Global Graphica

We were at Groundwork organic coffee in Venice when we found this wonderful flyer for the Reggae Central, a weekend radio show on the station 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles. BTW, the dude on the poster is the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I, who is also one of the deities of the rastafari movement that originated in Jamaica.

As reported in Gizmodo, the new Shadow “Ebike” pictured below is an electric bike that contains a drive controller and motor in its front wheel, as well as a lithium-ion battery, LED display and USB port for charging electronic gadgets, like your iPhone or iPod, using electricity generated by the bicycle itself. It’s the first of a kind. Pretty freaking awesome. (Thanks to A. for the tip!)

The Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA ) in New York has introduced the baby icon in its restrooms signage to indicate the presence of baby-changing stations. We love this logo and expect to see it elsewhere in the future as part of the canon of international symbols.

In our new ongoing “Scenes From a …” series, we’re posting images snapped at museums and similar places and events. In this post, we start with some recent pix we took at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. MoMA is among our favorite physical spaces in NYC. Art aside, it’s has many places within it’s wondrous complex for sitting in contemplation, meditation and people watching. In this image, a visitor is reading the wall card for the displayed poster, part of a German architectural design exhibition currently showing at MoMA.

We were tidying up our temporary LA HQ (a.k.a., Global Graphica West) and throwing out a pile of old mags when we came across this recent issue of New York Magazine with an awesome cover. We LOVE this cover. This “Whi Runs New York?” edition of the mag was one of their best in months.

Walking around the Abbott-Kinney section of the Venice neighborhood, in Los Angeles, we see a lot of awesome bicycles parked on the sidewalks. Here’s a beautiful green-and-black fixed gear (or fixie) bike locked up in front of Intelligentsia Coffee.

Massive fresh Haculla (a.k.a., Harif Guzman) wheat-paste street art at one of his preferred spots, on a wide door a few meters away from Swiss brunch joint Cafe Select on Lafayette Street in SoHo, across from Petrosino Square, in downtown New York City. Love this.

Ghostly stencil street art of a boy’s face on a building cornerstone in the Grachtengordel-West (western canal district), in the area around the Jordaan and Nine Streets neighorhood, of old Amsterdam, Holland.

We recently found this USPS Priority Mail stickie label used as graffiti-art canvas in the bathroom of the awesome McNally-Jackson book store in Nolita, in New York City.

“Employees Only” sign on staff room door at Intelligentsia Coffee cafe in Silver Lake, in Los Angeles.

This large stenciled silhouette of a boy and girl is perhaps a cheeky and fitting image the day after Valentine’s Day. Each is hiding very different object behind the back, each suggesting very different hidden motives. We stumbled upon this street art on Jan Luijkenstraat in the Vondelpark neighborhood of Amsterdam, near the Rijksmuseum and the city’s famed museum district.

Our friend J. recently acquired this colorful, full-of-awesome pair of Adidas sneakers. He showed them off to us on a recent stop at his home in Venice, in Los Angeles, and we couldn’t help but take some pix.

Van’s wonderful “Risky Business”-themed graphical tee shirt by New York City-based clothing label Built By Wendy.

Semi-bombed street sign with skulls sticker art at the corner of Cadiz Court and Abbot Kinney Street in Venice, in West Los Angeles.

Our colleague “A.” cruised into our office in L.A. proudly displaying his recently acquired and super-awesome NYC graphical tee shirt with that beautiful retro-disco-era font (which we’ve utterly failed to identify – if any one knows what that font is called, drop us a line.) Thanks for sharing your t-shirt, A!

It’s here. The one, the only: the Feltron Annual Report. It’s a volume of personal-behavioral stats presented as corporate-style report complete with the kind of elegant info-graphics that make the likes of Edward Tufte smile. In a departure from the usual modus operandi, Nicholas Felton (the last name is Felton, but the report is Fel-tRon, with an “R”) created his 2010 report as “an encapsulation of his father’s life.” Epic. Beautiful.

This image is from the awesome “Provincial Japan” photographic series by the Italian photographer Guido Castagnoli, a former art director at a Milan advertising agency. The series was shown at the Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York City in 2008. Fortunately, Castagnoli is one of those photogs who like to blog (his online journal is called Diary of Solitude).

The sound-board aesthetic: We love standing near the sound boards at concerts and find the look of all the lighted boards, mixers, screens and electronic equipment oddly alluring. Pictured below, the sound engineers’ set-up at the Echoplex in Echo Park, in Los Angeles, for the band Deerhoof.

Wonderful wheat-paste street art on Vermont Avenue across the street from Figaro Bistrot in the Los Feliz / Silver Lake area of Hollywood, in Los Angeles. Love the words: “If we never speak again just assume I became … famous.” Very L.A., we think.

Telling image of recently confiscated counterfeit “keep it real fake” goods in Los Angeles. The people behind this operation and line of fake iPhones, iPods and other electronic had reportedly already hauled in $7 million before being caught. As Engadget points out, pictured is part of $10 million worth of merch. Lovely visual. (Via Engadget)