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Why do we need music? Why do we consume it desperately?
Music is an inalienable element of the human condition. It is the only art form that we have already “built in” by default throughout our voice and body.
We have used music as the primary element of evolution, because its constitutes the mere foundations of our thoughts and feelings. Music is the reason why we don’t have lunch hanging from a tree or smell the opposite sex ass to show affection. Music defines us as Humans.
And according to Brazilian group Cansei de ser sexy, “Music is my hot hot sex”.
And… as all things human music is marketable. Back in the sixties, there was once this little group that you might have heard of, called “The Beatles”, that thought of promoting their songs with a feature film. And their little commercial experiment turned out to change history. With their first film “A Hard Day’s Night” they established the visual template from which the art form of music videos would evolve till our days. From that moment, record labels began to use the visual medium to promote singles without having to make any in-person appearances. Then appeared TV. And then MTV.
Generally speaking, the music industry only considers videos as a marketing and distribution support for their singles. (and singles are considered a support to sell albums, and albums help sell shoes, condoms, toys, drinks and so on and so forth. Pretty evil) The main intention of a music video is to establish trends, be flashy and be trashed after a week. But on rare occasion, videos transcend their commercial intention and become real works of art, enduring on popular culture and evolving film techniques and styles. Many videos are even turning into a test field for technical improvements intended for features.
I am sure that regardless of your field, these great music videos can be huge inspiration for your creative work. And because it’s essentially art, they can too inspire and change your lives. I’ve enjoyed immensely building up this list, and really hope that at least one of you readers out there take the time to sit back calmly with your souls and brains wide open, and play these marvelous songs from start to finish. You will surely feel the change in your life. I promise.
Holy SHIT! This is the kind of video that leaves you rubbing your eyes and wondering what the hell have you just seen. It almost obliges you to see it again. And again. Do you know what a palindrome is? It’s a word or phrase that’s read the same way forward or backward. Like RADAR, CIVIC or POP. If you want to describe accurately this experience to anyone, it is safe to say this is a true and unique visual palindrome. In fact, its the only one I’ve seen. And all of it in just one take. Or two?
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| Mosaic found at HONGKIAT |
Well, Twitter is no longer the best “next” thing. Twitter is actually THE HOT topic of the day, alongside Barak Obama, Swine Flu, and Rihanna’s buttocks.
But what the hell is Twitter? Why is it so hard to understand and harness after being around for almost three years?
We all know the general concept: What are you doing?
Can anything be simpler than that?
This is the charm of it all. Unlike my blogs, their premise is clear and straightforward. In 140 characters you are supposed to tell people what you are doing at any given time. You just have to create an account in order to begin picking up virtual friends. Either you “follow” or you be “followed”. Each time you post what you are doing, the message ends up in a stream of text available to your followers. You can also send direct messages between friends, and reply posts. All messages are sent via the Twitter page or via add-ons for your desktop, browser or mobile phone. The main difference with an Email service or instant messaging is that you don’t have to create groups or anything like that to send a single message to a massive amount of destinataries at the same time. How easy could it be from Gmail or messenger to send a message to a thousand or more recipients? Hmm, wait a sec, isn’t that spamming?
Icons are a mandatory subject matter in the daily life of programmers, bloggers, designers and software enthusiasts. And there are so many sources around, that sometimes its almost an impossible mission to find just the icon you want. You can easily spend many hours browsing through thousands of motifs, sizes and styles. Regarding free icons sets, I have to say that there is so much poor quality material out there, that it turns out to be a difficult task to purge all the garbage. The whole chore can be sometimes an entrepreneurship almost as discouraging as finding logical sense in a David Lynch film.
A friend of mine used to joke that usually programmers have bad taste (even for their clothes) and always choose efficient, but rather ugly icons for their applications. I think that thought could make an interesting pole don´t you think?
Anyhow, I have made a selection of original, stylish, beautifully designed icons so you can save clicks and have more spare time to go to the beach, look at he beach from your office window…or at least, think about the beach.
Click on image to download
The detail they give to their creations is simply fascinating. I believe their pallete harmonizes with a wide array of desktop colours.
So…Here I am, an old school techie that does everything the painful, excruciating, aching, manual way, writing about plug-ins. To begin with, I never use plug-ins! They just do stuff that can be done efficiently on plain Photoshop. I mean… come on! If I am paying $1000 for an image manipulation app like PS, I assume that either, I know how to use it, or have a big enough portion of my brain free from T.V and fast food to learn how to use it. Why am I going to pay $30 to $300 more for something that I can already do with a little exploration? Tonight is Champions League night. And Manchester United has just scored a goal. And I, the old school techie, am an Arsenal fan. This is one of those moments in life were you have to sit back and contemplate existence. Think calmly about your rights and wrongs, and avoid a psychotic outburst by looking at things from another perspective… Personally, I would rather spend a hundred bucks in a video tutorial or a book than in a plug-in. I oppose to plug-ins because they make users lazy and limit their knowledge. And I know that according to MTV, laziness and ignorance are both qualities strangely praised in this silicon breast infested (alleluia!) one hit wonder society. But we, legion of dark misfits and outlaws, don´t dig that. Or do we? Manchester United has scored again. Shit. We ARE in the XXI century ladies and gentlemen! And it is true that TIME IS MONEY. And we, fierce legion of designers all around the world, have to meet deadlines! So, I admit that there are cases when we have to use the god damn plug-ins in order to be (say it in robot voice) “Fitter, happier, more productive.”
After 3 straight days, ten jars of coffee and fucking up my Photoshop with 50 demo versions, I am going to share with you my thoughts about twenty-five plug-ins that I believe could be attached into an everyday workflow with some degree of success. Either I liked them or not, all these plug-ins deserve a try and a judgment on your own. I strongly encourage you not to pay any attention to this review, since I am on amphetamines right now and I know that I will not remember what I just wrote in a couple of hours.
Basically, it’s a collage creation tool. I work in advertising and know for fact that photo montage is an everyday thing. So the promise of saving time in such a task as blending and merging objects into different ambiences and backgrounds seems tempting. The specs and the info on the well organized Akvis page seem clear enough, so I began testing.
Here at Iconshock, we are always trying to renew and improve our products and services so clients and visitors can have the best experience possible. As part of this process, Iconshock has made a terrible mistake, and has hired me to write this blog from now on. I have tricked them, making them believe that I am an experienced filmmaker, with HUGE knowledge in Software and Graphic design. But in reality I´m just a frustrated Rock´n Roller with self destructive tendencies that could never make a guitar sound anything like a guitar. So I trust I can keep this secret with all of you so I won´t loose my job in the near future.
This Blog is going under some revamping, so you will be seeing new design and content.
Hope we have fun.
G.
