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Friday Videos - April 20th, 2012

No crazy gif this week because, frankly, nothing can top that inflated superman still. It'll all be clear when you see the actual video. Here's the playlist.

• R2-D2's Other Message - yea, the joke is obvious but still worth a chuckle or two. The Tupac Hologram actually opens up some really questionable doors in the world of entertainment but I won't get into that here.
• Video game planets - not particularly wacky, just a nice bit of graphic design & animation representing some recognizable games.
• Joe Biden BLR Soundbite - yep, these are still amusing from start to finish.
• Nicolas Cage performs John Cage - if you're not familiar with 4'33" this probably won't make much sense. If you are familiar, you get the stupidity of the joke.
• Superman Body Inflation - 5 minutes of a weird fetish you don't even want to begin to understand. There are plenty more videos from Love To Inflate if you're curious.
• Henri 2, Paw de Deux - life is a weight that Henri can hardly handle.
• Eating Pizza - you have never been this cool eating pizza.

Bonus

• Chakkani Chukka - I posted this awhile back for a prior edition of Friday Videos but it's worth a revisit. Maybe it can be your weekend project to recreate it in its entirety.
• Ted Turner Birthday Wishes - Ted Turner on Conan gets me every time.
• KK Slider - Hurt - not visually interesting but this bizarre Animal Crossing cover of Johnny Cash's version of NIN's "Hurt" is oddly entrancing. I love it.

That's it! Have a great weekend. Remember to make an effort to support Record Store Day.

Consume Consume

Consume Consume follows in the grand tradition of Found Photos (content) and Them Thangs (randomness) and any number of other sites filled to the brim with a slew of unrelated images that give you a moments pause. It's brainless but it's always a great way to waste the day away browsing through the archives. There are just some things you can't miss.

via Mr. Box.

4CP - Four Color Process

Four Color Process is 30+ pages of panels of various comic books showcasing the artistic goodness that comes from restraint - namely, having to work within the confines of the four color process. For those that don't think there's beauty in comics, I offer you to partake in offerings such as this or this or this or this.. well, you get the point. I can see myself wasting my whole day browsing the archives (which, hopefully, stay intact since it's a Posterous hosted site).

Oh, and if you're not into the paginated view - check out this Mosaic View, you lose a bit of the grandness of the large views but it's still a fun alternative viewing style.

via Mr. Stipe.

Joshua Hibbert

The works of Joshua Hibbert run through an enjoyable gamut of styles - watercolor portraits, photographic collage, sculpture and, occasionally, a bit of ridiculousness are just a portion of what he's offering. There's little information available beyond the images presented but what you see is all you need, a collection of interesting works.

Time Travel Now

If you find yourself in need of some vintage inspiration - typography, illustration, shapes, photography, color schemes, etc - from the 1940's onward then you'll probably want to steer on over to It's Better Than Bad's photostream - an absolutely immense repository of goods covering all the bases. Be forewarned that there's the occasional nudie lady in the mix as well but if that sort of thing bothers you you'll quickly forget about it after seeing Mr. Copy or anything like this.

via Jamie.

Farewell Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress

If you aren't familiar with the letterpressed works of Yee-Haw Industries, please take some time immediately to get familiar with their offerings. Why the rush? Because they'll be closing their doors at the end of April. Their shop is filled with pages and pages of diverse prints, typography cards, journals, monoprints, Giant postcards, etc. It really is an overwhelming amount of great design (and inspiration)... which makes it just that much more unfortunate that they're shutting their doors after sixteen years. Dive in.

HT Miss Briggs.

Tom & James Draw

By their very nature, Collaborative art projects are always interesting just to see what each individual artist brings to the table. In the case of Tom and James Draw you've got two brothers working together to create some surreal portraits. Their story gets a bit more interesting if you read a little further:

Tom and James are two brothers who have influenced and assisted each other in their drawing and painting practice since the very beginning of their lives. James was born in 1977 and Tom was born on 1981 with Downs Syndrome.

