Sixteen entries in "Design"

As designers we celebrate meaningful libraries of information. We love the information, but it’s not our only concern. We also take the design of the library itself – the system that organizes the information – very seriously.

Designers have a long history of library-making. Pre-internet, we compiled books (reference books, monographs, retrospectives, magazines, etc.) Now we find ourselves reinventing our libraries for an online world. We develop new systems to better manage and deliver our information, and to accommodate the scale and scope of the internet.

Unlike the finality of books, online libraries constantly change, and this dynamic nature makes modern library-making a unique challenge. To do it right, you need more than the designer and archivist; you need the information architect – the online system builder – as well.

Today we’re happy to announce the significant relaunch of a modern online resource. We partnered with our friend and colleague Duane King (the DK of BBDK) to develop a system that extends his immense library of online resources to the web. Please enjoy Thinking for a Living™:

http://thinkingforaliving.org/

This past Saturday Jason, Matt and I had the pleasure of speaking at AIGA/NY’s Smart/Models one-day business conference here in New York. Our presentation, “Creativity and the Collective”, focused on our studio-as-collective business model.

The bulk of our presentation examined the differences between a traditional business structure and our collective model. As we’re so often questioned about the nature of our organization, we wanted to provide examples of how members of the collective form teams on a per-project basis to tackle work involving a variety of a creative disciplines — from graphic design, illustration, print and motion/broadcast/directorial, to web design and development.

To illustrate various points, we prepared a series of infographics designed to be part informative, part humorous, and part inside jokes for both designers and fellow aging hardcore kids/former edgers.

For the design nerds, we reinterpreted the classic 1969 Eames diagram.

(Click to enlarge)

And we were so pleased with the following graphics that we opted to include them in our presentation, despite the risk of having our cleverness lost on portions of the audience.

(Click to enlarge)

(Didn’t catch these? See here and here.)

Some thoughts

45 minutes goes fast; we had to blaze through the last five minutes.

Speaking early in the day is the way to go. With our talk out of the way we were able to relax and enjoy the other speakers.

Apple’s Keynote is a breeze. Give it a look if you’re putting a presentation together. Copy/paste vectors no problem, drag-n-drop Quicktimes, export to PDF, whatever you want. Near-zero learning curve.

TheTimesCenter is an amazing event space. Totally pro-form. The building’s interior nature/garden zone: blockbuster.

Michael Surtees of DesignNotes posted a review of the event, including some photos:

Update: Armin from Under Consideration published a very nice review as well.

Unanswered questions

We did a 45-minute presentation with no Q&A, as the organizers asked that we save questions for the end of day panel discussion. We were able to address some audience questions during the panel, and it was certainly interesting, but given the number of questions we received during the reception, and later via email, it appears that a few attendees left with questions unanswered.

The most common point of confusion regarded distribution of revenue. It seems some misinterpret the term “collective” to indicate a form of communism. Others simply wanted to know how we structured proposals, paid taxes, or formed LLCs.

We're happy to pull back the curtain for those with questions. Just get in touch:

Thanks

We’d like to extend a big thank you to the Smart/Models event committee – Tina Chang, Liz Danzico, Kent Hunter, Bobby C. Martin Jr., and Sam Potts – for the hard work of organizing the event, and for making us a part of it. And, of course, thanks to everyone for coming out on a Saturday.

We posted some new work today.

Cover photo illustration for this week’s NY Mag:

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House & Parish One, One-Thousand CD package:

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Shout It Out Loud Music CD Sampler:

I was fortunate enough to speak at the Cranbrook Academy of Art design department at the end of January. Having graduated from Cranbrook in 1995, I was really excited to see what students were up to, and to catch up with Elliott Earls, the head of the department. Back in ’93, Elliott interviewed me as a perspective student and was instrumental in getting me into the program.

Elliott has been carrying on the Cranbrook tradition of an open studio environment that centers around self-initiated projects and weekly group critiques. I gave an hour long lecture to the students touching on my personal and professional work as well as talking about the collective nature of the Athletics studio. One of the main themes of my lecture was the notion that, as a designer, it’s not only the actual work you create, but also your own unique perspective on the design discipline that informs the creative process.

