Planetary Folklore

Broken Bells

2010-03-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

Liking Jacob Escobedo's work for Broken Bells...

T[amarind] L[ithograph] #6

2010-03-19T02:31:00.000-07:00

T[amarind] L[ithograph] #6 by Jack Tworkov

Four Lions

2010-03-19T01:13:00.000-07:00

This looks simply brilliant (and controversial)!

Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce. In a storm of razor-sharp verbal jousting and large-scale set pieces, Four Lions is a comic tour de force; it shows that—while terrorism is about ideology—it can also be about idiots.

Based on three years of research and meetings with everyone from imams to ex-mujahedeen—not to mention a wealth of surveillance material from major trials, Four Lions plunges beyond seeing these young men as unfathomably alien or evil. Instead, it portrays them as human beings, who, as we all know, are innately ridiculous.

The Future is Space

2010-03-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

Cool illustration from the very cool Josh Cochran, also available as a Desktop wallpaper from The Desktop Wallpaper Project on Kitsune Noir...

Notter + Vigne

2010-03-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

I originally came across the work of Geneva based design duet Notter + Vigne after seeing their awesome Lovecraft Poster (I think on FFFFOUND!). Any ways, delving a little deeper they have some great work on their site.

Notter + Vigne

Grafikcache Is No More

2010-03-18T01:08:00.000-07:00

Not sure of the reasons why, but such a shame to lose one of the better design blogs out there. RIP Grafikcache.

The parting message from Dave Smith:

The Grafikcache has indeed come to an end but a few have asked that I leave the Grafikcache up as an archive.
-
My Flickr account with all the archived images can be found here.

Amateur

2010-03-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

by Alvaro Posadas -- music: Black To Comm 'Amateur' Alphabet 1968 2009

Amateur Flickr Set

16 Free Vector Panton Patterns

2010-03-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

That's right "Panton" not "Pantone"

For your delectation may I present 16 (free) seamless vector pattern swatches (also as symbols) for Adobe Illustrator CS and higher. Inspired by the work of design legend Verner Panton and great for use as backgrounds, fill patterns, and optical illusions... all in glorious black and white.

Download Now - 16 Free Vector Panton Patterns

iStock Image Sizes

2010-03-17T02:51:00.000-07:00

Took me a while to find this information and figure it out, so I though it was worth posting my findings here.

The Story

Basically I have a Nikon D40 which is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a sensor sensitivity of only 200 ISO - it's a great camera but I've recently become a contributer to iStockphoto and have had some files rejected because of artifacting and noise issues:

This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.

Noise (pixels of varying color where there shouldn't be) is most commonly created by digital cameras, especially in darker shadows or under low-light conditions and exacerbates the compression issues mentioned above. You might want to double-check to make sure that your camera's ISO/ASA setting is at the lowest number (usually 100). In digital cameras, higher numbers (200 or 400) will always result in more noise (just as with film).

Hopefully you can make out the 'noise' in this sample - enlarged by 200% - from a rejected image

As I already shoot in RAW settings and use minimal post-processing in the latest version of Camera Raw I appear to be up against the limits of my camera (that's another story... currently saving for an upgrade). There are solutions to this e.g. blurring sky to remove noise - which tends to turn up in large blocks of colour - but this seems to be a lot of work fiddling in Photoshop for no guarantee of a decent return i.e. time spent vs earnings. Which leads me to another possible solution... resizing the image to decrease the appearance of artifacting and noise. BUT obviously, you want to upload an image with as large a pixel area as possible, so it is available at the most sizes and you don't miss out on money because you resized the image and it was too small.

So what are the iStockphoto size minimums?

