nashville TN: music city usa

Last Thursday, I had to go down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to give a presentation to the brand managers of Chattem, makers of 22 health and medicinal product lines that are probably sitting around in your medicine cabinet. Amazingly, it turned out that one of my best friends, Alicia, lives only 20 minutes from Chattanooga, so after the Thursday presentation, we had 3 fun days of exploring to do.

Nashville is a very cute little city in the Midwest, also the capital of Tennessee and dubbed "Music City USA." It's home to the cable channel Country Music Television, the Grand Ole Opry, and scores of little country bars where famous musicians are said to have been discovered.

Here, you can see that the influence of music is so great, that even signs are in the shape of a guitar pick.












I took this picture of the Lawrence Record Shop as a little tribute to my brother:


And then, of course, there was the required group of gypsy kids panhandling and singing. This quartet, led by the squinty-eyed chap on the right, happened to be crooning the lyrics of "Hey There, Delilah," and they actually sounded pretty decent.


Nashville is also home of cowboys and all things western.




Miles and miles of boots as far as the eye could see.


Here are a few of my favorite pairs:




We stumbled upon Hatch Show Print, one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America. They still make posters the old fashioned way by hand - and I was so excited to be in the actual print shop and take in all the posters they had displayed on the walls.






These are 2 examples of their posters:




Finally, Chattanooga itself is home to lots of great little shops and the quirky Hunter Art Museum, located on a rocky bluff overlooking the Tennessee River:


Sadly, the 3 days came to an end too quickly, and I soon found myself boarding the Delta puddle jumper...


...bound...


...for...


...Home Sweet Home.

wall art

Wall art and/or removable vinyl decals have gotten to be a big craze in home decorating over the past year or so. Blik is one of the more recognized producers of wall decals. Could be an easy way to create customized walls.

Stylized graphical elements:




Simple, geometric patterns:

Busier wall themes/scenes:

MoMA's newest member

I recently did something I've wanted to do for many, many years--I joined an art museum. And the MoMA, no less--one of my favorite art museums. Never felt like it was the right time to join--for financial reasons or because I was moving around, etc. But now that I'm in NY and have decided to be here for AWHILE, I figured I had nothing to lose. And I love it. The museum rocks.

Cool pieces from the MoMA's permanent Architecture and Design collection:

Panorama with 50 Years of Helvetica exhibit in background.


Simple, yet funky posters.


Black, red, and white coolness.


Solid, handcrafted chair from Arts & Crafts movement.


A chair designed to be placed in the CORNERS of homes. Ingenious.


And lastly, a chest of drawers with differently-sized drawers...something I would absolutely LOVE to own. I'm sure I could find something to store in each of those little drawers.


There are a few other great exhibits going on at the MoMa, and I will be visiting again soon with more cool seeings to post.

mural 101

Doing a little research into murals, and here's what's interesting...

From Wikipedia
Murals are important in that they bring art into the public sphere. For artists, their work gets a wide audience that otherwise might not set foot in an art gallery. For the city, it gets beautified by a work of art. Murals exist where people live and work and affect their daily lives. World famous are the murals in Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Belfast, Derry, Los Angeles and in India which have functioned as an important means of communication for members of socially, ethnically and racially divided communities in times of conflict.

Blah, blah - Let's just do something cool in a public space to cheer some people up.

Trompe-l'œil murals are interesting in that they play with 3D in a 2D space, but all these subjects are really too "classical" and boring to me:

Eric Grohe:


John Pugh:


John Pugh, again:


More modern mural designs, wall decals, etc to come...

cool rock band posters

I'm trying to design a poster for friends of mine who are getting married -- but it CAN'T be cheesy, or lovey-dovey, or LAME. They love bands like The National, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, and they have lots of funky band posters framed around their place, so I'm thinking of doing their commemorative poster a la rock band style.

Here was one poster artist, Leia Bell, whose style I liked a lot:







My friends liked the handwritten, bold style too, so we have a starting point.

They really like this Interpol poster, which is hanging in their apartment:


Another reference that they sent along though, were these Dead posters:







Stylistically, they're pretty different, but I think my friends thought of these posters more because of the subject matter/composition - where the illustrations are of a location (i.e., NY, SF) and something else placed within that location (i.e., skeletons). My initial sketches resemble this (i.e., Brooklyn Bridge, cats) so that is where the similarities end. Anyway, back to work...

ugly is so cute

A couple days ago, Pete pointed out the new ugly dolls site, which is a lot of fun. And full of cool illustrations, action and games.



In the "Meet the Ugly Dolls" section, the ugly dolls scroll by on a conveyor belt, and this one was my favorite ugly, Babo. So cute with his 2 little alfalfas sprouting out of his head. And when I read his bio, I clicked with him immediately.


Life seems like a lot of fun in Ugly Town!

mashup of my favorite things

I found this cool website Kirna Zabete a little while ago, and it's THE perfect combination of everything that I love: cool fashion and funky design (of the store AND the website itself). For now, some screenshots of the site. I have to plan a little recon mission to the actual store soon, though. I'm embarrassed to admit - I have not yet had a chance to check it out... *cringe*

Here is the New York boutique:


And here is the Tokyo boutique, which in my opinion, looks way cooler:


In clicking through the site, I actually think that the pictures of the product and interiors aren't great - they could do more to showcase the clothing in cool angles and lighting. Maybe they can have me do some product shots for them...

And look! A call for new designers...


My friend Shelz and I have many ideas - maybe we should submit some samples of our tattered tees concept. My brother and I also have had many creative concepts - "Day o' the Week Wear" - maybe we should create some fashion concepts too?

Stay tuned...