Cranbrook, like other design programs at Cal Arts, RISD and Yale, has amazing design resources: large-format digital output, laser cutters, wood shop, audio/video facilities and an impressive library. All of the available tools and raw materials offer Cranbrook students the opportunity to pursue and produce nearly any design idea. I think the big challenge, and the same challenge presented to me 13 years ago, is how to focus your own ideas and efforts to further one’s development as a designer.

During my visit, I spent about 30-45 minutes with each student learning their background and speaking with them about their work. The range of skill, ideas, energy and focus were pretty vast. I also found that students had decided to enter the Cranbrook graduate program for a variety of reasons. Some students had already worked in the professional sphere and were looking to either teach or shift their ability. Some students had very little design training but were selected for their creative ability in another discipline such as painting. Overall I felt the students had a firm grasp of what they wanted to do and were actively working together to move forward as designers.

I also found the group critiques to very informative. Group critiques begin with 2-3 students that hang their work in the crit room the day before critique. Another student is then selected to review the work and write up a 1-2 page evaluation. Reviews consist of an interpretation of the project as well as an assessment of the work of other artist or designers (contemporary and historical) that may help frame the project. The day of critique, the review is read aloud and all of the students have an opportunity to give their assessment. Comments range from issues regarding clarity of purpose, craft, meaning, technology, context, concept and aesthetics. After everyone comments, the person that created the work then reads a statement of purpose that articulates their ideas and goals for the project.

All of the students then have a chance to realign their comments to inform the statement of purpose and provide comments on how to move the project forward. It was my feeling that if every student were to take the critique format seriously and truly digest, evaluate and then act on the comments, the resulting work would be extremely strong. But as we all know, this is easier said than done. Just because the group provides the designer with the ammunition to push the work forward, it does not mean that a clear path emerges. The real opportunity for students is in learning to absorb feedback, and then work from it.

The Cranbrook experience is part academic, part self-help, part teamwork and part personal soul searching, and in the end provides a creative/critical format that is unique within the design discipline. It’s sort of the design equivalent to tv shows like Survivor or Project Runway, but it takes two years, there is no prize money and you have to read a lot more. Like any academic setting, I think Cranbrook provides the basic framework and facilities to push an individual designer to another level, but it is up to the individual to take advantage of the people, resources and environment.

Talking with students I stressed a need for a high level of sophistication in projects. Just because you have great resources does not mean that a big digital print of a Photoshop file represents “finished work.” Notions of craft, materiality and format help distinguish between a design “sketch” and a fully realized idea. For example, I would rather see tight story boards that clearly articulate a motion project than a 5-minute video “sketch” of an undercooked idea. It was the conceptual artist Sol Lewitt that said, “The idea behind the work supersedes the work itself” and that, “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.” I truly believe that if a designer has an idea they believe in then articulating that idea can become an amazing journey where the sky is the limit.

As a designer, I think it is important to live in the “now.” I feel more urgency and enthusiasm for the design discipline than I ever have. I also feel that Elliott, as the head of the program, continually expresses a level of energy and commitment to design discourse that is genuinely inspiring. For students, I feel it is their personal responsibility to realize that their time at Cranbrook is very special, and as a creative person, you must push yourself and your fellow students. If you have the opportunity to do whatever you want, why half-step it?

On the last day of our visit we had a chance to see the Eero Saarinen exhibition at the Cranbrook museum. The exhibition was incredibly inspiring. From his 1948 womb chair design for Knoll, to the 1962 TWA Terminal 5 at JFK, Eero’s creative output was staggering. I felt the exhibition was a great reflection of the true potential of the design discipline, and part of what makes the Cranbrook legacy so special. From Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Michael and Kathy McCoy, P. Scott Makela, Andrew Blauvelt, Elliott Earls, Martin Venezky and more recently the likes of Jason Jones, Camm Rowland, Chris Williams and many many more, I think there is something very unique about the Cranbrook experience that brings really talented people together and provides them with the right creative and critical tools to bring out their best. Ultimately Cranbrook grads have an oppurtunity to impact the larger world of graphic design in amazing ways.

View pics of my visit on Flickr

Many small, idiosyncratic organizations make an effort to remain shrouded in mystery in some myth-building effort. Large, publicly-held companies rarely do. But there is one major exception: Apple.