Their collaboration is unique as they are sharing experiences between the outsider and “insider” art world. James identifies with Toms abstract use of visual coding and Tom builds around James’ skilled and confident mark making. Tom relaxes James’ technical obsessions, and James enables Tom’s concentration and playful markmaking. Together they make worlds of experience, encompassing people around them and their actions, animals, plants, engines, and sometimes hilarious nods to the human experience and perception.

Maybe it's unfair to point out the fact that Tom has Downs Syndrome because it's inconsequential to the appreciation of the artworks produced but it does make it that much more interesting to view.

via Shablazm.

Code Snippets For Your Thursday

• Vertical Centering with Flexbox - turns out that once "display: flexbox" is fully supported, we'll all have a much easier time doing things like vertically centering block elements. Ready for that day to come.
• Twitter Spinner - use the Twitter Bootstrap loader anywhere. Does require "background-size" CSS support but it's a snippet worth having around.
• Responsive Viewport Units - coming soon to CSS3 standards and implementations will be viewport units that should make responsive design easier. Or maybe it will just be another unit we all ignore until it becomes painfully clear that it's the easiest way to do things. Only time will tell. I'm still holding my breath for the rem unit.

John Gall

The book design work of John Gall runs a wide gamut of styles - each executed incredibly well. I've always liked this series Murakami covers but had no idea they were done by the same person responsible for works like these Nabokov shadowboxes or these Auslander covers. Lots to see in there, soak it all in.

via H+FR.

Infrasound

So, the other night I saw Don Hertzfeldt speak about his short films and some of the techniques he uses when crafting every part of the production. Off-handedly he mentioned that he works in samples of Infrasound - sound that exists in a frequency range below what the human ear can audibly hear but, apparently, can still be sensed by the human body. While the existence of this kind of sound isn't really news I was unaware of all the fascinating facts that go along with it. Such as:

• Infrasound is emitted naturally by avalanches, volcanoes and other severe weather phenomena
• Infrasound is used by a number of animals - whales, elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes - to communicate over long distances.
• When felt by humans, the frequencies can (and often do) invoke a feeling of fear, anxiety and a generally heightened emotional state.
• It has been attempted to be deployed in a weaponized state in actual warfare and for crowd control.
• Researcher Vic Tandy claims that these waves may be the cause of people seeing ghosts, as the resonant frequency of the human eye exists in the same range. Though there are skeptics, he still wrote a paper about it called The Ghost in the Machine.

There's more on the topic but that's a nice broad overview of the Wikipedia. I'll let you dive in more from there if you're curious. It can lead to some interesting destinations.

Andy Luce: Visual Armory

The work of Andy Luce, aka Visual Armory, has that rare capacity to span being captivating design as well as intriguing fine art. The intent behind each is clear but he's obviously quite skilled in both realms. The hand drawn type that spans both undertakings is perfect. Absolutely lovely and inspiring across the board.

via TypeEverything.

Adam Dedman

If you've never given yourself the pleasure of browsing the illustrated works of Adam Dedman, please take a moment to do so now. He has a lot of loose-but-intricate linework in the majority of pieces and you can get lost in the details. Once you're done with that, head over to his Vimeo offerings and check out his personal bumper - the same style of impressive line work but fully animated (with sound). It's a great look that I'd love to see in much longer form.

Pocket (formerly Read It Later)

The folks at Read It Later have renamed themselves Pocket and relaunched a whole new site to inform potential users of their handy Save It Later tools. Here's the basic rundown:

Pocket is everything you’ve always loved about Read It Later, now with a cleaner, lighter viewing experience and a ton of new features to help you see what you’ve saved—from articles to videos, images and more. We’ve also made Pocket free for everyone.

Seems like a Win-Win all around. I'm typically a champion of Instapaper for my article saving needs (and VHX for video) but I can certainly see the allure of having them in one spot for your personal consumption at a later time. Plus, the interface looks real nice!

