_ as you gear up for turkey gobbling, consider the lovely printed matter. The FPO Awards Book is available for pre-order now!
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_our dear Nathan Rothstein sends word of his latest project, in which “people raise money for the cause they care about by selling their used clothing.” Interested? Contact them at buymyne@gmail.com
In Doug Freeman We Trust
Doug Freeman is a multi-talented Austin hero. The former Austin Chronicle writer, and current occasional columnist, has also co-authored the essential “The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology” which was released in March (much to the Gopher Editor’s musical benefit). Beyond his musical knowledge and journalistic prowess, it has also come to our attention that the one Doug Freeman is also a Tech Startup savant, world traveler and consumer of the best dive fare this city has to offer.
It should then be not at all [...]
Rad Tunes for you, from Desiree Mata
Photo Credit: Max Marshall
Part two of this illustrious effort by our dear, talented friends in Austin comes from a tall tower downtown. Desirée is a multi-talented music master and footwear enthusiast who zips around town in her aqua-colored scooter. That she let me ride once. And it was awesome.
Anyways.
Desirée’s set is a change of pace from R-Berry’s beautiful playlist, and may coax some ill-advised moves out of the less graceful citizens of the world. But enough about us. Desirée ‘with an [...]
Friendly Sounds Series: Ron Berry
July in Texas is… hot. The temperature climbed up quickly in May and has been inching ever closer to skin-evaporating heights of the sun. But thankfully there is reprieve indoors, sticking our heads in the melting freezer and listening to the four sets (okay, okay, playlists) that our dear friends from all around Austin made for the launch party of the second volume of the Gopher!
And the love we got from these awesomely attuned folks, well, it’s just something that needs to [...]
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_Amilcar sent word about this VBS vid shot in Caracas, which is the perfect way to kick off the weekend.
Zarouhie Abdalian doesn’t have a favorite word.
Set for the Outside
Zarouhie was in town on an artistic mission back when there was still a need for sweaters. We met her at a the dusty bar that we favor, immediately impressed by two things: she was immune to the chilli evening, and her order of battered and deep fried chicken gizzards. Upon reviewing the artist’s multi-medium work, this gizzard-eating-sweaterless adventurousness came back to me as a perfect lens through which to examine it. For Abdalian, neither medium nor message seem [...]
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_in honor of the breadless wonder-week that rhymes with flassover: Psychedelic Judaism brings the tunes.
Big and Bold and Bad-ass
Our visit to the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection this week (a collection! and you can use it!) has us reeling with an aesthetic inspired by the specimens: “hard angular forms that reflect mechanical origins”. Big and bold, and fun, and (maybe this is just us…) the kind of beautiful fun that smells of popcorn. So… we rounded up some things we liked. A big thanks to the amazing David Shields for the tour!
Wood Type and Wooden Toys. Get [...]
A sweet musical landing in Dënver, Chile.
Chilean wonder-duo Dënver (as they say, “the band, not the dinosaur”, whatever that means) claim that music comes naturally to them. Mariana claims she learned to play the guitar at the same time she learned to walk – and partner Milton supports this story, finding her jerky-dancing charming enough to approach her at a party some years ago. The duo have put out a number of incredibly catchy songs in this year’s release “Musica, Gramática, Gimnasia” and, unable to stop humming them, [...]
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_what can you do with that old typewriter, you say? Write poems on it? What are you, a hundred and forty? Hey! So Keira Rathbone’s got an idea!
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_this is awesome because we may or may not be guilty of making geometric patterns with our knick-knacks-
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_this series of a superhero grandmother by Sacha Goldberger is absolutely amazing (and greets you with “what? don’t you have anything better to do? — well, no, I will never have anything better to do ever again, grandma Mamika!)
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_ now I kind of wish that all fashion editorials were drawn by the ladies at “Fashion from Old People”
_532
_apparently developed by Place studios in Argentina, Sudamerica is a type with a message: Sudamerica no es Latina.
_528
_broadcastr, that brainchild of the folks at Electric Lit is launching tomorrow. Not gonna lie, kind of excited.
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_”i hate perfume” says Christopher Brosius, so he’s bottling experiences. Like the smell of a Library, or Gathering Apples. He’s won awards.
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_free online lectures might be the David to the university system’s Goliath. Or so says The Telegraph.
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_we ended up with one of these postcard-sized prints by Rand Renfrow. Turns out, it’s Rand Renfrow’s card. Now look at his portfolio!
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_it’s no secret that we can’t wait to get Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish Novelists” (Best of Young Novelists Writing in Spanish” didn’t have quite the same ring to it, I guess). Until then, sneak a read at Conditions for the Revolution.
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_designer Matt Stevens told designers in Dallas to work for free last month. And probably other stuff too. Here’s the poster for the event.
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_obsessed? We’re not obsessed! Obsessed is such a strong word, man. (okay, we reeeally like Micah Lidberg)
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_”her art is both humorous and sentimental while exploring her love for nostalgia” – Lyndsey Lesh, on Lyndsey Lesh.