At Apple, nothing is revealed until the last moment possible. Then, once every six months, Steve Jobs strolls out on stage in front of a packed house and delivers a keynote speech revealing various new gadgets. Every time around the tech world is obsessed with what might happen, and then post-event, obsessed with discussions regarding whatever was actually revealed. It makes for fantastic punditry. (I do love that John Gruber.) All consumer electronics companies release new products, but Apple is the only one turning product launches into media events by refusing to discuss, or even hint at what lies ahead.

What I find staggering is how much effort Apple puts into secret-keeping. Apple products require massive numbers of humans — designers, software and hardware engineers, advertising partners, overseas manufacturing partners, documentation-writers, web designers, etc. So many humans and no one is leaking. iPhone, the most highly anticipated product of recent memory, didn’t leak. Clearly the entire company has been organized around this secret-keeping principle, and it’s an integral part of the Apple brand strategy.

I mention Apple because we are fascinated by specialness in brands, particularly the myth-building qualities. Apple’s secret-keeping is a perfect example.

Months ago we considered penning an article for the blog detailing the inner-workings of a functioning design collective, specifically the business model. After all, we are operating outside the bounds of a traditional corporate entity; it might be an interesting read. Ultimately, we decided, No, we don’t need to share such information, at least not on the blog. Once distilled down to words on a screen, it didn’t seem so interesting. If anyone really wanted to know, we figured they could get in touch and we could have a conversation.

Turns out this is exactly what happened. This past Thursday we were treated to lunch by our new friends Renda Morton, Andy Pressman and Holly Gressley. All three are talented designers and currently sharing studio space in Dumbo. They wanted to chat with us as they are considering forming a collective. They stopped by and we shared our thoughts on the subject.

The take-away here is less is more, and sometimes lunch.

Matt Owens launches redesigned volumeone.com.

AisleOne has a great interview with designer Duane King.

Duane is one of our good buddies and creative director of BBDK, our partners out in Sante Fe.

I had the good fortune of playing Layer Tennis a few days ago courtesy of Coudal Partners. The basics of the game: two designers spar back and forth over 15 minute intervals, adding to or modifying a graphic composition of their choosing. With each “volley”, files are passed back and forth and a commentator (Joshua Allen) writes about each post. Throughout the match viewers can vote on their favorite and give their opinion of the work.

My partner was Jason Gnewikow, a colleague in the studio and long time friend. Jason had just returned from tour with his band House & Parish. The Layer Tennis invitation came to us a bit last minute, with the match taking place the day after Jason’s return to New York. We didn’t have much time to plan, but we were eager to come up with an idea that we thought would be fun to do.

Looking through the previous matches Jason and I noticed that the majority of the work consisted of layered Photoshop files that were assembled using pre-existing assets. Jason and I chatted at length about an unconventional approach that would be more “graphic” as opposed to assembling “graphics.” We felt that this approach might not gain the approval of all of the viewers, but by embracing the idea of a graphic feel as opposed to the standard photo-montage approach, we could come up with a match that was entertaining for us and also a departure from previous matches.

We all know Layer Tennis is sponsored by Abode, and as a participant, we relinquish our rights to the work created and Adobe can utilize it in whatever manner they desire. As a committed user of Adobe products, it was my desire to utilize their products in an unconventional manner and to do something using functionality that designers may not use on a day to day basis.

When I considered the term “Layer Tennis” the first thing that came to mind was the old school video game Pong. Indeed Pong is the first tennis of the digital era. What better way to make a nod to Pong as well as the “vintage” internet than to make all of our pieces animated gifs. ImageReady rules! Jason and I suspected that the tennis = pong = old school = animate gif logic would be lost on the majority of kids that wanted us to create “sick visuals” based on our already existing tool kit of graphics, illustrations and client work we have developed over the years. This was an exercise to be executed in 15 minute intervals. It was not a client project, nor has there ever been a client project that followed such a process. Layer tennis is supposed to be fun for the people doing the work and in the end it should reflect our perspective.

