Bookmarks for June 14th

By Ed Fladung | June 14, 2009
  • Stop Smiling Magazine: VISUAL RESPONSE: GEOFF McFETRIDGE
    "We asked Geoff McFetridge — founder of the Los Angeles-based design studio Champion Graphics and a member of the Director’s Bureau — to offer his impressions on the differences between living in California and his native Calgary. Included here are several bonus questions that did not originally appear in Issue 36: Expatriate"
  • Daring Fireball: Simple Inbox Archiving Script for Apple Mail
    ok, You're using Apple's Mail app and you have 2 or 3 IMAP email addresses (dot mac, gmail, maybe your own domain) and your inbox is swamped with crap and you're having problems answering emails. This Apple Script created by John Gruber helps you stay organized. You just flag the messages that you know need to be responded to and once per day you run this script. It automatically moves all read inbox mail to archive folders, effectively cleaning up your inbox for you! awesome.
  • Jordy Smith's Rodeo Flip In The Mentawais
    pretty impressive
  • :: andy gilmore :: design ::
    damn! i'm loving this guy's design work. beautiful abstract geometric stuff. awesome.
  • Border Film Project
    Border Film Project is a collaborative art project giving disposable cameras to two groups on different sides of the border: undocumented migrants crossing the desert into the United States, and American Minutemen trying to stop them. To date, we have received 73 cameras — 38 from migrants and 35 from Minutemen — with nearly 2,000 pictures in total. The pictures show the human face of immigration, and they challenge us to question our stereotypes and to see through new and personal lenses.
  • How AT&T Should Handle the Twitter iPhone Price Backlash – Advertising Age – News
    if yer not in the know, Apple introduced a new iPhone 3G [s] this past monday. Of course, when Apple releases a new product millions of people all rush out to buy it. But when you have to buy it with a contract from AT&T things get dicey. When people started seeing the how much it was going to cost them to upgrade all hell broke loose on twitter. This article explains the bru-ha and why AT&T is not doing the right thing. My two cents: AT&T and most telcos are zombie corporations just like GM and Citibank. They don't exist to serve their customers, they exist to serve the interests of their shareholders. and that's it.
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Serious Board Lust

By Ed Fladung | June 13, 2009

liddlesShelter’s new stock of Liddles

junod logsThalia’s new stock of Junod logs

Oh man, I’ve been having them dreams again. I gotta stay off the internets. I have some serious board lust. I can’t stop thinking about new boards. what kind / what shaper / what style / what dims. I have to stop stalking board shop blogs.

Above links have my eyes watering.

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Leave a message. Beep….

By Ed Fladung | June 11, 2009

incoming

This is the sound of Ed’s work productivity dropping.

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Free Rubies!

By Ed Fladung | June 9, 2009

rubies_mainjpgPhoto by Dena Todorova

The new Rubies album Explode From The Center is finally coming out (soonish) here and The FADER has free downloads of two songs off the album: I Feel Electric and Stand in a Line. Fader also has a brief interview with Simone Rubi (Danielle Rubi’s sister and twin).

Go become a Rubies fan. They rock.

And bonus: here’s video of Rubies performing Invisible Thread at Danielle Rubi’s show of the same name at Mollusk SF, from April.

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Bomb on Y’all

By Ed Fladung | June 9, 2009

3485408144_394858b0f0jpgphoto by Flickr user “Nabudoconodosor”

I was traipsing around Flickr and fffound the above photo of Brian Conley dropping in on a bomber of a wave in Pascuales. I don’t think this is lens distortion, this wave is huge. The photo was taken this past April. I wonder if this wave/session/swell will see its way on to one of Conley’s videos.

The photo was taken by Flickr user Nabudoconodosor.

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Ryan Lovelace’s Mini-Sim/Velo

By Ed Fladung | June 9, 2009

ryan lovelace's N3wBRyan Lovelace’s “N3wB”

This is the newest Ryan Lovelace creation, a mini-sim with a rounded velo tail. Dims: 5′5 x 23 x 3

More curve in the last 2 ft of the board than most of the other simmons type discs; because i like it better that way…and a velo-y tail as requested by Nick…it really came together nicely.

The recipient of this board has two session reviews up on the surfer mag forums, worth a read. This is from his second session:

I surfed HB this morning in chest high slopey waves with reforms to the inside. This board was just flying through the reforms and connecting to the inside with very little effort. I’m already addicted to the amount of speed you can generate and I don’t think I’m even close to its potential. A guy was paddling out and saw one of my rides. He was tripping out thinking I was surfing on a skimboard. I was taking off on these against the grain rights that looked like closeouts but I was able to just float over one section to the next and do these swooping turns top to bottom, going faster with each turn right through the reforms to the shorebreak. I took a few lefts and I did have trouble with it backside but I’m still getting used to it.

