231: When the Morning Comes.

I promised myself that this will only be the length of one beer. Well, there is two swigs left and it is pretty warm at this point. In fact, I am not going to lie, it is kicked.

That is all I have got at this point.

Watch the video below. I know I know, I'm late to the game, but what? I took a break and got inspired. I like that this video uses the sheer genius of the Rube Goldberg, which was another favorite in the Dan Dunn arsenal of cool shit to know. Also, was how to toss an egg off the roof of the school without damaging it.

One take. The whole film cycles through on one take. Or appears to. And I can guarantee that you will find something new every time. Note the State Farm Insurance truck that kicks off the whole Rube Goldberg. Apparently this has been garnering OK Go a lot of attention for its bold drastic take on product placement. Note the "OK Go Thanks State Farm for making this possible" at the end.

I love that this band will never run out of great video ideas. Thanks OK Go.



The video that it instantly brought to mind was this Michel Gondry music video called "Lucas with the Lid Off". For a couple reasons. One of them being the format of the frame and how it moved through the video with the action. The other for its sheer ingenuity (and Solo Take on the action). This was the one thing that fascinated me more than anything in film school. The opening of Touch of Evil (I've talked about this before right?) and the Royal Tenenbaum's ending. So good. But, what they do really well in the above OK Go one is seal the fact that this is a production by showing us the people behind the scenes in the final shot. I get that the whole thing is behind the scenes, but I mean the people making sure that everything is running smoothly behind the camera.

You get little snippets, glimpses of the genius of the action in the Gondry one, but it mostly comes from the main character, who, similar to the band members of OK Go keep re-appearing. Gondry deliberately shows us shots of equipment (cameras etc) but the entirety of the This Too Shall is the background. Everything is revealed in the unfolding of the Goldberg Machine. Whew, this is exhausting and way more than a beers worth. Even a tall Olympia. Know why?

Because there is more.




And here is the really strange part. There is another official video. I read through this letter from OK Go where they break down how the Music Industry works - for them - and then they gave a link to a website where you could watch the video for their new single and this is it. Apparently this was actually the first video that they released for their most recent album in January...

Oh Wikipedia how I love you so.

In any case there was one little section of the letter that seemed to make some sense. It went like this:

That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in “viral marketing” and the success of our videos is now taught in business school. But here's a secret: zillions of hits was never the point. We're a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff. We chase our craziest ideas for a living, and if sharing those ideas takes 40 websites instead of one, it doesn’t make too big a difference to us.

Well, thanks again guys. For being crazy, awesome, and honest. And a welcome distraction to the question of "Who's going to win the Tour de France?" Because, we all know that it is going to be A. Schleck. Or Contador. I can't decide. King of Spain? Or the Lads from Luxe?

Are there any good Tour de France T-Shirts that are going to be rocked for this extravaganza?

Ok, back to work there are fucking magazines to make people.

044: JDK Design

Went up to Burlington, Vermont the other day. Pretty uneventful drive in the rain. Yet, I'm guessing that is what you want out of a drive in the rain. If I said something like...pretty event-full drive in the rain that may imply lots of crashes and whatnot. That didn't happen.

Visited the likes of JDK Design while up there. Click on that link. Check out the bird, or birds that pop up, wait a minute and then click on the little cloud in the upper right hand corner. Prepare yourself to be amused for a few minutes. Good stuff.

Seated right next to Lake Champlaine the JDK offices are a sight to behold. It was a mix of amusement and fascination traipsing through their halls. The open space aspect of the studios contained within lent itself to their design style. With an emphasis on the outdoor industry clients like Merrell, Patagonia, Chaco, Burton, and even a crazy little electric lawnmower get amazing design makeovers from these guys. Can you say "design makeover?" Or does that sound like some new reality tv show? I can tell you what though. There would definitely be Space Invaders in my design makeover.


Not to mention the fact that it just looks like a great place to work.

This is the 10 Minute Design Wall. I can't remember if the designer of the month gets ten minutes to design each one, or ten minutes total. But you can see the resulting images are pretty amazing.


Another cool (and mind you, when I say cool, I mean pretty fucking awesome) part about working at JDK is the Skate Park in the Basement. I capitalized that because, well, they have a skate park in their basement. I don't even skate, not even a little bit. Never have. Actually, I take that back. Once I had a Snoopy Skateboard that I started riding around the neighborhood in good ol Lancaster, Wisco. I got made fun of so much by the local "street tuffs" that I stopped riding it and started hating Snoopy for it. So, that's the extent of my skate abilities.


However, I wanted to dust off Snoop for just this occasion.

The other thing that they have in the basement is the Iskra Print Collective. This is a pretty cool project that they have going on as well. A place for their designers to work on the print end of things. No big deal, they just all chip in to help pay for materials and they can use it whenever they want. Ok, guys, I'm in. All you have to do is ask. I'd even consider moving to Burlington, VT. Just sayin.

The great part about the Print Collective is that they team with local venue Higher Ground and produce limited edition posters to couple with bands that are performing. Good bands. Sweet bands. Like the Decemberists. This part of it also took me back a few because I have always had a sick fascination with concert posters.

My friend Michael lives in San Fran and goes to the Fillmore every once in a while and he always comes away with Sick, Sick posters from the events. That's kind of what Iskra is doing. Just cranking out sick sick shit. Keep it up.

They also have a little book. _ of 1500 that they put out to chronicle their 10 year relationship with Higher Ground and all the posters that they have produced. I actually wrote about it once here. This was definitely part of the impetus behind checking these guys out. I was really psyched to see their print shop. Who knows, maybe there's an Embrocation Poster in my/your future?