Sad handsome man

Cover art from Townes Van Zandt albums.

Fuck the clock

Patti Smith, 1976

Tanya Johnston

Tanya Johnston is an illustrator and artist.

Dynamic identities

Alice Rawsthorn writes about the growing use of dynamic identities for the International Herald Tribune.

In 2006 Pentagram redesigned Saks Fifth Avenue. They went with a pretty far-out dynamic identity system. Partner Michael Beirut explains the concept.





2x4 redesigned the Brooklyn Museum in 2004.

We imagined the Brooklyn Museum as the alternative Museum. Alternative not in the sense of either the marginal or the counter-cultural, but in an significant way. Alternative in the sense that "mainstream" is imaginary, that everyone, and all important things, are alternative.

Brooklyn Museum is not tourist-oriented, it doesn't cater to prefab, highly polished and well-rehearsed cultural fantasies about elegance, connoisseurship, purity or refinement. It is family-centered and facilitates a process in which visitors readily form their own interpretations of great art through many different, easily shifted and customized paradigms."

Brooklyn Museum combines authority and the active questioning of authority. If there is a central trope, perhaps its the intelligent, informed question, wittily framed. So, in our eyes, there is be an intellectual weight to the Brooklyn Museum of Art's identity combined with a certain quirkiness: Solidity destabilized.

The logo starts as a modern seal, but the seal continuously morphs. Each new iteration draws from a different trope, both high and low: a stamp, a flower, a violator, a thought bubble, a drop of water, etc. The morphing system plays out over the range of graphic materials from business cards and shopping bags to uniforms and site signage.

And then there was the launch campaign of the New Museum by Droga5. Simple posters with a die-cut silhouette of the New Museum building were pasted over existing ads on New York City subways and streets. Because the existing ads were different, each New Museum ad had a different graphic in the shape of the New Museum building.

So lots of brands are using these dynamic identities today, and there's definitely a temptation to follow the trend. As a designer, it's certainly an exciting problem. But when is it necessary?

Bruce Mau says it best in Rawsthorn's article: "MTV has a dynamic identity because they are dynamic, and I want them to be. But I don't want my bank to be dynamic. I want them to be conservative and radically stable."

Allan Wexler

Allan Wexler.

Dock Ellis

Dock Ellis gets high as shit, pitches no hitter.
Animation by James Blagden.

Tadanori Yokoo

1964-1965 animations from Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo, best known for his posters.

Yoshitaka Amano

Japanese illustrator Yoshitaka Amano created the art for Vampire Hunter D and Final Fantasy.

Jakob Schlaepfer

Jakob Schlaepfer has been manufacturing textiles for interiors and haute couture for over 100 years and is still kickin.

Eduardo Recife

Brazilian illustrator Eduardo Recife.

Tom Sachs

New York-based sculptor Tom Sachs builds painstaking and intimate reproductions of complex industrial products.
Much, much more on his website.

When We’re Equal, We’ll Be Happy

From Judith Warner at the NYT.

Strange, but women are still the world's largest minority.

Locust Wings

From the New York Times.

All these changes I'm going through!

Soul searing:

When you see a little boy or a little girl running down the street, running to meet the popsicle truck and all of a sudden you got to turn around and say, "Man I'll be glad when this cat gets here! All these changes I'm going through!"

Eric Nehr does Egon Schiele

Eric Nehr's fashion photography for the Times.

Marc André Robinson

More at the Times and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The yellow jersey

Nice photo.
From the New York Times.

Fred Tomaselli

Collage artist Fred Tomaselli, at the James Cohan gallery.

Single Ladies, Beyonce

Whatever, this video is just rad genius. The new wave of arty hip hop videos are killing. Obviously: