The online indie shop Insound have put together a series of poster and t-shirt designs for a bunch of bands that are the who’s who of indie rock right now. Here are some of the posters from that series — the best ones, actually. Some bands got slightly unexciting creations (notably, Liars), but others really got some star poster/t-shirt treatment.

Statement from Insound themselves:
“The series was created by Chicago based design studio Sonnenzimmer, featuring ten of our favorite bands that made noise in 2010: Beach House, Broken Social Scene, Girls, Liars, Neon Indian, The Mountain Goats, Owen Pallett, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Titus Andronicus, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The series consists of 10 t-shirts and 10 limited edition silkscreened posters done in Sonnenzimmer’s abstract design style; and interestingly enough the entire series of posters was designed to fit together into one larger image that was the basis for the team’s design.”

Check out the larger finished work at the end of this post.

Buy the limited edition collection here.

With the proliferation of text-messaging and chat conversations and all sorts of data! being! transmitted! at! amazing!! speeds!!! throughout the world at any given SECOND, and in all sorts of RiDiCuLuZ FoRmZ, it seems only appropriate to base one show… or maybe even tons of shows… off of this theme. Which leads me to this post.

James Harris Gallery in Seattle currently has a group exhibition going on entitled TXT. Graphics and text converge to create two- and three- dimensional works that can be interpreted on multiple levels by viewers. This show runs through August 20th. Here are some of the pieces:

Lawrence Lemaoana’s Things Fall Apart, 2009
Textile (49″ x 32″)

Walter Robinson’s Forest, 2008
MDF, Epoxy, metalflake (84″ x 62″ x 1″)

Anthony Discenza’s EVERYTHING YOU’VE HEARD, 2009
Vinyl on aluminum, Ed. of 5 (24″ x 18″)

Alejandro Cesarco’s Footnote #7, 2008
Vinyl text on wall, Ed. of 5

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On a similar note, Portland’s Recess Gallery has an open call to artists who are working with text. Call is as follows:

Work that recontextualizes the text. Work that informs, invites, or inquires. Work that sends, receives, documents messages/ideas. Work that does work. Work you made. Work that you and someone else made. Work that you want to make with people. Work that is technically proficient? Sure. Work about ideas about ideas about ideas. Work in Helvetica. Work in Garamond. Work in video. Works on paper.

Do you have something that seems to fit? Does it coincide with at least three of the above statements? That’s okay, even if it doesn’t, you should send it to

recesspdx@gmail.com by the end of July for a show opening in the middle of August.

Please include your proposal/project description/artist statement along with some contact informtion, artist bio, or link to a relevant/personal website.
Suggested Additions:
Images of proposed work
Images of recent work
Your phone number

If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to recesspdx@gmail.com.

These photos are quite old, but they’re new to me. Photographer Phyllis Galembo takes colorful portraits of individuals in developing countries and captures the richness and beauty in their everyday dress and surroundings. These photos are large-scale color images capturing ritual adornment in Nigeria, Benin and Burkina Faso. Here are my favorites, but you can see more on her website. Amazing!

San Francisco artist Ehren Elizabeth Reed is a mixed media artist with some serious focus. All of her works feature the same materials — thread and paper (often in the form of altered books) — and the results are nothing short of remarkable. Her books, especially, seem to be three-dimensional mergings of craft and graphic design. Below are two pieces from her Modes Of Discourse series which quite literally reach off the page.

Joe Van Wetering’s art is of a rare breed where his art actually looks better on t-shirts. Something in the way his lines spread their feathers over the contours of the human body really just works. Click on the images to buy the shirts!

And, for good measure, here’s one of his deconstructions of landscape into form and color:

And like the t-shirts, they sometimes do look better in 3-dimensional context. Go figure:

There’s a lot of crap on Tumblr. Here’s our weekly update that sorts through the crap to bring you the best of the week. (Click here to add us on Tumblr.) This is a big week for photography, so hopefully you like that!

There was a time when 3-dimensional-crafted shapes were all the rage on the internet and gracing the covers of electronic albums everywhere. For large part, that trend died down due to the fact that the shapes started looking much too artificial; they were unsophisticated polygons with no real textures or moods other than “metallic” or “clean.” Paul Lee has managed to take these polygons, manipulating them in a way that keeps them current.

Photography by Swedish multi-disciplinary artist John Falk Rodén, who runs his own creative company with his partner, Andreas Lewandowski, called Ajja.

Minimalistic photography that will take your breath away, by Thorsten Konrad. Oceans are frequently calming, but this takes that almost to another level.

Buttonmooon weeds through vintage cameras and film to create images like this that are basked in saturated colors. This could quite possibly be the album cover for the latest indie singer-songwriter.

Al Magnus combines photography with manipulation to create that walk the line between fantasy and reality. (And maybe gives a heads up to Wizard Of Oz?)

Gunta Stölzl, German artist. This is a wall hanging from 1931; she was ages ahead of the current hipster trends in textile art and patterning. Ages!

UK-based illustrator (and former Redefine cover designer) Andrew Wheatley now has some pretty cool items available for sale through Envelop, a site that allows artists and designers to put their works on a wide array of cotton products (largely household items, for the domesticated art freak). Wheatley’s items include his almost Alice-in-Wonderland-like Tea Party Tote Bag and his amusingly political Love And Hate Apron, both of which make boring items completely desirable with their off-kilter designs.

www.andrewwheatley.co.uk
www.envelop.eu
www.envelop.eu/shop/articles/details/p/tea-party-2
www.envelop.eu/shop/articles/details/p/love-and-hate

The YYYs have put out a request for fans to design the t-shirts for their next tour! View the full details are at http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/tshirt/, but here’s what Miss Karen O has to say about it:

“Hey Folks, all us YYYs have been avid collectors of t-shirts over the years, what can we say, WE LIKEY A GOOD T-SHIRT. In our travels many of you have chucked a homemade YYY tee on the stage or what not and all the shirts have always been unique and poured over with loooooove. So it got us thinking: how about giving you the fans a crack at coming up with a fresh new blitzin’ YYY T-shirt design! It’s a natural fact that YYYs have amongst YOU a whole heap of ART STARS! So school’s out for the summer and we want you to spend a hot lazy afternoon throwing something together for us YYYs to REPRESENT! And I got a hunch you’re gonna bring it! And if you do we’ll bring back a little something in return…!! Luv, YYYs”

The winner will get a bunch o’ signed stuff from the band and will have their tshirt printed + sold on the upcoming YYYs tour and online.

Designs must be submitted by July 22nd, 2009.

http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/tshirt/