Visual Soundworks by Steve Roden

I came across Los Angeles based Steve Roden's site and reached out to him regarding the much talked about early morning flea markets around LA, which he was super cool about and gladly shared (email us or him if you're interested in knowing more).  I then checked his work and saw some unusually abstract and stunning paintings.  His work process utilizes various forms of specific notation and translates them through self-invented systems into scores to draw influence from in his paintings and drawings.  Really liking the uniqueness in his style, and his advice.  

The Beginning of Record Sleeve Design by Alex Steinweiss

You can all thank Alex Steinweiss for ushering in the element of design into music, where without him, album art would probably be a lot more boring these days.  The New York born Polish graphic designer known as Alex Steinweiss (1917-2011) was known for inventing the record cover in 1938 at the age of 23.  Apparently, music albums came in brown paper wrappers until Steinweiss came up with the idea of patenting his own record packaging design to be more appealing in driving sales.  

Today, album art is huge, especially in the music blogosphere where sometimes a musician/artist is judged based on their album art or moniker.  

Extra Large Flyers by Burlesque of North America

Everything Minneapolis-based Burlesque of North America does is golden, even these party flyers for Extra Large events.  While their screenprinted gig posters are jaw dropping and can be extremely detailed, even when they do a simple quickie of a party flyer it still screams awesomeness.

Also check out their insanely good tour posters that they did for Arcade Fire.