The Brilliance!

All I wanted to know was who did the album cover for Power Trip's 'Nightmare Logic', one of my favorite heavy records of 2017. I expected to find a reclusive American painter with long hair who doesn't talk much. What I found was so, so much more than that. What I found was my new favorite Instagram follow. What I found was --- Paolo Girardi. Paolo is a 43 year old Italian painter who seemingly only creates his paintings for album covers of the metal variety. Doesn't matter what kind of metal - power, black, grind, thrash - just needs to be loud and heavy. I've actually seen his work on many record covers over the years but never took the time to find out who the artist was. So far this doesn't sound particularly unique, surely there are a lot of artists out there who do work in this vein. But!! Have you seen his Instagram!? Honestly, finding his Instagram was a bit like seeing a band live who you were only familiar with because of one or two songs, then being blown away by the live performance and leaving with a t-shirt and listening to them on the drive home. I'm really fascinated by this guy! Not only does Paolo post his intricate paintings...Paolo posts videos of himself in his studio lifting weights (he's huge!), in ripped tank tops, denim shorts, no shirt at all, going to bed in his studio on a cot with snowflake pajama pants on. He really is the embodiment of his own work. But none of this is an act or an ironic vibe, this is just who Girardi is and, according to this interview, who he always has been. From that interview: "I’ve never changed my “style” since the late ’80s/early ’90s. That’s all. I am a bit out of date, some people call me a dinosaur, stubborn huge brick wall, or Neanderthal man, actually. Well, Italian ladies hate my old style." Well, their loss. Get lost in Paolo's world on his Instagram, link below.

Michael Cherman is a fashion & graphic designer from New York who first made his mark with his brand ICNY, a sportswear company that utilized 3M reflective to keep night activities safe while still emphasizing smart, good design. The concept was Cherman's response to an incident in 2012 when he was hit by a car while riding his bike home from work. Sometimes great ideas are born out of shitty life experiences. During that time, he was also honing his branding and design skills with projects for the likes of Nike, KITH, and A$AP Worldwide. Fast-forward to 2016, Cherman's inspiration has shifted from the serious, technical, safety-as-priority ICNY to the opposite end of the spectrum with Chinatown Market, his new endeavor described as "An homage to the spirit of Canal St." So...You pretty immediately feel this is a brand its creator is having a lot of fun with, which honestly is why I wanted to write this post. (That's not to say he wasn't having fun with ICNY, this looks pretty fun to me). Smiley faces, bootleg Gucci kingsnakes, 'Thank you have a nice day' and a rose lifted from plastic takeout bags, the 'SHIRT SHIRT T-SHIRT', which is hilarious to me...all tell a story of someone who found a simple point of inspiration and is having a good time building on it. It's all very New York but still somehow universally wearable, much in the way that early aNYthing was. I was living in the Chicago suburbs when A-Ron got that brand rolling and I never felt weird wearing it - it just felt like a perfect homage to an incredible city that anyone who has ever visited could appreciate and participate in to a certain extent. Check out the Chinatown Market Instagram and the site at the link below. Thank you and have a nice day.

"A person-to-person education service connecting anyone to experts in any field via short, elegantly structured, super affordable Q:A interactions."

This whole thing started with: all "those" kids sending cold emails, DMs, @s, comments, running up to people on the street/at the airport, the "lets build fam" kids, pick-your-brain-over-coffee kids, etc, etc that used to be (still are?!) perceived as annoying/bothersome. Thing is – I love those kids! Honestly! Those kids are are looking to educate themselves from people THEY decide are worthy to be teachers...sorry, but I fucking love that concept. Those kids are leveraging this beautiful thing us humans have, the internet, to move whatever it is they're working on forward as fast as possible. Again, I love that. The issue is that DMs, cold emails, random @s, comments, etc, etc are not really efficient channels...there isn't any "friction" as we call it - in our case, the $10 fee, there wasn't enough brutally simple structure - as we think we've created. And while there are some somewhat similar competitors, we don't think anyone is doing it tastefully.

So we created it.

It's quite small yet still - but "its working" as we say. I love being able to say that, honestly. I almost quit this project twice. I was so worried (still am?) it was going to be perceived as corny by the community/culture. Was worried it wasn't going to work. Was worried it was an entirely too-simple/dumb idea. Again, we're super tiny still - too early to start planning what I'll wear on stage at All Things D with Kara Swisher, lol, but we're pretty stoked on where its at right now and what the next few months look like.