The question I asked myself the moment I heard of Layer Tennis was if I thought that it was my role to show the world that one can create a sophisticated design composition in 15 minutes. I determined that that was not something I thought wise to communicate. Secondly, my impulse was to ask, what does this say about our discipline? our profession? What does a potential client assume if they see great design composed in minutes for an undisclosed sum? I determined that given the quick and dirty nature of Layer Tennis, the pieces should not be about creating perfect things at the drop of a hat (lord knows it takes me forever to come up with something cool) but to come up with a process that talked about the tools we use everyday, and at the same time have fun with them in a manner that client work rarely allows. In the end Jason and I thought that Layer Tennis was an opportunity to lighten up, try not to sweat the small stuff, have fun and maybe just maybe make people think. A few minutes before we started, a cold chill came over me and I asked myself – “Would Herb Lubalin be comfortable with the idea of Layer Tennis? Paul Rand? Neville Brody even.” In the end, I threw care to the wind and let the pixels fly.

After the match was completed I felt both elated and a little uneasy. Would we be confronted with a deluge of haters? Would folks get the joke? I spoke to a few friends and colleagues. Those that know Jason and I and are familiar with our work gave us a pat on the back and a little chuckle. It was not so much a “job well done” moment as much as it was a “good luck explaining this one” kind of comforting. I think we were both prepared for the aftermath and were prepared to have some explaining to do. For me, I took the high road. I love making things. I love the opportunity to explore and share visual ideas. If through a strange stroke of events I find myself convincing one of my studio mates to stand perfectly still and slowly apply a pair of 80’s sunglasses while I photograph each step, all so that I might compose an animated GIF, isn’t that more fun that just moving around something you already made in Photoshop, or giving away something you know everyone already wants?

Don’t get me wrong, if someone were to give me a decent amount of money, a coherent brief and a clear articulation of the needs of a project, you can be sure I would unleash my personal arsenal of visual, motion and interactive skills to develop the best idea possible. This is what is done for client projects and is something I enjoy. On the other hand, the challenge of making multiple large scale animated gifs is not something that is terribly easy or fun to do on a daily basis…unless you have a Layer Tennis game to bust out! In the end, if Adobe starts a “Project Runway” style contest called “Designer Warfare” and gives us the budget and time to pitch killer ideas to be judged by our peers, you can rest assured I would be on board and would come out with guns blazing.

I would like to give shouts out to Steven Harrington, Chuck Anderson, Aaron Draplin, Jason Koxvold, James Hutchinson and everyone else that kicked out the jams on Layer Tennis. I totally appreciate the work and their approach to the project. Thanks again to Coudal and Adobe for giving us the opportunity.

If you’re in NYC, check out this week’s Village Voice. Wes illustrated the cover story, and the cover:

That’s Wes about to be run over by a bus. It’s not the first time he’s worked himself into a cover.

Recently discovered Sleevage, a blog on record packaging design. Sleevage is still relatively new, and it seems like they’re still working to find their voice. I find many of the reviews to be a little too easy — too brief, minimal commentary, or stories I already knew.

However, today’s interview with David Calderley of Graphic Therapy on the Brendan Benson – Alternative to Love packaging was great.

I enjoyed David’s words on how he eventually arrived at the final product. It’s always nice to learn the back story, see early concepts, and final art for the album and singles in one place.

For those unfamiliar with Brendan Benson, I recommend all three of his records, and that one he did with Jack White as well.

Link:
http://sleevage.com/brendan-benson-the-alternative-to-love/

I had the fortune of seeing the design studio Vasava present their work at the OFFF festival here in New York last week. I have followed Vasava for many years now and was very excited to see them speak. Vasava www.vasava.es is a design studio based in Barcelona. They are primarily dedicated to communication campaigns, interactive, editorial design, motion graphics, events and exhibitions as well as personal projects and products.

Totaling 15 people, the work of Vasava has a wide variety of styles and mediums. Seeing the work presented together, the notion of design authorship came to mind. The way Vasava present their work, it is impossible to tell who did what project. However, you do see specific styles where it is apparent that the same person did one project and then another.

Of particular interest to me were the following pieces:

Diesel Fifty book. 5 Steps to creativity

The Room Flyers

Fotogramas

HP Hamburger

Overall, the type and illustration work as really impressive. Whoever did the type for the 5 steps to creativity in the Diesel Fifty book deserves a pat on the back. Vasava have been working with Diesel for many years and a large portion of the work they presented was Diesel related.

I was taken by how varied the work was. There seems to be an anything goes freedom to a lot of the work which was really interesting. I think in the US, we tend to focus on the accomplishments of individual designers and are generally overly critical.

