Apache from oneedo on Vimeo.

Check out the groovy animation in this music video for the band Danger Beach on Dream Damage Records. Super cool and inspiring.

Intersection of steel and sky.

Legendary typographer, logotype designer and teacher Doyald Young died on Monday. After I moved to L.A. nearly four years ago, I became much more aware of his impact in the design world. He was a long-time Art Center professor in Pasadena and design bookstores here would carry his brilliant and inspiring books. He would make trips from his home in Sherman Oaks to personally deliver his books to Hennessey + Ingalls locations in Hollywood and Santa Monica. Circulation was limited – Amazon and other bookstores do not often carry them. 

I can't recommend his three terrific books on logos and logotypes highly enough. I'd encourage anyone with an interest in typography and logotypes to add Dangerous Curves: Mastering Logotype Design, Fonts & Logos and Logotypes & Letterforms to your design library while they are still available. They are essentials. You can order them here:

Doyald Young's Official Site

Some other good links to learn more about Doyald and his remarkable career:

A Recent Interview

Fonts He Designed at MyFonts.com

Biography 2009 AIGA Medalist Award

The Poet of Letterforms: The Passing of a Legend Doyald Young

Wikipedia Entry

(Photo by Don Perdue)

Oh my, the irony.

And zombies. Breaking stuff.

Do music videos get much better than this?

We like.

Wires in the sky. A quick picture from yesterday.

Finally! The dreaded Buffaslug logo is extinct. R.I.P. One of the ugliest logos in all of sports – and a prime example of why logos should be designed by a professional brand identity firm and not attempted in-house.

A good read from The New York Times on how cartoonish designs are dying off as hockey logos return to their classic roots.

Saw some inspiring art from Nathan T. Ota at the La Luz de Jesus gallery on Saturday night:

Check out more of his art at his site.

Is it time for a new website? Here are seven signs that it’s time for an upgrade. Stuart Silverstein, friend of the Zoo and e-commerce superstar, is interviewed:

AllBusiness.com Article

The Sunset Strip came alive again two weekends ago. With several blocks closed off to traffic, over 10,000 rock and hip-hop fans attended the Sunset Street Music Festival on August 28th. Here were the highlights.

A video from Kid Cudi‘s show:

Video from the Smashing Pumpkins performing “1979”:

Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees brought his mohawk and rocked out, singing their “Animal” hit:

Travie McCoy rapped out a fun set:

Fergie joined Slash to finish off a rocking set:

...dancing at the Sunset Strip Music Fest on Saturday.

After that long pause in the firing, we’re back. Lots of blog updates on the way. Stay tuned…

Check out this amazing new video from OK Go, “This Too Shall Pass.” Using a Rube Goldberg machine, they filmed this all in one shot. Wow.

Good buddy Mark Radcliffe is one of the characters in Lemonade, a short film about a group of advertising professionals who are laid-off in 2008 by a large NYC ad agency and how that changes their outlooks on life. Worth watching:

Just heard exciting news from Margaret Floyd, an exceptional nutritionist here in LA. She’s getting very close to being under contract for her forthcoming book, Eat Naked, which will explore how eating fresh food that’s whole, organic, unrefined, and often comes unpackaged is a healthier nutritional choice. The book would launch in Spring 2011 and appear in bookstores everywhere.

Zookeeper developed the logo, tagline and website late last year.

Very, very excited for Margaret.

As we all know now, many of our baseball heroes put incredible doses of steroids in their bodies over the years to boost their slugging abilities.

But imagine being on an acid trip and pitching? And not just pitching, but throwing a no hitter, the rarest of diamond gems. Dock Ellis did it back in the day and here’s his almost unbelievable story in this brilliantly illustrated video by No Mas and artist James Blagden:

Check out our hockey buddy Kenny Jordan’s new video that just released today, Come Back Clean (Kaskade Radio Edit Version). Kenny teams with Scott Kirkland to form The Crystal Method, one of the best selling electronica bands in the world.

Last year, we designed this poster for a fundraiser hosted by The Crystal Method. We also created this “I lost me to The Crystal Method” T-shirt:

Just back from Mulholland Drive, a bit east of Laurel Canyon, checking out the massive forest fires. Overlooking Universal City, the vantage up there of the Station fires is incredible. You could actually see the flames tonight, ripping up the slopes, getting very close to the communications towers on Mt. Wilson which could vaguely be seen in the distance. When I stopped yesterday afternoon, you could just see smoke from there, approximately 18 miles from the closest fires, as the crow flies.

The billowing clouds look like massive mushroom clouds – these pictures don’t do justice the size and scope of the clouds. They are enormous.

My grandfather was a firefighter in my hometown of Troy, NY, and my grandmother and great aunt used to take me to many fires when I was just a kid. We’d sit there for hours and watch the firefighters do everything they could to douse the flames. Very sad two firemen lost their lives today battling the forest fires. And these fires are a long way from being over…

Click on the photos above to enlarge the pictures of the spectacular – and ominous – skies.

Starbucks has been doing a masterful job in the social media sphere to get their word out and build up a community of loyal followers. And it’s paying off – they’ve racked up 3.7 million fans on Facebook.

Read how they’ve done it in this Brandweek article

What’s your brand doing to build a community and make an emotional connection with customers?

Recently met and had coffee with a talented LA designer about collaborating in the future. I noticed on her Facebook profile under info that she says she has slept with the same doll, Dolly, every night, since the day she was born. I forgot to ask her about that. Quite the streak. Funny the emotional connection we make to things.

Which leads us to the new Calvin Harris video, the first release off his new album releasing August 17th that I’m pretty excited about. His first album, I Created Disco, was chock full of hits and energy, and seeing him live at the Henry Fonda Musicbox here in Hollywood was one of the highlights of 2008. In this new video, “I’m Not Alone,” Calvin loses his teddy bear as a kid and is hellbent on reanimating his stuffed bear, slicing and dicing models to bring it back to life. Part snuff film, part man-on-a-mission, the vid is pretty hypnotic. Check it out: