The Dark Lord of Logos
Klaus Pichler of Vice magazine compiled a mini Q&A with Christophe Szpajdel, who has designed "more than 7,000 logos, mostly for black- and death-metal bands from all over the world".
Check out the accompanying slideshow of his work, which exemplifies how little creativity there is in black metal design (as opposed to black metal music which, to be fair, is a mixed bag). I dislike stereotypical heavy metal design from an aesthetic point of view, but commenter Jason make a great point:
They are very appropriate. The music is not accessible and is very harsh thus it's visual interpretation follows suit.
These logos appeal to the correct target audience.
And that's good design.
Why Is Everyone Saying 'Fail' All of a Sudden?
Slate has a feature on the term "fail":
The highest form of fail—the epic fail—involves not just catastrophic failure but hubris as well. Not just coming in second in a bike race but doing so because you fell off your bike after prematurely raising your arms in victory.
The article is totally fascinating and brilliantly written. The idea of a Slate exploration of "fail" is as absurd as the New York Times running a feature on lolcats. The world needs more absurdity.
Want to Buy a Record Player?
The current discussion about CD sales vs. digital music downloads may seem like a bleeding edge, hi-tech issue; but this 1949 article in Time about the new-fangled record-playing machines puts the whole thing in context for me:
To exorcise the speed demon, top executives of RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca have been huddling in quiet meetings. Last week there was still no agreement. Until the industry pulled itself together, record fans had two sensible alternatives : postpone buying or buy a turntable that plays all three speeds. There are about ten on the market, ranging in price from $15 to more than $50.
Bottom line, record companies have always been in the business of screwing their customers out of choice in order to make a profit, and their flagship product—consumer confusion—will never change.
I often find myself wishing for an indie revolution, but independant record labels are so disjointed and disconnected from each other that I can't see it happening any time soon.
Tap Tap Revenge to Release Nine Inch Nails Edition
Tap Tap Revenge—a Guitar Hero clone for the iPhone and iPod Touch—has announced a licensing deal with Nine Inch Nails, resulting in a NIN-specific edition of the game:
The application will include a NIN-centric theme, as well as over a dozen of the band’s songs from its last two albums. The partnership is among the first to bring licensed content to an iPhone application, and will likely prompt a wave of similar deals between other musicians and applications on the platform.
It's not surprising that Trent Reznor is at the cutting edge.
TWLOHA Update
A quick update on the TWLOHA situation: Kids Help Line got back to me within a day and made available to us information cards, stickers and other knick-knacks, so I think we'll be giving them out with TWLOHA merch when we start selling it in a couple of weeks.
If we do end up making our own for whatever reason, I'll be using the links that people kindly put in the comments. Thank you!
Amazon Takes on Wikipedia With Editable Music Data
Amazon is backing a user-editable music information repository called SoundUnwound:
As with Wikipedia, users can edit this information, but not directly. All changes must be vetted by Amazon staff before appearing on the site, so you can forget about retroactively joining Run D.M.C. Rankings charts list the users with the most approved edits for the day, week or of all time, offering a bit of motivation to those want to amass that sort of authority.
Wikipedia is a snakepit of fan pages and official biographies masquerading as objective encyclopedia articles, but compared to some articles currently on SoundUnwound, Wikipedia is infallible.
SoundUnwound does put less emphasis on objectivity and verifiability guidelines, but in my opinion they have a little way to go if they want to overtake Wikipedia in the accuracy stakes. The first article I checked (Porcupine Tree), was woeful:
Sky Moves Sideways (1995) is considered to be Porcupine Tree’s seminal album, but the sound continued to evolve with Signify (1996), Stupid Dream (1999) and Lightbulb Sun (2000), becoming progressively rockier, a musical direction confirmed by the release of In Absentia (2002) and Deadwing (2005).
Moderating edits is a stroke of genius, but unless the moderation team is stacked with experts in every band ever formed they'll have trouble distinguishing between valuable, true information and, well, bollocks. That paragraph quoted above is clearly just the opinion of whoever wrote it, and contains a glaring mistake in the title of The Sky Moves Sideways.
People like myself who would usually just fix that kind of error might be put off by the requirement to register and have the changes go through a vetting process.
Then again, the lack of penis references in a website containing user-generated content is most refreshing.