For Vasava, I think as a studio they work hard but are open to anything and do not take things too seriously. I think this allows them to move seamless between different kinds of projects and different styles without getting too caught up in the details.
The quantity and variety of projects was totally inspirational. I really appreciate the impulse of most of the work and I think Vasava are a very unique example of what is possible in the commercial illustration/design world when really talented people put their egos aside and decide to work together.

Lastly, Vasava run a gallery/store in Barcelona called Vallery. Located in the Barcelona’s city center, It features exhibition by outstanding artists, graphic designers and illustrators.

VALLERY

I think the combination of the studio, great work with tons of variety and a store/space to share their passion for design is a real inspiration.

If you’re reading this, you likely arrived via a link posted somewhere out there in this great big internet. This article is no longer available because it needs some revision. You could say it expired. Adobe has changed the behavior of Photoshop a bit since Adobe CS1 and some of the issues that inspired this piece in the first place are no longer applicable.

Yesterday we launched the wholly redesigned and developed website for Dangerbird Records, an independent record label located in Hollywood, CA and home to artists Silversun Pickups, Dappled Cities, La Rocca, among others.

One of the more info-heavy sites we’ve done, the Dangerbird site is packed with content and loaded with features. The site balances out all sorts of content — artists, releases, news, tours, downloads, store, videos, etc. Considering that each of these include various levels of sub-content, the overall scale of the site made for an IA challenge.

Information Architecture

As we’re respectable web/info designers, we went through a full IA process. We tend to do this for any large-scale site, especially the info-heavy ones (jumping straight into Photoshop would just be asking for a world of pain.).

We’re quite fond of the Flash-based prototyping tool we’ve developed specifically for the purpose of wireframing representative site states, and stitching the wireframes together in a click-able environment. For those of you familiar with making wireframes in Illustrator and packaging them up in PDFs, you’re sure to be sweating our little app.

In the past, we’ve worked on some globo-chem level corporate projects that required extensive wireframing. Trying to manage these projects with Illustrator & PDFs is too much. We’ve looked into pro software products like Axure’s RP Pro, but this sort of thing is just too far down the corporate-web-ditch-digging rabbit hole. And after taking a closer look at these prototyping tools, we realized that we could just lift a few of the basic concepts/features and roll our own app in Flash.

Basics of site prototyping

• Wireframe each representative site state, focusing on organization of content, visual hierarchy, etc.
• Link the states together in a straight-forward way, allowing the client to click from state-to-state and really get a sense of how the different pages work together.
• Upon completion of the prototyping phase of the project, the visual designer should have a clear vision of the site’s structure, content and functionality, all before cracking Photoshop.

What does our prototyping app do?

By using Flash, we are able to design each wireframe in an environment similar to Illustrator. However, unlike Illustrator, we’re able to create reusable objects (Movieclips) for all sorts of repeated elements (site header, footer, sidebars, etc.). And the real trick is that we can use Actionscript to stitch the wireframes together in an intelligent way, allowing the user to click through to the wireframes.

With the Dangerbird site, it was important to prototype the Artists, Artist Detail, Releases and Release Detail states. By having the prototype link these states together, the user gets a feel for how the different states relate to one another. It’s just not the same if you’re stepping through a PDF.

Demo

Want to see what it looks like? Check out one of the later prototypes for the Dangerbird site. Various details were tweaked along the way, but you’ll find that the prototype seriously informed the final product.

In the end all relavent parties (client, designer, developer) have a clear picture of what’s going to be built, how it will work, how it will feel, etc.

Framework & Content Management

The real nerd-thunder of the Dangerbird site is the underlying web framework. Like other Athletics web projects (DKNY Jeans, Oak, and the Athletics site itself), the Dangerbird site is powered by the Studio IV Adminkit CMS and front-end framework.

The Adminkit CMS software manages all aspects of site content (artists, releases, news, tours, downloads, store, videos, jukebox — everything). Adminkit is something we’ve been actively developing for more than three years now.

The front-end framework doesn’t have a catchy name, but perhaps it should. Very much informed by things like Ruby on Rails, CakePHP and CodeIgniter, our framework follows the MVC design pattern and defines common conventions for integrating HTML templates into a system powered by the Adminkit CMS. The framework is mostly geared towards increasing developer efficiency and creating reusable chunks of code. Also, the framework provides some nice features, including human-readable URLs and output/page caching.

