Railroad Tycoon

Remember Pipe Dream? Here it is with trains and a cool harmonica soundtrack.

Tunes for the week

Kanye West's College Dropout is one of the best hip hop albums to drop in a while. I can listen to it from beginning to end without feeling that there's a ton of filler taking up space. And even the skits are funny. For the most part. Between this and The Grey Album, 2004 is already shaping up to be a pretty good year. Burger/Ink's Las Vegas is a collaboration between Jorg Burger and Mike Ink. It's an electronica album bearing some resemblance to Monolake, but with a little more going on. Xiu Xiu's Fabulous Muscles mixes electronics and experimental rock into a fascinatingly creepy album. Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik is an album I had heard in the past but for some reason this past week I was suddenly into it in a way I'd never been in the past. The mix of metal and funk was exactly what the good doctor ordered.             Most of the singles I've been rocking are from the Kanye West album, including "We Don't Dare," "Family Business," and "All Falls Down."

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music v.2.0

It's back and it's bigger than before. Check it out and learn the difference between Happy House and HiNRG.

Heads I win, tails you lose

Apparently, flipping a coin is not as fair as it might seem. Statistician Persi Diaconis built himself a machine to flip coins and determined that "if a coin is launched exactly the same way, it lands exactly the same way. You can listen to the story on NPR.

Leaving No Child Behind redesign

After sending in the original design of this (left) I was told that the book should have larger type and indicate more of a policy bent. They felt the original design was too quiet, focusing on the individuals in question too much. And they wanted an all-cap title. So the option on the right.    

Evening's work

I spent the weekend in New Jersey attending a baby shower and now I'm trying to finish up some designs before the week starts. The Subversive Self in Modern Chinese Literature explores Japan's role in shaping Chinese cultural modernity by comparing and contrasting what appear to be similar narrative modes between the shishosetsu and work coming out of the Creation Society, studying how Chinese writers both appropriated and reconceptualized this Japanese approach. The Turkish-Israeli Relationship examines the historic, geo-strategic and political-cultural roots of the Turkish-Israeli relationship, from the 1950s until today.    

Speaking of the Grey Album

Grey Tuesday is creating coordinated civil disobedience. On Tuesday, February 24, websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work. Read the site for the full story.

Esquire magazine covers

I was reading design observer's article about the decline of magazine covers. The article specifically references George Lois and his 60's Esquire covers. I followed some of the links and realized that Esqure has all of its covers posted online. I love those old covers, before, as the design observer article says, celebrity took over from design.

Weekly faves.

DJ Dangermouse mixes Jay-Z's vocals from The Black Album with beats culled from the Beatles' White Album and creates The Grey Album. It's such a vast improvement over The Black Album you wonder why Jay-Z didn't hire Dangermouse in the first place. And I'll never hear the Beatles in the same way. Brilliant. I started listening to Sinatra because I was working on a book on the subject. Come Fly With Me marks his first outing with arranger Billy May, and together they take a swinging trip around the world. I've always loved Sam Cooke. The Rhythm and the Blues collects a number of early 60's sides and remasters them. Cooke has never sounded better. The sound is crisp, the vocals clear. A-mei is a Taiwanese singer. I saw her in concert on Christmas Day, and picked up her album to prepare myself. Some great Chinese pop music, though she still hasn't quite ascended the heights of her hit single a few years back.             Singles this week I've been returning to include Tori Amos's "Taxi Ride," Pizzicato Five's "Baby Love Child," and Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me."

Continuing Series . . .

A while ago, I designed template for a series of books put out under the auspices of NYU. Here's the latest:    

Historic Tale Construction Kit

Now you can weave a tapestry of your deeds. I think even in multiple pages. Once I have more time I'll see what tale I can tell. (courtesy #!/usr/bin/girl)

The Lost World Game

The BBC has this neat 3-D adventure game. I didn't get very far but it looks nice.

Musicplasma

Looking for music recommendations? Plug in a name into Musicplasma and follow the yellow brick road. Well, the pastel links.

Recent first passes

I worked on two covers this past weekend. One is a book on Frank Sinatra's persona and how it relates to Italian Americans, and the other is an evaluation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I've also spent the better part of the past two days listening to Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me album to get in the mood. Thoughts?    

Ugly dolls

The Times had an article about this set of plush toys. Here's the actual site for you to learn more about them. If anyone's looking to get me one, I like orange. :-)

Remember the Pingu?

Here's round two. This one's a lot harder for me. I can't quite see what's going on. So far my best score is 75.7. You can play it here.

Classic 80s games

Looking to play Frogger or Moon Patrol (I used to love Moon Patrol, though I played it on my Apple IIe rather than the Atari 2600)? You can right now. Just click here.

Resisting Ethics

A few months ago, I designed a cover for Resisting Ethics, left. The editors didn't like it and so I went through a couple of rounds and came up with the design on the right. They approved it and the mechanical just about went to press. I got a call yesterday and was told that the author somehow managed to see the initial design somewhere and loved it. They asked if I still had it somewhere so that we could go back to it. I do and we will.    

