A Source Of Inspiration

How about a LCD Soundsystem powered lava lamp? Well, that’s exactly what Park Studio did for Nokia Trends Lab.

The site has some groovy music visualizations, using the Actionscript 3 SoundMixer class. And altough i don’t understand a word of Russian, it seems to be a localized version of the global Nokia Trends Lab, “a physical and virtual hub of mobility experiences”.

Magic. Anagram. Video.
Of course i’m talking about Arcade Fire’s new interactive music video.

Click around (or hover) and rejoice.

URL: www.beonlineb.com
Development: Vincent Morriset
Production: Nu Films

Source: Stereogum

Róisín Murphy releases her new single ‘Let Me Know’ on October 8th with the brand new album ‘Overpowered’ following on October 15th. Co-written and produced by Andy Cato of Groove Armada, and mixed by Dan Carey (Kylie, Sly & Robbie, CSS, Lily Allen), ‘Let Me Know’ is a huge, floor-filling monster of a tune. The track was inspired by Róisín’s performance at legendary New York DJ Danny Krivit’s 718 Sessions in 2006 and perfectly showcases Róisín’s love of dance music coupled with a huge great melody.

RSS readers: link to roisinmurphytv video

‘Let Me Know’ features three brand new B-sides and some stunning mixes from both Andy Cato and Joey Negro. However this time they’re spread across the formats rather than stuffed on to one bumper-CD.

I’m on a music and film mood, so here’s another appetizer: The Darjeeling Limited.

Wes Anderson brings us another almost surrealist emotional narrative, with a pre-suicidal Owen Wilson partnering with Adrian Brody , and a cameo appearance of Bill Murray and Natalie Portman. My real interest is not the movie itself, but rather the exquisite soundtrack that Wes usually delivers. This time, the ethnic hindu sounds mix pair with The Kinks, the english rock band of hit single “You Really Got Me”.

In The Darjeeling Limited, most of the tracks are from the album Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, featuring “This Time Tomorrow,” in the trailer and also included is “Strangers”. I’m curious to see the movie to find out if Wes Anderson pitched another world music artist such as Seu Jorge (of Life Aquatic), specially since Mark Mothersbaugh isn’t contributing to this film.

Meanwhile, watch the trailer.

Heima is a documentary by the symphonic rock band, a beautiful voyage through their shows in small Iceland towns.

The film was directed by Dean Deblois, previously nominated by his animation for Llilo & Stitch, and comes as a companion for their new album “Hvarf”, a set of rarities from Sigur Rós.

View the youtube video above or the HD Trailer.
If you fancy this one, you should also check their previous videos. And they blogged the whole tour.

The cover by Katie Melua

The original by Robert Smith

The rock festival posts are not over yet! But this time, it’s from Richard Turley and the process he went through covering the Glastonbury Festival for the Guardian.

Photo: Martin Godwin/Guardian

The article speaks about the troubles, fun and hard work his team had to deal while setting up the design in the middle of one of the biggest music festivals in the world. And i found myself totally agreeing with Richard when he says

How do you capture the feeling of your senses being numbed by the heavenly punishment of dirt, music, art, people, performance, rain, insomnia, cider and exhaustion whilst being simultaneously kicked out of the sleepy trudge of day to day life?

This same process and feelings need to be applied to the current state of web design, getting rid of the gradients and round corners, and injecting some fresh energy to stand from the web crowd. Having read Transcending CSS lately, it became clear that webdesigners must force themselves to design beyond the grid and push new boundaries in their projects.

Or as Ferrell McCollough visually puts it:

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen might just have a stroke listening to Richard saying “…if you embrace a very loose approach to the design process, then some things are always going to be beyond your control. And when you abandon most of the rules, how do you define a mistake?”, but i’m sure others such as Jason or Andy Clarke would agree.

With a prophetic self-criticism, he ends:

Newspapers are going through a paradigm shift in the way they are read and disseminated. Over the next 10, 20 years or so, at a speed dictated by technology, readers will drift more and more to receiving news via digital means. News design will adapt to that. Flash or its equivalent will become the tool of choice as packages of graphics, images, text, audio and video will be put together, which will be an incredible opportunity to really affect how people receive design. These are the last gasps of print based news design. But that’s not something to be sad about. Whilst we’re still doing it, let’s have some fun.

Source: http://www.designobserver.com/archives/026488.html

I’m back to work, but the stories from last week rock festival are not over yet. The nice folks at Torke Stunt did a cool ambient/guerrilla marketing stunt, with a rugby team delighting the short people that didn’t stood at the front rows.

Challenge
Optimus is a mobile phone company based in Portugal. Our task was to create a brand experience targeted to young people within a big music festival context.

Solution
Under the brand’s tagline:”Experience it”,a service called “Broad Shoulders” was created. Ten big men offered their Broad Shoulders for people to climb in order to see better the concerts or just to find a lost friend amongst the crowd.

Results
This service was greatly accepted by young people, creating word of mouth in the three days of the music festival as more people were asking for the Broad Shoulders service.