THANK YOU to all the kids who've used it - seriously. Thank you to our experts. And super thank you to Zac and Charles for being part of the team to make this happen...its about to be super fun this year.

***End goal is to put a ding in traditional education.

I have been reading Meet Me In The Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman. It’s an oral history of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s. Jonathan Fire-Eater, The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ryan Adams, LCD Soundsystem, and Interpol are all discussed by the bands themselves, journalists, DJs, promoters, etc. It’s gossipy but ultimately very engaging. I can’t put it down.

I was 18 years old in 2001, I dropped out of high school and lived in a house called Squaresville in Atlanta. We had shows in our kitchen; it was fun, wild, and gross. I started going out and doing drugs soon after - when all of the music featured in this book was starting to take off. The first wave of my friends left Atlanta for New York City soon after. They lived in a truly heinous apartment in Bushwick (before it was “East Williamsburg”). I would visit them pretty often. On those visits, I would be out every night in a lot of the same places featured in Meet Me In The Bathroom. I still lived in Atlanta, so it wasn’t necessarily my scene, but even my slight brushes with it were intoxicating - literally and figuratively. I am now at the age where the things that I experienced in my formative years aren’t passe, they are discussed at length - in a wordy think piece in the New York Times or even visually on Instagram. Usually, I don’t love to look back or reminiscence, but this book forced me to, and I liked it. That time was special. Nothing mattered, things seemed less serious, and it was all ahead of us - the good and the bad. I guess that is everyone’s formative years, but I like to think my peers took youthful abandon further than most. The New York I have lived in for the last decade is much different than the one people remember so fondly in the book, but that’s OK. I don’t want to be waiting in line for a vodka soda at Bar 13 on a Sunday night anyway. Plus, I never loved The White Stripes.

One of my favorite things about THE BRILLIANCE! has always been posting about artists & designers who have made an impact on me in some way personally, professionally, or creatively. Sharing other's work has become an essential part of who I am as an artist and I want to canonize that here in a new ongoing series of posts I'm calling 'Visualized!'. I'll highlight 4 people/studios/etc. whose work has left a lasting impression on me and that I feel readers should know, if you don't already. Enjoy.

Hassan Rahim — A NYC-based artist & art director, Hassan is one of the people responsible for what I consider to be a real shift in the paradigm of modern graphic design. His work has an effortless, dark beauty about it that many seem to imitate but few get quite right. One of my favorite album covers of 2016 was Gonjasufi's 'Callus' and almost right away I wondered, correctly, if it was Hassan's. Don't ask him if he designed the new Nick Jonas album though. He didn't. You're thinking of the Jacques Greene record that came first.

Andrew Savage — Andrew Savage is a visual artist & musician, most well-known as the frontman for Parquet Courts. I wish he had a portfolio I could link to but he doesn't, so in the meantime enjoy that ItsNiceThat writeup to get to know him & his work a bit more. Parquet Courts have what I consider to be the best visuals for an active rock band in the world today, honestly. I don't think it's a stretch to be reminded of what Raymond Pettibon did for Black Flag. The art and music go hand-in-hand, almost can't exist without each other. The 'Human Performance' record is really a thing of beauty.

Esteban Diácono — Esteban Diácono is a motion graphics designer who leaves me speechless every time I see his work pop up in my Instagram feed. I often send friends DMs of his posts with just a "!?!" note attached, and they respond with something like "!!!!!". Really a modern 3D master of the human form but in a sort of hallucinatory fever dream kind of way. Check his Instagram for more recent/frequent experiments. This set is just too wild.

Ryan Travis Christian — I couldn't go this first 'Visualized' post without including a Chicago selection. Ryan Travis Christian is one of my favorites - his work feels comforting and familiar yet unsettling in the kind of way KAWS' work often does: rooted in characters and illustration you feel like you've seen before but rendered in an entirely different, dark and strange yet oddly perfect way. Black & white graphite drawings pulling inspiration from late 20's/early 30's cartoons made up of surreal, amorphous blob-like creatures and Mickey Mouse & friends variations that creep you out and win you over at the same time. His patterns and composition are incredible too, really he's a fine artist with a veteran designer's eye. Ryan is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago, so if you're ever in town go check them out.

