RSTB Soundscreen Design Guest Blog + Touchable Sound

So this week Raven Sings the Blues is the featured guest blogger for our friends at Soundscreen Design. Check out our post on Ensemble Economiques entry to Amish Records' Required Wreckers series.

Plus, while you're there, make sure to check out the rest of the site including their great musician as designer series of t-shirts that include new, very limited (like 60 shirts only!) designs by RSTB faves like John Wiese and Shawn Reed.

(John Wiese's design)

(Shawn Reed's design)


Also, since you know that we love 7"s around these parts and bets are on if you're reading this that you might too; check out SSD's latest book Touchable Sound. "Touchable Sound: A Collection of 7-inch Records from the USA, is an exciting celebration of nearly 25 years of labor intensive 7-inch record packaging and design." The book was designed by Brian Roettinger (who does packaging for No Age and Liars) and features essay contributions from Henry Owings of Chunklet Amphetamine Reptile founder Tom Hazelmyer, Three One G founder Justin Pearson, and many more.



They've also hooked us up with a coupon so you can save 15% off the book. Just enter the code: tsrstb15 at checkout. You can buy the book here.

Poster Design: Sonnenzimmer

One of our favorite studios has a few new posters plus a couple of old favorites below.


















check out more on Sonnenzimmer HERE

The Soft Moon

Man you gotta love a band with a good eye for aesthetics.

Poster Design Feature: Straw Dogs

So I'm still deciding what to use this space for, but in the spirit of the intersection of music and design I've decided to shed a little light on some of my favorite poster designers of late. First up... the cut n' paste insanity of Dutch design team Straw Dogs.

The Straw Dogs crew have mastered the art of collage as a psychedelic medium and while at first the designs might seem unstructured and sloppy, the end products often end up evoking the right nods to the bands represented while still maintaining a common thread of chaos. The collective's posters usually end up much more "focused" than their free medium and canvas projects and it seems to be an area where they truly shine. A large debt of gratitude to the collective for having great taste in bands and design.

So from time to time I've decided to use this space for posts and larger ideas that fall outside of the normal, solely music based posting on the front page. A sort of forum for artists or projects that catch our eye, share our aesthetic or bring something essential into the world of art and music.


(Jason Yates)

First up is a great project from Sound Screen Design called Artist Music Journals. Now SSD already caught our attention with their line of summer wearables that pair RSTB faves like No Age, Liars, Gang Gang Dance and Battles with great designers like Seripop, Hand Held Heart and The Bird Machine. I mean, I'll be damned if I don't want to snag myself one of these No Age sweatshirts designed by Brian Roettinger of Hand Held Heart. But as impressive as the shirts project is, the scope of Artist Music Journals is even more bewildering.


(Jason Yates)

Essentially the series is 12, 24-page books, each from a different graphic artist or musician. The books are sized like 10" records and each title fits into specially made, identical 10" jackets with a sticker replicating the artists' signatures sealing them closed. So far the first four artists lined up for this project are Jason Yates from Fast Friends (two piesces of his AMJ are pictured above), Shaun Flynn (AMJ pictured below) who has been a member of Wzt Hearts in addition to designing posters for OOIOO and Animal Collective, Hisham Bharoocha of Soft Circle and Daniel Higgs of Lungfish!!!


(Shaun Flynn)

There are more scheduled to come each month throughout the year, with 12 in all in the first series. More artists lined up are Bongout, Emy Storey, Seripop, Brian Roettinger and Post Typography so keep an eye on this page for more on the project. You can purchase them as stand along peices but for those of you with daring and cash you can also guarantee receipt of the whole series by ordering it as a full year subscription HERE.