I woke up this morning and realized that I didn’t have a desktop wallpaper ready…the horror! Thankfully though I’d gotten an email from a talented fellow named Nick Agin who was able to hook me up. Nick is a New York based designer who’s a jack-of-all-trades. His portfolio is great to go through because of the breadth of his work. he can illustrate and design with the same ease. Just look through his Dribbble, you’ll see what I mean.
For his wallpaper we chose to use this beautiful illustration he did of a classic sewing machine. I thought it was a such a perfect representation with such lovely details. Did you notice that the thread says Make? If you dig this illustration you can also buy it as a print by clicking here. A huge thanks to Nick for helping me out at the last minute.
Since we’ve devoted this week to gold it was only fitting that this week’s wallpaper fit the theme as well. I asked Bree Lundberg, a Florida based illustrator, to create a wallpaper that embodied our theme and bring it to life. She decided to take a classic quote and change it up a bit, making it more appropriate for our current times.
I wanted to take an antiquated quote about gold and update for our contemporary times which I thought was fitting for the theme. Silence is no longer golden because I think everyone should speak up/speak out for what is important to them.
Simple, clean, and beautiful, not to mention a good reminder to be proactive.
This week we’re back to our regularly scheduled program with desktop wallpapers, and kicking things off is this gem from Timothy J. Reynolds. Timothy hit me up via Twitter, seeing if I was in to his work, which I indeed was. You can see on his Dribbble all the cool experiments he does with 3D illustration, creating these really beautiful landscapes from geometric objects. They way he’s able to portray colors and light in his pieces is what drew me to them, there’s something so lively and wonderful about everything he does. His wallpaper feels the same way.
When I asked Alyssa of Ten Paces and Draw to collaborate with me on a monthly wallpaper, one of the ideas we threw around was to make the content of each wallpaper pretty random. Sure enough, she found a couple of folks who did exactly that.
Our illustrators for the month of May are Ann Shen and Lydia Nichols, who’ve decided to illustrated National Moving Month. I had no idea this was even a thing, but after some digging, sure enough, it’s a big thing here in America.
Recognizing America’s mobile roots and kicking off the busiest moving season of the year. Each year more than 43 million Americans pack up their belongings and relocate to new homes and communities. More than half of these moves take place between May and September. During National Moving Month, moving experts will be educating Americans on how to plan a successful move, pack efficiently and handle the uncertainties and questions that children may have.
It kind of sounds like the equivalent of a Hallmark holiday, but the image they created is anything but cheesy. The initial sketch was created by Lydia and the final drawing was done by Ann. It’s such a clever idea and leaves you with lots of room for your daily icons as well. A huge thanks to Ann (a fellow Angeleno) and Lydia for such a rad wallpaper.
I’ve been listening to Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank in preparation for writing this post. Then I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to write something that was constructively critical, rather than saying “this album is the worst thing I’ve heard ever.” I guess that about sums things up, though. Isaac Brock sounds like the drunken sailor he’s always wanted to be, the backup vocals from James Mercer are shabby and completley uncalled for and I can honestly say I don’t like a single song on this entire album.
Honestly it sucks to have to write that. The early Modest Mouse albums are some of my favorite ever, but this new stuff is too different for me, it’s not the sound I enjoyed from them. Hopefully they’re happy making the music they make? The album went Gold, selling 500,000 records, so obviously I’m in a minority here. But that’s ok, to each their own.
For the wallpaper though, we have the fabulous Ellis Latham-Brown creating a super fun scene which is way better than the album itself. Ellis explains himself perfectly;
This was the first album produced by Modest Mouse since adding a new member, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. I wanted to capture the spirit of this album as Issac Brock put it, a nautical balalaika carnival romp. I couldn’t think of a better grouping of words to describe it. I put the album on and went to work and this is what came out. The theme of being lost, or stranded comes up a lot in this album. I used that to form this scene of a captain who’s only companion is tragedy, portrayed by the beast. With all tragedy comes a silver lining. (The cake)
This is where most people first heard Modest Mouse. With the release of Good News For People Who Love Bad News they had a little single called Float On which you may have heard every 10 minutes in the summer of 2004. The beginning of the album isn’t bad, and in most respects it still sounds like Modest Mouse, but it’s too polished and too refined for my taste.
Then a few songs in, sadly, Isaac Brock’s song style dips into Tom Waits territory and they’ve totally lost me. I’m not a fan of Tom Waits at all, so this was the last thing I ever wanted from the band. Thankfully though the album ends on a positive note with a cluster of good songs like Blame It On The Tetons, and the star of the album, The Good Times Are Killing Me.
For the wallpaper this month, Riley Cran has illustrated the first lines from Float On with perfect execution.
I backed my car into a cop car the other day
Well he just drove off sometimes life’s ok
I love how simple and straightforward this piece is. The illsutration of the type on the badge looks great and I love all the details in the cars. A huge thanks to Riley for nailing this one.
