If you’re not familiar with them, the Gorillaz is a “virtual band” composed of four comic book characters created by Damon Albarn (previously of Blur) and Jamie Hewlett (creator of Tank Girl).  We’ve always been intrigued by the way the band mixes various mediums to create a world for their music.

The concert was a good example of this mix.  In addition to the real band on stage, a massive screen showed various bits of video and animation ranging from fully produced music videos, such as Melancholy Hill and Feel Good Inc., to unfinished storyboards in sketch form.  From a designer’s perspective, it was really interesting to see the different stages of their process.  The music and virtual world aside, we enjoy their visual style, and since we’re all visual people here (go figure), that goes a long way.

The pictures we snapped with our iPhones during the concert sadly didn’t turn out, but these photos (by wonker) are an excellent representation of the concert.

On a more work-related topic, we launched a new site for a (hopefully!) upcoming project at Dupont Circle – the Dupont Underground.  For those who don’t know (which is generally anyone who moved to the area after ‘96), there’s actually an old, abandoned trolley station below the circle.  It lay dormant from 1962 until an ill-fated attempt to convert it into a food court failed in 1996.  Dupont Underground is a new initiative that aims to convert the unused tunnels into a gallery space.

We were honored to be asked to design a website to help promote the initiative. As Adam Griffiths, membership director for the Washington Project for the Arts was quoted in the Washington Post, “There’s no arts district here. You might have galleries clustered in groups of two or three, but there’s no place to go to help the arts spiral out into the surrounding area.” We agree, and we were happy to lend a hand to help rectify that situation.

One of the nice things about working on the site was that we had the ability to be a little more experimental than we are with your average business.  The site is split into thirds (design students take note – rule of thirds!), and uses imagery to abstract the project’s name.  We’ll be adding to the site over the coming months (we’d like to make some more image pairs for the left two-thirds) so keep an eye on it!

We’ve been concerned with sustainable design for a long time.  Maryam, the studio eco-freak, has been cataloging, organizing and discovering new ways to offer earth-friendly design to our clients.  While this is great and we’re happy that it’s a service we can offer, we thought it’d be useful to share some of this insight with the greater design world.

The new Greener section of ripe (which can be found here or by clicking “Greener” on the ripe homepage) lists tips for making your studio and/or design greener, and links to various green resources we find helpful or informative.  We hope you’ll check it out and let us know what you think.  It’s a work in progress, so please check back now and then.

Art of Peace

Backed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Art of Peace Foundation strives to foster peaceful discourse between China and Tibet.  They’re in the process of releasing a CD titled Songs for Tibet – The Art of Peace which will be available for purchase on iTunes on August 5th, and at Amazon.com and other retailers on August 12th.

ripe was offered the opportunity to create the Foundation’s branding package, website and the artwork for their upcoming CD.  We were happy to accept, and are more than pleased with the results.  Check out their website, and stay tuned for more information regarding the CD release.

Blog

Last but not least, we recently decided to launch a blog… and here it is!  We’ll be posting here now and then with information regarding new work we’ve completed and are happy with, upcoming projects, interesting techniques we’ve discovered, etc.

It’s been a busy summer so far, and it shows no signs of letting up.  But at least being so busy keeps us out of trouble.