Jordan Swartz-The Rad Times #27

I’ve got a tattoo on my left calf of a skeleton sitting underneath a palm tree and drinking a cocktail. Above it in script that is fattening and hazing with each passing year it says “Summer Forever” and my dudes, I mean it more than ever. The days are getting longer and the sun has gloriously come to Portland. I’ve been to 3 beaches in the last week with more planned for the coming days. I’ve been reading books in the sun and deep diving new hardcore (the kids are gonna be alright!) on long walks. I’ve been eating fresh salad on a makeshift table in the backyard and riding bikes with friends to parts unknown.
Read this newsletter and then invite friends over and grill, find new water to swim in, sit on a patio with an old friend and catch up, eat more veggies, close your eyes and stare into the sun, don’t wear socks again for the next four months, listen to your favorite song with the windows down, go enjoy this time, and I'll catch you when I catch you.

Thanks for hanging!
Be good to each other.

My new zine Visual Affects is available for pre order now and contains a collection of collages made over the last 2 years. Making tangible things has always been my favorite part of design especially when so much of my work lives in hard drive graveyards and pixel purgatory. This also marks the start of a new project called Department of RAD, a hybrid design and publishing studio where I will be releasing more of my work, as well as other people’s projects and objects I’d like to see in the world. If you’re reading this a digital version is available to download for free or a hard copy is available to pre order, shipping early June.

Hotel Soma in Ft. Worth TX had their grand opening party a couple weeks ago and is officially open. I did a full brand identity, print and operating collateral, a bunch of apparel and merchandise, as well as way finding and signage on this project. If you see it on property there’s a good chance I had a hand in it. Seeing every one post photos from the opening is always a high. You can see a full brand feature on my website.

I was in Seattle for most of last month helping my friend Sarah Robbins with some new mural projects. If you’ve been to Seattle in the last 5-10 years you’ve seen some of her murals around town. One of my truest joys in life is seeing my friends succeed in whatever it is they do and she’s crushing it.

Slightly NSFW, nothing wild, but if your boss sucks read it later.

The early 2010s internet was a rad place for photography and showed me a whole host of photographers I follow to this day. Magdalena Wosinska is one of those photographers. When I found her early work it was a lot of her friends hanging out, skating, traveling, partying, a lot of what my friends and I were doing, but hers all had a different feel. As I’d watch her work and style develop over the years, that difference was community. You can tell she’s deeply in tune with the projects she takes on and the people she photographs. It’s great seeing her be able to bring that personal candid style to larger projects and campaigns. She also put out the book Fulfill the Dream a couple years ago, documenting her early days photographing skaters.

Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows was my favorite book I read last year and I have been anxiously awaiting his new one, A Violent Masterpiece, which came out last week (and as of this writing I am halfway through.) His writing is propulsive and crisp, dirty, rough edged and has tactile grit. He wrote for tv for over a decade and you can tell, no wasted words, just everything you need. His short story How to Kill was recently featured on Southwest Review and is a good intro to his style, but if you like crime, stories about LA, or the edges of society, I’d highly recommended his writing.

Train Jazz has made every train in the NYC subway a different instrument. Each note a different spot along its route, the pacing of sounds ebbing and flowing with the hours of the day. A melding of data and technology, transportation, and music. I have enjoyed putting this on while I work, feeling its rhythms weave in and out of my day.

Bill Daniel is a filmmaker, photographer, curator, installation artist and by my estimation the Forrest Gump of a certain swath of art and punk. I had the fortune of working with Bill for a couple years designing the most recent edition of his hobo graffiti magazine, Mostly True. Part of our design sessions would be spent making layouts, editing photos and captions, and scanning new content, but these sessions always devolved into Bill telling me stories (and me egging him on) of who he knows, what he’s seen, and where he’s been. A good place to start with Bill’s work is his documentary Who is Bozo Texino?

In their own words, Laura Kampf is someone who makes videos about making stuff. The videos have varied in subject matter over the years; home renovations, beer bikes, the customization of everything, but no matter the subject, the videos are entertaining and have a creativity and curiosity at their core. They make me want to make things and I think that’s maybe the best thing art can do.

Beastie Boys Book - This book chronicles their path from hardcore kids to the forefront of hip hop and into the pop culture lexicon. Voiced by a wide range of readers and featuring a number of storytelling devices, they do a great job of pushing the boundaries of a pre-established form. As a bonus someone made a playlist of their Danceteria songs and it’s great.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett - Lara tells her three daughters her life story, using the play Our Town, one of the great American plays, as a mirror and narrative thread. Messy family dynamics, second hand nostalgia, and what it means when your life turns out different than you thought. It’s narrated by Meryl Streep and her voice gives a lush emotionality to the story.

Jackass: Best and Last - I recently had a conversation with a friend who has a 2 year old and I asked when she was going to show him Jackass and if I could be the one to do so.

VanMoof - In 2015 they started shipping to the United States and their bikes were arriving damaged. It seemed US delivery services weren’t handling the packaged bicycles with care. The solution? They put a tv image on the outside of the box and damaged packages dropped by 80%.

The Course of Water - Pairing photographs of the Owen’s Valley region with archival images, and maps, details how in the early 1900’s a lack of water threatened LA’s growth potential, and how these actions repercussions are still felt today. I recently rewatched Chinatown after reading The Big Goodbye, a book about the making of the film, so LA’s water has been on my mind lately.