We just finished a project in Expressive typography at school, and here are my results.
The class was basically about finding your way of expressing type, making the visual presentation synergize with the actual word, in a way. So i chose the word Techno, as is is a word I can easily put ideas on top of, it’s a word I am intimate with.
The video is meant to show the technical and artificial, that are being given the human element; thus creating what we call techno, in music, art and so on. Big words, huh?
I just discovered the criterion collection on the web, a collection of the world’s best classic films. One film that especially caught my eye was The thief of Baghdad, shot in 1940, in brilliant technicolor. I just nicked some screens from it, I will most certainly use these for some heavy inspiration later on… Just look at’em!
You can watch the whole film for $5 too, practically given away. I’m gonna check if they have season passes…
I’m working on a pretty substantial visual project to go alongside my dj gigs, so I made a quick microsite to represent it on the web.
With the project not being finished and all, I can’t show too much yet. But I’m putting some photos from live shows and stuff up there, so there’s something nice to look at.
I built the site with Cargo, a lightweight CMS from CargoCollective. Great people.
At the same time, I’ve been putting on a few paint strokes here as well, even though you may not see it at first. Mostly my category archives are a lot prettier now, have a look!
I was asked by Emilio, grand master of Nabovarsel, if I wanted to contribute to their forthcoming publication. This gave me the chance to work more on my editorial design skills, so I was happy to oblige!
This project is a bit special though, the entire publication will be distributed strictly digitally, through usb sticks and the web. Thus, the magazine must be optimized for being read on-screen, and potentially printed out by the readers, if that’s their thing. The brilliance about this is that when you’re not bucked down by print costs, you can fill up the magazine with tons of good stuff, and not have to worry about the price.
Future editions will most likely work with the ipad and its similar incarnations, too. We’ll see.
I have a new mixtape for my brand new project The set up coming along, and right now I’m working on the cover art. The problem is, I can’t choose which direction I wanna go with it! Take a look at these two versions I have so far.
The one with the lady on it is all cool and kitchy, but looks a lot like something I could have made three years ago(not good). The circle one is more conceptual, but at the same time more… me. . So i need to pick one.
Take note, this is the first mixtape of two, so the next one (titled “the boys”), will have to be made in the same style.
Anybody want to be my divine intervention, giving me some input here? I’m stuck! By the way, click the yellow guy to hear a preview of the tape.
This mixtape will be a cheeze factory like nothing else, and I love it. Hey, it’s for the girls. The boys will get theirs on the next tape, trust me. It’s gonna be 80’s funk-hiphop-early-electro-galore.
Update
i finally got my head from out my ass and settled on this. In a way, it brings the two ideas together conceptually.
This fall we had a motion graphics course at school, centered around a design contest for NRK3 (Norwegian National Broadcasting). We were to come up with an eight second short, a “jingle”, to play between programs.
The jingle had to convey NRK3’s image and values and so on of course, a difficult feat. The station has a lot of low-brow series running, and its main separation from the sister channels NRK1 &2 is its humor, its not needing to take itself too seriously. NRK1&2 are all about family values and whole-heartedly fun, NRK3 can let itself go with programs such as “embarrasing deseases”, Bondi beach and Rick and Steve (“the world’s happiest gay couple”).
And this is where my character comes in. When we first got the brief from the NRK execs, they were practically running around the room, talking about “openness”, “acceptance”, and “a little weird, but funny”. The first thing I did was doodle a funny naked guy, running around the page waving his junk. Later this idea transformed into this happy drag-queen-fellow in my movie.
Now, it might be hard to see everything that’s going on in those measly eight seconds, and it’s supposed to be that way. When you see a little short like this god knows how many times a day, you need to see something new every time, to keep things interesting.
The story is basically a man coming home to his boring, black/white, two-dimensional home. But as soon at the door closes behind him, he unwinds, the music starts, and his true identity unfolds. All within the first three seconds, mind you. For the rest of the film he just dances about the house in his red bra and fruity hat, nothing special there.
The film didn’t get picked up in the end, but that’s fine, only a small fraction of the contestants did. This way I can do what I want with it, like show it to you!
I’m working on some designs to put on iPhone shells.
Whenever I work on big design cases, I always have some small project going on the side that I can work with when I need to clear my head. This is just that. Click the image to biggify.
I just re-did the entire design for La Figuére, a house-for-rent in Provence.
I based the site around a WordPress theme called Manifest, which is super minimalist, single column, no widgets or any other nerdy stuff, which i tweaked a little to suit this project, adding some images and such.
It’s a lot of fun working on these really simple sites. Usually clients want a vast array of functionality, this time the only crucial point was adding an availability calendar.
You can have a look at the site here, if you like. Feedback is highly appreciated, it’s not even a day old!
As a DJ, people often ask me where I get my music, and answering is never easy. Back in the day I used to run around town, scouring record shops and thrift stores for old vinyl. These days however, more and more of that running around has turned to surfing around, and not in the way that involves Bermuda shorts and bleached dreadlocks.
I still make the occasional trip to ye olde record shoppe, but since the DJ performance itself needs digital files for the most part, it’s way easier to go crate digging online. I still agree that the sound produced by vinyl is slightly preferred to its digital counterpart, but most music these days have been through digital processing prior to being pressed to vinyl anyway. I’ll leave it to the purists like Jack White to keep that battle alive.
Anyways. Most of my music shopping goes through Juno or Beatport these days, even though there are plenty of indie solutions (like art on earth), i seldom end up using them.
But still, the paid solutions stand for the bulk of my music intake, blogs are more of a tertiary musical income, third to paid mp3’s amd real vinyl. But they are easier to share!
Music blogs get a lot of flak these days, but like eating out, you have your McDonald’s and your Stragiotti’s, you gotta spend some time and look around if you want to find the best spots. Following are a short list of my preferred places to hang out and get free music: (more…)
Part one here.
Now that the presents have been unwrapped and all bets are off, I can finally post these medallions that I made on the laser cutter, from old vinyl records.
My brothers and sisters together form the names Duus, Olsen & Lysgaard, and the medallions are kinda faux-lawfirm-looking, with each of our creative fields cut into them.
Happy holidays folks, hope everyone got proper stuffed!
