land of angle

Secret Attack!

2010-04-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

Looking a bit like the uncomfortable fusion of a 1980s music video and an episode of Lost In Space, this is promotional art that I did recently for a company that is known for its meticulous samples of obsolete music-making machines.

Utilizing vinyl records, analog cassette tapes, low-resolution samplers and classic drum machines—recorded in various states of distortion, distress and decay—New Zealand-based Goldbaby Productions brings some of the quirky and unrefined sounds of early electronic music into the realm of modern software workstations. Sample packs from Goldbaby have garnered rave reviews from music magazines and top producers, and they also represent some of the best bargains available in music software (there's even some fantastic free stuff on the site).

I was fortunate enough to see a Twitter post from the company, asking if anyone was interested in doing artwork for their new, top secret product.

Please note that this product is still unreleased at the time I post this, so you may be getting an unexpected sneak peek at what should be a unique, high-concept offering from Goldbaby.

Mickey's Ears

2010-03-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

This is a mostly-used pad of official Walt Disney Pictures inter-office stationary found somewhere on the CalArts campus around 1988 or so. It has a humorous message on the first page written by Deb Gassner, my classmate in the Visual Communication program at the time.

I don't know if it has any kind of value as a vintage collectible, but I have to admit I am tempted to take my chances on ebay.

The Plan With No Teeth

2009-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

The L.A. BIKE PLAN: Created by a parasitic bureaucracy, it has been virtually invisible in changing our urban landscape into a humanized, bicycle-accessible city. Yet it wakes from its stupor every ten years or so, terrorizing transportation activists with its disemboweled visions, apocryphal statistics and phantom infrastructure maps.

Can this putrid, rotting corpse be reformed into an effective, living document, or should it be buried for good in an unmarked grave? 

I created this text and artwork for a bicycle spoke card, which is a small laminated card that fits between the spokes of a bicycle wheel. They are often given away at the start of a sizable social bike ride, and serve as a commemoration of the journey.

In this case, the ride is a pre-Halloween trek from East Hollywood to a meeting, in West L.A., concerning the updating of our city's little-known, mostly ignored Bicycle Plan. As you might guess from reading this post, the plan is deeply flawed, and despite the fact that it's been around for decades, it has resulted in very little progress towards making Los Angeles a better place for non-motorized transportation.

I can only hope that a lurid spoke card, inspired by some classic movie posters, will be an incentive to get a few people out on a Wednesday afternoon.