My Drive Thru by Julian Casablancas, Santogold & N.E.R.D.

Mark this entry under clever, catchy, and well done. As a part of Converse’s newest campaign, they’ve teamed up with a rather large and eclectic group of musicians to further their cult status among youngins. The most exciting part being the collaboration between Julian Casablancas, Santogold and N.E.R.D. on a song called My Drive Thru, which to me sounds like something Mark Ronson would have put together, but it’s actually Pharrell’s handiwork. The video itself is reallllly fun, featuring animated photo cut-outs of the artists performing. My favorite parts are mostly when Santogold is dancing around, she looks damn adorable, but there’s also the part where Julian Casablancas is falling down through the sheets of paper, that’s really rad. Other then that, I have this song stuck in my head most of the day, it’s totally catchy and fun.

The campaign otherwise is pretty rad as well, someone picked a pretty random group of folks that are actually pretty “hip”. There’s Bradford Cox from Deerhunter, the guys from Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Eleanor from The Fiery Furnaces, the dudes from MGMT, Yacht… you get the picture. The stark black and white images, the cut out paper effect, everything is pretty spot on. Check out the site by clicking here, and be sure to download the song for free as well (that was a good call, Converse).

Bobby Solomon

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July 14, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

The New York Times iPhone GUI

It’s a strong held belief of mine (and many others) that good design is the design you don’t notice. It sits there like it’s always belonged there, such as the stop sign and the red cross. So when I came across these GUI (Graphic User Interface) designs for The New York Times iPhone application, they reminded me of something you wouldn’t notice, they just worked. The GUI was put together by Felix Sockwell, Khoi Vinh, and Caryn Tutino, who had to create the icons in greyscale and black and white at a size of 29 x 29 pixels.

Felix’s website has a nice exploration of the their ideas as well as Felix’s thoughts and a bit of the process as well. One of the most interesting parts is how much The New York Times flip-flopped on the GUI for the Obituaries section, as they deemed many of the ideas too morbid, finally deciding upon using a flower to signify death. Does that seem a bit off to anyone else? Anyhow, check out the rest of the sketches and ideas, it’s an interesting inside look.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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July 14, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

Creative Scrape

When I started this blog I knew I wanted it to have big and exciting images, as a lot of design blogs I had been reading at the time used smaller images, making it less exciting to me. So it was interesting when I started to get some regular hits from a new site called Creative Scrape, which uses a “hand-picked number of RSS feeds and Flickr sets in order to deliver a random smattering of beautiful, ugly, and inspiring things.”

The site was created by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs and acts sort of like an automated FFFFOUND, albeit with a much smaller concentration of sources. As far as I can tell the feed sources are from Kitsune Noir, Design Notes, Rojo Magazine, Behance, I Love Typography, and then a bunch of folks from Flickr. It might be narcissistic, but it’s really cool to see these images as purely images, with no words to describe them or a blog to give them a greater context. Definitely pop over and check out what they’re up to, and if you really like it, download the screensaver they created as well!

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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July 13, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

Damien Correll Updates

Friend of +KN Damien Correll has finally updated his website with a ton of new projects and it’s looking mighty sharp. He’s got work from 2006 to the present, all of it full of great colors and textures. It’s also really great how simple and straightforward the whole thing is, and I love that you can click an image and get a larger view as well, I hate when all I get is tiny JPG’s. I think my favorite pieces are his contribution to the newest issue of Faesthetic, the (sadly) scrapped cover for Atypica, and the AMAZING stack of meat shirt he did for Sixpack. I think any and all things related to meat are great, call me easily amused.

Take a visit for yourself and get inspired!

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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July 9, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

Colour It (RED) by Koma

Andy Miller of Koma sent me an email earlier telling me about this awesome project he did for his final degree show called Colour It (RED). Andy used the (RED) organization as his jumping off point, creating an adorable CD/coloring book that comes together with the help of a red crayon. As soon as I saw this I was kind of in love with it, especially that you only get one color and how great it all looks when it’s colored in. I also really love his wonderful illustrations, they have this great excitement and fun to them. More than anything, I could totally see these being sold at Urban Outfitters all over the world, and that to me is what really makes this successful, I completely believe that this could be real.

Be sure to check out the rest of Andy’s work as well, he’s a damn talented guy.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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July 9, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby