An Inside Look at How the Fantastic “Wintergatan Marble Machine” Makes Music with 2000 Marbles & 3000 Handmade Parts

in Creativity, Design, Music, Technology | March 18th, 2016

Swedish musi­cian Mar­tin Molin’s Mar­ble Machine, above, looks like the kind of top heavy, enchant­ed con­trap­tion one might find in a Miyaza­ki movie, gal­lop­ing through the coun­try­side on its skin­ny legs.

Those slen­der stems are but one of the design flaws that both­er its cre­ator, who notes that he hadn’t real­ly tak­en into account the destruc­tive pow­er of 2000 flow­ing mar­bles (or more accu­rate­ly, 11mm steel ball bear­ings).

It’s nat­ur­al for some­one so close to the project to fix­ate on its imper­fec­tions, but I think it’s safe to say that the rest of us will be bedaz­zled by all the giant musi­cal Rube Gold­berg device gets right. Hannes Knutsson’s “mak­ing of” videos below detail some of Molin’s labors, from recre­at­ing the sound of a snare drum with coast­ers, a con­tact mic and a box of bas­mati rice, to cut­ting wood­en gears from a cus­tomiz­able tem­plate that any­one can down­load off the Inter­net.

If it looks like a time con­sum­ing endeav­or, it was. Molin wound up devot­ing 14 months to what he had con­ceived of as a short term project, even­tu­al­ly design­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing 3,000 inter­nal parts.

The fin­ished prod­uct is a feat of dig­i­tal, musi­cal, and phys­i­cal skill. As Molin told Wired,

I grew up mak­ing music on Midi, and every­one makes music on a grid nowa­days, on com­put­ers. Even before dig­i­tal they made fan­tas­tic, pro­gram­ma­ble music instru­ments. In bell tow­ers and church tow­ers that play a melody they always have a pro­gram­ming wheel exact­ly like the one that is on the mar­ble machine.

The “mak­ing of” videos high­light the dif­fer­ence between the record­ed audio sig­nal and the sound in the room where the machine is being oper­at­ed. There’s some­thing immense­ly sat­is­fy­ing about the insect-like click of all those mar­bles work­ing in con­cert as they acti­vate the var­i­ous instru­ments and notes.

The machine also appears to give its inven­tor a rather brisk car­dio work­out.

You can read more about the con­struc­tion of the Mar­ble Machine on Molin’s Win­ter­gatan web­site. Its tune is avail­able for down­load here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

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Download 650 Soviet Book Covers, Many Sporting Wonderful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

in Archives, Books, Design | January 14th, 2016

Circus 1931

Amer­i­cans like to pride our­selves on the numer­ous ways our pop cul­ture pen­e­trat­ed the Sovi­et Union and seduced its young­sters, send­ing them to bed with dreams of Mick­ey Mouse, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Elvis, and Star Wars. Whether it’s jazz in the ear­ly decades after the rev­o­lu­tion, or rock and roll in the 50s and after, Sovi­et youth so craved the ways of the West, it seems, that they famous­ly boot­legged Amer­i­can music on used X‑rays, with results of wide­ly vary­ing degrees of qual­i­ty. That’s all well and good, but we rarely ask what Sovi­et cul­tur­al exports we were miss­ing while we trum­pet­ed our supe­ri­or­i­ty. (I mean, besides Ayn Rand or the com­e­dy of Yakov Smirnoff.)

Unknown Soviet Cover 1

A few of those exports have become high water­marks of cre­ative inno­va­tion and aes­thet­ic beau­ty, such as the film­mak­ing of Dzi­ga Ver­tov and Andrei Tarkovsky. At least one Sovi­et export, the Theremin, rad­i­cal­ized music with its haunt­ing elec­tron­ic whine. Much less well-known, how­ev­er, are the fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ments in ani­ma­tion and illus­tra­tion (such as these out­er space utopias). Now—thanks to the New York Pub­lic Library’s huge­ly expan­sive, free dig­i­tal image archive—we can view and down­load 650 exam­ples of Sovi­et book cov­er design between the years 1917 and 1942 (most date from the 30s). Many of these cov­ers are as unre­mark­ably vanil­la as some of their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts, but no small num­ber offer unique looks into avant-garde Sovi­et design trends.

