[via Wooster Collective]

From iri5’s Flickr collection “Remixes”.

Check out more of Ray’s work at raydemesa.com. We’re also joining forces over at MMM.

[via Cool Hunting]

There are so many things I love about Rune Guneriussen’s photos. I think the one above is my favorite. Reminds me of walrus fighting. Also love the singles collection.

I cannot wait to get you in the mail.

Have to say I absolutely love the Amelia movie logotype. Very clever and very simple.

While driving or riding as a passenger at night, I have a propensity to put up club (house, dance, etc.) music. Now that I’m in California again and thus driving a lot, I’ve realized why.

I used to do a lot of cross-country flying between LA and New York (JFK to be exact). I’d get on the plane around 11am and land around 8pm, stepping out into darkness. I’d grab a cab home and often, get a young cab driver, who’d be listening to club music on the radio. Usually around that time, the tunnel isn’t the best route to take, so we’d end up driving over the Queens-Midtown Bridge. It was always a beautiful view– the lights from the city, moving into the view of the skyline. And then the club music, but nothing too annoying, you know? It was perfect. It would gear me up to get back to my life, back into my routine, into my apartment– a feeling of coming home, but also of going somewhere, because New York was never quite home, but neither was LA.

Now, putting on that music in my car gives me back that feeling. I still don’t feel like I really live anywhere or in any one place (probably because I don’t), and I really don’t enjoy my routine now. But driving, in between going anywhere, is refreshing. Thus, I thought I’d share some of those songs with you! (Also check out Satoshi Tomie ft. Kelli Ali – Love in Traffic…I couldn’t find it to add on).

If you’re in the New York area or will be on Monday, September 21, check out Kristi Spessard Dance Projects’

– a dance tale about a young man’s sexual awakening over the course of a Southern meal.

at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. It’s a Southern-style cabaret and party to raise funds for the company. Kristi Spessard caught my video, “Beans and Cornbread”, on YouTube and contacted me to use it in the show! Because of work, I can’t attend the show myself, but I would love to hear from anyone who does. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Tickets are available here. For more information about the show and Kristi Spessard Dance Projects, visit kristispessard.com.

I watched this TED talk on positive psychology and “the good life” with Martin Seligman some time ago. Something stuck out to me. Basically, when you are engaging, when you’ve entered “flow”, and you’re able to draw meaning from the activity, you garner true pleasure from it. According to Seligman, technology, entertainment, and design can relieve misery. This is why film can be so comforting.

Looking back at the Great Depression, box office numbers were at their best (even today, during the current economic depression, movie-going has increased). The 1930s brought us the glitz and glamour of Busby Berkeley musicals, uncensored gangster films and women in barely there evening gowns. Many of the great musicals of the 1940s, during WWII, were thought to be forms of escapism. Since the 1980s, the rise of “chick flicks” (from Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment to the likes of Bridget Jones’ Diary and He’s Just Not That Into You) have been a (guilty) comfort to women, single or taken, everywhere.

There is much film criticism out there that talks about the experience of watching a movie. You are in a darkened room with a larger than life projection up on the screen. Theaters are kept at a fairly cool temperature so you are comfortable. You are in a place where time and space are essentially suspended. You can completely engage with the film on screen. Now, whether you garner true meaning from the experience or not depends on the film and even then, that’s up for debate. Nonetheless, I think this theory is a good explanation for why people flock to movie theaters during hard times, why when we’re sick at home or we’re going through a tough breakup, we sit in bed watching movies on TV with the lights off.

Came across the illustration at left in this Web Designer Depot post. I immediately fell in love with it. It makes me think of New York, but not just New York in general, but it take me back to the mindset of living in New York– the good, the bad, and the ugly (it’s glitzy and grungey, somehow at the same time).

The artist is Sophie Henson, and she has a great design style. Check out her work. I have a great admiration for typographers or those who can do a wealth of different hand-drawn typography. I used to do hand-drawn typefaces, myself, a long time ago. I remember I used to always do the names on the envelopes of greeting cards, all special– my family members used to give them to me to do for them since they all liked the different ways I drew the names. I wish I could get back into it. Maybe I will…I’m still young.

Anyway, upon e-mailing Sophie, I found out she’s got an online store in the works and will be selling the New York illustration as a poster quite soon. Can’t wait!

UPDATE: Guess what? My limited edition print is on its way to me in the Royal Mail! Thanks, Sophie!