Human-readable URLs

Human-readable URLs are important to us. Rather than crazy looking query-string style URLs with a bunch of random looking garbage thown in, we like simple URLs that plainly describe the content they represent. For example:

Query-string style URL:
http://www.example-domain.com/news_article.php?cat=235&article_id=235266

Human-readable URL:
http://www.example-domain.com/news/title-of-article

Considering how extremely possible human-readable URLs are, we see no excuse for the former.

Output/page caching

Caching is important if you intend to power a popular database-driven website. In the era of the Digg/Slashdot effect, your website needs to be prepared to deliver content to a lot of visitors in an extremely efficient manner.

Without having the page-caching system built into the framework, a sudden surge in site visits would overload the server’s database with requests for content. Fortunately, a good page caching system can eliminate this database bottleneck. The page caching system stores static copies of pages generated from database content, and upon future requests for the same content, the system delivers the static version instead of making the full roundtrip to the database. Clever indeed. Inspired by WP-Cache and the CodeIgniter implementation.

Web toys

The Dangerbird site was an opportunity to throw all sorts of different gadgets into the mix.

• Jukebox. Over the years, we’ve done a ton of players, most of them being minor updates to code dating back to 2002 (that’s a lot of mileage out of the now-extinct RemyZero site). The Dangerbird player is a bit different. First, it’s powered by Adminkit, so Dangerbird can upload MP3s and compile playlists whenever they like. Second, we built two different embed-able options for the player — regular and the mini. Hopefully the MySpace/Facebook crowd will embed them like mad.
• Home Promo Slideshow. These things are pretty common at this point, but I think it’s important to point out the home page’s promo slideshow. In the Adminkit CMS, Dangerbird can upload and assign any number of JPG or SWF files as slides within slideshows. They can toggle various slideshows, re-order slides, etc. It’s a pretty cool way for Dangerbird to immediately inform visitors of whatever the new-big-thing is. I’ve always liked the way Macromedia did slideshows on their site, and now Adobe continues the practice.
• Search. This is cool… results are segmented by section, so you can get a sampling of results from every section (artists, releases, news, videos, etc.). Here’s an example if you searched for “silversun”.
• Mailing List. The Dangerbird mailing list is managed by Campaign Monitor, our favorite email newsletter software. Campaign Monitor offers an API for integrating CM’s services directly within your site — rad.
• Buzznet Integration. We’ve become familiar with Buzznet recently — we did a bit of profile integration on the Cartel site. With Dangerbird, we did something similar, but instead of using one of the packaged Flash/Javascript widgets provided by Buzznet, we rolled our own. Two problems with Buzznet’s packaged widgets: 1) they are generic looking, and 2) they are often slow. To get around this we parsed Dangerbird’s photo RSS feed and rendered the content to work within the overall site design direction.
  
  One thing: the Buzznet site is slow. Anytime the server tries to fetch the RSS feed, it takes forever. Rather than make every Dangerbird visitor suffer, we maintain our own server-side cache of the RSS feed and serve that up instead. Once every three hours someone has to wait for the Buzznet feed to be re-cached. You can check out the Buzznet call-out in the sidebar on the site home. (Thanks to the Zend Framework for the feed parsing and caching.)
• Videos. The player is a modified version of the player used here on the Athletics site, but the embed player is new. An example:
  
  

Parting thoughts…

We like the folks over at Dangerbird and have really enjoyed working with them over the past few months. It’s been a pleasure to work with a client that is already informed about the web — they were right there with us on RSS feeds, embed-able players, blogs, and other web two-point-new terms.

And on a personal note: given the Pumpkins’ inability to comeback, Silversun’s gonna have to really step it up and carry the torch.

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Comments? Contact James via email - .

Matt Owens’ “Meridians” video short has been featured on Beautiful decay. Check it out HERE

David Ahjua is finishing up work on VH1’s RockDoc:

NY77: The Coolest Year In Hell.

NY77 premiers August 11th at 9 PM on VH1. This two-part, two-hour documentary tells the story of one of the most astonishing pop culture years in American history. New York City had fallen in decay and chaos. There were not enough jobs, not enough money, not enough police, not enough schools, and not enough social services. There was a city wide black out with major looting, there was a serial killer on the loose, and the Bronx was burning.

