Edits Quarterly is the brainchild of Portland designer Ian Coyle and it's a great expression of content and presentation. I love the way the sections panel through each other and the interior photo collections & videos are compelling as well. All and all, it's what you want to see in an "online zine." Definitely looking forward to the next issue.
I recently ran across the showreel of COWORKERS, an LA-based creative team that includes Mr. Robert Larson, aka Vanbert. The reel has four solid commercials, my favorite being this Best Buy spot. Not everyone may be into watching advertising agency work but I'm really liking what I'm seeing.
If you're not familiar, Dan Harmon is the creator of Channel 101, Computerman, Heat Vision & Jack and, most notably, Community. From the looks of it, the title of Creator won't be going anywhere but his role as head showrunner / writer has been stripped entirely. Regardless of your thoughts on the show, it's always interesting to see a little bit of drama in the TV world when someone's intimate creation - the thing they've slaved over creating - is taken from them so abruptly. Imagine if Tina Fey were booted from 30 Rock; just doesn't seem right. Harmon's reaction is actually much more level-headed than I'd expect for someone in his position. More on the new arrangement can be found here but, mostly, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
Here we go again. I've had a week that was, primarily, offline so I may have missed some of the heavier hitters but I still think you'll enjoy the playlist. Dive in!
How To Wake Up A Kid - even if this is somehow faked, it's faked incredibly well. That kid will grow up to be super awesome (because he is already).
Cat Toast - if buttered toast always lands butter side down and cats always land on their feet - what happens when you combine the two? It's the Buttered Cat Paradox and it's an old science joke but the folks at Flying Horse Energy Drink (seriously) made it into a pretty amusing commercial.
A couple of years ago I posted about a curious documentary called Firewall of Sound. Filmmaker Devin DiMattia had put together a film about the independent music industry, the impact of the Internet and the current state of things. Now, two years later, the entire film is available for viewing. So, add it your favorite queue for watching over the weekend and enjoy the differences you hear from the landscape as it was in 2010 to how it is now, in 2012.
While it may not be quite as compelling as The Liz Lemon Hair Timeline, there's certainly something engaging about this Facebook IPO Infographic. Namely, it that it shows Facebook surpassing Google in terms of value and likely being valued around $135 billion by the end of day on Friday. If that number doesn't blow your mind you aren't thinking about it hard enough.
It's entirely possible that you saw Facemath making the rounds yesterday but, in case you didn't, please check out the brilliance. It's the simplest concept but the examples that they use are hysterically accurate. Nice work Internet.
Hey, I was traveling all day yesterday and kinda forgot to browse to find you some quality links for entertainment. Sorry about that! To make up for the lack of legit blogging, here's some stuff I found real quick that you might like:
Prometheus - "Quiet Eye" - another teaser for the forthcoming Ridley Scott movie. I refuse to watch this as I am embracing willful ignorance towards the movie (no spoilers!) but I can tell from the still frame that I would love it.
It's that time again, another installment of the We Own This Town podcast. If you are, somehow, unfamiliar with this creation that I've been involved with for the past few years - it's a compilation of the latest and greatest music from around the Nashville area as skewed through the lens of my own personal interest. That is to say, it's a bunch of rock, indie, electronic, folk, etc songs all mashed up into a half hour for you to enjoy. So, please enjoy.
There's not much to say about The Sounds of Aronofsky except for "awesome. rad. excellent. amazing." And then some sort of rant about the importance of phenomenal sound design and how it can have an unconscious impact on the impact of a film. Long story short, it's great.
While it's sad that The Books have met their demise (though, Zammuto fills the void pretty well) it is good read this positive note that they'll be putting out a box set with the entirety of their discography including b-sides, rarities, etc. They'll even be posting updates about the insight into each track over here, which I am officially recommending following along despite not having read a single thing yet.
Big thanks to Waxy for the heads up on this video - Welcome to Life: The Singularity, Ruined by Lawyers. It's a satirical take on a potential future that may exist once The Singularity emerges; merging technology and humanity. When people envision being able to download their brains into a new physical entity they rarely think about a situation like this that requires patent violation, copyright infringement and tiered monetary existence. It's scary but probably more accurate than anyone would like to admit.
Long story short, this is probably a believable version of the future and I, for one, will pass.
I'm a big fan of the work of Jay Leo Phillips - his latest being a band called Charges. I told you about them previously but looks like they'll be releasing a legit EP at the beginning of June. Consider this your official notification to mark your calendar to obtain the new goods. In the meantime, go listen to Cosmonaut Song.
Gifture is being touted as "Instagram for animated gifs." It's obvious that they're intentionally competing in the same space - the filters, the icons, the whole app pretty much copies Instagram from the top down but the end result is a manually created animated gif. Kind of neat actually. Though there's definitely better tools for this sort of thing, I can see this taking off to some degree.
There are plenty of competitors in the "Instagram for the Web" space but Pinstagram is doing a rather nice job with their presentation layer. Is it better than Inkstagram or Statigram? It's debatable. But, regardless, it's something new to poke around and check out!
I've had this one under my hat for a long time now but I'm extremely pleased to announce the official relaunch of the site for Mercy Lounge. I've worked my butt off over the past few months to get this whole thing designed and coded. I'm sure to spend all day squashing down bugs that I didn't know existed but, on the whole, I'm incredibly proud of how it has turned out. It's fully responsive and should make for browsing on a mobile device much more pleasant. If I were to pick a piece of work that served as my crown jewel - this would definitely be it.
Superbrothers has managed to take their game, Sword and Sorcery into the social realm by creating an "audio/visual jam" where fans are challenged to create original works based on the game or remix the audio from Jim Guthrie. You can follow along with the results on Tumblr. One such example of these creations is the above video experiment - which pretty much flips all the right switches in my brain when it comes to enjoyment.
Admittedly, I haven't watched Modern Zamanlar in its entirety yet but I'm super intrigued by the look of it and the description from Vimeo:
Aykut Alp Ersoy has us pegged all of us. “Modern Zamanlar” is a short but potent critique of our 21st-century love affair with constant connectivity or the illusion of it, anyway.
At the very least, add it to your favorite queue for enjoyment at a later time.
The majority of images in the photostream of Alice Bartlett are slice of life photo documentation - someone documenting their life, as we're all want to do. However, there's a handful (pun intended) of great images featuring tiny miniatures on grassy fingernails that are worth checkingout. Lets hope there's a lot more of this to come.
Foresight.js, apparently, sends the appropriate resolution image to your browser based on the most needed media (i.e. low res for smaller screens, higher res for bigger screens.. you know, responsive media like). I don't fully understand how the JS is circumventing the original img src request but who am I to question such magic? If it works, it works.. saving bandwidth and getting the quickest response to the user is the end goal.
