Hand lettered album art and glass panels

Pencil sketches

Close up of the pencil sketch

The digital art

The final cover

Adding gold leaf to glass

Round glass panel

David A. Smith is a traditional sign-maker/designer. He created the covers for the ‘Born & Raised’ album and ‘Queen of California’ single by singer/songwriter John Mayer.  He also created two decorative reverse glass panels for Mayer’s company. Smith is a true craftsman — it is fun to see his design process.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/60647216]

David Smith Traditional Ornamental Glass Artist 

A sexy song and beautiful type design

The sublime type foundry House Industries has a new video that’s a visual treat. You’ll see many of the fine fonts, books, posters and other products by their designers. There are scenes of the designers in action. All the visuals are timed to the catchy, slightly 1960s sounding Polite Dance Song by the duo of Inara George and Greg Kurstin — better known as The Bird and the Bee. Kurstin, is a music producer and keyboardist that has worked with Lily Allen, Barenaked Ladies, The Flaming Lips and Beck.

The fonts in action

Hand lettering

Book design

Ink work

Arcade Fire’s amazing interactive HTML5 music video

Arcade Fire

I had a lot of fun putting in different addresses and watching this amazing interactive HTML5/music video/Google maps mash-up for the indie band Arcade Fire. There is so much going on I had to watch it a few times. Windows pop open and shut, maps spin, photos of streets that you may know appear.

You have to use a HTML5 compliant browser, and be warned the film is processor intensive. You’ll want to shut down other programs first. It will take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. I was able to view it with Safari 4 and 5.

“The Wilderness Downtown” page

Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown

More about the video

[UPDATE 9/6/10] NPR: The Secret Ingredient Of Arcade Fire’s New Video? You

Arcade Fire: Using social media to score a number-one album
Much like the now-fabled Old Spice Guy campaign, Arcade Fire and Merge Record’s use of social media is sure to be a model for album releases to come.

Official Google Blog: Arcade Fire meets HTML5

Google Chrome Experiment page
Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all.

Windows pop open and shut, showing video and Google maps all timed to the song “We Used to Wait” off of the new album

Documentary: We Are All Workers

The city of Braddock

An ad on the New York Times’ home page caught my eye this week. It was for an eleven part documentary series on the economic issues of Braddock Pa. I’m from Western Pennsylvania and went to college in Pittsburgh, so I was curious as to what this film was about.

Short films

Apricot

The tools to create a great looking and sounding film are becoming less expensive all the time. It’s exciting to see what filmmakers are posting online. I’ve been seeing some rather interesting experimental storytelling in short videos.

NPR pokes fun at themselves

I love NPR. They are great at audio storytelling. They “get” the internet and mobile — the NPR app is one of the best news apps for iPhone and iPad. And they have a great sense of humor.

This video was produced to introduce NPR President & CEO Vivian Schiller at the All Things D conference, June 2010.