BKLYN ROCKS

T-shirt © 2008 Frank Olinsky

I’ve been living in Brooklyn for a long time. About 40 years or so. A lot has changed over that time. Used to be none of my friends would come visit. Now Brooklyn has become a superstar. Why only a few weeks ago they were shooting an episode of Gossip Girl on my corner. Heath Ledger lived down the block and and I didn’t know until after he died. Any way, like it or not things change. One thing that has not changed is my love for this place. I came up with this t-shirt design awhile back. I decided to have a small edition printed up as gifts for friends and family members. In case you were wondering “BKLYN” is an abbreviation for Brooklyn. It has five letters as does the word “rocks” which made for visual symmetry.

Apple. . . BlackBerry. . . Blueberry!

My original idea was to make a laptop computer from a pizza box. Since pizza boxes are square that didn't work out. While visiting Canada this past summer I came across a blueberry box that was just the right size and shape. Brought it back to Brooklyn. It sat around for a while. One day out came the X-acto knife, Elmer's glue, some Fom-Cor, black paper, aluminum foil, Duct Tape, etc. and this construction was born.

Velocity, Deborah Feingold, etc.

It was 1984 and one of the first album packages I got to work on with my studio Manhattan Design was Velocity by the Philadelphia band, The Vels. I still have a warm spot in my heart for this one. It was also the first time I got to work with one of my favorite photographers, Deborah Feingold. Her photos of the band appeared on the back of the LP (yes kids, vinyl). I illustrated the cover based on a portrait Deborah took of the band with odd bits drawn on fomecore and pasted on their faces. (The source photo appears very small on the lower left corner of the back cover.) Drawings of these facial bits also appear full size on the back cover. I also scratched out an inky black and white version of the portrait for a 12 inch single. The silhoutte portrait of Deborah in action is a recent digital recreation of the missing original art which was created with cut paper. The square shape was selected because Deborah shot in square format in those days. She also stood on a blue equipment box when she worked. I’ve been in touch with Deborah just recently. She’s working on a book of her photographs. It will be amazing.

Next New Networks’ Poster Series #2

The second from a series of 12 limited edition posters I am creating for Next New Networks has just been mailed out. This one features the names of each of the Next New Networks inked on top of their N-Bot logo/character. As mentioned earlier on this blog, these posters will be mailed out one per month for a year. The first poster for Barely Political was sent out just before Obama Day (I mean Election Day).

WTF?

I was alerted to a post on Gawker related to layoffs at MTV. The posting was accompanied by this takeoff of the original MTV logo.