Two Years In Northern Lands 1935

Addi­tion­al­ly, the archive gives us a broad overview of the kinds of books that were pub­lished in the Sovi­et Union dur­ing these pre-Cold War years. It’s unlike­ly many of these titles saw trans­la­tion into Eng­lish and unlike­ly many of them ever will. In some cas­es, the author and title of the book rep­re­sent­ed have been lost to his­to­ry (as with the col­or­ful cov­er sec­ond from the top). Each of the images here links to a page on the NYPL’s online data­base, where you can see pub­li­ca­tion info and down­load high-res­o­lu­tion scans. Browse, and down­load, hun­dreds more pre-War Sovi­et book cov­er designs at the NYPL’s “Scrap­book of Russ­ian Book­jack­ets, 1917–1942,” or see a few more choice selec­tions at The Paris Review, who drew our atten­tion to this won­der­ful online col­lec­tion.

Takers 1933

The Grim River 1933

M. Lermontov

Big Universe 1936

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Watch Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Win­nie the Pooh, Cre­at­ed by the Inno­v­a­tive Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Brazil Gives Out Books That Double as Subway Tickets, Promoting Literacy & Mass Transit at Once

in Books, Design, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2016

One of the things I miss about liv­ing in a city with a sub­way sys­tem is the myr­i­ad thought­ful design ele­ments that go into man­ag­ing a per­pet­u­al flow of tourists and com­muters. New York’s sub­way map presents us with an icon­ic tan­gle of inter­lock­ing trib­u­taries resem­bling dia­grams of a cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem. The NYC system’s inge­nious­ly sim­ple graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of let­tered and num­bered trains, encir­cled in their cor­re­spond­ing col­ors, can be read by most any­one with a rudi­men­ta­ry grasp on the Eng­lish alphabet—from a new lan­guage learn­er to a small child. The Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­way sys­tem, though a much more pro­sa­ic affair over­all, whisks rid­ers through impres­sive­ly cav­ernous, cat­a­comb-like sta­tions, with bru­tal­ist tile and con­crete hon­ey­combs that seem to go on for­ev­er. The squig­gly lines of its col­or-cod­ed map like­wise promise ease of use and leg­i­bil­i­ty.

Ticket-Books_LPM-1-957x644

And then there are the hours of read­ing time grant­ed by a sub­way com­mute, a leisure I’ve relin­quished now that I rely on car and bike. So you can imag­ine my envi­ous delight in learn­ing about Brazil’s Tick­et Books, which are exact­ly what they sound like—books that work as sub­way tick­ets, designed with the min­i­mal­ist care that major tran­sit sys­tems do so well. And what’s more, they’re free: “To cel­e­brate World Book Day last April 23rd,” writes “future-for­ward online resource” PSFK, “[Brazil­lian pub­lish­er] L&PM gave away 10,000 books for free at sub­way sta­tions across São Paulo. Each book came with ten free trips.” Rid­ers could then recharge them and use the books again or pass them on to oth­ers to encour­age more read­ing, an impor­tant pub­lic ser­vice giv­en that Brazil­ians only read two books per year on aver­age.

Ticket-Books_LPM-3-968x516

With sub­way map-inspired cov­ers designed by firm Agên­cia Africa, the books include The Great Gats­by, The Art of War, Ham­let, Mur­der Alley by Agatha Christie, Hun­dred Love Son­nets by Pablo Neru­da, and more (includ­ing com­ic col­lec­tions from Charles Schulz and Garfield’s Jim Davis). Watch an explain­er video at the top of the post and see some love­ly images of the book cov­ers above. The cam­paign won three tro­phies at the Cannes Lions Fes­ti­val in the cat­e­gories “Pro­mo,” “Out­door,” and “Design,” and has proved so pop­u­lar that pub­lish­er L&PM has expand­ed the project to oth­er Brazil­ian cities, giv­ing me yet more rea­son to vis­it Brazil. And if Tick­et Books makes its way to a sub­way-enabled city near me, I may con­sid­er mov­ing.

via PSFK

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

Com­muters Can Down­load Free eBooks of Russ­ian Clas­sics While Rid­ing the Moscow Metro

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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55 Covers of Vintage Philosophy, Psychology & Science Books Come to Life in a Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Books, Design | October 27th, 2015

We all know that toys come alive at night, but what about mid-cen­tu­ry vin­tage paper­back cov­ers, such as you might find in the psy­chol­o­gy or phi­los­o­phy sec­tions of a dim­ly-lit used book­store?

