View Hints for Better Living, a short animated film by CalArts student Mike Afsa. Mike is graduating this year, likes to build scale models and has some more work here.

 

Clicked on this episode of BoingBoing TV and the mouse nearly got away from me. TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. The facility is equipped with just about every machine for making/hacking/fixing things you could possibly imagine. Laser-cutters, 3d printing, silkscreening, vinyl cutting, circuit board printing, vacuum forming, injection molding, metal forge, automotive diagnostics, engine and transmission removal… the list goes on. Everything is do-it-yourself and they will teach you how. Holy crap, this is huge. Let’s go make things!

Located in Menlo Park, CA. Nine more locations will be opening across the U.S. including Los Angeles. See you there.

Hollywood was on fire this morning with the news that Hope gallery's second ever offering will be an exhibition and book release party for the SF-based photo zine Hamburger Eyes. The zine has been going strong for 7 years now, and the Eyes stepped it up recently by opening up a Gallery/Shop/Photo Lab in the Mission district known as the Photo Epicenter. The color or b/w lab with large format and digital capabilities can be rented for just $14 per hour and the only way in is for Dave Potes to drop a magical key from the sky. Fecal Face has an article on the space here and some photos of the new book here.

 

Nate Harrington is a writer, photographer, zine maker, DJ, student and all-around nice guy. He’s a fixture in the small (but quickly growing) art and music scene surrounding The Smell, Family bookstore and the Ooga Booga boutique in LA. At 22 he’s written for ANP Quartery, published his own zine called Constantly Pregnant and DJ-ed top-shelf events on both coasts. Now he’s the latest addition to the VLU roster.

You’re a fairly young guy, but you seem to be an encyclopedia of sorts on music, art, writers, weirdo movies, and crazy ice cream flavors. How do you accumulate all your information?

I got into skateboarding when I was 11 or 12 and my favorite skater was (and still is) Ed Templeton. He seemed more damaged and less clean cut than most other skaters and he was an artist and I was really drawn to that. Seeing Welcome to Hell, which is still my favorite skate video had such an impact on me. That's how I got into Sonic Youth and The Misfits, because their songs were in that video and it just grew from there.

Since then I've been the kind of person that will hear about something and then go home and read up on it as much I can. Over time it has turned into me going through my friends libraries of records or dvds and asking them about things that stick out to me. If you talk to any of my friends, especially anyone older than me, they will tell you that I ask a lot of questions, but I am fine with that because that's how you find out about things. Similarly I will read interviews with artists I like and they will mention a book or a record that has influenced them, luckily most people I look up to are very inclusive about their influences.

What are some things you’re really excited about right now, besides minimal techno…

For me the most exciting thing right now would be the art and music my friends are creating. That’s the greatest inspiration I experience on the regular. I feel really lucky living in LA where there is a great sense of community. I think The Smell is still the best place to see shows but to me the community is much larger than just where I live. What community is to me is all my friends doing their own thing and just living whether it be in LA, New York, overseas, wherever. People and bands like Gang Gang Dance, Soiled Mattress And The Springs, Lucky Dragons, Soft Circle, No Age, Scott Mou, Matt Damhave, Ashley Macomber, Eva Michon, Wendy Yao, Brendan Fowler, Rusty Santos/Jesse Lee, Infinite Body, The Sads, and Oliver Payne & Nick Relph are all really pushing things forward.

What’s Constantly Pregnant?

Constantly Pregnant was the first zine I made when I was 18 or 19, it was all photos but it was only like eight pages and maybe 20 photos. Photography was my first love and I still love taking photos but there was a point where I stopped for a while because I felt it was too easy, you see it too much. Last year I got back into it and I want to do something with my photos eventually but the drive to show people my work hasn't been there so much. I think that's why the next zine I made was all interviews, because I didn't know how to do interviews and I think there is something really fun in the naivity of that.

Welcome Nate!

Thomas Campbell has a new surf film coming out called The Present. If you aren't familiar with the films Thomas makes, they're worth checking out even for the land-lover. He shoots everything on slippery 16mm, which means lugging a huge film camera into the waves. It's safe to say no one has ever captured surfing this way, and with the eye of an accomplished visual artist no less. The endless reign of the Endless Summer might just be coming to an end.

While you're at it, check out this profile about him on VBS. When he compares drawing to learning how to skateboard (you must fall many times before you get it right) I don't feel so bad about sitting under piles of crumpled up crappy drawings. 

Post-production on all Thomas' films is skillfuly handled by my good friends the Diamonds at MBS Productions.
 

According to this article, Where the Wild Things Are is in danger of being scrapped or considerably changed as punishment for not being family-friendly enough.

“Hollywood studio Warner Brothers is considering big changes to the movie after audiences at test screenings complained that the film frightened children and confused adults.” 

The film is directed by Spike Jonze with writing help from Dave Eggers. Not exactly a bunch of amateurs. If you have kids, don’t fret. I'm sure Norbit 2 will make it to theaters without a hitch. Here’s a test-clip from the production. It’s not frightening or confusing, it actually looks great and the dialogue is kinda funny.

Thanks to Nate Granzow for the tip.
 

I went to Austin and came home with my ears ringing, holes in my shoes, Beautiful Losers stickers in my hair and pockets full of dead batteries. Here’s a short rundown of what I saw at SXSW:

Met up with Rob Walker, writer of the Consumed column in the NY Times magazine. He has a book coming out called Buying In, which is sure to be landscape changing. Find out more here.

Snuck into Gonzo, a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. The film brings you close to the man by weaving together every moment he ever committed to film, photo or tape. Hunter and I and are like family now.

Everyone was talking about Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote, where the audience turned on the interviewer for not knowing how to put together a proper line of questioning.

Then it was on to the Beautiful Losers premiere, which was a huge success.

Saw the Noisettes do an amazing acoustic set at Good Magazine’s BBQ.

Hung out with Soiled Mattress and The Springs, who have the power to silence every guitar in town with one radical sax note.

Tagged along with Jay, Taylor and Otto as they filmed various things… like a very special Dan Deacon video presentation and Ninja Sonik totally embarrassing all the hipsters by playing their song Tight Pants.

On the last night, we experienced some brilliant musical improvisation by Money Mark and an insanely tight performance by Tommy Guerrero at the Beautiful Losers party.

Finally, we headed home with Lemmy (not Lenny) riding shotgun on the plane to L.A.
 

 

Teenage Engineering, a multi-disciplinary studio from Sweden, recently invented Absolut Choir, an interactive music machine. The choir responds to your musical input with it’s own creative output. Physically the machine is located in Stockholm, but can be interacted with by anyone over the internet. The website will email you a video of your performance when the time is up. I really appreciate the Little People-ish forms and Wendy Carlos inspired sounds. Photos by Erik Sjödin

Rad Mountain is Damien Correll, Justin Fines, Wyeth Hansen, Garrett Morin and Ryan Waller. They've created a set of illustrations that demonstrate the difficulties of weight loss experienced by anthropomorphized foods for the February issue of Good Magazine. If you aren't familiar with Good, it's a publication that explores what it means to be good, do good etc. Appropriately, the magazine features good design and good writing. For me, the diet always starts Monday. One more illustration can be seen here.

I’m very excited to finally share the poster I designed in collaboration with Aaron Rose for the upcoming film Beautiful Losers. BL was recently selected to appear at the SXSW film festival in Austin, and hopefully it will be headed to theaters very soon. You can see a larger version and some details on my Flickr page. This film is going to inspire a whole generation of young artists. Despite having seen the film over 15 times, I still get up from my seat and want to go directly home and make stuff. Thanks to everyone who worked on the film and especially to all the artists who have been and continue to be a huge inspiration. Go see Beautiful Losers!

Beautiful Losers typeface designed by Geoff McFetridge.

Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans are moving at the speed of business with this super-smart laptop envelope inspired by Steve’s dramatic unveiling of the MacBook Air. You may know Jona as the one-man musical powerhouse behind YACHT and Claire as the inventor of the Sweatshirt Skirt.  

Barry McGee gets the Hollywood tabloid treatment from friend and fellow artist Andrew Jeffrey Wright. Barry almost never gives interviews and even goes so far as to hide in the over-turned cars at his own openings to avoid giving them. Topics covered include the real origin of Twist, MDMA?!, scooter gangs and what it really takes to evolve as an artist… Vote Barry.

Here’s a great library of Ernst Haeckel’s Artforms of Nature, available as 300dpi jpegs. The site’s in German, but it’s easy enough to find great specimens. Haeckel’s works are all in the public domain.

From Haeckel’s Wikipedia entry:

Ernst Haeckel was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist. He named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista.
 

If you happen to be in Miami for Art Basel please join me at the Paris theater for the latest iteration of Nike's Re-Run exhibition. The show is curated by Aaron Rose and now includes commissioned artworks from Scott Campbell, Tracy Nakayama, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Kime Buzzelli, Steven Harrington, Jesse Spears, Eric Mast, Mike Paré, Jo Ratcliff and Alexis Ross.

Amsterdam's coolest guy Parra came to LA last week to celebrate the publication of his Arkitip feature issue. And what better way to celebrate than by drawing on stacks (and stacks) of cardboard boxes pulled from the trash. The one-night event took place last Saturday at the Smart House in Venice.

 

 

Last night I went shopping at Paper Magazine’s 24 Hour Store. Killer goods in abundance from Colette, Family, Ooga Booga, Mollusk, The Smell, Orange 20 Bikes and more. If you’re in LA and want to check it out, the store will be open til 6pm tonight. It’s the perfect spot to pick up a $375 Toby Wong box cutter for your dad and a pair of Damien Hirst Levis for your other dad… It's My Two Dads!

This afternoon I'm abandoning my slow-paced work to be a spectator to an adrenaline-fueled, full-contact design game taking place right now on Coudal's site. It's called Layer Tennis, and today's match pits Scott Hansen against Rob Cordiner. Play-by-play commentary by Alissa Walker.

 Michael Bierut commissions Marian Bantjes to create stunningly beautiful typographic illustrations for Saks Fifth Avenue.

Self-initiated, evironmentally aware graphic design work by Glasgow School of Art graduate Chris Thompson. Image: a multi-level poster which points to environmental issues caused by years of neglect and under-investment in Britain's rail system. He's constructed the poster like one might build a model train set and simply photographed it. Spotted on Type for You.

Swerve is a new annual festival that celebrates west coast creative culture. It's happening in LA at the end of this month and features art curated by Aaron Rose, musical performaces including Bonde Do Role, the new Ian Curtis (Joy Division) biopic Control, a documentary about Steve Rocco and more. Image: Thomas Campbell