It’s like Communication Design class all over again.

Take a peek at these sexy pieces for the Grammy’s “Celebrate the Music That Made Us” campaign.  The portraits of select artists (Rihanna, Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, Thom Yorke, etc.), are made up of song titles that inspire them. Not sure who produced the artwork but you can view more here and here.

With such great use of typorgraphy, even I’m inspired to catch the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8th.

The Rubitone, by Ignacio Pilotto: A Rubik’s Cube with Pantone colour chips—now why didn’t I think of that? [props to my man Cory for the heads up]

I am left wondering the following: How many times did they have to re-do this trick and how long did it take to set it up. Enjoy it.

It’s been almost a year since the first and only time I’ve been to La Habana, Cuba and since then the country has moved even further away from the isolationist history (imposed or voluntary) of the last 50 years towards globalization with the rest of the world. One of the things that left a lasting impression on me was just how little things had changed in Cuba since 1959 compared with the rest of the world.

Peter Moruzzi, an architectural historian by trade, has published a book examining Cuban life in Havana prior to the rise of Castro. In his words…

This book explores Havana from the perspective of an American tourist visiting the city during the first half of the 20th century and, many decades later, as a 21st century visitor intent on rediscovering the city’s astonishing past.

Included in the book are a great display of “before and after” photos worthy of a look. The book also reminds me of a great trip I took a year ago and somewhere I need to go back to visit. (pics from my trip on flickr)

I enjoy performance art as much as the next guy (fact: few people enjoy performance art), but this Brooklyn-based artist William Lamson should be recognized for creating the weirdest bit I’ve seen in a while using a mask of exploding bananas. He also seems to have an unhealthy obsession with balloons. File this one under inspiration I guess.

This came in today via LiquidTreat. It’s a documentary called Died Young, Stayed Pretty which is billed as a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. These artists dig deep into the culture of our times, and past times, in an ever increasing effort to stand out amongst the clutter that surrounds us.

Along the way, they manage to create posters that are strikingly obscene, unflinchingly blasphemous and often quite beautiful.

At Industrial Brand, we have more than a tiertiary interest in this subject ever since we worked with Bob Masse on a project for Hemlock Printer’s Metal FX campaign. There is certainly a contrast between Bob’s classic work and that of these new renegades, yet, perhaps a level of eccentricity is mandatory for anyone venturing into the craft. From what we’ve seen, it seems to require a sense of adventure and willingness to experiment. And for sure these days, mischieviousness.

Keeping up with the craze over the new Batman movie, I thought I’d add to the hype by posting this nicely designed poster. The chorus of ‘hahaha’s’ written to form the bat symbol is a neat detail.

Props to Warner Bros. for the guerrilla-like advertising.

Radiohead is one of those bands that always seems to innovate and they’ve done it again. For their latest video for House of Cards, they collaborated with James Frost (Of Blip Boutique) to realize a video created entirely using data visualization and not traditional film techniques. Inspired by Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns, and harnessing the power of Processing, Frost created a video that is rather aw inspiring from an artistic point of view, not to mention the technical point of view! There’s a great explanation of everything including a great interview with Frost over at Creativity Online including some behind the scenes video and a bunch of the working files and code that’s been made available.

Apparently this has been going around for a little while, but the sheer effort, not to mention volume of paint, of this street art (I hesitate to call it grafitti) is impressive. Muto is “an ambiguous animation painted on public walls” according to Blu, the Italian artist behind this. Blu is known for the political and social messages in his work and I’m sure you can easily draw connections to another well-known artist, Banksy. Check out the rest of Blu’s site. The sketchbook is amazing. (via Gizmodo)