Caramblogage

I was recently asked to make an OS X dock icon at work. After a few days of jiggering and pokering around with it, I came up with this little piece, which, thanks to a very handy programme, Img2icns , I've been able to easily convert into an actual and usable program symbol.

I left Kreuzberg again, in order to escape the ghetto and reming myself that there are other parts to this city. In fact, i've been spending a lot of time playing very civilised ping pong in that former bastion of revolution, Prenzlauer Berg. On the way to, I collected some bricks and mortar on a 3/4 chip. Is this the local Mitte opinion? One short observation on Prenzlauer Berg: very… picturesque.

Today, a bit of knowledge, stolen from youTube (yes, you! Tube!), which answers some questions you may not even have asked yourself (and answers some you may not want to have asked). It also features Fatboy Slims early work (Right Here, right now), so extra brownie points for that! Via the Spiekerblog.

In this issue, Carl finds that the future is upon us. Next installment: 050609

Welcome to this peek into the pages of the sketchbook. Today, the process of making one of the Carl Klapp strips, before I post the strip itself. Unfortunately, the format does not allow for a blooper track, you just get the boring directors' comments (i.e. mine). Generally, I'll start in my sketchbook with a 3H pencil, as it allows for quick and precise drawing. Then, the sketches are inked with Copics ranging from .01 to Medium brushes to give them a firm and black look. The results are scanned and cleaned up a very little bit. The resulting feel is slightly rough, which reflects the world the protagonist inhabits. In this weeks edition, some reordering also occurred, as the strip was drawn more or less back to front. Then the walls are coloured, as are the background details. The colour palette is taken straight from the Berlin facades (minus the street art), vegetation and surroundings. The tool used is my trusty, yet inadequate Bamboo tablet. The supporting characters are ...

This commercial for Adobes Production Premium suite takes on the guise of a short film. It uses pretty much any kind of special effect you can think of, including stop motion animation, overlaying letters, eating cake and subtitles, human beings opening up… basically showcasing all the fun that can be had using the products… now if only they could also be made slightly more affordable…

Since reviving the Bahar font, I've spent more than my fair share of time pushing beziers and curves around. Today, in search of numbers and numerals, I returned to the original, handwritten letters in the sketchbook I was using at the time. It reminded me that things that work on paper don't always work when verctorised and turned into a digital fontfile. So here is a medley of those original sketches, painstakingly drawn again and again by hand over the course of a few weeks until they felt, for the lack of a better word, right. At this point, I'd also like to thank Alex for his helpful comments after going over the font!

A short, brisk walk is a very salubrious experience. It vivifies the mind and excites the eyeball, gives you ample opportunity to admire the surrounding architecture and art that invariably adorns the facade of the buildings. It also allows for the discovery of old friends engaged in new activities, such as a bean I hitherto thought innocent engaging in some dirty SM moves… I hope that you have enjoyed this vicarious walk!

On a sunny day, Carl leaves his house and feels good about himself for a change… Next installment: 250509 Carl Klapp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License .

For some reason, I can't stop watching this ad for the Nintendo DS-I. It features reaction shots of Beyoncé Knowles playing Rhythm Heaven. I've never been that big a fan of the lady since she left Destinys Child (waaayway back when…), but it's almost impossible to avoid occasionally bumping into her when following the media. But this has to be the best use I've seen her put to in advertising to date, more enjoyable than the work she did for L'Oreal or the like… This feels like the best in advertising for me: An honest depiction of the fun that can be had with a product without diluting it with extra effects. It is a simple film of seemingly natural reactions she has while playing what seems to be a very enjoyable game. And for a change , it made me want to go out and buy one of her albums… The title will take you to the official Rhythm Heaven website. Found on Adrants.

I have recently joined Streetfiles, on online archive of Street Art and Graffiti in general… Due to this, I though I'd post the walls and the Art that grabbed my attention during my first few days of membership… and since the slideshow updates its own self, I've turned it into an extra link. If you have enjoyed this brief excursion into other countries and onto other walls, let me know and I'll start a new series showcasing various artists & sprayers. The title will take you right to streetfiles!

It's been a while since I posted a random sketch. So here you go: This is one of the Basata sketches, which I have been wondering what to do with for a while now. This morning, upon waking up to the sound of a metal saw, I finally decided to go about 80% Rolling Stones and paint it gray. It comes with some of my occasional bouts of songwriting/ poetry/ lyrical nonsense attached, so, for completeness sake, here's that as well! A night of stars over cold white sands the fire was burning this is it's end… And two people who belong together feeling so alone huddling under a blanket to share the warmth they talk and they talk and they talk and they talk it all comes to nothing it's the wrong place and time… This is never this is always this is us at three in the morning this is the end of the fire's waning and the world Two weary travelers on the roads of life No stops no home and no respite meet on the crossroads that lead down separate ways they walk and they walk and ...