I love short n wide n thick n skatey boards. hmmm, I’m still holding out for the she-hull.

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Left My Wallet in La Ostula

By Ed Fladung | June 8, 2009

qpeazywhere are you Q.Peazy?

Trying to figure out how to balance the responsibilities of new fatherhood and my insatiable need to go back down south for some pre-season swell.

Left my wallet in La Ostula. Left my wallet in La Ostula. Left my wallet in La Ostula. I gotta got it, I got, got to get it. Come on let’s go.

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Bookmarks for June 8th

By Ed Fladung | June 8, 2009
  • Ayalon on speech: The new "axis of pragmatic forces" | Israel Policy Forum
    amazing analysis of Obama's middel east speech by Isreal's Mahjor General Ami Ayalon. a great read. – Ayalon: We are witnessing the beginning of new American diplomacy in the Middle East whereby it will no longer appear to be very, very pro-Israel, but, as was obvious in the speech, it will be more balanced. Israel has to now understand that this president really believes that there is a common denominator of moderate Arabs, Americans and Israelis. It is a new phenomenon in Middle East diplomacy because we have long believed that the US and Israel represented one side of the conflict and the Arab world and Muslims the other side. But unlike previous administrations where the world was divided by an axis of evil, particularly that of President Bush, Mr. Obama divides the world by an axis of pragmatic forces. [ via TPM]
  • Castles In L.A. | SurfingMagazine.com
    oh snaps! new movie from Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey: "“This is my passion project,” said Taylor Steele who was sporting a solid gash in the head from stitches he picked up during a recent trip to India. “These trips and these movies [Sipping Jetstreams and Castles in the Sky] are the films that we get to see the world in a whole new way. We take risks in making them. Travel long distances on a whim. Say yes when strangers invite us over for tea. That’s what makes them so special."
  • YouTube – Bookcast: Author Don Thompson and his new book
    Author Don Thompson in an interview with National Post talks about his book "$12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" – if you don't catch the shark reference, about Damien Hirst. [via @longdrivesouth]
  • View Master: Diorama Photography by Lori Nix, Jonah Samson and Grace Weston
    very cheeky sex-driven diorama photography from Jonah Samson. Love the top one, of the swimming pool.
  • Seth Godin's Blog
    Amazing reading on entrepenurship, marketing yourself and generally how to navigate the choppy waters of transitioning business to the internet. Godin's blog posts are prescient, witty and full of good advice. on publishing: "Mark this down as another job for the new economy: someone who can collate, amplify and leverage the work of writers and turn it into cash. I don't believe that there's one solution, not this time. But I'm confident that around the edges and deep into niches, there's money being made."
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Sayulita Gypsy

By Ed Fladung | June 7, 2009

Gary Hanelphoto by Ed Fladung
Gary Hanelphoto by Ed Fladung

Señorita Kelly from the cosmically and karmically dialed-in Sayulita Gypsy rocks a Mollusk singlefin shaped by Gary Hanel. This board is beautiful and definitely a soul cousin to my Junod pumpkin seed. That yellow is slammin’

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Alaia, I luv Ya

By Ed Fladung | June 7, 2009

alaiaEd’s current lust object

Please file this under: “There are no stupid questions”.

I’m pretty much assuming that if you have the chops to surf an Alaia, you don’t worry about having a leash. But what do you do in crowded breaks? If you happen to fall off (gods forbid) does the board turn in to a lethal object?

And now for my stupid question1: where’s the leash plug?

Above photo politely borrowed from super awesome man Graham and the Shelter Surf Shop blog, without whose semi-weekly posts of fresh, new boards my life would be exponentially less exciting. Oh and don’t even think you’re gonna swoop in and buy that framed Tmoe print in the background, that’s mine. I call dibbs.

  1. rhetorical, of course ↩
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Zombie Modernism

By Ed Fladung | June 6, 2009

nelson_desk_chairjpgNelson Swag Leg Desk by Herman Miller

Design George Nelson™, 1958.
Walnut, laminate top, plastic drawers, chromed steel tubing. Made by Herman Miller®.

A beautiful desk and one that I’ve admired for years. George Nelson made rad things, along with his cohorts at Herman Miller: Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, Isamu Noguchi and Donald Knorr. The above desk is particularly beautiful with its minimal profile, tapering bent legs and perfectly placed color palette.