✌

Reporting live from a Boingo hotspot @ the Marine terminal at LGA...why is Delta flying out of here now?? Odd spot. Anyway, man - the Nike / Tom Sachs thing last night. Crazy / weird / incredible. Was texting some friends last night like, how do even explain that event? As with any of these events - there was a proper DJ setup (s/o Acyde and Tremaine), drinks, etc, etc, etc. The actual point of the whole thing though was the screening of "The Hero's Journey" a 40 minute film by Tom Sachs and Van Neistat...quite good, and then this crazy obstacle course explained as "An experience in physical strength building and manual dexterity." - it was no joke a series of about 9-10 physical and dexterity challenges you had to go through. After the film you were told: "You can choose the difficult path ahead or be a pussy and choose the easy path and walk around the party." Lol. If you choose the hard path - which I did - you were given a full branded Nike/Tom Sachs jump-suit which you needed to change into. So crazy and weird, loved it. The challenges started started off with a knotted rope climb to the ceiling of this warehouse (!) but included flying mini RC helicopters, trapeze swinging over a decent size pond of water, learning to tie a very specific knot, doing clap push-up until you broke form, jumping across polygonal "rocks" because the floor was lava, lifting progressively heavier weight while repeating his mantras aloud, and a ton of other quite random stuff...again, all of this was an actual Tom Sachs installation. And to trip you out the entire time - Tom himself was often standing next to you watching you. ?!?! Truly one of the more avant garde experiences I've had in my life...all taking place on Governors Island that Nike rented their own Ferry to shuttle you to. Crazy. Qwehlo!!! thank you for the invite and sorting me out man. ****All this and I'm not even a sneaker guy...ha.

If you've been a reader of the brilliance for a minute - you know I used to often write about Steve Jobs and Jay-Z. They were, and continue to be, incredibly influential people to me. I joke that my formal education is listening to Jay-Z while I learned classic ASP and SQL in my parents basement in high school int eh late 90s, ha, it worked out well. Anyway, Elon is a rather obvious recent addition to those two characters. I was always familiar with his work, but it wasn't until about 2-3 years go that I started digging in heavy on the interviews, the book Ashlee Vance wrote about him (please, please, please read it!), and his general back story. Probably too much to say in this brief post... But man, he is truly the definition of following your convictions, no? And to proper extremes...going for broke (and going broke!) on unimaginably (honestly!) ambitious projects. His stated, and 2 of 3 pretty much accomplished, goals are to disrupt the auto industry, remove dependence on fossil fuels entirely, and make our species multi-planetary. And!! Doing it all with great taste! Thats not even considering Neuralink...

So, the only real point of this post is two things: (1) to highlight a few interviews worth watching and (2) this quote from Larry Page on craziness and luck:

"...I mean we just have a single proof point now that you can be really passionate about something that other people think is crazy and you can really succeed. And you look at it with Elon and you say, ‘Well, maybe it’s not luck. He’s done it twice. It can’t be luck totally.’ I think that means it should be repeatable in some sense. At least it’s repeatable by him. Maybe we should get him to do more things.”

Fantastic interviewer...perfectly broad.

Sam Altman/YC interview - The quote about fear in this one is quite good.

LOL on him crashing his uninsured McClaren F1.

*Steve Jobs always said he wanted to make a ding/dent in the universe. I love that, though he was prone to hyperbole a bit...it's funny, Elon is the only human we have right now that is doing so in a more literal, less hyperbolic (no orbital trajectory pun intended) way.

