Nice lot of work gone into this jazz LP-parodying flyer for a series of DJ jams in Crotona Park this summer. The last one is actually today and features Lord Finesse, DJ Cheese and Johnny Juice.
Design
How cool is this? An animated version of the Micronauts toy and comic franchise that looks pitched somewhere between Transformers Animated and Tron: Uprising.
These are concept drawings, posted by Dave Johnson aka @Devilpig666 via his Twitter account after reaching 10k followers.
The pitch ultimately failed and it looks like it won’t be made because Hasbro bought the rights but he revealed that they would have got original Micronauts comic artist Michael Golden in to do some designs too.
Regardless, it’s just nice to see this modern day re-imagining of an old classic although this does look like it would be a bit less brutal than the old comics.
Steve Cook put these photos up last week on his Secret Oranges blog. Above is Jim Murray and below, Jason Brashill, taken at Tribal Gathering in ’97. Both were then working for 2000ad on various projects, with Jim eventually finishing off vol.2 of the Batman/Judge Dredd team-up ‘Die Laughing’ after Glenn Fabry couldn’t commit to it. He then went off to work in the computer games industry but has just put out a gorgeous book with Robbie Morrison called ‘Drowntown’ which is the first of several apparently. Jason followed a similar path but not before he’d painted one of my favourite sleeves for The Herbaliser in the shape of ‘Wall Crawling Giant Insect Breaks’, which I commissioned from him after seeing his work with graffiti artists She One and Req 1 as part of their Brighton crew, The Dusty Knights.
shinjuku from robert valley on Vimeo.
More beautiful animation and design from Robert Valley, not sure what this is for exactly.
Friends on my Facebook page recently will have seen a new photo album called ‘The Devil’s In The Details’ where I’ve been posting design finds that I’ve photographed whilst going through a load of records recently. All these details are hidden on the backs of sleeves or on the actual labels, another example of something that’s disappearing with the digital age.
I’ve been having a clear out recently, I’ve not properly weeded out my record collection for years apart from going through the Hip Hop last year and it’s always fascinating to realise what you have and what’s contained within the artwork as well as the grooves. Speaking of Facebook, I now have a dedicated DJ Food Official page for gig news and official releases.
More old Dan McPharlin designs just because they’re so fantastic, this time for The Sword, check out the hexagonal picture disc.
These are pretty old now but I’m a sucker for Dan McPharlin‘s work. Such beautiful examples of image and typography evoking a certain era perfectly.
Adam Pobiak did these great posters for GOAT‘s London gig last weekend in 4 different variations. They are nearly all sold out but you can grab the last ones here.
There’s a new mix available by Doug Shipton from the Finder’s Keepers collective that was recorded for the Cinefamily gig in LA recently (or it may be a recreation of his set). It’s a half hour mix of spacey New Age electronics, the new love of the digging set it seems. Great poster here too, featuring Suzanne Ciani with a head full of wires, presumably by the man Votel, he really should do a book of his work some day.
And here’s another for an event coming up, a Hocus Focus night featuring Andy’s missus, Jane Weaver, re-scoring ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ live as well as a screening of ‘Vali The Witch of Positano’ (no, me neither). Love what these guys are doing, wish they would do more down South but then we’re pretty spoilt anyway.
A seller (inddes)has put some seriously rare Syd Mead books up on eBay – a lot of them signed, with very low starting prices. Most of these books rarely come up for sale and when they do will start at around the £100 mark. Marvel at his beautiful design work, if I had the money I’d bid on the lot.
A new retrospective exhibition about Ninja Tune just opened in Pau in the Pyrénées, France at the André Labarrere Mediatheque. Curated by Fred Elalouf of the Ping Pong promotional agency in Paris, it also ties in with Ping Pong’s 15th year of existence. They have represented the label in France throughout their past decade and a half through thick and thin.
Earlier this year Fred visited the Ninja offices and my studio on a mission to gather as much original material as he could find for this event. Original art, promotional posters, sleeves, videos, slides and other ephemera are all present, some of it never exhibited outside the UK before. I have to say, he’s done an amazing job as you can see by some of these photos.
The exhibition just opened and is on for the next two months, closing on August 24th. It’s free (I think) so, if you’re in that part of the world, go and take a look as there are a lot of items that will go back into private collections when it’s over. Original Kid Acne, Mr Scruff and Kid Koala artwork hangs with cover proofs and promotional toys. The model robot that was projected on for the front cover of the ‘Funkungfusion’ compilation is on display as well as some of the original drawings for the now famous Ninja logos.
Hauntology super group? John Foxx, Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle – forthcoming on Ghost Box.
Now a design cliché whilst highlighting just how adaptable those old designs were, the object as Penguin book gets another outing here. We’ve had record sleeves, film posters and more but now it’s the turn of comics to get their chance in the spotlight. When they’re done as well as these then I don’t mind at all, more examples by Fonografiks over here.
I love that I can find things like this on someone’s Tumblr site but what really pisses me off is that the site strips away any title the original file had. If the person putting it up then doesn’t credit the image (which few seem to) then that info is lost or takes an amount of detective work to find. It’s exactly this that exasperates me when the copyright laws making the use of ‘orphaned work’ (ie images found online with no discernible author attributed) then give users a better legal position to exploit it rather than protect the original owner.
Props to Kid Acne for this fantastic package, updating his ‘Council Pop‘ LP and ‘Radio Music’ 12″ – this joins my ever growing collection of hand-screened or painted records.
Damn! Any regular reader of this blog knows that this combines two things I dearly love. There are 5 Lego maps of the London Underground on display around the capital until the end of the summer. More details and locations over at BuzzFeed.
Fantastic flyer for a Sun Ra gig from an excellent set of old Post Punk flyers I found on the reinvigorated Flickr the other week.
Shortly after Storm Thorgerson died I did an interview with Matt Meuse of CBC Music about why sleeve art matters and where it will go next. Also in the interview are Jeff Jank who designs for Stones Throw and David Jones (pictured) who owns the Vinyl Records store in Vancouver.
Want one of these? The new single from The Simonsound in a special 25 copy ‘Pilot Pack’ with 10″ colour vinyl, two sided colour map, sew on ‘The Simonsound Transit Authority’ Pilot patch, 1 of a kind 1/4 inch tape loop, mini booklet, Monorail ticket, all housed in a beautiful letter press printed sleeve? Better be quick – pre-orders happening NOW.
If they’re sold out or your budget doesn’t stretch to business class you can still catch the monorail in a more regular and affordable standard class version. 10″ colour* vinyl of ‘The Beam’, comes with two sided colour map. (*Colour to be confirmed.) Also, if you’ve not tried the debut LP from the group (Simon James and DJ Format) then you could do a lot worse than grab ‘Reverse Engineering’ while you’re there.