Yet out of the chaos, emerged one of the most creative times any city has ever encountered. Hip Hop was emerging from the South Bronx, punk music was emerging from the lower eastside, and disco was emerging from Queens and midtown Manhattan. Elaborate, finely crafted graffiti art decorated the subway cars. Break-dancers danced in the streets. There was a huge sexual liberation with sex clubs and a burgeoning porn industry. In the beginning of the year, the world was not paying attention, and most of this activity existed in its own underground bubble. Yet by the end of 1977 all of this artistic expression was about to become part of mainstream America and would remain popular for generations to come.

The film will be graphically dizzying and groundbreaking, led by the team that produced the acclaimed documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. Firehouse Films was created in 2004 by Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Nanette Burstein.

David worked with graphic hot shot Wyeth Hansen to design and animate the more than 60 minutes of graphics in the documentary.

You can read a review of the advance screening of NY77 HERE.

We have been working with Cartel, the Atlanta pop-rock band on Epic Records, for some time now. Projects include everything from music videos and album packaging to the band’s official website. Most recently we completed work on album packaging for the band’s upcoming self-titled release, the follow up to 2006’s Chroma. What made this project unusual was that Cartel was the featured artist for Dr. Pepper’s “Band In A Bubble”, a corporate-sponsored four-part MTV mini-series that aired over May and June.

The crackpot concept:

Construct a giant “bubble” structure on Pier 54 in Manhattan, put Cartel in the bubble for 22 days (they don’t get to leave), film their every move as they record their album, broadcast every moment 24-7 on the web, and cut the footage down for four episodes on MTV, including a finale concert episode.

Pre-bubble

While we knew we were doing the packaging, I don’t think we found out about the bubble until February. We like crackpot schemes, so we were happy to go along. Further, as individuals invested in pre-internet punk rock and hardcore, we are continually fascinated by the MySpace generation and the no-apologies, seventh-wave emo rock culture.

There was a lot of pre-bubble hype (see here and here), with plenty of haters. Things were really heating up—people around town were talking about the show, and there was a general bubble fever enjoyed by anyone that gets excited about the music business or teen culture.

And to up the ante, Cartel’s management informed us that they wanted us to make an appearance on the show and go inside the bubble. Apparently the design of the album’s packaging was important enough to warrant a “bit” in the show. We would go inside the bubble, present our designs, and chat about it all on camera. Ridiculous!

Visits to the bubble

We went to the bubble twice. First, we went in to go over photos with the band and discuss the design. Some photos from that one…

Heading down with Cartel’s manager

Pre-interview outside of bubble (interviewing Chris Black)

Then, a week later, Jason, Wes and I went back to present the initial design concepts. We presented the comps, made some jokes, and got out of there. And we had to do a little post-interview on the way out.

Inside the bubble

Final design

Despite the storm of insanity surrounding the record, the band had plans for a more mature and considered record. With the record being self-titled, the band wanted a simple, iconic graphic for the cover.

The band chose the “peachtree” direction, which we then expanded upon to create the final album artwork.

Of course, someone leaked the cover within days of final approval. We really enjoyed the discussion on Absolute Punk.

Best Quote:

i didint mind the atrwork on the last one it wasnt too special but i re4ally dont like this.
its cool to rep the home town and all but this just is awfull. i see this in a store and it makes me not want it. and the bad thing is i ususally just dont really care about the artwork very much but i see this and it makes me not want it.

Conclusion

After all the hubbub of visiting the bubble, putting on fancy wireless mics, being interviewed on camera, etc., we never made the cut for the show. I’m afraid design comps just aren’t exciting enough for reality TV. So, we got to experience the bubble first-hand, without any national embarrassment. Not so bad.

The finale concert went well…

The record

We recently got an advance copy of the album. Rather than go into an in-depth review, I’ll just say that the record goes beyond our expectations. We expected the rockers and air-tight singles, but we were surprised by many of the tracks that expand on Cartel’s usual repertoire of pop rock tunery. Terms like “blues hammer”, “Miami sound machine”, “Pearl Jam”, and “hot-doggin vocals” were used to describe various tracks. The record is set to be released August 21, 2007.

Some links

http://www.cartelrocks.com
http://www.drpepperbubble.com