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_Eleanor Rudge is an illustrator based in Brighton blah blah, look pretty, colorful mountains say hello! Hello! Hello pretty mountains! (visit Eleanor’s site, for serious)
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_”I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary.” there are academic ghostwriters? Shocking! Truly shocking! Never heard of such a thing! . (This guy is seriously prolific, though)
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_”this is a video created so I don’t have to have a Facebook page” – meet Chad Kouri of The Post Family
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_not to judge a book by its cover, but some of these are beautiful! Check out Featherproof for more.
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_a commentary on mythical-creature idiosyncrasy by Iain Burke (sounds like it should be a book, no?)
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_okay, we may be late to this party, but Burbia is for “hip suburbanites” and we, frankly, are neither. That said, we can’t stop laughing at their funny pictures section.
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_a few days back we wrote about This Gallery’s new show. And through them we found Eduardo Hernández Vaca’s project NRMAL. Click.
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_This Gallery in Los Angeles just opened a Latin American Graphic Design show. If you’re around there, please go and tell us how it was!
Crochet as [badass] Medium.
Crochet art comes in more forms than just your grandmothers artfully studied bunny-patterned sweaters. As amazing as those are, now that it’s getting colder, and since my grandmothers most certainly do not knit, my sweater-loneliness has found solace in the strange and wonderful creations of three women.
My first encounter with crochet public art only a few weeks ago, looking up while I waited for some food sitting in a patio. It was a pair of shoes, laced together and thrown over some electric cables. [...]
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_we visit once in a while but this week FSG’s Work in Progress blog seems to be in the zeitgeist. So you should visit too. Maybe.
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_yesterday, we were rescued by a taxi driver who adorably plugged his kid-sister’s music project – successfully, clearly. Denitia Odigie, we’d love to see you live!
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_some days ago we ran into the inimitable Andrew Losowsky and he showed us the goods: if you haven’t seen STRANDED you should go get one now.
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_ever wonder where all those lonely orphan suitcases at the airport go? To Alabama’s Unclaimed Baggage Center, of course!
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_this is like parents’ gentle colorful nagging – or as Erin Hanson puts it “childish treatment for childish behavior”
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_haven’t you heard that eskimos have many words for snow? Proof that language shapes your experience of things (via the Wall Street Journal)
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_this series by Eric Fisher plays right into our obsessive nerve: “Locals and Tourists” maps tourist photos in red and locals’ photos in blue for hangout maps around the world.
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_Jess Atkinson’s series NO! is “is a plasticine illustration about a little creature who discovered he can only communicate his thoughts with others by telepathically having his limbs severed to spell it out”
Making Rob Gordon proud in the blog era.
Proyecto Playlist is the brainchild of Ma. Elizabeth (Marie) Hernández and the Maracaibo lovechild of High Fidelity character Rob Gordon (neé Fleming). The blog, born out of a hybrid need to share – Marie is the youngest of six children – and to self-express, has attracted the attention of many Venezuelans looking for curated tunes from local taste-makers. And so what was once a monthly post by Marie was transformed into a hub for local taste-makers [...]
Tasty, tasty Trastienda
We continue our series on netlabels with one we’ve followed for a while. trastienda.org was founded in Salamanca (Spain) during the summer of 2005, an odd frog type of netlabel and among the very few putting out material other than electronic music. The world and its wonders (or whatever made its founders move around) made it international. They write “Nowadays our headquarters are split between Taipei (Taiwan), Madrid and Barcelona (Spain).” Still, the multi-genre label is going strong with a continuous [...]
Romeo Alaeff shows us his tapeworm
Brooklyn-born global dweller Romeo Alaeff is an artist. Any sort of definition beyond that may be fuzzy or inaccurate, and his work itself blurs the boundaries between icon and art, funny and serious, traditional and experimental, and public and private. His explorations have taken some wild turns: Alaeff studied biomedical engineering before graduating as a photographer, going to graduate school for Fine Arts, detouring somewhere along the line to work as an animation editor and writer for children’s shows like [...]
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_ live in Chicago? Hurry to The Family Room Gallery and check out their expo “There, Now it Will Last Forever.” It closes Friday.
Nick van Woert drips into our cave imagination
I always suspected that bats and rats and strange cave-dwelling animals have their very own theme parks among all the rock and humidity and general yuckiness of those holes in the ground. Obviously, I mean, how could all those little larvae looking creatures grow to be so scary without a little bit of formative fun, a cavernous-christmas if you will. On second thought, maybe I’m thinking about that recurring dream that made my parents drag me to the school counselor for about a year. [...]
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_a whole year of posts! Wow! We’re celebrating with Papelote, a Czech papermaking firm looking to reinvent… er… paper.
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_straddling the genius and the bizarre: feather creations by Kate MccGwire. Nature-bending seems to be the thing this week!
Franke James is Drawing a Greener Conscience
Posting about climate change and a green conscience may strike some as preachy, and we at the Gopher have to confess a great deal of pickiness when it comes to reading up on it. Ruining the environment is bad, and being a composting expert will earn you friends in certain circles (be our friend! come oooonnnn). We, too, watched the Al Gore film and felt that gagging sensation through Food Inc, ok?! And as much as we enjoy some people’s hysterics, sandwich boards and [...]
