He's The DJ , I'm the Rapper

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One of the reason why we started Finale was to connect with friends that were doing really cool things. My good friend DJ Sage has been really pushing his Hip Hop radio show called the Urban Renewal Project. The Urban Renewal Project (URP Radio) airs Tuesday nights from 10 pm - 1 am PST on 102.7 fm or can be listened to live over the internet and if you missed that you can download the podcast off their website. They play really dope music and their own air banter can be quite funny, funnier when I show up.

Dale and I have talked about and worked on this project for a year and I am really excited to see that it has come into fruition. Download the mix at the following URL.

Get it before the link goes dead.

Finale Design and The Urban Renewal Project deliver a T-Shirt / Mix tape package that combines both collectives love for Hip Hop culture. Finale Design plays tribute to some of the best tandems in Hip Hop history while DJ Sage of the Urban Renewal Project creates a complementary mixtape that plays hommage to these legends.

The Urban Renewal Project is based out of Vancouver BC, and is the biggest hip hop radio show in Western Canada. The show airs every Tuesday night from 10pm - 1 am PST on 102.7fm and can be listened to live over the internet or fans can download the podcasts off their website.

You can download the Finale Design X Urban Renewal Project Mix at the following url.
www.zshare.net/download/524774052f56d195/

The T-Shirt/Mix tape package is available at www.urbanrenewalproject.net.

Finale Essentials

Vinz and I got to list our essentials on Hypebeast this week. Check the link.

Hypebeast Essentials Vancouver

I tried to focus on things that had a good story behind it or that has a Canadian or local background to it.

Live From the BBQ

I m going to be on TV tomorrow for an interview on Global Television but this will not be about Finale it will be about VancouverSlop. I have never been in the studio for an interview before but this should be fun. I post a clip of it when its all done.

Matt

Mapple

-Vince

Some Finale Party Pics

Here is a picture of Vince. I wish I had long hair.

Pecha Kucha Again

I was excited to go to this event because the first one was off the hook. Many of these people are creatives and are not the best public speakers but some managed to have a great stage presence and make their presentation really interesting.

I am going to try and get Vince to speak at the next one.

Minority Report 2

Stars Jackie Chan, Samuel L Jackson, Benicio Del Toro....just kidding.

Peep this video though


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

-Vince

Always Be Closing

-Vince

Of The Man

I decided to brave the Vancouver Comme Des Garcon / H & M release on Thursday at the downtown location in Pacific Centre. I think Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal were the only stores to stock the collaboration.

We arrived at about 8 (two hours before opening) and the line was about 60 deep. My friend was in the front and she got there at 5 in the morning. At ten just before the store opened there were about 300 people in line. The most interesting part was the demographic of the people in line, about 90 % asian and mostly the ones that follow street wear not fashion. The asians are always down for a deal.

When the doors open it was pure madness, people grabbing shit that wasn't there size, and holding onto it to try on later. This meant you couldn't get more than a few items in your size unless you were really lucky. I managed to get the cardigan I wanted but was unable to get the jackets that I really wanted. I attacked all wrong. Oh well, it wasn't the best of quality anyways.

Anyone want to trade a trench. I got a 44

CS4

I went to a seminar put on by Adobe today. It showcased the new features in CS4. There are a few things that would make our lives much easier. This was pretty cool:



I'm looking forward to using the blob brush in Illustrator. The bone structure feature in Flash. The web galleries generated by Indesign CS4 is a game changer for me. I'm sold, Matt time to get CS4 for the office.



-Vince

Embody

I'm like all the other design nerds out there who love Herman Miller products.

I was using a Aeron chair at one of my full time jobs and I loved it.

I just read that the person that created the Aeron has developed a new chair called the Embody.

It doesn't look as good as the Aeron in my opinion. But I have to see it in person.

Matt time to get one for the Finale Office.



-Vince

Where Are All The Costumes At?

The day before Halloween and I am at the Alife Party and no one is in costume. Not one. The party was solid, free grey goose and free beef for all, with DJs spinning.

Ok, so I wasn't either but I have a good excuse, my costume is huge and it is taking forever to build. I can't wait to wear it. Here is a sneak peak of the head.

I Heart Finale

I do not know many famous people. My friend used to go out with Grace Park from Battlestar Galatica, I have seen Kristen Kreuk, I bought Danny Aiello a appetizer once at Earls and I have met a good number of rappers, none I could call a friend.

I managed to get together with an old friend named Michelle Morgan, and she is on her way to becoming a famous actor. She has been in a bunch of stuff such as the L Word, and has a significant role in the show Heartland which has the actor who played Peter Caine in it from Kung Fu The Legend Continues. Big ups!!!!

Anyways, always cool to sit down and chat with a friend. Best of luck to you Michelle.

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha- I have to admit, I had no idea what this was. My friend called me to check it out with her and I was really glad that I did.

