Beyond Design…

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Another major avenue for my creative energy is photography. And through photography, I've found a desire to film and edit video as well. It's a slippery slope, to say the very least.

Recently I traveled to Brazil in order to shoot footage for a series of webisodes for my old friends in Killswitch Engage. The results inspired me to expand video to feature the abandoned sites I explore for photography. And now I get to edit them myself, which I naturally didn't on the KsE webisodes, of course. Editing video is no small task, by the way. For instance, the Final Cut Express 4 manual is 1152 pages alone! I both curse and bless its programmers in the same breath, my friends. Curse, bless… bless, curse.

Anyway, I'm only getting started in this field but it feels good to work in so many mediums and I hope you head over to my Vimeo page to see my early works.

Happy New Year!!! See you in 2010…

In These Times Of White

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With winter officially upon us, all things white were on my mind. Upon searching for both "snow" and white design," I happened upon 3 very cool things.

"Winter Palace" (above)
• From the ever-addictive Shorpy: February 12, 1933. "New York City views. Plaza buildings from Central Park." The Savoy Plaza and Plaza hotels. Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho.


White Furniture
• A gorgeous selection of modernism furniture, lighting and accessories.


White Design (environmental)
• In their own words: "White Design is an architectural practice and sustainability consultancy specialising in the design of context sensitive, low carbon and low environmental impact buildings and landscapes, both cost effectively and to the highest design quality. Our approach to sustainability overarches, underpins and threads through all our work. The practice has four areas of specialism: architecture; landscape architecture; consultancy services; innovative materials and research." – white-design.co.uk

Print Is(n't Even Close To Being) Dead.

The other night, in a discussion amongst several colleagues, the notion of "is print dead?" came up. I simply can't help it, my eyes immediately begin rolling the instant this topic of discussion's brought up. Call me a dinosaur, call me what you will, but don't forget to also call me a realist while you're at it.

The "print is dead" theory has largely been spear-headed by metro-bubble, tech-driven, design snobs who huddle around coffee shops and convince themselves that everyone thinks like they do. The argument doesn't hold much water past the newspaper – which isn't even dead yet, by the way.

For starters, every single item made and sold in this world comes with packaging and visual identity. Everything. In other words, order it online from your fancy website and guess what arrives? An actual product, fully-realized in all three dimensions with a design intact that was designed by an actual designer. Weird.

Only a soulless generation would think of creating a visual world filled solely with monitors and digital screens. You can't hold a pixel. A pixel doesn't give you comfort and, let's face it, real life demands a whole lot more than 72 dots per inch. For example, try sending an ecard to Mom on Mother's Day or your wife or husband on your anniversary. They'll hate you, and rightfully so.

Ultimately, it's very likely that a few individual facets of print design will fade away in time but this is not nearly enough to make print D.O.A. as we head into the 2010's – or within my lifetime. And I'm not that old, thank you very much.

AN NYC BOOK SIGNING EVENT

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For immediate release:

On Friday January 8th, 2010, punk legend Eerie Von (Danzig, Samhain) will make a special in-store appearance at New York’s Generation Records in support of his new photography book MISERY OBSCURA: The Photography of Eerie Von (1981-2009).

Eerie Von will play a rare acoustic performance with Lyle Preslar (Minor Threat) and Mike D’Antonio (Killswitch Engage) during the in-store appearance at Generation Records, and sign copies of MISERY OBSCURA along with designer Tom Bejgrowicz.

The one-night-only event starts at 7:00pm in the West Village. Those wanting to secure their place at the event can pre-order copies of MISERY OBSCURA at generationrecords.com to be guaranteed entrance (space is limited).

NOTE: Please note that only copies of MISERY OBSCURA will be signed during this event. No outside material may be brought into the store.

Achtung: Work In Progress!

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I've been at work on a new project as of late and here's a teaser of the cover ideas that were pitched, accepted and routed for approval…

2009: The Year In Music

As I'm sure you guessed by now, I'm a big-time music fan. It always was this way; from sitting down and playing 45s on the floor of my brother and I's bedroom in the 70s to moving off to NYC & LA to become a Project Manager and A&R representative. With that said, I wanted to post a little something about the year in music as well as my choice for album and single cover of the year. Now, before anyone goes bonkers on me, the covers of the year are chosen specifically from the titles that land on my "best of the year" list. If it wasn't on my list, it couldn't be selected. Simple.

ALBUM COVER OF THE YEAR:

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THRICE Beggars
• They changed up the final cover at the last minute, too late to stop the first one from getting out there for the earliest sales. Personally, I'm a big fan of the first cover – which is the one featured here. Thrice are quickly becoming one of my most-respected bands in all of music. They never sit still, would rather fail trying and succeed treading water and are one of the best sounding live bands. If only they'd tour with bands I like, or just by themselves.

SINGLE COVER OF THE YEAR:

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BAT FOR LASHES "Daniel"
• The single is, for all intents and purposes, a dead art. Most singles are now digital only, especially in the states, and typically feature some promotional photo shoot outtake with some lame type over it – and that's it. Not Natasha Khan. She has the Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso, painted on her bare back for this gorgeous photo. It's hard to beat, I know.

And here's the music list itself. Based solely on the listening experience, of course…

THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2009,
(in alphabetical order):
ALICE IN CHAINS Black Gives Way To Blue
BAT FOR LASHES Two Suns
NEKO CASE Middle Cyclone
THE DEAD WEATHER Horehound
DOVES Kingdom Of Rust
HEAVEN & HELL The Devil You Know
HE IS LEGEND It Hates You
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE Killswitch Engage
MASTODON Crack The Skye
THRICE Beggars

For more, check out the Knights of the Turntable blogspace…