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_Alexey Malina’s design work is inspired by dance, music, architechture and everyday life (in Moscow)
The wonderful world of Denis Carrier
Denis Carrier is the mind and hands behind Studiofolk, source of a bevy of wonderful, unfussy and clever illustrations. We imagine him exactly as he describes himself – his work mirroring his persona, and according to him, even his looks. “Denis Carrier, looks like his work : not so big, not very muscular, but really funny and simple.” (the real mystery to us… how does a person look “simple”?) Simple and not-so-big as he may be, Carrier is a busy [...]
Pick a Piper makes us wonder about drums
Having made the (admittedly very basic) Internet rounds it’s clear that Pick a Piper is exciting the ears it reaches. Their sound gets described in elaborate, evocative, complex and sometimes downright nonsensical terms like “Ecstatically charged yet almost trance-inducing, PAP are a vodka-redbull with none of the edge, all of the euphoria and zero unpleasant aftertaste” (source). What fascinated us was the absolute ubiquity of the word “tribal” to describe the music. Is it that drums, heavy drums, and superimposed [...]
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_we love stumbling upon stuff like this: Shigeru Mizuki’s book Yōkai Daizukai includes diagrams on the anatomy of traditional Japanese monsters.
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_as secret, creepy lovers of Mike Perry’s work, we urge you to visit this interview conducted by the lovely folks at GrainEdit.
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_Mind Lab is an amazing tool that lets you “explore the unconscious functions of the brain with visual illusions and mysterious perceptual phenomena.”
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_Jaime Van Wart “puts her OCD to good use by obsessing over typography and designing original typefaces”
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_Alba Machado writes: “How to Trick People into Reading” (there’s some lovely footage at the bottom)
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_this tumblr is a sideproject of Spaniard-in-Paris illustrator Puño, and you shouln’t miss it for the world.
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_el Avionazo is Said Dokins‘ street intervention of La Plaza del Aguila in Mexico City. Wooster calls it inspired. We think it’s fun!
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_for all musicians and music enthusiasts: this information graphic illustrates what it takes to make minimum wage selling music. Yikes!
Retrato Robot gets us all mixed up
Super Lambada en Hollywood
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
By some twist of fate, two Gopher editors found themselves listening to a strange lecture on independent and self-produced music projects curated by cult creature, performer and sometime alchemist Internet2 this weekend. Despite the longish presentation sets – we sat through several – and the presenter’s strange choice of player (WinAmp? Really?) we had some laughs and came out kind of obsessed with Spanish music project Retrato Robot. [...]
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_Livia Corona’s photographic series “Two Million Homes for Mexico” focuses on mass development housing projects. What do you think?
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_what the frick is wrong with Eileen Wunderlich?! Oh well, buy her work, she’ll sign it in blood. Look for her at Bongout.
The formal symbolism of Simon Bernheim
La Roue Sans Fin (2009)
Simon Bernheim is a French artist whose work “constantly evolves around the perception of words, signs and language. His project is to change the meaning of words and language away from its sense and towards its form.” (more here) We got in touch with him by recommendation of our beloved Estelle Hanania, and cannot not resist showing you some of his work. Bernheim has taken part in exhibitions involving his “wall painting” projects [...]
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_colorful drawings (and even a wonderful Flickr account) by Paris-based artist Julien Kedryna of modelepuissance.
The tallest man on earth is freakishly good.
Tallest Man on Earth - Burden of Tomorrow
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Shallow Graves, the previous Tallest Man on Earth record left us with two questions: “how did it manage to be so good?” and, “why in the name of ears is this such a short record?” Our trusty Wikipedia tells us that The Tallest Man on Earth is the stage name for Kristian Matsson, whose name, in turn, is not the kind of name one automatically associates with Americana sound of [...]
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_everyday objects are made into paper-art by Yuken Teruya.
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_New research suggests our brains react almost instantaneously to statements that challenge our moral values. Read more here.
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_Luc Melanson is an illustrator living in Laval, Quebec.
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_Cardboard Love, a medium for positive, cardboard-y thoughts.
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_why slowness may be as important as speed, explained by futurists and featured by GOOD magazine.
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_check out these incredible photos of the Alps by Moscow photographer Tata Vislevskaya.
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_Happy learning time: A lesson on Infographics (with some stunning examples)
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_studiofolk is the brainchild of French Illustrator Denis Carrier, featuring vector and hand-drawn works that fill us with joy!
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_the man behind the Indie Rock Coloring Book – graphic designer, art director and illustrator Andy J. Miller - is available for commisions!
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_check out this photostream by ‘P is for Philip’/Philip S. Maybe we’re bad internet detectives, but we couldn’t find the website behind the whiz!
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_Alex Varanese “is an artent believer in hard determinism” – perhaps it was fated that he would create a series of found art typefaces
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_this is an incredibly thorough and long and entertaining list of book (design) stories.
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_Julius Santiago is making a bear for every day of the year. Too cute to pass up.
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_from the Amsterdam Law Forum – Should we want art to transgress moral norms?
