The Brilliance!

We’ve chatted about Hedi’s photography here on the site a couple times before I think. Once at least. He’s back with this one…his amazing ability to find people that embody that ‘Hedi’ image, what was once the ‘Dior Homme’ image - I’d say it’s important not to confuse the two. The idea behind the project was to, in just 4 days, “create a definitive record of London youth right now.” Quite a task in just 4 days. Nicola Formichetti, the stylist for the shoot, and Hedi would hit the streets, cafes, late night shows, etc to find the faces they felt embodied the “genre now” look of London’s youth as A-ron might call it. I dig the end results. Without sounding like a fanboy - its a bit hard to wrap your head around someone like Hedi who seems to be so talented at some many things yet all of them are so congruent. All his projects fit together like puzzle pieces. Look for the photos in the next Dazed & Confused issue - and below for what I imagine is just a sneak peek at them. Or…maybe all of its just lighting. Ha.

From: Chuck W. Anderson
Subject: cool…
Date: December 16, 2008
To: Benjamin Gott

http://wellmedicated.com/inspiration/100-illustrated-horror-film-posters-part-2/
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On Dec 16, 2008 at 10:17 AM Benjamin Gott wrote:

so awesome… saving this..
actually… post this!
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On Dec 16, 2008, at 12:33 PM, Chuck Anderson wrote:

not sure what to say about them. haha. theyre just awesome.
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On Dec 16, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Benjamin Gott wrote:

Make a post about how you told me you don’t think you have anything to post about…ha. Something funny.

Chuck’s new book! I think Chuck filled me in about, hmm, maybe like 2 months ago? No? ...That he was working on a new book, and that it was going to be pretty intense, quite a follow-up from his last book release. And that it is. First of all, I love the name: Wandering Off Into Space. I haven’t actually asked Chuck where he got the name for that…even though he lives like not even two blocks from me now, ha. I should probably go over and ask. We still email each other a zillion times a day. Anyway…I love the name of the book - for me, its the perfect way to describe the creative process - just let your mind wander off into space. And Chuck’s made an art (pun intended) of wandering off into space well - constant creativity…this book is the documentation of that. Quite a bit of his work is represented. Some of my favorites. For a lot of people, its the first chance to see his stuff in (high quality) print - which I can tell you is quite a bit different than just checking it on the web. I’ve been around Chuck and his work for quite a while, since he started pretty much - but it’s always super fun to look at his stuff printed - the posters/pages almost look backlit sometimes. So yeah, it’s certainly worth grabbing a copy - perfect coffee table book to have out. Also, if you’re in the West Michigan area - you should swing thru to the launch party this Friday. Check it out here. Chuck and I will be there…in person drinking Coors Light…well, Chuck will probably be drinking Evian or a Capri Sun or something. But whatever, it’ll be awesome. Congrats Chuck…the book is great man.

I’m too impatient to wait until I’m completely finished with a book to write a review here…sorry. My friend Rick gave me this book last Christmas, and I just got around to starting it like a month ago. Basic gist: a full, very thorough, report on the inner-workings of the luxury goods market and the brands that comprise it. All the history of them up until about 2006 I think…so pretty current stuff. It’s all the heavy hitters: LV, Gucci, Hermes, Prada, Dior, Lanvin, Chanel, etc, etc. Since I’m not finished with the book I can’t give a complete review - but I can say its been amazingly eye-opening. And more than anything else - I’ve learned to watch Bernard Arnault like you watch Steve Jobs…if not far more so. Man, he makes Gordon Gecko look like a Boy Scout troop leader…no joke. He’s an incredibly shrewd man who has shaped almost everyone’s view and conception of ‘luxury’ in the past 20+ years…either directly or indirectly. It’s not that I hadn’t heard of him, or knew about him before - but this book really gives you a blow-by-blow of his rise to power - and more importantly his influence over literally what the market would define luxury as…super crazy. Anyway, the book. It’s really just amazing to see the often, if not always, humble beginnings of the now massive luxury fashion houses. And as you can imagine - its never as pretty as you’d think under the hood. From my reading so far, only LV and to a much greater extent Hermes are the ‘real’ luxury brands per the original definition of luxury which had a lot less to do with expense and more to do with purpose and the artisans behind the products. Again, to disclaim, I’m a huge fan of LV - but I’m not ignorant to the fact that there is a lot of marketing at work attempting to influence my opinion on a brand…but with that being said, its even still eye-opening to look behind the scenes of these brands, what makes them tick, their margins (!!!!) and how they seem to break traditional business rules. Really interesting stuff. This post was longer than I was shooting for…my bad.

