We can’t believe its taken us this long to post on Hydro74, but better late than never. From his humble beginnings doing editorial cartoons to starting Hydro74, in 1994, Joshua M. Smith has proven time and time again he can throw down with the best of them.

When you’ve got clients like Nike, ESPN, Quicksilver, IdN, and YouWorkForThem start shilling out your left overs you know you are at the top of your game. “Over the past 10 years of working as a designer, there have been highs and lows to getting to where I am right now…this is something I would never dreamed up when the first clicks of the mouse started,” says Smith.

You can check out his blog here, which he updates regularly (with humor), and you can check out his book, Hydro74 The Collection, Thus Far…, here.

And click here to see more images of his work.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’re so in love we’re just about to marry this new T-shirt from 5 Years Clothing. They’re based in France, which just makes them that much more alluring, and of course they have no American retailers.

We suggest checking out the Five Years Clothing online store and picking up one of their T-shirts. When all your friends wearing the same 5 shirts from Urban Outfitters, ask you where you scored such a treasure, just be like “yeah I got this from some little place in Paris”.

Some day, we’ll all have T-shirts this cool. Till then we’ll have to settle for rocking to Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. video with a T-qualizer. If you’re dying for one of the T’s in this video, we’ve heard Colette is your best bet.

We went to a show last night, and as we glanced over at the guy standing next to us, we noticed his shirt was lit up and bumping to the music. The T-Qualizer is a shirt with an LED screened on it and a sound sensitive battery pack that fits in your pocket. The LED film is bendable and apparently you can wash it as well (though we’d guess a hand wash is probably the way to go).We doubt that this is something you’d want to wear around all day, but if you’re at a club you will not stop drawing attention. We found them in several places, but this looked like the best deal.

Jeremyville just opened his new online store. You haven’t heard of Jeremyville yet? How the hell did you miss the Jeremyville Sessions? Go now, and don’t tell anyone you haven’t seen this before. Just IM everyone like, “dude FINALLY got a store up”.

Aaron Horkey is usually referred to by his better known moniker ‘burlesque design.’ But we’re here to break that myth. Horkey is merely a contributor to burlesque (who’s principal partners include Wes Winship of LSD fame, and Todd Bratrud). This post, however, is to credit Horkey’s distinguishable typographic style as having produced most of burlesque’s awe-inspiring silkscreens for some of our favorite bands (including, but not limited to, Pelican, Isis, the Arcade Fire and a recent two part edition for Sludge Metal Kings, Neurosis).

His silk screens are highly sought after, and more often than not, only available on ebay. However, that doesn’t stop us from loving his craft (we may or may not have spent upwards of $300 for a single poster). In addition to his normal swagger, Horkey throws the occasional art show, has produced skate decks for several brands (we loveee the Geiger inspired slabs for consolidated), and designs clothing for a better known outlet in RVCA. Though it’s rumored his fine art is not for sale, don’t buy into the hype. In fact, hop on the burlesque site, click on ’shop’ and show our boy some love.

Are you creative and want to let the whole world know it? If you a have a blog or website that has a similar feel to Neu Black and want to let us know who you are, post a comment with your URL and shout your lovely little name out to the rest of the world.

Our friends at Mig-28 have released a cool new batch of T-Shirts that bring us back to the days when we wanted to grow up to fighter pilots. All designs are printed on American Apparel 100% sweatshop free clothing and shipping is free.

The Jeremyville Sessions focuses on the rise of collaborative projects as the new art movement of the 21st century. With the rise of internet communication and technology, disparate designers from all over the world - folks that would otherwise never have worked together - are able to creatively share ideas and projects. Using his own experiences as a case study, Jeremyville showcases collaborative projects that he has worked on with over 300 artists and companies - covering a variety of mediums from original art, apparel, animation, toys and more.

Collaborators include the likes of Beck, Gary Baseman, Geoff McFetridge, Shephard Fairey, Ben Watts, Saiman Chow, Circus Punks, UNKL, and STRANGEco, just to name a few.

The book also includes a fold out poster, die cut sticker sheet, DVD featuring toy templates and animation, wallpapers, screensavers, a game, terviews, art shows, short movies, and if that isn’t enough, a signed original drawing by Jeremyville when you buy the book at from his site.

If you’re a fan of limited edition handmade designer art, jewelry and clothing you’ll probably be as happy as we were to discover Little Paper Planes. This site is run by Silverlake artist Kelly Lynn Jones who is a talented artist in her own right.

We were especially happy to see some of our favorite underground zines sold here such as FYEO and Broken Wrist Project (if you don’t live in LA, you’ll probably never find these and you are so missing out).

If you see an artist you like, you can probably find out more about them in Little Paper Planes Artist Interviews section.