The Handmade tale of Lido Pimienta
Lido Pimienta is a mother, an artist, a singer-songwriter, a screamer, a banana-sandwich eater, a student, a Colombian in Canada, a Canadian with dreams of Colombia. She also has one of the best names we can think of. So we did what we do best, emailed her all starry-eyed and asked her questions about her life, her music and her plans and her views. This one is a real mixed media portrait, all images songs and text are of the artist’s [...]
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_art director Romain Lenancker lives in Lyon, makes corporate, packaging and print media solutions.
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_Alberto Hernandez is a graphic designer based in London who is looking for a gig. Check his stuff out!
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_Jeff Hamada, is a “friendly Japanese Canadian artist living and working in beautiful Vancouver, BC”
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_Dieter Rams gives us a lesson in good design.
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_Martin Klasch has a blog that is retro, nostalgic and smart. Oh space age, how we long for thine PVC promises.
Ana Pais Oliveira’s Strange Dwellings
New Strange Place to Live
We fell in love with the woozy, eerie colors of Ana Pais Oliveira’s work immediately. Twenty-eight year old Ana has had a busy year, receiving a bevy of prizes and being a part of the faculty at Oporto University in her native Portugal. Her most recent body of work New strange places to live “reflects about the places where we live, the spaces we inhabit, occupy or pass by, and also the ones that we don’t really know [...]
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_Song, Myung-Jin is a Korean artist with a website full of leaves.
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_Allison Schulnik is an art powerhouse living in Los Angeles.
Flying Lotus shows his Nintendo bleeps
GNG BNG – Flying Lotus (Los Angeles)
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus is a musician and producer from Winnetka, California. His music is often categorized as “experimental” and was at least once called “California’s answer to the Aphex Twin” (see Tong, Pete) – a band, incidentally, also signed to Warp. According to the man himself, this experimental-ness can be attributed to the Nintendo-generation: “I’m used to hearing bleeps and [...]
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_here’s something we love: creative publishing that is handmade and has numbered small print-runs. Duke Press, marry us?
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_we seem to have a bit of a Brazil fixation as of late: here’s André Azevedo
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_Federico Jordán! Federico Jordán! If you don’t know him, meet him now,
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_colors and doodles, the wonderful world of Celyn Brazier.
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_artist and designer Bruno Kurru’s work isn’t “born from certainties, but from questions about what to do and how it should be done”
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_going down the rabbit hole is easy with Talita Hoffmann.
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_Jessica Walsh is a Scorpio, likes sushi and is a multidisciplinary designer. We dig.
Sneak Peek: Lay Flat 02
_Our dear friends at Lay Flat, an incredible magazine about photography, are releasing their second edition titled Meta. The concept? We’ll just give it to you straight from the horse’s mouth “Meta brings together the works of contemporary photographers whose images are conceptually engaged with the history, process and conventions of the medium itself.” The roster of photographers is insane: Claudia Angelmaier, Semâ Bekirovic, Charles Benton, Walead Beshty, Lucas Blalock, Talia Chetrit, Anne Collier, Natalie Czech, Jessica Eaton, Roe Ethridge, Stephen Gill, Daniel [...]
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_color coding meets AWESOME, courtesy of Michael Johansson.
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_Dave Miko is privy to buzz. He is not, however, the proud owner of a website. Hello there!
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_Jesse Corinella is a dynamo. Check out his illustration/ design/ photography/ retouching work HERE.
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_Karel Martens creates layouts, we think. Do you know where we can find her?
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_don’t know much about Choi Nam Yang other than she’s Korean and she has some pretty good work to her name.
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_we’re almost sure this is an indexing website by someone named Harsh Patel. Or whatever, we’re uncool, but his “drawer” is not.
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_Scott Jarvie “believes that the solution to any design problem can be assimilated by creative interrogation, research and thought.” Take, for instance, this chair made of straws.
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Did you know we tweet? Well we do! twitter.com/gophermagazine
Kickstarter is feeling the love (or doesn’t hang up!)
Full disclosure here: We love Kickstarter. Through their website we’ve been fundraising to print the first, fabulous, tricked-out print issue of The Gopher Illustrated. We got in touch with the Kickstarter team, and they were like “Ummm. sure, why not!” so we got excited and coordinated an international phone call through internet phone jacks and a recording device stuck to the earpiece and a pencil and paper in case the recording device didn’t record. The site’s co-founder, Yancey Strickler, picked up the phone [...]
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_Antje Herzog loves to draw in the Zoo. And she’s awfully good at drawing other things too. Also, adorable website.
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_continuing with this bookish theme we seem to have going, Andersen M studios makes fantastic paper stop motion animation. Also check out this work for the New Zealand Book Council,
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_some of you have asked about Matt Kish’s inspiration. Here it is: Zak Smith’s illustrations for Gravity’s Rainbow.
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_inspired by a similar project on Gravity’s Rainboy, Matt Kish set out to illustrate every page of Moby Dick.
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_peruvian born, Oregon dwelling Santiago Uceda is a lot friendlier than he appears on his bio picture. He also makes beautiful posters.
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_Tabitha Gwyn Osler lives in Halifax, but used to live in Vancouver. She takes pictures, draws, makes sculptures and jewelry, and we hope everyone in Vancouver is that cool.
