currently one of the largest construction projects in the world, the Sochi countryside is being leveled in order to create an entire city and infrastructure to support the Olympics and the tourism it will bring to the small, coastal city.

KAWS’ first solo museum exhibit

KAWS, Chum (Red), 2009 Brian Donnelly, better known as KAWS (previously), a Brooklyn street artist gone successfully commercial (without losing that rep) announced on his personal blog that he is having his first solo museum showing at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut starting June 27 through January 2, 2011. The project will offer [...]

Return to the 90s

If you haven’t noticed, Annie and Lisa have been thinking a lot lately about micro-budget filmmaking. Why? Full disclosure – we’re embarking on the adventure ourselves, we drank the Kool-aid and hope we don’t collapse in a fit of spasms. We have all the too-cool-for-school-tools. We got our Kickstarter, we got our 7D, we got a sound guy – wait – we didn’t get that, because the DIRECTORS are doing sound! Man, that’s cheap. Told ya … we got the fever bad … and we’re practically middle-aged women! What must the 20-somethings feel? In a certain sense the current wave out there is making me think about the early 90s.

Yet another reason we’re glad we were ’80s children

Remember back when Madonna was first huge, in the ’80s, and girls who wanted to be just like her wore black rubber bracelets up to their elbows and multiple crucifixes, even if they were Jewish? It seems almost quaint now that girls are wearing imported, illegal contact lenses that may damage their eyesight, just to look like Lady Gaga. (She wears them in her “Bad Romance” video.) The lenses cover not just the irises, but also part of the whites of the eyes, giving girls a wide-eyed, innocent, anime look — the eyes look impossibly large. Yeah, we all looked like idiots in our ’80s Madonna get-ups, but at least there wasn’t a chance we’d go blind from it. Geez.

Robyn’s Bitch Track

Robyn, the Swedish disco-pop songstress, embarking on a tour with Kelis this summer has released her first of three slated albums this year already. I’ve highlighted the first single, “Dancing On My Own,” here already. The song “Killing Me” is equally as mesmerizing. The video is quite remarkable too. The song sees Robyn, repeatedly, saying [...]

Self High Five Machine

Currently exhibiting at Chashama in New York through July 15 is Turkish-born, New York artist Deniz Ozuygur’s “Self High Five Machine” which subverts the artist’s memories of grade-school “acceptance and popularity” which was embodied by the high-five among classmates. Having been on the wrong end of too many “missed it!” and “too slow! high fives, [...]

How to promote your new hybrid car: host a global warming debate

If you’ve ever been to one of the big auto shows, you know that big announcements by the car companies often have many of the makings of a rock concert. For its promotion of the new CT 200h compact hybrid at the New York Auto Show, Lexus took a totally different approach: it hosted a debate on climate change.