Watch­ing 55 min­i­mal­ist cov­ers from graph­ic and motion design­er Hen­ning M. Led­er­er’s 2200 title-strong col­lec­tion begin to spin, drift, and seethe in the short ani­ma­tion above, I got the impres­sion that they were the ones dic­tat­ing the terms. Or per­haps Led­er­er is the ves­sel through which the inten­tions of the orig­i­nal design­ers—Rudolph de Harak and John + Mary Con­don to name a few—flow. Cov­ers is not an act of reimag­i­na­tion or crowd-pleas­ing irrev­er­ence, but rather one log­i­cal motion, ele­gant­ly applied.

Habitués of used book­stores may find their usu­al brows­ing habits slight­ly altered by the hyp­not­ic results.

Led­er­er makes no bones about judg­ing books by their cov­ers. Strong graph­ics, not con­tent, are the pri­ma­ry deter­min­ing fac­tor as to which titles he acquires. The state­ly geo­met­rics set in motion here are relics from anoth­er age, but the unclut­tered abstracts so favored by 60s era pub­lish­ers are not the only genre to catch his eye.

Shame Drifter, Dusky Desire, and Sin­sur­ance are some of the decid­ed­ly non-min­i­mal­ist titles spic­ing up his collection’s online gallery. After all of those arrows, angles, and spheres, Led­er­er might have craved ani­mat­ing some­thing with a bit more…personality.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

Illus­tra­tions for a Chi­nese Lord of the Rings in a Stun­ning “Glass Paint­ing Style”

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her post-dig­i­tal, pre apoc­a­lyp­tic dark com­e­dy, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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100,000+ Wonderful Pieces of Theater Ephemera Digitized by The New York Public Library

in Archives, Dance, Design, Film, Theatre | September 11th, 2015

ERoosevelt

Liv­ing in New York, it’s not unusu­al to encounter ardent the­ater lovers who’ve care­ful­ly pre­served decades worth of pro­grams, tick­ets, and ephemera from every play they’ve ever seen. These col­lec­tions can get a bit hoarder‑y, as any­one who’s ever sort­ed through the belong­ings of a recent­ly depart­ed life­long audi­ence mem­ber can attest.

If the­ater is dead — as gloomy Cas­san­dras have been pre­dict­ing since the advent of screens — these mono­liths of Play­bills and stubs con­sti­tute one hell of a tomb.

Sound of Music

(Go ahead, toss that 1962 pro­gram to The Sound of Music…and why not dri­ve a stake through poor Uncle Mau­rice’s cold, dead heart while you’re at it? All he ever want­ed was to sit, eyes shin­ing in the dark, and maybe hang around the stage door in hopes of scor­ing Acad­e­my Award win­ner, Warn­er Bax­ter’s auto­graph, below. )

Warner Baxter

For those of us who con­ceive of the­atre as a still-liv­ing enti­ty, the New York Pub­lic Library’s recent deci­sion to start dig­i­tiz­ing its Bil­ly Rose The­atre Divi­sion archive is cause for cel­e­bra­tion. Such grand scale com­mit­ment to this art form’s past ensures that it will enjoy a robust future. Hope­ful­ly some­day all of the approx­i­mate­ly 10 mil­lion items in the Bil­ly Rose archive can be accessed from any­where in the world. But, for now, you can start with over 100,000 items. The com­par­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age avail­able now is still a boon to direc­tors, design­ers, writ­ers, and per­form­ers look­ing for inspi­ra­tion.

It’s also wild­ly fun for those of us who nev­er made it much past play­ing a poin­set­tia in the sec­ond grade hol­i­day pageant.

KHepburn

Tru­ly, there’s some­thing for every­one. The library sin­gles out a few tan­ta­liz­ing morsels on its web­site:

A researcher can exam­ine a 1767 pro­gram for a per­for­mance of Romeo and Juli­et in Philadel­phia, study Katharine Hepburn’s per­son­al papers (ed. note: wit­ness the many moods of Kate, above), review Elia Kazan’s work­ing script and notes for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Street­car Named Desire, exam­ine posters for Har­ry Houdini’s per­for­mances, read a script for an episode of Cap­tain Kan­ga­roo, view set designs for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of Guys & Dolls and cos­tume designs for the Ziegfeld Fol­lies, ana­lyze a video­tape of the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Cho­rus Line, and find rich sub­ject files and scrap­books that doc­u­ment the most pop­u­lar and obscure per­for­mances from across the cen­turies. 

Comedy

You might also prowl for Hal­loween cos­tumes. What kid wouldn’t want to trick or treat as one of Robert Ten Eyck Stevenson’s 1926 designs for the Green­wich Vil­lage Fol­lies?