Spin/Spun

I'm heading off to Connecticut today and probably won't have time to update this blog before next week so I thought I'd post today. The Stars' Comeback EP is a cute bit of indie pop, incorporating electronic beats on one track, string arrangements on another. One song even makes me think of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, as much for the lyrics as the simple piano and bass that supports the song. Romantica is the latest Luna album. I had stopped listening to them after Penthouse but caught this one playing at the Grey Dog Cafe. I couldn't place it at first, and had to ask the waitress. Then it all clicked. Somehow, after seven albums, they've managed to come out with a new album that reworks their sound to very good effect. One song, interestingly, has a very "Radio Song" intro to it... I've been listening to a lot of classical music this week to calm my nerves (it's been a bit frustrating this week) and so I've been listening to Mitsuko Uchida's renditions of Mozart's solo piano work. It's a hefty box of music to get through, but it was just what the doctor ordered. And the new Norah Jones. I thought her first album was really boring. The new one delves a little more into roots music, and I find that it's much more grounded. Plus the production and engineering on it are great. I love the way the bass sounds on the first song. It's still doesn't keep my interest all the way through, but it's a marked improvement over the last.     As far as singles are concerned, there's only been one that I keep returning to again and again. And that's Norma Fraser's "The First Cut is the Deepest" from the Studio One Soul compillation that came out a while back. I heard that song for the first time in a Brooklyn cafe cum record store (I can't for the life of me remember the name at the moment) and then had to buy the record. I've since worn out that one groove.

What to rent?

Always wondering what video you should rent? This site makes recommendations based on your personality profile.

Norah Jones

Norah Jones released her new album today, which is getting a fair amount of attention. I thought her first album was kind of boring, and was surprised it recieved the attention it did. I'm liking the new one more. It has more of a country feel to it that I like. And I really like the way the bass is miked on the first song. All Things Considered conducted an interview with her where she said she was moving in that direction. And she mentions Gillian Welch as someone she liked. I do like Gillian Welch. Her Hell Among the Yearlings was receiving a good amount of play a few days ago in my apartment. And the Dolly Parton cameo rocks.

A sad day for courier

On Feb. 1 the State Department decided that official written materials should be set in Times New Roman as opposed to Courier New, saying it is easier to read. The NYTimes documented the typographic shift in this Week in Review piece. Interestingly, the article chooses the retain the aside "This article is written in Times New Roman," which is true in the paper, but my browser renders the site in Verdana.

The Weekly Top Four(-ty)

This week it's a bit of an eclectic mix. Last weekend was so cold I found myself listening to reggae to warm up. The Trojan Box Set: Tighten Up was the perfect answer. Three discs of the stuff served up warm, the bass thumpin'. Squarepusher's Ultravisitor starts off beautiful, melding melodic synths with beats that jump in and out, building his songs slowly into long meditations. Somewhere in the middle it gets a little too busy and noisy, but then mellows out for the end. There's an odd mix of the midieval that seems to pop out now and again. Movietone's Blossom Filled Streets is a folky bit of dream pop that floats by on Kate White's voice. And Latyrx's The Album is the underground hip hop album that marries DJ Shadow and Cheif Xcel with Lateef and Lyrics Born. The title song, with the dual channel raps, is a neat bit of production.     Top singles include Enrique Igelsias's "Don't Turn Off the Lights" and "Escape," The Flaming Lips' "Flight Test," Squarepusher's "Iambic 9 Poetry," and the Notwist's "Consequence."

States Within States part deux

Apparently the editor was married to the concept of having the second part of the title within the "a". The title had to be pretty big to accomodate the "within states" part, so here's what I ended up with: You can find the original more elegant design below.

Mona Lisa smile?

Here's kind of a funny little site that subjects the Mona Lisa to a few other emotional exhibitions.

Mr. Picassohead

Channel your inner Picasso and see what portraits you can create here. Two of my examples below:  

Money makes the world go 'round

So how much does the average New Yorker make? A dog walker makes 50k a year. Meanwhile, Wolverine makes that in a week singing and dancing. Maybe it's time to think about changing careers. See how you stack up by reading this article. (courtesy gothamist)

Super Bowl Ads

Only watch the game for the ads? You don't have to anymore. Here's a link to ifilm, which lays them all out. Think of all the time saved!

Good Men Good Women

Just saw this movie, which balances the story of an actress preparing for the role of Chiang Bi-Yu, a Taiwanese revolutionary active in the anti-Japanese resistance in the 1940s China, and a Communist party member in 1950s Taiwan, with that of Bi-Yu herself. The film operates on three levels, as the actress is also confronted with her own past as a man who has stolen her diary faxes her pages daily. These pages telll of her tumultous past with a Taiwanese gangster. Hou Hsiao-Hsien slowly weaves these disparate threads slowly into his film, offering no explanation and forcing the viewer to piece the stories together. The character of the actress, and the character for which she prepares to play, are juxtaposed, as the actress sees herself in the recent past, and herself in the role of her character in the more distant past of Taiwan's history. A fascinating film, Good Men Good Women, while slow, rewards patient viewing, and is worth seeing again from the beginning after the final frame to see how the stories influence each other, building towards the final few frames.