Field Notes – share the love

We love Field Notes notebooks and we love print and this video shows why.

That’s the way to promote your product: show people you love what you do and that you’re competent at it.

Still state of the (street) art

Filmmaker, author and photographer Henry Chalfant, the director of much-loved early-1980s hip hop street art documentary, Style Wars, has just launched a new website that is set to feature his astonishing Big Grafitti Archive. Henry’s portfolio features countless breathtaking shots that effectively helped to communicate grafitti art to the rest of the world, and he plans to make the Big Graffiti Archive available as a DVD set. That’s one for the OG Christmas list, then. Click on the image above to check the subway car in all of its glory.

Another ingredient in the crucible of hip hop, New York’s street gang culture, is explored in Rubble Kings, a new documentary from director Shan Nicholson that’s currently on the film festival circuit. Check the trailer below…

The Little Apple – New York as Toytown in The Sandpit

We first showed a tilt shift movie with the video Little Big Berlin and this film, which makes shots of New York seem like a toy town is also a must-see. Surely it’s only a matter of time before this technique is brought to wider public attention in a music video, advertisement or film – it’s an innovative, charming and quirky way to show a city at work.

Great film posters

We first became aware of this guy’s work when Hollywood director Jon Favreau tweeted a hand drawn poster for Iron Man II earlier this year.

The illustrator’s name is Tyler Stout, who hails from Washington in the States. He’s spent years caught up watching films and honing his craft, and it’s through this focus that you can see why he didn’t have a girlfriend until he was in his early 20s.

But it’s that kind of love for the subject matter that’s paid off in his later life, getting commissions to produce brilliantly observed re-imagings of current and classic movie posters.

We’re hugely keen on his ‘Kuato Lives’ Total Recall poster – the ‘two weeeeeeeeeks’ head is great – but all of his posters bring something to the party that hasn’t been seen in film posters for years.

Let’s hope we see a return to these sorts of promo values in the near future – all of our lives would be the better for it.

For more of Tyler’s work, stop by at his website – you may even be able to pick yourself up a print, but you’ll need to be quick!

Hollywood greats – underfoot and on screen

On September 18th, the Cinespia crew are set to end their tenth season of post-sundown, open-air classic movie screenings in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on LA’s Santa Monica Boulevard with a showing of Night of the Living Dead.

Lifetime Collective’s unexpected new video

The du jour brand for hipsters. Lifetime, started as a DIY basement outfit and have steadily progressed to creating full collections. Watching this video shows they still haven’t lost their edge. It’s nice when brands mess with clichés.

Could you give a pet AT-AT a good home?

When not smashing up Rebel bases, a well-loved AT-AT can make a great family pet:

Masterful teaser trailer for The Social Network

I know, a film about the origins of Facebook sounds like nothing more than a TV movie of the week, but when it’s directed by David Fincher and scripted by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin you have to take notice.
Like all the best teasers, this one manages to completely grip you without actually showing you anything. Nice, if obvious, movie logo at the end too.

When JMM met 007…

Cigarette Girl director JMM is still in a state of post-Connery shock, while producer Adam Hoenberg just looks dazed.

Very possibly the unlikely exchange of the year took place at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Sunday 19 June:

The setting: A gala screening of John Huston’s classic, The Man Who Would Be King

Cast: Memphis-based director John Michael McCarthy (JMM) and Sir Sean Connery

The script:

JMM: “Hi, I’m Mike McCarthy from Memphis, Tennessee, and I’m here to show my new film, Cigarette Girl.”

Connery: “What’s it about?”

JMM: “It’s about a girl who gives up smoking and, three days later, she starts killing people.”

Connery: “She gives up smoking?”

[Slow dissolve]

What Japanese kids do at school

Did you ever do anything this good the whole time you were at school?

Sure I built Bradford-on-Avon’s Saxon church out of cardboard, but I never made an awesome stop motion Mario run round my classroom.

“Off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush”

Ellroy's prime source material - propaganda disguised as a TV tie-in!

Noir icon James Ellroy is well known for his almost seamless blending of fact and fiction, but a recent chance purchase of a copy of 1940s magazine On The QT at a market stall in Bath popped another piece of his creative puzzle into place.

The Killer Inside Me — an anti-hero too far?

Classic pulp art — the original US paperback

Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of noir titan Jim Thompson‘s irredeemably dark fifth novel of 1952, The Killer Inside Me, has been attracting considerable flak for its brutality and amoral tone. Reportedly, even the film’s co-star, Jessica Alba, didn’t make it to the end of the gala showing at the Sundance Film Festival, so unflinching was the portrayal of a violent scene between her character and the work’s anti-hero, Texan Deputy Sheriff, Lou Ford (Casey Affleck).

