Art: Ernest Briggs

The Baruch College website describes the work of Ernest Briggs:

From dense layers of calligraphic brushstrokes to broad, sweeping passages of luminous color, Ernest Briggs's paintings from the 1950s bristle with the artist's sense of elation at leaving traditional image-making behind. Briggs was an active participant in the later wave of Abstract Expressionism, the revolution in abstract painting that secured New York City's position as the art capitol of the world in the post-World War II period.

The Abstract Expressionists celebrated the performative act of painting and the recording of the artist's subconscious as central themes of their art.

View Ernest Briggs's paintings in the Anita Shapolsky Gallery's current and past exhibits.

Category: Art

Music: Depeche Mode

From depeche mode dot com:

The band have announced the title of their upcoming album. The album will be called 'Playing The Angel'. Some of the songs on the album are:

• Precious
• Sinner in Me
• Suffer Well
• John the Revelator
• Macrovision
• A Pain That I Used To Be
• I Want It All

The Depeche Mode site also reports that a soon-to-be-released compilation called Future Retro features two Depeche Mode remixes. The whole track list looks great for 80s new wave junkies.

Category: Music

Quotes: The Wild One

Girl: What're you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddya got?

From Marlon Brando's The Wild One, 1953, via Punk: Attitude.

Category: Quotes

Design: Milton Glaser

BD4D recommended a very nice video of design legend Milton Glaser speaking on art, design, life, and maintaining "your capacity for astonishment" (37 MB).

Category: Design

Design: The 8 Steps of Image Editing

Matt LeClair leads us through The 8 Steps of Image Editing with Photoshop:

1. Crop, Rotate & Scale
2. Fix Scratches & Dust using the Clone Tool
3. Expand the Tonal Range using Levels
4. Add Contrast using Curves
5. Adjust Midtones using Curves
6. Adjust Color using Curves
7. Improve Sharpness using Unsharp Mask
8. Compare

Categories: Design, Photoshop

Web: Goo Goo Google

Here are several of the amazing sites and services that leverage Google Maps along with a story about Google Maps testifying in court:

• Gmaps Pedometer
• Google Sightseeing
• Google Moon
• Housing Maps
• How Google Maps Got Me Out Of A Traffic Ticket
• Hurricane Data Maps
• Workout Tracker

Category: Web

Architecture: Michael Wolf Photography

Robert Koch Gallery is pleased to present Architecture of Density, an exhibition of large scale color photographs by Michael Wolf. Wolf has lived and worked in Hong Kong for ten years. Stimulated by the region's complex urban dynamics, he makes dizzying photographs of its architecture.

Category: Architecture

Design: Casino Carpet Gallery

Peruse the casino carpet gallery Die is Cast:

Casino carpet is known as an exercise in deliberate bad taste that somehow encourages people to gamble.

In a strange way, though, it's a sublime work of art, rivalling any expressionist canvas of the past century. Note the regal tones of Caesars Palace, the bountiful bouquet of Mandalay Place, the soft, almost abstract pointilism of Paris, all whispering, 'gamble, gamble' just out of the range of consciousness as people walk to the nearest slot machine.

[via Speak Up]

Category: Design

Music: Come As You Are

Eleven years after his death, Kurt Cobain's hometown has finally embraced the legacy of the late grunge icon. Last week, the title of one of Nirvana's signature hits, 'Come as You Are,' was added to the 'Welcome to Aberdeen' sign on the anniversary of Cobain's April 5, 1994, suicide. (photo)

From mtv.com via the July issue of Blender.

Category: Music

Quotes: Pirates of the Caribbean

Will Turner: This is either madness or brilliance.
Jack Sparrow: It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide.

From Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003.

Category: Quotes

Design: Photoshop History

I especially like the old Photoshop icons in this short Photoshop history. Version 1.0 shipped in February of 1990. My first experience with Photoshop was version 4.0 in early 1997.

[via The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog]

Category: Design, Photoshop

Misc: Wristbands Called Safety Risk

Before you wear your cool yellow LiveStrong wristband at the hospital, think twice. Several area hospitals are putting the brakes on Lance Armstrong's cancer organization fundraising bracelets. It's not cold-hearted backlash, but rather a safety precaution.

Patients wear colored bracelets to identify safety needs, said Lisa Johnson, vice president of patient services for Morton Plant Mease Health Care. Yellow stands for 'do not resuscitate.'

From the St. Petersburg Times via Details magazine (article reprint).

Design: Steps to Designing Grid Systems

After Mark's well received typography series, his new series is titled "Five simple steps to designing grid systems."

• Preface
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

Category: Design

Quotes: Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

From poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy, 1844–1881 (Ode, 1-8).

[via Willy Wonka]

Category: Quotes

Art: Linda Besemer

Linda Besemer makes it evident that a painting's surface is at least two-sided; it is a thing with a front and a back. Added into her heady mix is her insistence that a painting need not reiterate the illusion that it is a flat or static thing. Rather a state of potentiality, which Pollock's poured paintings embody, is the goal Besemer achieves in her paintings, which seem as if they could be rolled or unrolled further, or even folded again.

Click the "Next" link above each painting on cohanandleslie.com to browse some of Linda Besemer's work.

Category: Art

Web: Ten CSS Tricks

Pick up some tips in Webcredible's Ten CSS Tricks:

1. CSS font shorthand rule
2. Two classes together
3. CSS border default value
4. CSS document for printing
5. Image replacement technique
6. CSS box model hack alternative
7. Centre aligning a block element
8. Vertically aligning with CSS
9. CSS positioning within a container
10. Background colour running to the screen bottom

Categories: Web, CSS

Design: Photoshop Blending Modes

You may download Ben's Advanced Blending Modes Handbook in PDF format on his blog:

Photoshop's blending modes seem to be one of the most mysteries features for most users. All it takes is a basic idea of how these wonderful features work in order to start to use them at a more advanced level. You don’t have to know how each individual mode work, instead it's usually more useful to have a general idea of how they are organized and to know what’s unique about each grouping of modes.

[via The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog]

Category: Design, Photoshop