• XSmall, 300×400 = 0.12 MP minimum, 1″x 1.5″ @ 72dpi
• Small, 600×800 = 0.48 MP minimum, 2″x 3″ @ 72dpi
• Medium, 1200×1600 = 1.92 MP minimum, prints 4″ x 5″ @ 300dpi
• Large, 1920×2560 = 4.92 MP minimum, prints 6″ x 8″ @ 300dpi
• XLarge, 2800×4200 = 11.7 MP minimum, prints 9″ x 14″ @ 300dpi
• XXLarge, 3300×4900 = 16.2 MP minimum, prints 11″ x 16″ @ 300dpi
• XXXLarge, 3700×5600 = 20.72 MP minimum, prints 12″ x 18″ @ 300dpi

What this means is if you wanted to upload your image at the lowest boundary of the "medium" size it would need to be 1600 pixels x 1200 pixels (BTW: this is also the smallest size accepted by iStockphoto) - what this actually means is that the image pixel area must exceed 1,920,000 pixels (or 1.92 MP) and technically, you could submit an image that was 1 pixel wide x 1,920,000 pixels high! As long as the total image pixel area (i.e. the pixel width multiplied by the pixel height) is 1,920,000 pixels then it meets the minimum size requirements for the "medium" image size.

For All Mankind

2010-03-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

From 1968 to 1972, those onboard Apollo lunar missions were given 16mm cameras and told to film everything they could, in space, in orbit, and on the surface of the moon. Two decades later, filmmaker Al Reinert was given access to the NASA vaults to create this incredible film set to a Brian Eno soundtrack.

Why Brands are Becoming Media

2010-03-16T02:29:00.000-07:00

Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance: Article by Brian Solis
March 15 2010

"One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content."

Read the full article here »

Invertebrata Enigmatica

2010-03-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ten years worth of entries for the Oklahoma Microscopy Society’s Ugly Bug Contest, which are essentially micrograph mug-shots of bugs.

You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?

2010-03-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

Via ZOOBEZOOBEZOO

Geometry is Everything

2010-03-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

"We want angles, arcs and intervals; we want pattern.
Structure is content, geometry is everything."
Tom McCarthy

Rectland

2010-03-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

rectland10, originally uploaded by Kim Asendorf

neptune

2010-02-24T19:06:00.000-08:00

neptune, originally uploaded by sx70manipulator

Cementimental

2010-02-24T03:49:00.000-08:00

Untitled Harsh Noise Graphic Novel
Surrealist book-object; harsh noise album in paperback form. 300 pages of pixel-noisescapes, created soley using the antique mac paint app LightningPaint.

Avaliable now: £7.77 + p&p from from http://www.lulu.com/cementimental

Cementimental

Slices of Venice (226)

2010-02-23T18:52:00.000-08:00

Slices of Venice (226), originally uploaded by Panoramatic

It Is What It Is

2010-02-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

"... A graphic design project starts out as a relationship, transforms into a process of loose analysis and more-or-less insightful speculation, then enters into a practically autistic phase of visual generation, followed by a synthesis of speculation and experimentation that morphs into a purely computational and mechanical production – accomplished with or without the involvement of any number of outside trades – and finally emerges in the world through a complex of socialization and acculturation that includes publicity, public relations, distribution, retailing, advertising, focus testing, and criticism... "

From the introduction to the new 2x4 catalog.

Typo/Graphic Posters

2010-02-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

Large collection of cool posters.

The Long Night

2010-02-22T18:33:00.000-08:00

When a blackout hit parts of the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in early February, a 2HeadedHorse filmmaker took to the roof of his building and did some slow shutter timelapse experiments. The results are this little video for "The Long Night," a song by Patrick Park.

The Long Night from 2HeadedHorse

Geology of the Moon

2010-02-22T02:04:00.000-08:00

Via Moon River

The Harmonic Center of the Universe

2010-02-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

The Harmonic Center of the Universe from Jesse Stiles

The Harmonic Center of the Universe is a sonified light-emitting sculpture that generates endless iterations of non-repeating cascading musical lightforms. The Harmonic Center of the Universe was created by Chris Harvey, Olivia Robinson, and Jesse Stiles in early 2009. That spring, the sculpture was nearly destroyed in a freakish thunderstorm that struck during a public exhibition of the work in Lowell, MA. Harvey, Robinson, and Stiles have since restored the work.

jts3k.com, website of musician/artist Jesse Stiles

Demonstration Reel

2010-02-21T13:56:00.000-08:00

Demonstration Reel from Sculpture

Soviet

2010-02-21T02:05:00.000-08:00

Via Soviet