Salome

There’s cer­tain­ly no shame in moon­ing over a for­got­ten star… for the record, the one above is Alla Naz­i­mo­va in Salomé.

BMcQueen

And there’s some­thing gal­va­niz­ing about see­ing a famil­iar star escap­ing the con­fines of her best known role, the only one for which she is remem­bered, truth be told…

For me, the hands down pearl of the col­lec­tion is the telegram at the top of the page. For­mer First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt sent it Gyp­sy Rose Lee to her­ald the re-open­ing of Gyp­sy, the musi­cal based on her life.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, telegrams were once an open­ing night tra­di­tion, as was stay­ing up to read the review in the ear­ly edi­tion, hot off the press.

More infor­ma­tion on vis­it­ing the archive, online or in per­son, can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and per­former, whose lat­est play, Fawn­book, opens in New York this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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M.C. Escher’s Perpetual Motion Waterfall Brought to Life: Real or Sleight of Hand?

in Design, Video - Arts & Culture | September 10th, 2015

Since M.C. Esch­er bent minds in the 20th cen­tu­ry with his Möbius strips, meta­mor­phoses, and impos­si­ble objects, oth­er artists have been try­ing to bring his cre­ations to life. And the advent of com­put­er illus­tra­tion, then ani­ma­tion, has made it all the more pos­si­ble.

In the real, “meat­space” world of organ­ic things, it’s a lit­tle bit hard­er. In Jan­u­ary 2011, a YouTu­ber by the name of “mcwolles” post­ed the video above. In it, a man pours water in a scale mod­el of Escher’s 1961 Water­fall. The con­trap­tion, using blue water, actu­al­ly seems to work. The water runs uphill through sev­er­al sharp angles and fin­ish­es by tum­bling off the top into the pad­dle­wheel below, where its begins its jour­ney again. “Mcwolles” ends the video star­ing into the cam­era as he tries to find the off switch…but also dares view­ers to fig­ure out how he did it.

Escher, Waterfall 1961

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wikipedia

The Inter­net had a viral freakout—check out the 9.3 mil­lion views—and prompt­ly set about try­ing to offer solu­tions. “Look how the shad­ows fall!” sev­er­al peo­ple point­ed out. The locked-down cam­era was anoth­er clue.

In May of 2011, “mcwolles” offered a 360 tour of the cre­ation in his garage that offered some sug­ges­tions, and that was all that was need­ed for user “LookingMercury3D” to offer their expla­na­tion of how the trick was done. (Hint: edit­ing).

Since then, “mcwolles” has only post­ed two more videos: one of him los­ing weight and one of a dog hav­ing its way with a stuffed ani­mal. Maybe he’s busy work­ing on his next piece of Esch­er-inspired art.

 

Relat­ed con­tent:

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Watch a Luthier Birth a Cello in This Hypnotic Documentary

in Design, Music | August 28th, 2015

It’s always inter­est­ing to see how things are made—crayons, Fend­er Stra­to­cast­ers, car­toon eggs…

The doc­u­men­tary above takes you through the cre­ation of a cel­lo in the Barcelona work­shop of mas­ter luthi­er Xavier Vidal i Roca. (To watch with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, click the closed cap­tion icon — “CC” — in the low­er right cor­ner.)

The open­ing shots of luthi­er Eduard Bosque Miñana tak­ing mea­sure­ments have the jazzy feel of a Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood seg­ment, but once music schol­ar Ramón Andres gets into the act, things take a turn toward the philo­soph­i­cal.

His thoughts as to the ways the “king of all instru­ments” speaks to the human con­di­tion are com­men­su­rate with the lev­el of crafts­man­ship its con­struc­tion requires.

(Though see­ing Miñana patient­ly fit a steam-shaped curve to the devel­op­ing instrument’s c‑bout leads me to ques­tion Andres’ choice of anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing pro­noun. With a waist­line like that, sure­ly this cel­lo is a deep-voiced queen.)

The mas­ter luthi­er him­self acknowl­edges that there is always a bit of mys­tery as to how any giv­en instru­ment will sound. Most mod­ern cel­los are copies of ancient instru­ments. With the design set, the luthi­er must chan­nel his or her cre­ative expres­sion into the con­struc­tion, work­ing with sim­i­lar­ly ancient tools — chis­els, palette knives, and the like. If pow­er tools come into play, direc­tor Lau­ra Vidal keeps them off­screen.

