Pretty Goes with Pretty

Travis: One of These Things is Not Like Other

At the record store last week I saw the new Travis album, The Boy with No Name. Earlier that day I saw their video for "Closer" [below] and liked the song, in all its Travisness, despite the video being a bit twee. It's the only song I've heard from the new record so far, but it definitely sounds like a return to form for the band.

And I emphasize return. The band tried to branch out with their last album, 12 Memories, which ironically committs a sin worse than being bad—it's forgettable. It was a critical and commercial dud; I remember walking into a record store less than a year after the album came out and seeing a new greatest hits album out—a sure sign that 12 Memories was such a flop that their label had all but given up on the band entirely, hoping to make what cash they could before "Driftwood" escaped the collective pop memory forever.

Getting back to that phrase: return to form. Travis is in the position of trying to resussitate an all but dead career. Reinventing the wheel, they apparently decided, will not be the way to go about it. On the surface—again, I haven't heard the album—the band looks to have retreated to their comfort zone. You need look no further than their album covers. Back is the trademark typeface—which I'm actually happy about. Remember when a band's name had to be portrayed as a logo? These days, aside from Travis, what am I supposed to write on my binder? Also back is the "band in landscape" photograph, rather than 12 Memories' grid of closeups demonstrating the band's poor taste in hats. Finally, the album title: as with The Man Who and The Invisible Band, we have an album title indicating someone only half there.

All of this is just begging you to give Travis another chance, isn't it? Barring actually hearing the new songs, they seem to be banking on their cover design to reel you back in. It's a promise that this is the Travis of 2000 or 2001, not the dastardly doppleganger of 2003. It's a trilogy-with-hiccup. "We promise we've regressed!"

And you know what? I'm intrigued. It doesn't hurt, of course, that I like "Closer." But really I'd all but written the band off in my mind, even though I still listen to The Invisible Band on a fairly regularly basis (not regarded by most as their best, but I think it wound up having more depth than The Man Who). Even liking the song, though, wasn't necessarily enough to get me to pull the trigger. Seeing the album cover and immediately relating it to the Good Travis bumped my temptation up a level, though. (Still didn't make the purchase; too much other stuff is out this month.) At any rate I'm keeping my eye on this one.

Here's the video for "Closer." (Incidentally, why would a band that has spent most of its career being compared to Bends-era Radiohead shoot a video in a grocery store?)

You've Read the Signage, Now See the Movie

Anyone with a passing interest in design—or, for that matter, anyone who's scrolled through the font choices in their Word program—is familiar with the helvitica typeface. Well, prepare to become even more familiar: a documentary on helvetica premiered last week at TypeCon in Boston and will open elsewhere sometime next year. You wouldn't believe it but the history of many type designs—and this one in particular—can be fascinating. Participants in the film include Michael Beirut, Tobias Frere-Jones, Stefan Sagmeister, and many other heavyweights in the design world. This will be the debut film from director Gary Hustwit, though he does have producing credits for Wilco's I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, as well as a few other indie rock docs. [via Typographica]

If you can't wait for the film, there's always the book: Helvitca: Homage to a Typeface is a neat little book that came out last year.

I Am the Great of All Time!

Design Observer points me to The Knockoff Project, where the above images (and many, many more) come from. Much of the content at TKP lines up obvious references or parodies (The Melvins solo albums aping the Kiss solo albums; a few Weird Al albums, and so on). But it's fun to see accidental similarities such as James and Sarah, above, or Depeche Mode’s New Life single and Black Sabbath’s Born Again. There were also a few contemporary albums that I didn't realize referenced older ones (I'd never seen the Kink's The Kink Controversy, which Sleater-Kinney references on Dig Me Out, for instance; and Clinic's Internal Wrangler associates itself with an Ornette Coleman album I’ve not seen before).

Most intriguing to me are the ones that are nodding to a classic but aren't actually parodying it. What, pray tell, are Scott Weiland and J-Live trying to say about themselves by knocking off Blue Train? (The same can be said for Sleater-Kinney and Clinic, for that matter.) Whatever it may be, I can't imagine how to spin it positively—either their egos are way out of scale, or their modesty is undermining their creativity. Are they proclaiming their albums to be as earth-shattering as that which they reference? Or are they acknowledging an influence that casts a shadow over their own work? Whatever their intention, unconsciously they seem to be saying Put my album down, and walk yourself over to the Coltrane bin in the Jazz section.

This brings me, a bit sideways perhaps, to the current “Passion of Kanye West” cover for Rolling Stone. The cover—provocative if you’re 15 years old—is sparking shock in some quarters, eye-rolling in others. The kneejerk reaction either being “fuck this dude for comparing himself to Christ” or “fuck this dude and this magazine for using such cliché imagery.” But if you know your history of magazine covers [here's a good place to start], you’ll see the comparison isn't really with Christ: its another icon entirely West is using as his model.

Somewhere in the interview, West makes the perceptive critique about how we prefer our pop idols: “You want me to be the greatest, but you don’t want me to say I’m the greatest?” He’s right to call us out for holding him to that double standard. But of course, he’s not the first to make the observation. And West knows it, and so do the photographers and graphic designers at Rolling Stone. Who hasn’t seen George Lois’s infamous Esquire cover of Ali (who, by the way, actually was persecuted by society—unlike West—due to his conscientious objection to Vietnam and his Muslim faith)?

Nevermind that West is playing Jesus and Ali is St. Sebastian. It's a small difference, as West makes clear with another photo in the interior:

West therefore finds himself in the knockoff squad. How can you call yourself The Greatest by referencing the man who called himself The Greatest—neither of which, by the way, are Jesus Christ, who surely was The Greatest, if the Bible or King Missile are to be trusted. At best, Kanye is number three. And we all know that’s just great.

Light is the New Lycra

Via core77: Portable Light is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to bringing light to poor communities living off the grid in third-world nations. What’s particularly fascinating about it is just how the light is portable: it’s woven into fabric. You can fold it, ball it up, or even wear it, and it generates enough light to read or work by.

The remarkable energy efficiency of high brightness solid state lighting (HBLEDs) means that a bright digital light of 80 lumens per watt (bright enough to read, work and illuminate areas at night) can be produced by a single miniature diode and powered by small areas of flexible photo-voltaic (solar panels). Portable Light expands the value of miniature solid state electronics by putting digital light into a textile medium to create cost effective, completely portable, off-the-grid light engines that can be deployed at a global scale wherever energy efficient electrical power and illumination are needed.

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Portable Light initiatives are currently underway in a number of countries. Portable Light in the Sierra Madre will enable Huichol women to harvest electrical power from the sun, own and carry their own light with them, and use it to improve literacy, create better options for education, increase household income and improve family health and nutrition. This pilot project will create immediate, direct and tangible benefits for Huichol women and their families—bringing light to serve a collective community group of more than 300 people in the Huichol Sierra.

You can see much more—how it works, where the initiatives are underway, and how to contribute, at the Portable Light website.

Underneath the Covers

Identity Theory has an interview with Chip Kidd, a talented designer and entertaining personality. But if you've overdosed on Kidd (and if you've had your share of conversations about book cover design, you might have had your fill), you can always go to this site for a little perspective. It's got loads of contemporary book covers by a variety of designers, on which you can post your professional or not-so opinions (you can also search by designer, which is nice). Too, Betablog points to a webcast archive  of talks at the Walker Art Center which you can download, including one by Paul Sahre, who is responsible for perhaps my favorite book cover of the last few years, Killing the Buddha. (The Walker site also has numerous lectures and interviews with the likes of John Baldessari, Merce Cunningham, David Straitharn, and many many more.)