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_Michael Latimer’s words: “I am a freelance artist and designer, I have worked as a creative director for many years for various companies, if you give me some pounds then i can do the same for you too.”
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_no gifts under that tree? Fret not. Tao Lin is the author of Shoplifting From American Apparel. He also has a blog that is very funny. Go buy his book or read his blog.
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_We Are The Friction is a book of illustration and short fiction created by 12 pairs of international writers and illustrators, published by Sing Statistics.
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_Spencer Charles lives in Salt Lake City. He created the packaging for his band on his kitchen table. Look at some more of his work here.
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_Christina Ung retroactively affirms she left her native Bangkok for the Barbie Doll rich lands of Canadia. Her images are geared “towards young adults”
Candy Claws are Coming to Town
When the Candy Claws told us they wanted to visit The Gopher on their Online World Tour, we were excited to learn what an online tour was. We asked them hopefully “does this mean the band plays live on our website? ” and they were like no you simple gopher dontcha know anything at all?” and we were like “well then what is it?” and they were like “we make a new exclusive video featuring one of our songs for each destination [...]
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_wow! the Gopher is featured on Kickstarter!!! we’re making our first edition and you can be part of it! go! go! go!
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_we may be a bit late in catching this, but Brock Davis makes something new and different every day.
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_Yusuf Sevincli is a photographer living in Istanbul.
Hi Ho Silver Oh: On State Lines and the Internets
Communion – Put It All in One Place and Burn It
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
When we learned about Hi Ho Silver Oh, a musical project spearheaded by Casey Trela, we thought it was a holliday album. Turns out our Bruce Springsteen reference radar was broken and HHSO’s music is (blissfully) jingle-bell free. The present iteration of the band is a foursome made up of three Chapel Hillians and a Los Angelino, making music that is lyrical and fun. We [...]
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_nerdy fan confession time: one day we would love to work with “Studio on Fire” design and letterpress studio. For now, drooling over BeastPieces will have to do.
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_we are loving Mike Davis’ blog “So Much Pileup” and its “Philately Fridays”
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_what you see here is part of a campaign for MAMBO by the Australian art and design collective Rinzen. They have offices in Berlin, Brisbane, Melbourne and New York.
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_Greer Honeywill is an artist, photographer and sometime educator living in Melbourne, Autralia. We also like her work with birdcages.
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_ this series by Artist Julie Rrap reminds us a bit of our friend Lucia Pizz‘s work.
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_Scott Campbell is a printmaker, illustrator and musician and one of the founders of the Young Monster collective in Tennessee.
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_Leif Low-Beer is the art page of Young-Gunner Leif Parsons and it is very cool.
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_Jonas Bergstrand is “no lone wolf” – and neither are his illustrations. Very I Dream of Jeannie at times. (via GrainEdit)
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_Shigeru Ito is a Japanese-born designer who moved to Bangkok to be with his wife. Romantic, yes, but also very talented.
Philippe Intraligi / Bauhaus, TV and Hot Soup
Philippe Intraligi is a German-born, Brazil-interning, New York-dwelling, Graphic Designer whose impressive client includes Telecom Italia, Adidas (and their Missy Elliott collection that a Gopher Editor who will remain nameless loves) and whose branding work is rooted in aesthetic philosophy and love of Bauhaus. He also just confessed to us that even though he’s a branding rockstar (our judgment, but clearly!) we have the privilege of getting his first interview, where he talks design, TV and even sends us songs he listens to [...]
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_from WIRED’s GeekDad blog, a cute little list: Top 10 Bad Messages from Good Movies. Oh stop it, you know I’m a sucker for lists.
The Sound of Arrows Whooshes By
The Sound of Arrows – Winding Roads (Danger/2008)
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
The Sound of Arrows is the hard-labored baby of Stefan Storm and Oskar Gullstrand, a Swedish duo with superhero names. (I aaaaam Stefaaaaan Stooooorm… yes? right?) They hail from Gävle “one of the most boring towns in Sweden” according to Labrador, their Malmo-based record label. Notable residents include the Prog-Rock band Beardfish. I love Wikipedia. Labrador quips that the first “Sound of [...]
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_San Francisco Illustrator and Artist Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch has a show at Fecal Face Gallery righthisminute. We wish we could go.
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_Gavin Potenza makes amazing infographics. We want to be his friends.
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_Diana Marie Behl’s work references “memory and narrative… metaphor and humor” She lives in South Dakota.
Snuggle Up with Candice Tarnowski
After taking a tour through Candice Tarnowski’s works on her website, reading that she was born in the Canadian Prairie seemed almost obvious. Tarnowski’s media – textile and installation – are rooted both in the highly cerebral and in the very basic quest for comfort, it seems. We found ourselved overtaken by this comfort, by soft textile and the idea of home. It is precisely this notion that provides the conceptual and aesthetic foundation for Candice. She eloquently explains her practice in her [...]
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_ Affex Ventura is a Danish artist, photographer and designer living in Copenhagen.
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_In her website’s own words: Emily L. Eibel wants a cabin in the woods, but for now, she lives in Brooklyn.
