Wow, this is lovely. Panasonic Note headphones packaged by Scholz & Friends.

Wish I’d thought of that…

…found via 2modern

Along with a lot of other right-thinking people, I was really sad to hear the BBC were planning to close down digital station 6music. Almost as importantly as the end of the Adam & Joe show, it will mean I won’t have a use for this sketch I did a while ago.

The 6 was always aching to be a pair of headphones, and most of the other stations have a small intervention to the number to indicate their content.

If you want to try and change the BBC’s mind, there’s a protest tomorrow in London, apparently if enough people turn up they will consider a reprieve.

And if that happens, I’m happy to develop the logo for the relaunch.

We were treated to a visit by Storm Thorgerson last week, album cover design legend and, as it turns out, very entertaining guy. Storm’s portfolio is overwhelming, famous for working with Pink Floyd and creating arguably the most iconic album cover of all time in Dark Side of the Moon, but has since worked with bands as diverse as Anthrax, Muse, The Offspring, Audioslave and Biffy Clyro. He admits he doesn’t always like the music, but that’s mainly because he often has to listen to it repeatedly during the design of the artwork. Storm told us that he was going to “show pictures, tell you how I did them, or what I was trying to do.” which worked for me. He also said at one point:

“I wouldn’t buy a record for it’s cover, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.”

…which was fantastic and kind of set the tone of the evening. He split his work into sections, which rather suspiciously spelled out his name…

S is for Sets & Scupltures

“If we get a chance to build something we do it”

Storm clearly loves to make stuff. The example below from Anthrax’s Stomp 442 album was never a whole sphere. Instead it was a quarter sphere, rotated and manipulated to create a composite image. Storm told us of his fascination for spheres, and the fact that “you never know what’s inside them, if they’re solid or hollow”

Anthrax ‘Stomp 442′ 1995

T is for Tales

“Things are richer with a story, so I try to encourage people to make one up, even if it’s not the one I intended.”

For the Biffy Clyro album Puzzle, Storm fixated on the fact that lead singer and songwriter Simon Neil’s mother had recently died. The figure in the foreground is in a fetal position, something which Storm associated with grief, and the missing piece is just beside him, although he can’t see it. A detail often missed is that of a figure being forcibly removed from the room, symbolic of having a loved one wrenched away. This is Storm’s own story, based on his understanding of the band and their music.

Biffy Clyro ‘Puzzle’ 2007

O is for Obsessions

“How much can you persuade someone to look again?”

Storm told us that he simply loved the idea of taking a cow and photographing it for the front cover of Pink Floyd’s 1970 album. The randomness of this delighted him “I’m lucky I’ve worked for people who don’t know any different. They didn’t know if my work was any good, any more than I did.” The cow was an instinctive idea and not over-thought, eventually ending up reproduced at huge scales incongruously across billboards worldwide. Storm’s insistence and the support of the band made sure it happened.

Pink Floyd ‘Atom Heart Mother’ 1970

R is for Real

“Design is in the doing”

The photograph for Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is impressive stuff. Storm is proud that he actually set a man on fire to achieve it. Interestingly, he told us that to start with the figures were the other way round, but the prevailing wind set the unlighted man’s moustache on fire, so it was rearranged.

Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ 1975

M is for Models

“It’s better to have something good than something shit”

Storm’s Back Catalogue is exactly that. Not a row of polite captioned JPEGs but the album covers painted on the back of lovely ladies. That’s the sort of thing you can get away with if you’re Storm Thorgerson.

It was a great talk and the man himself was very happy to talk about any aspect of his work. I decided not to mention the fact that I used to design CD covers, because those were mainly the kind of ones you find in motorway services bargain bins. Two more which he brought with him were a long term favourite of mine for Muse…

…and the newest Biffy Clyro album cover, which was frankly amazing.

Not many people make album covers like that any more.

You can see a clip of Storm talking about his work here and the poster I designed for the event here. After the talk, he even signed my copy of Dark Side of the Moon, and you can tell he’s a visual perfectionist, because he did it along one side of the prism. I liked that.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Beatles Rock Band for some time now, valiantly ignoring all other rhythm action games and going to the rare trouble to preorder it so I got it on release day 09.09.09. I went the whole hog and got the full band edition just to show I mean business. Hopefully it will be waiting for me when I get home (postal strike permitting), the neighbours aren’t going to get much sleep tonight…

The game looks beautiful, just take a look at the opening sequence…

The animation is by Passion Pictures and MK12. Passion Pictures in particular are well known for their work on Gorillaz, as well as ads for Sony Bravia and the Audi Unboxed ad I posted a while ago. MK12 have done some great movie title sequences such as Quantum of Solace.

There’s a lot of Beatles stuff around, the hype machine is in full swing as all of the original albums are also being released for the first time remastered in stereo on the same day. The box set will set you back a cool £170 though… Apple may finally even be releasing them on iTunes too which has been long rumoured.

Oh, and here’s the trailer for Guitar Hero’s response to the whole thing, launching on 10.10.10…

Where were you when you heard Michael Jackson had died? It really doesn’t matter I’m afraid. Sorry.

We’re living in a time when information is more mobile than ever and things happen FAST even in your pocket. You don’t need to be there, you just need a hotspot. The video above shows the news breaking on Twitscoop, which tracks Twitter trends. It’s fascinating, this is how information behaves in real time, it’s alive.

All of the frantic information, rumour and then iPhone scrambles for valid news sources to verify the story, led to a massive spike in internet data usage. Twitter was groaning under the strain, think of the poor birdies trying to lift that massive King-of-Pop sized whale…

In fact Twitter became the star of the show, as in addition to the turmoil in Iran, Michael Jackson’s death was something which offered one of its first true tests, the world was really relying on it to find out what was happening. It’s no good Googling “Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest” in the middle of the night when you suspect someone is surely pulling your leg, there’s no cached information to draw on. MJ hadn’t had the foresight to put out a press release or preschedule his multiple organ failure to coincide with the evening news (although Uri Geller seemed strangely available for comment). No, Twitter is the immediacy search engine™, the only way to find out what’s going on right now. No wonder so many important people are frightened of it.

And so maybe it’s fitting that Twitter also offers up the best tribute to Michael Jackson I’ve come across so far, the inspired Billie Tweets by 9Astronauts. I could try and explain but it’s easier if you just click this link and see it for yourself.

Amazing.

These really are fascinating times we’re living in.

Rest in peace Michael.

Alternative titles for this post included Abbey Slowed, The Long and Grinding Road, Stop My Car, All Things Must Pass, Dumb Together…

Old news this, it’s on TV every 5 minutes but I couldn’t let it go. Lovely new ad for the Audi Q5. The music makes it too, it’s Woody Guthrie “Car Song”.

From BBH London. “When the world zigs, zag.” Apparently. They’re also the people behind the Barclaycard water slide ad which everyone on Facebook seems to think is real…

Audiosurf takes an audio track and turns it into a race track. Beats, pitch and tempo all control the path of the course, and your craft must fly along it, dodging or collecting blocks of various colours according to the structure of the music. It’s absorbing stuff and great fun.

The best part? Audiosurf uses your own MP3 collection for the gameplay, it even compiles charts of the most played tracks, compares other players’ performance to the same songs, and scrobbles to last.fm too.

The worst part? It’s a dirty PC only game, which is made a little better by being pretty cheap and available on the excellent Steam platform, but only just. You’re alright if you can take a break from your PowerPoint presentation on your PC, or Halo on your xBox, but if you are a PS3 and Mac man like me your options are limited. For the PlayStation, may I suggest Vib Ribbon…

I can happily report however, that if you have an Intel Mac, you can play it perfectly using Boot Camp and there is also a free demo to try it out first. Still, a PlayStation Network release would be great, and it would go down a treat with all the audiovisual Mac users out there…

…pretty please?

It was a great night, not sure who won what, not sure it matters, and it turns out ‘golden tickets’ are ten a penny, it’s the platinum ones you want. The only fly in the ointment apart from Steve Jones was the fact that our icons and identity could have been implemented with a bit more imagination, but the system is new and I guess we’ll see them develop their bravery over time once it’s more recogniseable to people. It did all look lovely…

There are more photos here, and if you fancy watching the show, it’s on Channel 4 tonight at 11:25pm. I’ll be watching to see if I can spot myself…

When the worlds of Back to the Future and Graphic Design mix, you can be sure I’m all over it like a rash.

Neon Neon, Boom Bip’s collaboration with Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals has resulted in the album ‘Stainless Style’ with accompanying picture disc singles following the theme. Stainless steel, diagonal lines and lovely ladies. I’m off to their site for a listen…

This site experienced a traffic spike after I posted about 100 Best Boobs, and I’m still the lucky recipient of many a dissatisfying Google Image search, so I can only imagine what mentioning the word ‘porn’ here is going to do…

Blimey…