Pecha Kucha - is a speaker event being held around the world by different organizing parties. It is basically a speaker session where the speakers are confined to a 20 X 20 format. 20 slides with each slide being on 20 seconds long. This allows the presentation never to get boring and force the speaker to be dynamic. They have to keep up with the slides or fill in time when they don't have enough to say about the slides. In Vancouver, there were speakers from Vancouver is Awesome, my friend Chris Allen, the owner of Hunt and Gather, and many more. It was a very good sitting and was very inspirational. I will be at the next one.

Finale Fall Release Party

We are having a release party for our Fall Collection, if you are in the Vancouver area, come down to Shine on November 7th, 2008, have a drink with us, listen to some good music and hopefully get some free gear.

Finale Fall Release Party
November 7, 2008
Shine Nightclub - Gastown

Mighty Mouse and more Bloggin

Matt is killing it with his food blog. We talked about the Finale blog briefly, and we decided to step up the posts. Matt is pretty prolific with his blog, I actually post quite a bit on my personal blog which is read about 3 people in the whole world. I'm going to start double posting from my personal blog from now on.



Apple went through a few mice before they came to the Mighty Mouse. Remember that hockey puck mouse? I dunno what they were thinking when they made that thing. Now the Mighty Mouse is a must have for me. The side force sensing buttons with expose is the shit. It makes my work flow much more efficient and it makes me feel like I was in the Minority Report. Use expose with the mighty mouse and show desktop with the hot corner is shit that I swear by.

Here is a total graphic design nerd thing. Now when people were using the old Power Macs would notice that the mouse operates slightly differently then from a PC mouse. Most people won't notice or care but if you are drawing with it all the time you will notice that the Power PC settings makes the mouse much slower and there is a different type of sensitivity. When I fully converted to Mac I had the hard time getting used to it. Now that I am on the Intel Macs, I found that the mouse speed has increased, before you had to get a freeware program to get the mouse to track faster.

Now when I get on a new Mac I make it a point to slow down the tracking cause I got used to the slower tracking speed from the old Power PC Mac's.

Man that was a nerdy post.


-Vince

Maiden Noir is the shit

I found this video the other day

Shit is inspiring.

On a side note where is the video that Matt said he was going to post?


-Vince

BBOY Reunion - Original Rudes Calgary

I was in Calgary for work but I managed to be in town for a local the Original Rudes Anniversary. This is cool, every year they put on a party and the members of the crew would fly in to showcase, have fun and chill. Some members that I have met and have achieved international popularity is Motion Sickness aka Moshe from Skills Method and Raul the Cool who now live is Montreal.

Here is a clip from the event.

I used to dance for a crew called Straight No Chaser but our generation dissolved but it was some fun years.

A Trip To The Printers.

It is weird that this day and age that screen printing is done by hand. With everything being automated, I find it funny that someone still has to put down a shirt on the press, and then place down the screen and run the ink through. I know they have automated presses but they usually don't use those unless your numbers are massive.

It is also very cool that brands still must shop around for their screener, to check past work to make sure they are up to par. A good screener is a very important ingredient in making a good shirt.

Here is a shot of the set up.

I like to eat

Ok, so I found the best burger in Vancouver, go to Vancouverslop.com to see the results.

S-K-A-T-E

We had the privilege of being a part of Any Howells ArtsProjekt. Matt and I came up with a few ideas for the board. We decided that we would use original artwork rather then reusing one of our shirt graphics.

You can pick them up here.


-Vince

Production Time

We are in production. I just went back and forth with the screen printers over an issue with brush strokes on one of our files. After a few exchanges I gave them the files they needed. (I used to do a lot of prepress so it was pretty easy for me to fix the problems) The screen printer ended up asking me how I fixed the issue. I ended up teaching him how to fix it if he runs into this problem in the future.

Hey at least I know film is getting made now.

I want to see them shirts.

-Vince

I love marketing

You got to watch this. Thanks to lolos for the link.

Livstock Block Party

Ok, this is amazing for the city. Livestock knows how to throw a real jam. Djs on rotation, free food from Guu, free beers, bboy contest, sneaker drive, skate ramp and a ton of people. What more could you ask for.

The jam was great, I m getting old and walking through the packed areas got tiring after a while but you could tell everyone was having a great time. At one point I felt like my dad, where he would let me go play and have fun but just sit on the side. Check the pics. Props to Livestock and all those involved.

I Can't Live Without My Radio

When I grew up I owe college radio or community radio as the main reason I got into Hip Hop. Growing up we didn't have the Internet, not because we were too poor but just because it wasn't readily available. Those free AOL disks didn't come by my house til maybe 3 years after high school so my Jr high years and high school years were based around radio and TV.

