Pretty sure many of our generation grew-up making mixtapes with twin cassette recorders. I certainly did and received some awesome tapes from friends before all this internet gubbins came along.

I’d planned to use Muxtape to do this a year or two ago, but since that all went pear-shaped, Spotify came on the scene to save the day. We’ll see how the recent royalities issues play out a little before we abandon it in protest, as for now it’s one of the best way to hear new music and (as it turns out) share it with friends.

This one’s a bit of a genre-hopping, rag-tag bunch… Too many exciting tracks to choose from! Track listing below, for those without Spotify.

Have fun!

Super Mixtape Action Plus! Vol 1

1. Beating Heart Baby / Head Automatica / Decadence
2. Again & Again / the bird and the bee / The Bird And The Bee
3. Raid / Madvillain / Madvillainy
4. Find It / Stu Phillips / Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
5. The Rains / Some Girls / All My Friends Are Going Death
6. Live From the Plantation / Mr Lif / I Phantom
7. F.K.O. / Subtle / A New White
8. Stillness Is The Move / Dirty Projectors / Bitte Orca
9. The Littlest Birds / Jolie Holland / Catalpa
10. Forests And Sands / Camera Obscura / My Maudlin Career
11. In This Shirt / The Irrepressibles / Mirror Mirror
12. Atlas / Battles / Mirrored

All those mirrors at the end are purely coincidental!
Original cassette player image from here.

Following a series of high profile detentions under s44 of the terrorism act including 7 armed police detaining an award winning architectural photographer in the City of London, the arrest of a press photographer covering campaigning santas at City Airport and the stop and search of a BBC photographer at St Pauls Cathedral and many others. PHNAT feels now is the time for a mass turnout of Photographers, professional and amateur to defend our rights and stop the abuse of the terror laws.

http://photographernotaterrorist.org

I went along with my parents, as Dad is a keen photographer too and had witnessed police hassling a street photographer in London recently. I wasn’t planning on taking any photographs, as I thought that it was obviously going to be well covered by everyone in attendance, but after people asked everyone to hold their cameras up for a… photo, I changed my mind.

Not sure what the fall out will be yet (in my experience, it’s often difficult to see repercussions from protests), but everyone seemed pleased with how it went and there has been a bunch of press coverage so far today. Our friend, Paul Treacy, was also there and took some awesome photos. A few of ours are below or you can check out the full set here!

Check out the full set here!

2010 has come upon us fast but our last month of 2009 was a busy one… We were lucky enough for the egg, Theatre Royal Bath to ask us to be part of the creative team for their 2009 Christmas/Winter show: writer Toby Hulse, director Lee Lyford and designer Hayley Grindle’s interpretation of the classic Jules Verne novel, Around the World in 80 Days.

So we said “yes!” and had our first proper experience of being involved in putting together a theatre production. We loved every, well most, minutes of it; everybody we worked with was brilliant, it was a massive amount of hard work and we have learned loads and loads and LOADS! An important lesson being that we really enjoy creating theatre!

We’ll post a full write up soon, but safe to say, after a struggle of working crazy hours; long days with little sleep for the majority of people involved, it turned out amazingly well! An ingenious, entertaining, hour and a half full of talent and fun!

The show has been running since December and has received great reviews from the national press. Check out the quotes and photos below for a taster. We also got 4 star reviews in The Times and the Guardian this week, though we would recommend you don’t read it until you’ve seen the show, as they do contain a bunch of spoilers!

Good news is, you’ve still got time to check it out; it’s running until the 16th January at the egg, Bath, so if you’re nearby, make sure you go see it before it’s too late!

We thoroughly recommend it! We’ve enjoyed every one of our, at least 15, viewings and we’ll see you there on Saturday night if you can make it :)

Oh yeah and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope you are all enjoying 2010, we’re look forward to getting more involved in massive projections for public consumption :) xx

“What a delight… this is old-fashioned storytelling in the best sense”

The Guardian ★★★★

“A Lovely Show”
The Times ★★★★

“This was always going to be a riot… What a trip”
Venue ★★★★★

“This is a fast-paced, irresistible round-the-world romp, packed full of mayhem and melodrama and guaranteed to raise a smile”
British Theatre Guide

“Oh What fun this is… pure joy”
The Bath Chronicle

“The clever mix of movie image and live actors is superbly enhanced by Hayley Grindle’s stage within a stage”
The Stage

Read more…

Also, our How To Live film is showing at crunch09 (the art festival at hay) this weekend. We can’t be there due to other commitments and I’m not sure where or when it’s being shown (think it might be in the gallery), but if I find out I’ll post an update.

See more (and an interview with Jan) at The Design Inspiration, or click the images above.

(via @Vivekkay)

When using gradient opacity masks, the mask will not go fully opaque unless the black swatch of your gradient is in RGB mode.

Default for gradients is Grayscale mode:

Illustrator Opacity Mask Gradient Grayscale

To fix this, double-click on the black swatch, then click the dropdown in the top right of the box that pops up. Change the mode to RGB.

Illustrator Opacity Mask Gradient RGB

If you’re not sure where to start with opacity masks in Illustrator, Bittbox is a great place to learn the basics.