Our very own Nubby has an art show in Portland on July 2nd. I won’t embarrass her by rambling on about how great her work is, just go see for yourself if you’re any where near PDX.

“A new collection of graphic black + white artwork from Nubbytwiglet.com, the Black & White Graphic Insight series is an ode to my love of graphic design.”

Black & White Graphic Insight
Reception: July 2nd, 6-9 pm
Show runs July 2nd to August 3rd, 2008

@ Vino Paradiso
417 N.W. 10th
Portland, OR 97209
Gallery Paradiso website

I’ll never break my Mac habit to go for a Zune but if there ever was a reason to own one this may be it. Limited edition release of 500 units engraved with the Joy Division iconic artwork created by Peter Saville. Get your finger on the trigger on June 17th.

Tree Stencil Cut and Spray Timelapse - Draft from Jaymis on Vimeo.

From the artist - “This is a timelapse shot over several months totalling about 10 hours cutting and then spraying a stencil. It still needs some tweaks to editing and motion, but it takes an extremely long time to render, and there are loads of other projects in the way, so I’d prefer to share it incomplete and warty rather than never showing it because it’s not “perfect”.

Tech:
Shot with a Pentax *ist DS Digital SLR. The frames were taken as quickly as the camera could record to SD card - about 1 frame every 1.7 seconds.

The camera was immobile on a tripod, the pan and scan (or “Ken Burns Effect” if you want to be all photo nerd) was added later in After Effects. I shot medium-resolution images, which gave me 1500×1000ish pixels, allowing quite a bit of resizing and moving around the frame.

The faster, motion-blurred action as the video progresses is also post-production, created by speeding up the clips and blending multiple frames together.”

For anyone who has been aware of Marshall McLuhan’s life and work and who have read his many books and essays, he is perhaps best remembered for the slogan The Medium is the Message upon which he elaborated in his 1964 book, ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.’

For those who know the slogan but not the man or meaning behind it a timely book published by Mark Batty Publisher came out late last year entitled Everyman’s McLuhan written by W. Terrence Gordon, Eri Hamaji and Jacob Albert. It’s basically a primer for those interested in McLuhan and who are ready to plunge into his work.

This is a pocket-sized book that’s handy to have around; you can pick up this book and start at any page, you can jump around too without losing the thread and it’s also worth having just for the graphic design. The writers also provide the back story to some of McLuhan’s writings including the slogans. For instance they flesh out his thinking behind “The Medium Is The Message.” They ask “How can the medium be the message? How can the television circuits, screen etc. be the ad coaxing us to buy?” They let us know that McLuhan never intended his phrase to have such a literal meaning. He often rephrased the slogan to fit different audiences and those paraphrases are not that well know. Here’s one - “The medium is the message, but the user of the medium is the content of the medium, in the sense that any medium is an extension of the human body.” By that he could mean that a mobile phone is an extension of our ears. The idea then extends itself to this - “The medium is an environment that produces effects.” I recommend picking up this fascinating book, it’s a mere $12.71 at Amazon right now.

One to bookmark. Modern English coming soon.