ChartBeat: Real-time Website Data

ChartBeat is an analytics engine that recently underwent a redesign that might make your jaw drop. The front facing promotional pages are super slick, informative, amusing and subtly animated on each panel but the real impressive aspect is the Tracking Dashboard. Who knows how this would look on a website with a whole lot less traffic and social presence but it looks undeniably well put together when demo'ing someecards.com tracking. Be sure to play with the options along the left side to see additional well designed pages.

Roy Ira - 'One Day' EP and Kickstarting

My friend Keith recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for his band Roy Ira and I suggest you watch the above pitch video to understand why. Stick with it for a little bit before you judge too harshly as the whole thing is very dry humor - he doesn't really have dream-like visions of songs. Many times I get erked when bands ask for money to create an album but only because it seems like they're not investing anything themselves. Not so with Roy Ira - they're invested and are using the campaign as a pre-order for their record.

You can hear the first single / EP over on Bandcamp. It's a combination of country, indie, gospel and good ole rock n' roll all rolled into one. Give it a listen and then throw them a few dollars to get things really rolling. Please?

We Own This Town: Volume 52

The last We Own This Town podcast came out in mid-February. Here it is mid-April and I'm just getting into putting together another volume. Shame on me! Not because the delay wasn't warranted - I really have been busy - but because there's been a ton of great music released in the Nashville area in the interim that should be heard. I've already got Volume 53 halfway done and am promising myself not to be so negligent moving forward.

Featuring: Meadownoise, PUJOL, The Echo Group, imagine asians, Cherub, Uncle Skeleton, Melody Map, Quichenight, All Them Witches, n o i, Makeup and Vanity Set

Waxy Turns 10

WAXY, the homebase of Andy Baio, is easily one of my favorite destinations on the web. I check it multiple times a day out of obsessive interest in what his Link log may contain - as whatever shows up in there is always of interest to me. The site recently turned ten years old and he's got a nice writeup on the past decade - including a list of some of his favorite posts throughout the years. If I were a more eloquent writer with, you know, analytical thoughts worth pondering - I'd totally steal his format of long form blog posts coupled with a blast of small writeup interesting web destinations. It's the perfect combo.

Long story short, WAXY is ten. If you haven't been visiting it with great regularity before now, you should really take action today to correct that course.

The Random Adventures Of Brandon Generator

I'm going to be honest; I don't totally understand the function of The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator. At it's simplest, it's a web-only undertaking from writer/director Edgar Wright, illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards and narration from Julian Barratt - a combo no one could argue is compelling. Digging a little deeper, it's apparently sponsored by Internet Explorer 9 - though they leave the site open for any browser to interact with it. It's also a crowd sourced undertaking in which you, the user, are asked to submit prose & inspiration to the main Brandon character. I've only watched the first episode but the aesthetic is compelling and it could certainly go some interesting places. Consider me Sold on the whole idea.

Swiss Typefaces

Check out this great repository of Swiss Typefaces to browse through. The straight-forward Font Listings are nice but the homepage couples some great ambient photography with a selection of the type - so even if you aren't into the typefaces, you will likely approve of the presentation. Each face comes with a limited Free Trial version as well; so you don't have to drop a pretty penny right outta the gate if you see something you love.

Monday Morning Nerding Out

• Jmpress.js - create some pretty nice 3D effects with this javascript bundle. The demo throws everything at you at once, so it's a bit much but you can imagine using 1 or 2 transitions tastefully to spruce up a site.
• Primer CSS - dump in your page markup and this little tool with extract all the ID's and classes for you into a startup CSS document. Assuming you tackle your markup first, could be super handy.
• Nielsen is wrong on mobile - Josh Clark has a great take on how Jakob Nielsen's thoughts on the mobile world are incorrect. This made the rounds heavily last week so you probably saw it but, in case you haven't, take time to read it thoroughly. He's dead on the mark.