Seems like a real useful book


Grain

price: $39.00

available: restocking

item #: bk-632

“From the same people that brought you the royalty free camouflage book, comes this book of 100 wood grain jpegs. Could this be any more useful? Add instant warmth and depth to your designs with these photographic quality wood patterns. Images range from light to dark stain in assorted grain patterns (from basic to wild). The book serves as the catalog and includes a CD-ROM with corresponding files. Recommended.” [Via Turntable Lab

Dance like a robot

Two Chinese boys have made a spoof music video of Backstreet Boys’ song “As Long As You Love Me”. The duo’s name is called ??男生 or in English “Back Dormitory Boys”. Their spoof music videos have been selected by Motorola China to promote mobile phones.

Also checkout this classic video.

If you have a lot of chest hair,
Show it like a FOB*,
Immigration coming to get you,
Marry like a FOB,
…
I am a nice FOB,
I work in the IT**,
When you call tech support,
You will get me.
…
I am a bachelor,
And I work hard,
Come and marry me
So I can get the Green-card.
…
White people, they can’t understand me,
Their jobs are now in New Delhi.
…

* FOB, Freshly Off the Boat, aka. newly arrived immigrants.
** IT, information technology.

Artist Hu Yang spent a year interviewing and photographing 500 Shanghai families.

Jin Chizhe (Shanghainese, Technical Assistant)

I’m busy with my work in a company and I also work as a part-timer for my artistic friends. I likie collecting artificial guns and enjoy designing and making mechanical products of the 1960s and the 1970s. I want to have my own studio and work for myself one day. My pain is that I don’t have enough time to be with my parents and family.

Ji Li printed 15,000 of these bubble stickers and placed them on top of ads all over New York City. Passersby fill them in, then Ji Li went back and photographed the results. Genius!

From the heart of Japan’s youth culture—Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district—Flickr user Purpin describes how Apple is advertising the iPod nano:

“As part of their rather unique advertising campaign, huge iPod nano posters now adorn the platform walls of Toyoko Line Shibuya Station.

As you depart the train you’ll be faced with a stream after stream of 1:1 iPod nano cutouts, in which you can pull off and take home. Obviously, I helped myself to a few as well.

Needless to say, with its tens of thousands of people passing through Shibuya station daily, those iPod cutouts won’t last very long.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough to be able to catch a glimpse of the staff furiously “refilling” the empty spaces with new cutouts in between the waves of departing passengers (I took the pictures after the evening rush. I can only imagine how busy these guys can be during rush hour!).”

Chinese Backstreet boys in full force.

Rob Kleckner reports:

Exhibit A: Classic cover art of Minor Threat’s self-titled 1984 compilation.

Exhibit B: Nike Skateboarding’s poster image for its “Major Threat” 2005 East Coast Tour.




You don’t need a degree in graphic design to notice the similarities here. They’re the fucking same. Oh, wait—one is blue, not red, one says Major, not Minor, and, uh, okay, there are some Nike logos tossed in there. It sort of brings to mind that old interview in which Vanilla Ice attempted to defend the difference between “Ice Ice Baby” and “Under Pressure” (“dun dun dun duh-duh-duh dun” vs. “DUN dun dun dun duh-duh-duh dun”). [via pitchfork.

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