“OMG, the vocoder guy?! Ugh…he sux!!!11” Not really. He wears a top hat, Oakleys, circus-flavored tuxedos and makes it look super fresh. True story. I’m not a huge, huge fan of T-Pain’s music - but I am of his brand. Specifically the visual brand he’s creating for himself with his image and his amazing videos as of late. I made a post a while back about my new love for good pop music and how I wish there was more of it…and I honestly I think T-Pain is one of those artists thats making it happen. It’s just super fun music. But yeah, the videos…have you seen the, lately??! So good. I think it started with the ‘Chopped & Screwed’ video and is continuing forward with his latest, ‘Freeze’. The super fun, and sometimes pretty amazing, visual effects, the lack of super cliche girls-dancing scenes, no slow-mo pan shots of a Phantom, the colors, the tempo of the visual effects, etc, etc, etc…I’m just really enjoying them. What a breath of fresh air. In the ‘Freeze’ video, where they make his name out of a continuous motion of him dancing and play it backwards?! So, so good. Feel like the first time I saw the ‘3D Pipes’ screen saver on Windows, ha. So yeah - I’m a fan of T-Pain’s brand and I think a ton of artists could (should) take a couple notes from him…or least the brand that is T-Pain.

I’m not sure how many times we’ve said it…but we really love being able to do interviews. In fact, I’d say its one of major reasons we even started this site…to connect with people we find brilliant, fascinating, interesting, etc. Our process of picking who we want to interview is pretty ‘organic’ as well… I noticed the other day that both Chuck and myself had mentioned 37signals in a post 1 or 2 times in the recent past and thought “hmm, why don’t we just reach out for an interview?” That’s pretty much that. Jason was nice enough to give us some time and more importantly, a really insightful/fun-to-read interview. I think this will stand as one of our classics. And you really have to love our juxtaposition/contrast with who we interview… Just before Jason was Verbal, the fashion/influence icon of Japan and after him comes Jason, who’s pretty much THE guy in web applications via 37signals. I dig that. So yeah, a big thank you to Jason and all the people who’ve done interviews with us. We really appreciate it!

First off, happy late new year…2009 feels a bit mysterious. I have no idea what’s going to happen this year considering 2008 was a great year, an awful year, a fun year, a fast year, a slow year, a miserable year, a joyful year, and a weird year. It was all of those things probably no matter who you are in some capacity, and might be one of those things more than the others depending on what line of work your in, who you voted for, who you invest your money with, and whether or not you like autotune. Here are a few brief thoughts…

•Obama. 2008 will be remembered as the year of the ‘O’ logo, Shepard Fairey’s now iconic poster, 24 hour news, and of course just simply Obama winning. There’s nothing more to really say, you know the whole story… Ben and I have talked a lot about how positive yet bizarre this whole thing is. Am I glad he won? Sure, I voted for him. Is there a bit of a creepy ‘overlord’ feeling to the whole thing? Yeah, kinda…and I don’t blame the man himself, more just the whole phenomenon in and of itself. But I think that will pass and in a matter of days we’ll get down to business and see what this guy and his ideas can really do.

•Music…let’s just have a little less (maybe a lot less) autotune in 2009. Kind of a ‘fun while it lasted’ sort of thing, at least for me. TV On The Radio really impressed me and T.I. offered up the coolest hip-hop album cover I’ve seen in a while. Sigur Ros, Bon Iver, and Harvey Milk put out a few of my favorites this year too. As for 808’s & Heartbreak, I wasn’t a huge fan at first, I’ll admit. But I’ve come to appreciate, quite a lot, how unapologetic Kanye was about this album considering everyone had such strong opinions about it, myself included. Not to mention utilizing KAWS on some of the album’s artwork and having it end up in Time Square...funny how things work out sometimes...