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_Michael Paulkner works around “information technology and new media as it relates to branding, communications and design.” We basically think he’s awesome
Philosophy / Jesse Prinz’s Surrealist Embarassment
With all these music and art and design posts, we couldn’t resist waxing philosophical. On a recent trip, I met with philosophy Professor Jesse Prinz at NYC’s Deitch Galleries and was so excited about this interview I forgot my wallet. (Thanks for coffee, Jesse!). There, he talked about art history, the similarity between moral judgment and aesthetic judgment and why porcelain cats can be political. Jesse is a Professor of Philosophy at C.U.N.Y, former Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at [...]
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_Miss Lotion is a Danish-born artist who resides in Copenhagen. Apparently she has some sort helpless compulsion to draw?
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_ Lumadessa is Josh Brill’s art and design label, where he aims to construct ‘visual reinterpretations of life’. We like his birds.
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_Mikey Burton is a midwestern designer living in Philadelphia who “still wants to make beautiful things for awesome people.” This is his dissertation project: New covers for required reading. Double nerd joy!
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_Agan Harahap is a self-taught photographer and illustrator in Indonesia. He plays around with photos.
Gonduras: Critters, and Self Exposure
Gonduras Jitomirsky is a self-taught photographer, illustrator and all ’round artist living and working in Tel Aviv. We befriended him on a website and were captivated by his critters, but know little about him except the amazing self-description he posted on his website, which we reproduce in whole. Also check out his blog, his other blog, his other-other blog, his flickr and maybe follow him on twitter. Geez.
I drink [...]
Music / Candy Claws Sweeten the Deal
This one time I went Scuba Diving. I was thirteen, and and I felt like an idiot with all the gear and the flippers and the mask on top of the awkwardness of being thirteen. That is, until I got in the water and floated and there was silence and tons of little, shiny fish were swimming around me and I never wanted to leave. Listening to the Candy Claws is like going in the water was that one time. Ryan and Kay [...]
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_The folks at Methane Studios make incredible posters.
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_About 8% of the male population has some sort of color blindness. This website works to create web patterns for the colorblind.
Interview / Stephen Ledwidge makes us blush
Receiving and reading submissions is probably one of my most favoritest things to do. Usually, I put them in a neat little reading stack (on my e-mail inbox, of course) and go through them one by one, in order of arrival. Except, that is, in the case of Stephen Ledwidge, whose email shot out right at me as I was about to close my browser. It would be too easy to say it was Irish luck, but I thought “eh, why not.” Along [...]
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_Upon seeing Ty Wilkins’ work, we realized Kansas is no longer just Dorothy’s home.
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_My Cardboard Life: Web Comics made out of cardboard, courtesy of Phillipa Rice.
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_We love Cody Hudson and his Struggle Inc.
In search of Emmanuel Polanco
Like many of our posts, we owe this internet-find to our incredible clumsiness. We search, we fail and in failing find something radically more exciting. Emmanuel Polanco is an illustrator who works in France, whose work we recognize from Philosophie Magazine, of all places. We came upon his page on Computerlove, got really excited and began a frenzied search for Mr. Polanco’s homepage, formerly emmanuelpolanco.net which is now defunct.
We are still posting some of his fabulous work, [...]
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_VADS just digitized the Design Council’s slide collection. Nerdgasm much?
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_“I can Read” is a picture blog with a simple concept: posting images with words in them. Kind of like PostSecret, but without all the guilt.
Ulises Hadjis is irresistible
Ulises Hadjis
Lunes (nuuro remix) - Remixes 2009
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Ulises Hadjis is a great personal friend of the Gopher editors. A maracucho with Greek roots, he is one of those singer-songwriters who make you forget all about how you hate singer-songwriters. No random medieval instruments, no hipster haircuts, no creepy angling at the lah-deez, just pretty mellow music. Last year Ulises launched his first album “Presente” for which his brother and Gopher illustrator Aquiles (this [...]
Interview / Shane Lavalette Talks Shop
Shane Lavalette is a Photographer. He lives in Massachussets, shoots everywhere else, often waking at the ugly, hairy and sleepy side of dawn to capture space in convoluted places (this makes him a hero in our lazy eyes. I mean… lazy selves eyes… um…) and tells us the Ninja Turtles camera was his first piece of photographic equipment. He is also the young and gifted editor of the art-photography magazine “Lay Flat.” The magazine includes loose photo prints in [...]
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_ Mauro Gatti’s website exclaims “Welcome, Stranger. While you are in my territory, no boring thoughts will fill your head.” We believe him.
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_Kim Sooja is a Korean-born installation/performance/video/everything-else artist living in New York City. Check out her work here.
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_All we know about George Myers is that he is a freelance illustrator and that he’s somewhere in the UK.
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_This grid-bubblegum dream is from the Melbourne Series by Shiau-Peng Chen.
Panther Touches our Sounds
Love is Sold (Lips and Ribs remix) Entropy, 2009
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
One may be inclined to do some horrible things when it rains. For me, these “horrible things” take shape in waxing nostalgic about the recent and not-so-recent past. Unearthing photographs, looking at old por… traits, you know, pigtails and lollipops and – I mean, I’ve heard this happens to friends of friends.
This particularly rainy afternoon led to some file cleanup and [...]
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_Bennett Holzworth teaches graphic design and lives in Nebraska and makes posters like these.
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_Today (and tomorrow and forevermore) we bring you Julius Von Bismarck and his Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus.
Young Studios brings the flashcards
So far, the Eye Candy section has featured design, photography, painting and work that is beautiful and belongs – in one form or another – in the pantheons of the artworld. This very special and highly experimental edition (I fear Lope might smite me for this post) features something a little more candy, a little less eye. So here’s the story:
The verbally austere folks at Young Studios have a project. Every mother-stuck-in-traffic-with-a-chatty- four-year-old’s dream project in [...]
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_ We were saddened to learn that San Francisco bookshop Babylon Falling closed shop. They kept their website as an archive
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_Central Office & Co. is in Portland, Oregon. We like their webpage, and we think you’ll like it too.
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_Marc Alcock’s website tells us he is a graphic designer who believes “design begins with ideas.” This is the result.
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_Julia Pott is an illustrator. She takes comissions, apparently.
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_We got this 1958 illustration for Canada Dry from the amazing canadiandesignresource.ca / you must go there immediately.
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_by pure chance: Luann Jennings of Comment Magazine asks “Does America need a ministry of culture?”
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_British artist Bruce Munro makes pretty fields of light.
Story Time with William Giraldi
The world is ending, and every page of every magazine ever printed has self-destructed – burned, BURNED! – in protest of the coming apocalypse of the newsstand because by golly the printed page is a dinosaur waiting to breathe its last breath and die in the thirsty, muddy pits of Fantasia-evocation and early childhood horror. This is, at least, what some would have us believe and what we Gophers might have started preaching (if only out of fear of the rapidly wagging index finger) if [...]
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_ Today we have Valerie Pensworth’s midthought-retro illustrations. She also has a video. Enjoy!
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_Philadelphia based artist AJ Fosik makes bears out of paper. They kind of make me feel like i’m in a very cool NatScience museum.
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_The Guardian’s Sam Leith, inspired by Dash Snow, asks why art can’t simply shock
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_Michael Clinard takes some very cool portraits.
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_Check out this article by Michael Bierut, a Critic in Graphic Design, titled 26 Years, 85 Notebooks. Also, the Gopher wishes Lili a happy birthday.
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_Sarah Cain is an American artist living in Los Angeles. Her work incorporates doilies, sometimes. via ArtNet
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_Blighia Sapida is the title given to this painting by Hurvin Anderson, a London Based artist.
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_Jill Lin made the scratch-n-sniff version of everyflavor beans, and in gorgeous tiny card form. See more of her work here
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_This photo we got from Sea Shanty’s Flickr whose name appears to be Lola and has a blog.
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_Sandra Juto’s written the book on having fun. Enough said.
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_Tara Donne takes the kinds of pictures we wish our mothers took. Lovely indeed.
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_Independent book publisher Lines&Shapes has just launched OtherBooks, which “originated for the sole purpose of publishing more ambitious book projects…” We like the sound of that. via randominspiration
Shaken: Experiencing Dan Auerbach
Friend and Gopher-writer Dylan Shrader came up with an idea for a review format. Early on, us Gophers agreed that we’d like musicians to do all the music reviews. Shrader is a musician, so he qualifies for this, but he may have just convinced us that personal experiences with music can be effective introductions to music. Read through and let us know what you think. Check out Dan Auerbach’s music here.
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_Cardon Webb brings his design skills to the aid of missing cats and babysitter services in New York City. Sharpies, beware. For his complete portfolio go here.
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_Dirk Fowler’s work profile describes him as an old man stuck inside a young man’s body – who is not that young anymore. But look at these posters! via random inspiration
Havalina: Like Javelin with an H… in Spanish
We met Manuel Cabezalí when he was touring with songstress Russian Red in a room papered with foil. It was then he mentioned his project Havalina, a band formed eight years ago and in the process of releasing their fifth album “Imperfección.” Below they describe their project, and per our request reviewed an album by another band. Also take a minute check out their blog. Without further ado:
Havalina
Incursiones – from “Imperfección” 2009
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
[...]
Take a peek: Jessica Hische
Lope, our Art Director, is a type freak. Longtime editor of Platanoverde Magazine in Venezuela, he dreams in highly stylized type-text and drools at the sight of Futura. When curating portfolios for our first edition, our dear Lope almost seized with delight. The reason? Jessica Hische.
Jessica graciously provided enough images to fill two portfolios and answered our many many questions. We were going to make you wait for the print edition for all the goodies we have in store but what the [...]
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_ A few artists collaborated with cloudycollection to make a limited edition print set that reminds us of out parent’s childhoods. This one by Stephan Britt.
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_check out the Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists – because you don’t have a reason not to. This one by Leo Morey.
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_From the rare trove of unintelligible sources in the internets: the nonsense infographic here is credited to Viget via makenosound
Meet Matilde
We posted this interview last week, and like the elusive lens of the most sneaky it disappeared before we realized it. So once again we bring you the work of Matilde Travassos, a fashion photographer by trade who is living in Lisbon. She has agreed to answer our every curiosity.
1. what lessons have you learned from living in Paris?
Leaving in such a cosmopolitan city, I was closer to the fashion world, witch was really good to improve my fashion photography work. Personally [...]
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_We’re suckers for catalog-work, so we were thrilled to find the Museum of Flight’s airline logo archive. In other news of vintage interest, it’s Michu’s father’s birthday today!
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_Mary Thompson likes to draw. She also makes jewellery.
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_this photo is titled Motorista and it was taken by Gorka Gondra, a Portugal-based photographer.
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_this is Low Rise by Peter Root. Frankly, we wish we’d thought this up.
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_the Tour De France wouldn’t have struck us as particularly artsy, but photographer Brent Humphrey has made its sights his muse.
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_Lisa Hanawalt lives in L.A. and has a dog named Indiana Jones. She also makes these drawings.
Vanity-Shmanity
It’s Just Vanity
Oh Kiddo, You Don’t Even Know
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Following our fabulous first post, this idea of letting bands who send us their MP3′s and photos describe themselves has grown on us. So much so that we’ve expanded the concept into a little show-n-tell section for musicians: they send their project’s info, some music and a photo. The catch is that they must also send a review and some music (a link, in its defect) of another band. And [...]
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_ Shocked Images II is the title of this collage by Berlin-based artist Kirstine Roepstorf
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_ These seats are a part of Charlott Markus’ “Cinema de Erotique“. We guess these are shot in Amsterdam, where she lives.
Talking Shop: “Global” Explained.
We have been hard at work putting together our zero issue (which you will be able to flip through in our nifty PageFlip on our “magazine” section) several issues have come up surrounding the idea of spaces. Spaces as in “we’re running out of space” due to our growing collection of tchatchkes. Or spaces as in the fascinating world of digital real-estate. Or time-spaces, since the editors of this fine magazine are in different time zones – making phone calls is fabulously chaotic. However this [...]
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_Nathanael Rich of Slate asks why Scandinavians write such great crime fiction. RedRum in Oslo? (that legendary home of the accords) Click on the link for the story.
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_Here at the Gopher we love lists. Lists make up the geography of our minds. So when we found Webdesigner Depot’s list of 100 extraordinary paper designs we had to post it.
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_This is not a portfolio, but it is free content in easily digestible meta-format. Check out Chris Anderson’s Wired piece on why freebies are the future of business.
Matt W. Moore
Our last post in this section ended in attributive mystery, so this one is titled and linked for your derivative viewing pleasure. According to his website, Matt (can we call you Matt?) just had a solo exhibition named “Parallel Universe” in Sao Paulo which included the painting of a rather large, colorful, geometric, tripping-the-light-fantastic mural.
The exhibit description follows – a direct quote from mwmgraphics.com “Parallel Universe” Series explores and celebrates the convergence of his dedication to various disciplines of design and art. The paintings were [...]
Happiness in the Kitchen
We Liked This
Oh, but how we’d be thrilled to preach on a saturday. Point being, we saw this and liked it, so we post it and a link – with regards – to the source:
EDIT: It seems that this image link leads nowhere. In the interest of not deleting things, please, if you know who we can attribute this photo (ot design) to, leave a note.
Dylan Shrader
Let’s test this thing, shall we? This one features our friend and Appalachian-dweller Dylan Shrader, who will be reviewing music in our upcoming first issue. We break the seal on our nifty music section with Shrader’s “Some Day” – recorded in a mountain cabin while in solitary (and voluntary) confinement. But he makes a better introduction than we do, so read on to the bottom and listen up for a treat.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Dylan Shrader is a multi-instrumentalist whose addiction to southern [...]
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_as if proof was needed that the editors of The Gopher [ Illustrated! ] spend a lot of time online [ particularly editors of the male gender who will will not <LOPE> name that tend to scan the interwebs for pretty tchatchkes all day long ] here’s a link to byAMT design, home of the Incredible Key-Shaped USB device. We were tempted to put a tiny picture of the I.K.S.U.S.B.D. here but decided to create an image instead, their [...]
Strictly Speaking
We are all about the words. And the design. And the, well, everything else. Send short fiction (8pp. double space max.), literary reviews and cultural article proposals to to michubenaim@gmail.com. Visual art portfolios – including but not limited to typography, painting, graffiti, illustration and photography – to junioruiz@gmail.com. Send proposals for reports and chronicles to k.s.chocron@gmail.com
This Page is being built!
Much ado about style, a crash course on css and we’re on the interwebs! This page is very much under construction, so fret not faithful friend – it will be all it should be on the double. In the meantime, if you would like to expedite the process to this facelift, don’t be shy. We like to learn.
And if you want to help just moderately… click on this post and comment with the answer to this question: when you click on a post, can you [...]
We’re up?
After a weekend – and lets face it, more than one skipped workday – we are done shooting the photos for the upcoming presentation of the magazine. Oh yes, the Gopher Illustrated [upon Lope's request i feel obligated to say that the name was born on May 17th, after far too much deliberation] is up and running. To show appreciation to my mother, who is surely the only human reading this, a picture for your viewing pleasure:
There will be a video up by this weekend. [...]
