ejnord.com | design blog of eric nord

Fatoe (Mike Orduña) is a pioneering artist who, among other accomplishments, has established himself as the preeminent designer of hip hop graphics. The following pieces are a somewhat obscure series of CD covers Mike did around 2004, I think. Prior to this period, Mike primarily focused on graffiti and illustration. But as he shifted into the realm of commercial graphic design, he showed how the chaos of his influences could be channeled into tight compositions: controlled chaos at its finest.

In making the following pieces, Mike took widely available, low-resolution images and converted them to monotone images. And while that, in and of itself, is nothing to write home about, it was how he combined them with various bits of graf, brush strokes, noise, splatter and splashes of color that established his early style. Mike’s ability to juggle positive and negative space enables him to create surrealistic, streetwise compositions out of otherwise commonplace bits and pieces.

Kanye West

DJ Premier

Pete Rock

Alchemist

This is the first of Diplo and Tripledouble’s two AEIOU mixes. While part two got an official release, this one was strictly DIY: duped on CD-R and distributed by hand and word of mouth.

Diplo & Tripledouble – AEIOU mix

As part of my ongoing editorial artist series, I would like to introduce my readers (all five of you) to the classy and clinical talents of Nola Lopez. Most notably, Nola supplies the New York Times with colorful, abstract pieces for Health-related articles. She also works with pretty much every major daily, weekly, and monthly publication that uses editorial art.

Nola is also an accomplished photographer, which might explain how she always manages to find perfect stock photos for her pieces. Or are those stock photos? Hmm. And there it is: her work is so relaxed and effortless. I get the impression she could just go out and shoot whatever she needs. And, as if mere grace weren’t enough, her trademark layering style conveys an interconnectedness and purity (which would seem appropriate for the otherwise anxiety-inducing pages of a Health section).

Stay tuned for more art from the mind of Nola!

This lettering by Nick Cooke was contracted by Root as part of its work with the London events agency, Massive.

File Under: great flickr portrait photographers

I originally saw this Che stamp on the Turntable Lab blog. Then I went looking for a bigger, cleaner scan of it, and found So Much Pileup. And so I had a double discovery: a great Cuban stamp and a new blog to follow. This stamp reminded me of of one of the classic, pioneering radial grid posters by Mueller-Brockmann. It seems like those somewhat random connections are how I find a lot of inspiration and new ideas.

The idea behind posting both of these images isn’t to suggest that the Cuban stamp was necessarily influenced by Mueller-Brockmann, but simply to point out two examples of a radial grid: one using it to suggest the emanation of radio signals, and the other suggesting time and/or an orbiting relationship.

artwork by Eric Nord

This is the first in a series I dubbed “Architextual Vectors”. It’s a tribute to modern/geometric architecture and Swiss graphic design.

This is just a rough sketch. But I wanted to get it up on the blog to see what it looks like with context.