Underground radio was everything to me, I would stay up late at night to tape the show, and have to stay up for an extra 30 mins to flip my tape over. I had a shoe box full of tapes of a show called The Krispy Biscuit.

When I got to university I wanted to do the same thing, and quickly got involved with college radio and started a show called the Promised Land. Long story short the Promised Land expanded to more shows, but only one radio show lives now, the Urban Renewal Project which is Western Canada's number 1 hip hop radio show.

I really want to share this link with all the readers as this show is great, lots of interviews, great music, Hip Hop trivia. I just built their website so go check
www.urbanrenewalproject.net and download their podcast.

For The Vancouver Heads

I was just going through my emails and I found this. Made me sad. Respect to FWUH a staple in the Vancouver Hip Hop Scene.

The Genius

Love the Wu. Gza killed it performing his whole Liquid Swords album. I was mad faded and I just remember talking to a bunch of people.

Went back stage and got to chat with him for a bit and then get a radio drop for the urban renewal project.

I am all out of gear, otherwise I would have a product placement shot for ya.

Magic, Project, Pool Show Part 2

Supernatural freestyling at Magic.




-Vince

Magic, Projct, Pool show in Vegas Part 1

I wasn't snap happy with my camera while I was at Magic. Here's a few pics that I did take:














-Vince

Know?Show Day 2

Today I went back to the Know?Show, I hung out for a bit. Matt came by, on the way out he was bugging me about not taking any pics. So I snapped a pic of him...oh yeah I got a pic of the sign too.


-Vince

Know?Show

Know?Show is going on right now in Vancouver. Know?Show is our little Magic and focuses on some street brands but a lot of snowboarder and skater brands.

There was an after party done by OBEY, the party was good and some seriously hot girls turned out.

Know?Show

Went to the Know?Show today. Unlike the man about town Matthew I went to the actual trade show and he will go to the after party. I had my camera with me, I should have took at least the shot of the sign outside to make this post look nicer.

I have a friend that's exhibiting there, so I was just sitting around talking and watching people walk by. Well I guess this will be a warm up to Magic.


-Vince

Get Up and Get Down

Come down to Shine in Gastown tonight for the Four Year Anniversary for Get up Get down.

Finale is sponsoring, come down for giveaways.

Wallabees

Since Vince was talking about Wallabees, I wanna drop this clarification.

Back in day about 1957 - 87 Clarks owned a company in Ireland named Padmore and Barnes, and out of this factory came the wallabees. Eventually, Padmore and Barnes had a management buy out and now most wallabees are made out of Asia.

If you are a real gear head you will only want to own the Padmore and Barnes wallabees, and not the Asia joints, its like having OGs versus reissues. Look on ebay for the Padmore and Barnes joints, they come up once and a while. I got a pair handed down from my dad. Nice taste pa!!!

Supreme, Paul Smith and Ships did their collaboration with Padmore and Barnes.

Tidbit I just stole from the web.
The recently released Nike HTM Zoom Macropus pays tribute to the Wallabee in both name and form. The macropus is the genus of the members of the macropodidae family, which includes kangaroos and of course, wallabies.

Jamario Moon

This guy is a problem.




-Vince

Toney

Since Matt made a post about socks I thought I would post this old Ghostface TV spot.




-Vince

Half Socks > No Socks

Here is my new steez. I like the look of no socks when wearing shorts or when you roll up your pants, but without socks your feet and shoes stink and going to people's houses feels weird. Here is the solution, I buy these short, hella thin womens socks from Walmart and fold them at the arch. They are so thin they don't bulk up much and support the arch and feel comfortable.

Now, your feet and shoes don't stink, and when you go to peoples crib you can unroll them and look like a normal citizen.

Lets be real, those no shows still show. This is the FUTURE!!!!!!

M.

Budget GPS

Props to my man Josh from Brknhome on this one. It is easy to get lost when you travel, especially in a city like New York, so many spots to see, so many subway lines etc. If you dont have the iphone or a GPS unit on you, you can do this.

Go to superfuture, google maps, transit websites and either save the image and upload them to your memory card on your camera or take a picture of the screen. This way, you have a map on your digital camera any time you need one. You can zoom in on the image and see a perfect amount of detail. This saved us from getting lost so many times, its great.

Do it, and impress your female friends. So smart.

SAS

-Vince

New York City

For the last few days I have been in New York. Love this place. I have a lot of friends here now so going out is awesome, good parties, good food, and good times. I will share some moments when I get some pictures on the computer.

But yesterday played a game of soccer with the Chinatown Soccer Club, these guys are good, like real good. A lot better than the people I play with back home. But I still only let in one goal and it was kinda of a fluky goal. I got a good picture on my holgaroid that I will add to this post later.

www.chinatownsoccerclub.com

Rent is expensive in this city, not sure how people do it. Maybe one day I will try but this city might just chew me up and spit me out.

