I’ve been enjoying The Roots’ new album, undun, for the past couple of weeks. It’s a concept album – telling the story of a fictional character, Redford Stephens, and his short, tragic life lost on the streets of Philadelphia. It’s an amazing piece of work from the band. One of the best albums I’ve heard in a long time.
Upon speaking to a few friends I realized that not everyone is aware of the video that accompanied the album. Entirely shot in black and white, it’s raw and deeply engaging. Really artistically done.
The Roots – UNDUN from The Ghettonerd Company, LLC on Vimeo.
NPR did a great write-up of the album on their site a few weeks back. Read more of that here.
I hope everyone is having a great holiday and most of you are enjoying some time off of work.
I didn’t post much here since last week since I was blogging over at Tam + Sam. Here are links to a few of the posts I contributed to over there.
Patterns: Aya Morrison Clutches
Color Palette: Kwesi Abbensett’s Man Series
Fashion + Design: Christian Louboutin and Typography
Music Inspiration: Tupac and Biggie Portraits by Tes-One
The image above is from Alyssa Stephian’s jewelry and paper goods Etsy shop. She’s got some great earrings and notecards for sale. Check them out here.
From Scott’s Flickr page:
“Each of the four pieces in the Moments in Time series signify four very different points of influence within my life. The triangles within these pieces are part of a system that represent 8 numbers per piece that relate to the date the piece was inspired by (mm/dd/yyyy).
All numbers are represented using red and teal, while black and white are the background colors. The numbers start at the top and rotate clockwise around the piece.
This image is meant highlight the numbers within one of the works. Here, 04 22 2006 (April 22nd, 2006) is being illustrated.“
The image he’s speaking of is the last image above. Very cool. I like the geometrical components within the work. See more from Scott here.
I’m guest blogging over at Tam + Sam this week. They’re right up my alley with content covering design, style and art. Click the image below for today’s post. Thanks!
Volume 2 of the Electric Punanny mixtape saga was recently released a few weeks ago. It’s a fantastic follow up Vol. 1 and just as dope.
I wrote about Vol. 1 a few months ago (here), but if you’re unfamiliar with the series the album is a compilation of reggae and dancehall tunes created by DJs/rappers MeLo-X and Jasmine Solano. Tracks include artists such as Beenie Man, Vybz Kartel and Mavado.
Listen/download here. Enjoy!
I love this time-lapsed video from Brooklyn based designer and custom chalk letterer Dana Tanamachi. I can’t believe she does all of this by hand. Amazing talent.
More of her videos are available on Vimeo.
My homie and past Color Muse James Shields (a.k.a Creative Shields) has released an amazing coloring book just in time for the holidays. The book includes fun activities such as color by number exercises, mazes and word searches. It’s volume one of an ongoing series covering the Birth of Hip Hop (’77 – ’84). I can’t wait to see the evolution of this.
Purchase it here. Also check out James’ portfolio here.
The making of “Hero,” Miguel Endara’s drawing of his father composed entirely out of 3.2 million ink dots. This is sooooo tedious. I’m going to take it upon myself and rename this video “The Audacity of Patience”.
This video captures all the fundamental principles of design in a nifty 3 minutes. The content touches on contrast, repetition and of course color theory.