To Write Love on Her Arms
It has always irked me that artists who perform at charity galas, benefit concerts and other charitable events usually, by some eerie coincidence, have a single or tour to promote. Call me a pessimist, it just seems that a worthy cause is the easiest way to drum up media coverage for every self-obsessed, self-promotional starlet and wannabe with something to flog.
I'm not suggesting that any charitable event is a sham, but if you can get a few press mentions for your upcoming album while helping to feed some starving Africans, the attitude seems to be: bring it on.
By their own admission, the To Write Love On Her Arms organisation (TWLOHA) is "not a 24-hour helpline", as the organisation's official MySpace profile states:
We are not trained professionals. TWLOHA hopes to serve as a bridge to help.
The issue that TWLOHA has dedicated itself to is the tragedy of youth suicide and self-harm. Certainly a worthy and deserving cause—and of course I absolutely support anyone doing anything to help prevent suicide, youth or otherwise—but my problem is with the way in which they go about it.
If you go to the TWLOHA website—if, say, you were a young person possibly suffering from depression and looking for help—what do you think would be the first thing you see? A hotline number? A list of links to helpful organisations?
Actually, the first thing you see is a splash page advertising pre-orders for a book.
The second thing you see, if you're like me and miss the microscopic "continue to twloha.com" link under the fold, is a shopfront where you can buy TWLOHA-branded merchandise at severely inflated prices. The shopfront is, of course, brought to you by Zambooie®.
On the shopfront's sidebar is a navigation menu with links to make a donation to TWLOHA, visit the organisation's MySpace page, join the street team (powered by FanCorps®) and add a TWLOHA badge to your website or MySpace profile (powered by SocialVibe®).
Above these sponsorship links is the site's internal navigation menu, in which the "Find Help" link is the third item, underneath a link to a calendar of TWLOHA-sponsored concerts and events.
The MySpace profile is just as bad: a long-winded and self-indulgent history section full of name-drops and photos of celebrity musicians wearing TWLOHA merch, interspersed with links and advertisements to buy T-shirts and other TWLOHA-branded items.
The single paragraph which directs troubled young people to help is squeezed between an award the profile won from MySpace, and instructions on how to promote TWLOHA with flyers and banners.
I'm not sure who they think their audience is: people at risk of depression and suicide themselves, or kids who like to feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking they're doing something to help by buying a $40 T-shirt, but are at no risk themselves.
Surely that $40 would be better spent by donating it directly to Kids Help Line, an organisation that can have a direct, practical positive effect on depression and self-harm among young people.
Fist2Face was recently the venue for a TWLOHA-hosted concert with some local rock bands and speeches by the organisation's two founders, who had flown half-way across the world to spread the word about TWLOHA. I didn't go, but if a troubled young person had come to get some advice or find help, they would have been in trouble: there was no information packs, no flyers, nothing.
The founders got up and spoke, but it was less about suicide prevention and more about the musicians they've met backstage at concerts.
beyondblue and Kids Help Line would love to have the kind of exposure an event like that would generate, but they were nowhere to be seen.
TWLOHA has got exactly the right idea by positioning themselves within the music scene that kids are passionate about, but they completely fail the people they are trying to help by concentrating more on self-promotion and less on suicide prevention.
The organisation is making a push into Australia this year, and Fist2Face is one of the outlets that will be selling TWLOHA merch. Originally I refused to have any part of it, but after talking it over with my boss we decided that a better approach would be to look into local depression and suicide prevention organisations and try to get some kind of information card to give away with each shirt.
Maybe then it won't be a complete waste of kids' hard-earned money.
Personally I believe strongly in Kids Help Line, where my second cousin worked for a number of years, but if anyone knows of any other similar organisations based in Australia please let me know so I can get in touch with them.
UPDATE: I've posted a short update with the response I got from Kids Help Line.
Guilherme Marconi
More illustration, this time from Guilherme Maroni:
The My Schizophrenic Brain project is incomprehensibly amazing work.
Last Chance Illustration
Last Chance Illustration is the artwork and design of Mike Bukowski, who has worked for 50 Lions, Comeback Kid and Afends among a long list of others (including my favourite CD design of this year, Four Year Strong).
Online Poker Finances New maudlin of the Well Album
Read The Toby Driver Appreciation Grind, a blog by maudlin of the Well fan and professional online poker player Etienne Dube, whose winnings are financing a new record of previously-unheard motW material.
And you can read it from motW's point of view on their MySpace blog.
What an incredible story.