•Movies. 2008 was a really, really fantastic year for movies. ‘Doubt’, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, ‘Burn After Reading’, ‘Pineapple Express’, ‘Tropic Thunder’, ‘Milk’, ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘Iron Man’, and a movie that has set new standards for good movies for me, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. All that and I have yet to see ‘Wall-E’, ‘The Wrestler’, ‘Man On Wire’, ‘Gran Torino’, or ‘Frost/Nixon’...and I know there are still a bunch I haven’t even thought of. I mean, I really, really loved all these movies. Even ‘Valkyrie’ wasn’t all that bad!

•Branding. Brand New wraps this up best with their brand/logo redesign Best & Worst of 2008, so I’ll just say check that link out…but I need to mention specifically that this was particularly awesome and on the flipside, well…let’s just say Pepsi really, really confused me.

•The internets. The internets had a lot of new webpages launched in 2008, lots of web 2.0’s, lots of new Twitters and Facebooks, lots of good Flash homepages and lots of really great socialized network webpage design homepages. My favorite www of 2008 was probably the homesite URL of Ffffound and also The Google made a lot of great things as well.

•Art/design/streetwear stuff. I wrote an article for FormatMag.com called The Most Intriguing Artists of 2008 you can check out, and their entire 2008 wrap-up is right here. Some good, bad, and funny stuff…

•Me, personally. It was a good year and I have a lot to be thankful for. My wife and I moved to Grand Rapids, bought a great condo, and have made some amazing friends here. I put a new NoPattern book out…spent a lot of time with family I usually don’t get to see much, read too much news during the election and got a cool but occasionally obnoxious new cat named Fredo.

•What else? I don’t want to dominate the front of the site too much even though I probably already am…but send us your favorite things from 2008. Links, songs, artists, things, etc. to Hello@Thebrilliance.com and I’ll put a little ‘mailbag’ post together in a week or so.

Here’s to Ben, Virgil, The Brilliance, and 2009…and another thanks to Jason Fried of 37Signals for doing a great interview with us.

Alright…so I got a bit of the winter blues going on. We’ve gotten just slammed by winter this year…like 3-4 snow storms already, super low temps for a week at a time, and its only mid January! I guess I complain about this every year, but this year just seems to be bugging me more than usual. And I have a headache today. So I decided to take what I’m now calling a “45 minute vacation.” I’m kind of creating a list of things you can do to refresh and renew a bit when old man winter puts his cigarette out in your drink. We’re lucky enough to have a really great conservatory/botanical garden here in Grand Rapids, the Fredrick Meijer Gardens. Conservatories, as I detailed in a post a while ago, just blow my mind. A whole mini rainforest inside a beautiful glass building…you know? So today I headed over during lunch to stroll around, enjoy humid air, smell some fresh plants/flowers, listen to the waterfalls, and even get some work done on a new project I was stressing about. As you can imagine, its the middle of the day, and very few people were there…even better. It seriously felt like a tiny vacation. Check out the photos I took!! So…the question is, does anyone else have a “45 minute vacation” recommendation or idea for me? Hit us up, hello@thebrilliance.com

This site-jewelery-video is so good it hurts me to watch it. Ahhh. I want to be a jewelry designer so bad. Dior does is the most cutting edge stuff. It makes all other jewelers look like kindergarten doodles from an art standpoint. Click on the girls ring once you get in. It’s crazy to see what goes into making each piece. Next time you look at the price tag, just think about the 4 months of work it to get there. The precious stone placement, the vibrant colors, the different casted elements are all works of art. Victoire de Castellane is the genius behind it all. You tube her and find out where all the ideas came from. From a designers standpoint what i love the most about her end products is the sense that tons and tons of the manufactures must have been like, “we can’t do that” or “we have never done this before” and she succeded at getting her full idea out. Bravo.

You’ve got to love this…Not the kind of change talked about during election season, but nonetheless, instant, obvious, immediate change. Taking the White House out of the dark age and into the age of technology with a simple change in policy. Obama will in fact keep his Blackberry. Sure it’s going to be secured and guarded like a tank, but he’ll still have it and be able to use it when he needs to… Setting a totally new precedent for future Presidents, this will be the first time email has been used by a President since FDR. Remember how slow email was back in the 40’s?! Anyways…I think this is a great move forward and a clear sign that this man understands that times have changed. A wired, connected President for a wired, connected generation. If his wife is anything like mine though, this Blackberry will cause more problems than it should…so, just keep the Crackberry addiction under control and don’t use it in public too often, Mr. President, and you’re good to go. What are the chances he’s actually reading this right now on his 6230?