Cigarette Girl — European premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival

Stop (Word) Press!

Mike McCarthy’s excellent slice of totally independently-made, dystopian big screen noir, Cigarette Girl, as previously blogged about on We Love Creative, is set to receive its European premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Tuesday 22 June.

Innapropriate children’s books – The Book!

Pixar story artist, Josh Cooley, has been creating his collection of Innapropriate Golden Books (a beloved US kiddie book range – think Ladybird) for the last two years. What has he done with this collection? Made a book of course. Check out some samples…

Flipping Princess

The Princess Bride has got to be one of my desert island DVDs. I already have the 15th anniversary edition, but the 20th is tempting… Got to love this fabulous ambigram cover design…

Princess Bride 20th edition

Cigarette Girl — truly great independent film-making

Cigarette Girl is the latest big screen slice of rock’n’roll-infused, dystopian noir from prolific, Memphis-based filmmaker, cartoonist and musician Mike McCarthy. He’s worked with rising director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) on such projects as MTV’s Emmy Award-winning Five Dollar Cover series; brought the world a host of lowbrow epics (including Elvis Meets The Beatles, “An unpopular movie about the most popular icons of our time”); and helmed promos for The Hives, Japan’s Guitar Wolf and other underground rock’n’roll icons.

Re-Skinned Buldings

Messing with people’s perspective by projecting images over buildings is all the rage in 2010, it’s still new enough to be impressive though.

Logorama – 2010’s logotastic Oscar winner

The winner of this year’s Oscar for animated short is Logorama, a wonderful inspirational design classic… that’s also a great quiz…. can you name all the logos used in its beautiful construction*?

*Actually, if you are going crazy trying to name all the logos those wonderful humans at Wikipedia listed them all in the Logorama entry

Pop Culture Retreads

There has been trend in 2009 for designers to take slices of popular culture and mash them up with old skool design. It looks like it’s an idea that isn’t running out of steam any time soon as Stéphane Massa-Bidal has shown with the latest incarnation – his series of internet phenoms as 1960’s style Pelican Classics.

Olly Moss was the first one out of the blocks with his revamped film posters and video games as books – all very Saul Bass.

M S Corley gave us books as, wait for it… books. Again heavily influenced by Bass.

It’s a great way for great designers to stretch their legs, but then no one is saying the originals weren’t brilliant either, right? Go here to see a great Pelican books resource.

Learning French through great design

Caroline Fabès is a freelance graphic designer who has created a great little typographical animation for a key scene in Raging Bull…

This is the actual scene. With pictures.

The history of Google in two lovely minutes

South West Creativity Farm

Apologies to London.

Psycho-typo.

Kinetic typography is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it’s immense power can be used for the dark side. Watch this speeck from Psycho…. if you DARE!!! Mwa ha ha ha… etc.

MTV Awards 2009 opening sequence

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Star Wars opening credits (if they had been created by Saul Bass)

The movie title stills collection

Someone very geeky is collecting opening and closing title stills from classic movies. This is shaping up to be a great resource for movie logos and motion graphics. They are gathered here for your pleasure

Art & Copy trailer

Even though this documentary is about US rather than UK ad creatives, it’s still a big screen documentary about creatives. A rare thing and it looks good! Here’s the HD trailer followed by the official blurb…

ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.

Dr Strangelove Opening credits

Here’s the opening credits to Stanley Kubrick’s wonderful Dr Strangelove. The titles were designed and hand drawn by a guy called Pablo Ferro. He started work as a comic book artist in 1953 and went on to work with Stan Lee of Marvel Comics before going on to do various animation projects and movie titles. He’s still going strong and there’s a film being made about his life which is scheduled to be released next year and is a combination of animation and documentary.

The car in font is a Toyota

Toyota is promoting its new car, the IQ, by having it drive a new font into existence and it turns out that it’s a genius idea. Designers are emailing the video to each other, blogs are picking it up – it’s gone viral. Plus, every letter of the font (free to download) shows the car’s tight manoeuvring: take a look at the lower case f, k and z, the precision of the upper case O – all of it shows great driving skills and fun. It was a leap this concept but it’s really worked and the font looks cute, dinky and odd. Just like the car.

WARNING: The soundtrack is far too bleepy and squelchy for its own good.

The Devil Wears Prada – this sh*t just got real!

This looks fantastic! The September Issue is a no-holds-barred documentary taking us behind the scenes of American Vogue. So far so dull, until you meet the terrifying legend that is Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour! Obviously, the commissioning of this documentary had absolutely nothing to do with the runaway success of The Devil Wears Prada. Even from the trailer below though, Anna makes Meryl’s fictional alter ego seem a little tame.

Full description after the jump…