Glorious Monday, dear co-existants! I am happy to report to this committee that steets were stridden upon, walls in Kreuzberg were shot and that they have been distilled and posted upon this virtual vertical surface! I wish you a happy monday and remember… Euphoria prevails!

Today, I'd like to share one of those longterm projects that seems to be nearing completion. BaharFraktur is a blackletterish font that started life as the Boob font in 2007, on one of Luc(as) de Groots brilliant font classes. I had been itching to do a blackletter font for ages at that point, loving the broken letters for their playful calligraphic qualities and the typesetting opportunities they offer. That they share a kinship with Arabic letting helped. So I hunkered down with fontlab to create a headline font, realising only weeks into it that I had embarked on the creation of a hungry, time-consuming beast which would not let me go for a couple of years. Since then I've been working on and off on this, returning to work on it fuller- time a few weeks ago… Below, you'll find a glyph list, complete with their unicode range, of the font as is right now. It's still missing the eastern european diacritics, a few dots and dashes of black here and there… but it's get...

I'm a great fan of procedural building, the art of building 3D/ Animations purely from code. It's a great mystery to me how it works, as a matter of fact, it leaves me as stymied as mathematics does. All the ifs and thens and whys and gotos confuse the hell out of me. Which is why anyone who can build something out of code is my hero (the same goes for actionscript, html, java C++… insert your favourite programing language here _______). My newest hero is a chap called Shamus Young, who set himself the goal of building an entire city from code, including lights and all the rest. On his blog , he calls it a simple project he played around with. To me, this stuff is grand and fascinating. What is as astonishing is the level of detail he goes to, creating many building styles seemingly at random and making the 10011010011 look terribly good. Below, find a youtube video of the goals and making of the project. Also well worth a look, the subversion project, a massive world-building ...

In my attempt to perfect the art of colouring between two tasks at work, I've taken the Guitarinist a bit further. These are the colours and some basic effects laid down and mostly finished (though I'm still not quite sure about the shoes), some rough shading in place. Next step will be the finishing shades and highlights, and the SFX… more to come as it gets done!

Today, Carl Klapp is on a job he hates- and makes a surprising discovery. Next installment: 220509 Carl Klapp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License .

For the Contemporary Art Festival of Terrassa, Barcelona agency Evil Love has produced some very nice posters playing with visual interference. The trick is to overlay a laver of red face with a blue one, resulting in a disturbing trompe- l'oeil effect. This set me wondering whether donning a set of 3D glasses would enable you to see the layers seperately… Very nice execution. PS: As the press kit shows, yes 3D glasses do work and are included. Whobee! For those wondering, Terrassa is about 10 km northwest of Barcelona. SOURCE: ADSOFTHEWORLD

This: I'm curious to see where it goes!

The German education system is in a sorry state. Budget cuts are forcing the administrators of the Humboldt University to replace their crumbling walls by Lego stones, slowly creating a front comprised entirely of plastics. On the one hand, this will make for a much more colourful educational experience, on the other, it will be somewhat less dignified than learning in those beautiful Gründerzeit buildings that still adorn Berlin-Mitte here and there amidst all the modernistic shoe-boxes… UPDATE: This is a project by Jan Vormann

Today, Carl Klapp wastes some time on social networks, and realises that times have changed a lot. Next installment: 150509 Carl Klapp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License .

In a slightly disturbing spot for the Bontrust Bank, Germany's Optix, brings us the results of money love. Even though I enjoyed the origami animation and the concept of the entire universe being made of money (dirty old capitalist that I am), I do find the spots resolution somewhat unnerving. Wouldn't money creating more money randomly cause massive inflation? Plus, the mark died out ten years ago, dinnit? A good example of when a good idea takes things a bit too far for it be good for the brand. The message to me: Money's a whore. She'll sleep with anyone to procreate. At least no money was harmed in the making of this film. The title takes you to Optix website! Hooray!

From Big Ant International, this very smart poster campaign for the Global Coalition for Peace . They won a Gold Pencil for this one at the One Show and were shortlisted for various other prizes… I'll link this to scaryideas , as their depiction of the posters is the most coherent. A nice way to show that selling weapons to anyone may come back to haunt you at some point. The title will take you to Big Ants' website.

After battling my way through the perilous dangers that leaving Kreuzberg involves, making my way through angry Ewoks, Force fields of Beer and the Döner Desolation, I came out on the other side… Mitte. What follows is a subjective documentation of the ailing art of mural decoration in these desperate times of civilising a city once covered from head to toe in Wallspray! I will conclude this particular outing by saying that it's a strange, wierd and wonky world beyond the cosy confines of the hobbit shire that is Kreuzberg… and that, except for reclining on the shores of the spree in stead of the landwehrkanal, I am glad to be home.