The 20 Minute Album Cover Contest winner is Menachem Krinsky / @mkrinsky. A talented art director for Visionary + Flock Los Angeles, and a member of The KDU.

He made clever used of such random elements. Nothing is clashing in his piece and its pleasant palette. I can see he was mindful of a typeface that would jive with the interesting abstraction he created from the Flickr photo.

Thanks to everyone who participated, this was mad fun and i look forward to starting some ruckus on twitter again. If anyone has suggestions of a contest they’d like to see, hit up @typcut or @thenorik on twitter.

I look forward to see what Menachem has in store for us at Typcut.

Tuesday I decided to start some random trouble on Twitter. I asked my followers if anyone was interested in submitting work to Typcut. So to garner some buzz i decided to create a little contest out of my recent 20 Minute Album Cover post. I was curious to see what people would create, and was pleased to see some great submissions!

I said the end of today Wednesday would be the cut-off, but this had been pretty fun so far, and i’d love to see more work!

So i’m going to extend this out to a week. Tweet your submissions with a link to your portfolio by Wednesday 8-25, at 11:59pm EST

Winner will get an invite to the design collective i curate: Typcut

D.I.Y. America – OS GEMEOS from BlackLake on Vimeo.

Art Of Facts (Feat. FUTURA) from 13thWitness™ on Vimeo.

Os Gemeos and Futura recently collaborated on a huge mural here in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC. I still have yet to check it out in person, but i hear it’s quite a breath taking spectacle. Futura’s contribution to the project is really a great compliment, it’s cool to see their styles mesh so well.

I also included a couple really well produced videos on both artists. Both Futura and Os Gemeos have such an impressive way of using their aerosol medium, the thin strokes that you’d really only get from airbrushing. I recommend reading up on Futura if you aren’t familiar with him, he’s got a quite an amazing career that began with painting trains in the 70’s to working with The Clash.

I also recommend following Os Gemeos on 12oz Prophet

I did the fake album cover above with this fun little challenging design exercise:

1) Band Name

Go to wikipedia and hit the random link. The title of the first article you get is your band name.

2) Album Name

Go to Random Quotations and select the last 3 to 5 words of the last quote.(i linked to a different random quotes site, the other one i used sucked at randomization)

3) Photo

Go to Flickr and Explore The Last Seven Days. Pick the third photo, if it’s just completely lame or unusable, grab the second or fourth. If Flickr won’t let you save the photo, take a screen shot.

4) Typeface

I’d say this is a typographic design exercise more than anything, finding the right typeface and treatment to go along with the name and photo is where your design sense comes in. In this instance i decided to go with the lovely fashionable Didot, designed by Adrian Frutiger.

5) Texturing / Coloring / Vignetting

This step is optional, but i think it adds a nice touch to color correct or colorize your photo (Photoshop’s Hue & Saturation and Levels), add some vignetting, or play with texturizing. In mine i added some vignetting to make the text more legible, and the photo less flat. I also used the above texture from Lost & Taken in the overlay blend mode.

This one took me about 20 minutes. Time yourself and see how long it takes you to do something you’re happy with.

C-215, one street artist who is consistently blowing my mind. He has got to be one of the most prolific guys out there right now. I did a post on him a while ago and since then, he has continued to push the boundaries of his ultra refined craft and style. If you look at the series of photos in this post, the bottom being what he was rocking a year ago, the middle when he started introducing color into his work, and the top being where he’s at now. What a gorgeous emergence from black and white, to muted washes, to straight fluorescence, accompanied with splatters adding more expression and energy. I don’t know how this guy makes so many stencils, he can’t just be using an exacto. If so, he better watch out for arthritis.

Check out this series he did for a show in London recently, great examples of where his work has evolved.

Two great things found in Brooklyn + Pico

Just got MWM’s new book in the mail today. What a gorgeous mix of his artwork on bikes, walls, photos of his studio and random shit, design, and graffiti (he loves montana paint!) etc.. I love how the thing is in black and white, it puts the focus on the geometry and form of his otherwise very colorful work.

Go get your limited edition hand signed copy

Here is a shot of our newly arranged art space in my loft. Interior design courtesy of neighborhood vandals, and my roommates. One of my roomates took this shot, and if you will notice he rigged quite a technically advanced cat box, only the best for Iggy The iPad Cat, yeah in case you didn’t know. I’m roommates with a celebrity.

L’outsider is a street artist from france. I don’t know a whole lot about him beyond his work. But what he does resonates with me deeply. He has taken the effected piecing style graffiti, and meshed it with a very Herb Lubalin typography. Looking through his sketchbooks you’ll fine he’s an extremely creative individual with his type, using negative space really well. His abstract art is also well crafted and fun to look at.

Them frenchies keep killin’ it!!

One thing about graffiti i find interesting, is it’s basically a career created out of a calligraphic / typographic study of one word, spanning over years and years. Funny to think about, considering all the different words designers set and manipulate through their career.

Recently a friend of mine was kind enough to hook me up with a FFFFound account, which i’ve been loving! Now i have a place where i can have a mood / inspiration place without spamming my blog. Here are some highlights from last night’s internetsssss raid.