But the price? $1800.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am fully down with paying a premium for historically important design works. But mid-century Modernism was partially born out of an idealism that hatched during and after World War II, when factories were converted back to civil use after having served the war effort. Break-throughs in production methods, materials and technology cleared the way for mass-production of well-designed objects. All the folks at Herman Miller were on board with the idea of bringing design to the masses. Charles and Ray Eames spent decades trying to get various iterations of their bent plywood chairs into consumer hands for modest prices. George Nelson was a champion of low-cost design up until his death.

So my question: why is this desk – and other items from this period – so expensive? Surely not for the materials, as this isn’t a luxury item hand-made from lemur teeth and sea eel hides. I’m guessing that it costs maybe $100-$200 to produce this piece, I could be wrong. But I doubt the price of production is in any way connected to the selling price. My criticism isn’t aimed at this particular piece of beautifully designed furniture though it was definitely the impetus for this post.

Good design should not have to cost a lot of money. Yes, maybe a premium, but not astronomically high. Furniture and design sellers often talk about Modernism as bringing design to the masses, the great equalizer. Yet the products they sell have price tags far above what your average work schmoe can afford. Ikea understands this, and has made oodles of money knocking off modern and minimal designs and selling them on the cheap, the sacrifice is the production quality. A high percentage of Ikea’s products are essentially disposable and fall apart long before they’ve outlived their usefulness. If it weren’t for the toll that disposable furniture takes on the environment, this wouldn’t be so bad, not all furniture has to last centuries.

Why does good design cost so much?

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Bookmarks for June 6th

By Ed Fladung | June 6, 2009
  • Horticulture Jamming | GOOD
    your word for the day: "Horticulture Jamming". yes, two words, whose counting? awesome concept.
  • SO MUCH PILEUP
    wickedly awesome graphic design artifacts and inspiration from the 60s to 80s. rediculously cool stuff here. [via Le Joy]
  • Ritz and Oreo go retro: idsgn (a design blog)
    beautiful new minimal packaging. i love how everything comes around.
  • Brand New: Bing sets New Record in Horizontal Scaling
    Microsoft's new search engine "Bing" has the fucking worst logo I have ever seen. When I saw it for the first time, my eyeballs started to twitch uncontrollably and my hand inexplicably reached for the nearest steak knife and plunged it into my eye socket.
  • the secret life of ants
    amazing video (6:37) of an excavation of an ant city. i'm pretty sure one of these days some scientist will prove that ants (and probably bees as well) have a collective consciousness (hive mind).
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Driftwood

By Ed Fladung | June 5, 2009

drift woodphoto by Ed Fladung

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Lauren Dukoff’s Family

By Ed Fladung | June 5, 2009

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Lauren Dukoff is an LA-based photographer who specializes in intimate music/band photography. Dukoff stumbled in to a career in photography by taking pictures of her close highschool friend Devendra Barnhart and his growing family of like-minded musicians and artist folk. Chronicle Books has just put out her first photography book, it’s called aptly enough Family:

For many years, Lauren Dukoff has been photographing close friend and musician Devendra Banhart and an extended, loose-knit international family of artists who share inspiration variously from folk, Tropicalia, and each other, as well as a range of other musical influences. This lovely hardcover album collects Dukoff’s striking portraits and candid images of Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Bat for Lashes, Feathers, Espers, Vetiver, Bert Jansch, Vashti Bunyan, and many others individually and together, in performance and more private spaces. The 150 full-bleed, color and black and white photographs are complemented by a foreword by Banhart, text and artwork by the musicians, artist biographies, and a digital download featuring songs by some of the artists in the book.

Here’s a pretty good selection of photos from the book.

I’ve been following Laurens’s work for some time, ever since my homie Isaiah Seret turned me on to her work right around the time he hooked up with Devendra to direct his At The Hop video. Lauren came up, under the guidance of Autumn de Wilde, who is also one of my favorite photographers. I kinda feel like Lauren Dukoff is a homie of mine, even though we’ve never met. After following her work for the past few years it was awesome to here that Chronicle was putting her book out. It was like watching one of your friends come up and get noticed.

I’m the kinda person that never wins anything. I suspect that most people also feel this way. That’s why it was such a nice, pleasant surprise when I entered a small giveaway on the Chronicle Books blog. The blog post1 was about Dukoff’s book and the post author asked for five really good songs, I think. I submitted a comment with my then favorites and a few days later the author contacted me asking where to send my prize. I was stoked.

Family is a beautiful collection of Dukoff’s work. She only shoots film and it shows. Her style is natural, unforced and non-technical. The subjects of the photos are relaxed and seem like they are being photographed by a close, intimate friend. The book is beautifully designed, from the photo layouts to the gorgeous embossed type on the back cover.

So cool.

  1. I looked for it, Chronicle must have taken it down ↩
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Reef Walk

By Ed Fladung | June 5, 2009

reef walkphoto by Ed Fladung

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