The effect is med­i­ta­tive, hypnotic…I was glad to have the mys­tery pre­served, even as I agree with cel­list Lito Igle­sias that musi­cians should make an effort to under­stand their instru­ments’ con­struc­tion, and the rea­sons behind the selec­tion of par­tic­u­lar woods and shapes.

Igle­sias also notes that the luthi­er is the unsung part­ner in every pub­lic per­for­mance, the one the audi­ence nev­er thinks to acknowl­edge.

The Sara­bande of Bach’s Suite for Solo Cel­lo no. 1 in G major brings things to an appro­pri­ate­ly emo­tion­al con­clu­sion.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

Elec­tric Gui­tars Made from the Detri­tus of Detroit

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

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Ralph Steadman’s Evolving Album Cover Designs: From Miles Davis & The Who, to Frank Zappa & Slash (1956–2010)

in Art, Design, Jazz, Music | August 4th, 2015

steadman02

Ralph Stead­man will always best be known—and for good reason—as the visu­al inter­preter of Hunter S. Thompson’s drug­gy gonzo vision of Amer­i­can excess and hubris. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on Stead­man and Thompson’s pow­er­ful col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship, it’s hard to imag­ine a more “suit­able visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment to the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly clear- and wild-eyed sen­si­bil­i­ty of Thomp­son­ian prose.” But the British artist has had a long and dis­tin­guished career, pre- and post-Thomp­son: illus­trat­ing Lewis Carroll’s sur­re­al­ist clas­sic Alice in Won­der­land; cre­at­ing lim­it­ed edi­tion DVD cov­ers for the dark cult hit TV show Break­ing Bad; mak­ing bul­let-rid­dled col­lage art with coun­ter­cul­ture hero William S. Bur­roughs…. To name just a few of his off­beat assign­ments over the years.

happy jack steadman

Today we bring you a less­er-known facet of Steadman’s work: design­ing album cov­ers. As artist and illus­tra­tor John Coulthart notes in a post on Steadman’s album designs, he’s been at it since the mid-fifties, when—for example—he illus­trat­ed a release of Con­cep­tion (top), “an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed mas­ter­piece of cere­bral cool jazz” fea­tur­ing the likes of Miles Davis, Stan Getz, and Son­ny Rollins. Stead­man’s abstract expres­sion­ist-inspired jazz cov­ers soon gave way to more Stead­manesque, though still rel­a­tive­ly tame, cov­ers like that above for The Who’s sin­gle “Hap­py Jack”/“I’ve Been Away” from 1966.

steadman07

It’s not until the 70s, however—after he’d begun his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Thompson—that his album cov­ers begin to take on the decid­ed­ly crazed look his work is known for, such as in the cov­er for Paul Bret­t’s Phoenix Future, above, from 1975.

steadman26

By 1997, Stead­man seems to have per­fect­ed his inim­itable riot of grotesque imagery, wild col­or palette, and unhinged black lines and let­ter­ing, as in the cov­er for Closed On Account Of Rabies: Poems And Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe, a com­pi­la­tion of Poe read­ings by stars like Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, Jeff Buck­ley, and Abel Fer­rara, which we’ve fea­tured on OC before. The artists rep­re­sent­ed here are—as in his work with Thomp­son and Burroughs—perfectly fit­ting for Stead­man’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. So, of course, is the clean-liv­ing but oth­er­wise total­ly bonkers Frank Zap­pa, whose 1997 Have I Offend­ed Some­one? received the Stead­man treat­ment, as you can see below.

zappa steadman

In the past few years, Stead­man has mel­lowed a bit, if you could call it that, and his work has tak­en on a slight­ly more refined char­ac­ter. His Break­ing Bad illus­tra­tions seem restrained by the stan­dards of his work with Thomp­son or Zap­pa. And in a 2010 cov­er for Slash’s first offi­cial sin­gle, “By the Sword,” below, he reigns in some of his wilder graph­ic impuls­es while retain­ing all of the styl­ist sig­na­tures he devel­oped over the decades.

slash steadman

Stead­man has always been a one-of-a-kind illus­tra­tor. In his album cov­er design, we can per­haps best watch his work evolve. As Coulthart writes, “the style of the ear­ly sleeves is marked­ly dif­fer­ent to the angry, splat­tery cre­ations that made his name, and with­out a sig­na­ture you’d be unlike­ly to recog­nise the artist.” See many more Stead­man album cov­ers over at Coulthart’s excel­lent blog.

via Feuil­leton

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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