Naoto Fukasawa

I just picked up this Lamy Noto pen. It's designed by one of my favorite designers, Naoto Fukasawa.


-Vince

Linesheets are done!

Hollar at Matt for it.


-Vince

something to tide you over

Posts about the lack of posts are popular.

Lemonade was a popular drink and it still is.

Matt's going to New York.

Aug 1st. is coming we're waiting for one more design to be confirmed before we release the line sheets.

FYI I actually design a lot of graphic for girls outside of Finale.

Matt has glasses that steam up.

I go to realtalkny.net a lot for hip hop news.

I'm waiting for the new MacBook Pro.

Like a rhinocerus, my speed is prosperous And pure knowledge expands from my esophagus.

I've always wanted an Nice and Smooth t-shirt.

I spilled half a beer on Matt once and he didn't get mad.


-Vince

Bikes

So here is another difference between Matt and I.

This is the kind of bike that he's likes:



This is the kind of bike that I like:



Looking at the neon pink of this bike brings me back. I used to collect mad issues of BMX Plus and I must have watched Rad countless times, I know all the lines to the movie.



I don't know anything about road/fixed/track bikes. I did work at a place that designed bike jerseys for 5 years. I actually got to design a a few jerseys for bigger companies like Maxxis, Rocky Mountain, and Cat Eye. I did learn to appreciate all aspects of bike culture through working there. I would never wear spandex gear but I sure did design a lot of it.

So Matt is in the market for a road bike. Someone hook him up with a good deal or some carbon rims or something like that. Or send us some pics of hot girls on bikes, either or. Matt will love looking at the pics while he's surfing the net in his Wes Anderson looking suit.

Oh yeah this is my holy grail bike, the Gold Haro Master from 93.



If you have a Haro that you don't want hollar at me.

info@finaledesign.com



-Vince

A Month of Weddings

It seems July has been a month of weddings. My man El Gato from Chinatown Soccer Club and Psyop (www.psyop.tv) got married just north of Sechelt and we had a wicked time. Great chance to hang with old friends, get drunk and make some new friends, a crew of 40 came from NY. Some real cool people that came from NY.

Yesterday my man Ryan from EA sports, Sole Searching Crew got married and we had another wicked time. Chilled with some good people, danced a storm and had a great time.

I am running out of money, and formal attire. This is getting tough.

Rebuttal

First off, the stabs Vince bought are wack.

Second, I used to be really into kicks. I had an old school geocities site that had a definition of sneaker terms and pictures of all my shoes. I wonder if I can find that stuff on my hard drive. I still wear kicks, I love my infared 90s, AM1s and ACGs.

Third, I moved vancouverslop.blogspot.com to http://www.vancouverslop.com and my eating buddy Josh from Brknhome has made his first post on there. My boy Rim from the street wear line Humongous has moved his blog to http://www.torontoslop.com.

I wear V necks.

Shoes

A long time ago Matt used to be into shoes. Now he's a jaded dude that wears non nondescript kicks all the time with no socks.

I was never too heavy into kicks. Matt actually made fun of these Stabs I got a little while back. Yeah I like bright colors. I actually wear a lot of plain kicks these days too. I have about 6 pairs of Vans Era's that I wear on the regular.

I've been paying more attention to shoes lately. With the onset of love for high end sneakers like Lanvin's, Common Projects and etc. With Nike coming out with new technology like the lunar foam and the flywire. I'm starting to get interested in kicks again. I know it's not very cool and the Hyperdunks don't look very good with New Standards. I like innovation.

My friend Rich just started a blog on sneakers with a slant on innovation, peep it here: sneakerpedia

There was always a sneaker themed shirt for every season of Finale. We skipped it for Fall 07 and we skipped the entire Spring 08 season altogether. But for Fall 08 we got another one coming.

Here's a sneak peak of it:



Yes it's colorful, yes it's a sneaker shirt.

Don't worry for all you cool guys I'll post a picture of a plain white American Apparel V-neck (which fits wack by the way, H&M and Uniqlo got the dope v-necks) for you next week to drool over.


-Vince

back on track...kinda

Well it's been a while and it looks like we are back on track. Well on track for Fall. Looks like we missed out on the Spring/Summer season altogether. Which is not really alright, but what can we do? At least we are set for Fall, well we will be set for Fall. I have to meet with Matt the Boss aka the wearer of blank tees, plaid shirts and food reviewer.

We had to take one design out of our line up. I had no idea Supreme had the same flip. Oh well, another graphic cancelled, at least this time it's not by Matt.



-vince

The Cheaper Show

This is what Vancouver needed. The show was incredible, much respect to those who were a part of it in any way. The venue was huge and perfect for the showing, and everything was well organized (liquour sales, art sales, volunteers, music, security etc). Here are a couple of pics.

Props again to those involved especially my friends Jesse and Meghan.

www.thecheapershow.com