I've been thinking a lot about how and why we use different social platforms, why we're drawn to some more than others, and what we get out of each of them. For me, Twitter is king. I feel like it's the best of all the other platforms combined: I get basketball nerd shit, see an artist's new work, get the news literally as its happening, laugh at a @leyawn tweet, and so on. It covers everything efficiently. It's still all about the beauty of saying what u need 2 say in vry ltd amt of chrctrs. I love Instagram though, but it's such a one-way street. I don't learn on Instagram like I do on Twitter, or have a conversation. It's very 'show and tell', which is cool. But I don't find the experience as enriching as I find Twitter. What I do love though, actually maybe more than Twitter in some ways, is Instagram stories. A lot of artists, myself included, tend to treat Instagram like a 'best of' - posting the final, polished product. Stories is such a perfect companion for that. A chance to let your guard down, show behind-the-scenes, making-of, etc. I enjoy the 'visual stream of consciousness' vibe. You can overdo it, like, when you see 9,000 little dashes up top and think yeah I'm not looking at all of this...ha. But you are in control of your own feed after all, so to an extent, as with any platform, it is what you make of it. Facebook is the weird one to me. It's starting to feel its age. Crazy that something only 11 years old is 'old' but by internet standards, thats ancient. Facebook won't go away and amazingly doesn't feel like it's going away any time soon. I suppose that's what happens when you've amassed 1.2 billion+(!) users though. Snapchat's certainly the one right now that feels on the fringes. IG Stories put such a dent into their userbase. I rarely check it anymore. They've done little to make finding people easier and that's ultimately what faded it for me. Anyway, what I think about most is: 'what's next'? FB/IG/Twitter all have staying power and loyal users. Starting a new social platform right now sounds like the most intimidating task. What voids are left to fill? Don't need any new little social icons on restaurant menus or the sides of brand's shipping boxes, ha. Feel like we're all set for a little while, but of course there is always a "next". Don't @ me.

Look out your window, look around next time you're in a parking lot, go to a dealership, etc. Try and find two identical cars...year, make model, color, trim, etc. Incredibly rare...like, exceedingly rare. Ever since Henry Ford allowed you to pick another color outside of black - people have been expressing themselves via their car with trim levels, color, etc - and its mind-bogglingly (to me at least) inefficient from a manufacturing standpoint. Think about the structures and design systems that need to be in place at a plant to allow that? 1,000s if not 10,000s of different configurations...even for like an $18k Jetta. It's nuts. For reference there are...5 iPhone color options, thats it.

So, lets say there were just...4-5 major car manufactures. And each one made just ONE (just one!) model of car - no options, period. And maybe the concept of "model" year went away. And they were designed for maximum manufacturing efficiency, passenger comfort, and fuel (electric!) efficiency. The cost savings to the manufacturers would be...bonkers. I don't have any actual numbers to reference, but I don't think it'd be out of range to see 70% reductions in the cost of manufacturing - maybe more. And! You could assume because they are purchasing orders-of-maginuted more of just one type of leather, one color of paint, etc, etc...that the quality of those parts/pieces would be as high if not even higher than that of an S Class Mercedes due to the scale of purchase... I truly believe we could have S Class level quality and comfort for the cost of a mid-level VW Jetta.

Who cares? This is where it gets interesting...now lets say they're not selling those cars anymore, but are instead, due their new found cost efficiencies, its more profitable for them to sell us "cell phone plan" style to access their cars. $50 for 250 miles a month, $100 for 750 miles a month, etc, etc. Would you ever buy a car again? Would it matter to you if you could get "Ibis" white vs "Arctic Fleck" white on your new Audi S5...when for $100 a month you could be taken wherever you want in something as nice or nicer than an S Class? ...

Man...it kinda sucks. I'm a car guy...like for real into them. But it just seems so obvious yeah? I suppose I'm looking forward to it. Funny thing, it'll happen slowly first...but eventually its going to feel like what Napster did to the music industry. Buckle up!

The first interview of this "new era" of THE BRILLIANCE! is here and we think its pretty much perfect: Andrew Kuo, or @EarlBoykins as you may know him from Twitter/Instagram, was kind enough to answer some questions for us about his brilliantly funny Instagram, life as a traditional fine artist, NBA superfandom, Milhouse, and of course the internet. These perfectly random interviews have always been a super important component to THE BRILLIANCE! and honestly our favorite part of the site...in a way, it was one of the motivations of why we started it. We weren't cool enough to ask any of these people to coffee and have them respond so instead we asked if we could interview them...and it worked, LOL. We have a bunch of other ones too if you're new to the site check the interview archives (or actually, even if you're an "OG" fan, check out the old ones...crazy that some of these people let us interview them back its the day.) To use Virgil's words: we consider it to be a bit of a cultural time capsule on the internet. Alife, Futura, A-Ron, Alex Calderwood, Jen Stark, Josh Keyes, Kazuki Kuraishi, Jake & Amir, Tom Sachs to name a few...and the list goes on. We're super honored to get to know these people through our simple Q&A's and hope you'll enjoy this latest one with Andrew Kuo! Good bye!1 Signed, Chuck & Benjamin