What's All This Then?
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What's All This Then?
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Friday Edition
Take a minute (eleven actually) to check out our film, Copy Goes Here.
Coudal Partners
fresh signals categorical archives
The Visual Arts
From Damon Soule.
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British artist James Hopkins' Vanitas Series. Startling, meaningful and wicked smart.
Royal Mail's 2012 Olympic stamps.
Wally Torta draws Norfolk, Starbucks, and talks about why.
"As a designer it is important to understand where design came from, how it developed, and who shaped its evolution. The more exposure you have to past, current and future design trends, styles and designers, the larger your problem-solving toolkit. The larger your toolkit, the more effective of a designer you can be." Design is History.
Nadia, a camera that features no display, instead showing you a percentage judging how attractive your photo will turn out. All based on its on-board "aesthetics inference engine."
Uhura gets buried in tribbles in the Alamo Drafthouse's new Star Trek-inspired poster.
Grain Edit on artist Josh Keyes and his ecologies of surprise. Lots more at Keye's site.
A guide to art in the NYC subway system.
So you know, a brief history of computer icons.
"Includes free anachronistic cave man for your T.Rex to eat." Too cute, the T.Rex animated paper kit.
Nice bird paintings by Maurizio Bongiovanni.
Chart showing the circumstances when whipping it should be considered.
"This project involves employing the inhabitants of a favela to paint their own houses according to a pre-arranged pattern. It will turn their community into an artwork of epic scale and will produce an explosion of color, joyfully radiating into the world. Visible from the center of Rio, 'O Morro' will draw attention to the city's deplorable social situation, while instilling pride and joy in the at the bottom of the social hierarchy."
Jason de Caires Taylor's Underwater Sculptures.
Lovely, from artist Tine De Ruysser, bank note jewelry.
Great Flickr set of the art of futurist-artist A. C. Radebaugh.
Illustration and collage by Stéphane Massa-Bidal, Rétrofuturs.
Star Wars original art by Tsuneo Sanda.
Lovely vintage vintage car illustrations.
Fab Russian Avantgarde books.
A journey round the linoleum cuts and wood engravings of Paul Landacre.
Illustrations to promote cycling in London. Via @mattytat.
The Gerd Arntz web archive. Via GraphicHug.
If you've got some spare change, it's auction time for The Vader Project. Via Flavorwire.
Smart. Dell partners with Threadless! to create awesome laptop designs.
Carved eggs, wow.
Related to an earlier post, 2053 is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe from 1945-1998. Via Public School.
Nice newspaper mailer for Loyola University Maryland.
Fab vintage Japanese Sci Fi illustrations.
FriendsWithYou's inflatable town in Toronto.
For a Merry 4th.
For JC and BB, why Germany will win the World Cup.
Lots and lots of street posters currently glued, mounted, hanging, or otherwise displayed in Berlin. Via Design Info.
Wilfred Castillo's Redwood City Wharf, CA tide prediction diagram providing commercial and recreational information for the month of June 2007.
Coloring Books for Grown-Ups.
Mark Sinclair checks out some of the Best of New Blood show, put on by D&AD.
Illustrator Doug Watson's pinball machine art.
"Well, we've built a giant cat head." The Threadless float in this weekend's pride parade.
Art of McSweeney's book and dust jacket. Amen.
Edward Tufte opens a museum.
A Journey Round on Cinderella meets Serpentina in Kiev, a dreamy set of illos by Alexandr Mychajlow for a collection of Fairytales of Foreign Writers from the Ukraine.
Joseph Senor's Hello Kitties include Buzz Lightyear, Darth Vader, C3PO, Robocop, Batman and Star Trek.
Badaude is sketching everything that transpires at this week's Shakespeare & Company Literary Festival in Paris.
Pixelated by Shawn Smith.
Stupid little biscuit.
Nice retro packaging for Ridley's House of Novelties. Via design work life.
Local note: Art on Track is a mobile art experience aboard an eight-car CTA train, which circles the Chicago loop for a day long celebration of fine arts culture.
The engravings of Henri-Georges Adam, 1904-67.
Birds and Toaster made from the ashes of Anne Lindeboom (1920 - 1984).
See the world, one drawing at a time. Urban Sketchers is awesome.
A unique communal work, a living portrait of the Man in Black; The Johnny Cash Project.
Fab. 1968 Czech edition of Gulliver's Travels, illustrated by Bohumil Stepan.
The sketchbooks, illos and cartoons of Jochen Gerner. Via Drawn!
Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives. To get you going on a Wednesday morning, pair a browse here with a strong cup of Joe.
Happy Lovers Town, the illustration portfolio of Jonathan Calugi.
For MS, giant webs made of packing tape. An idea for your napping loft?
"These spiders were made from scissors confiscated by the TSA at airport security checkpoints." Christopher Locke's Heartless Machines . Via What the Cool.
Repost from yesterday in response to a couple emails. Selections from a sweet Russian edition of The Hobbit. Dig the illustration of Gollum and the maps too. Also, bits from a Russian tv version. Presciousss.
For MS, Identical Twins.
Matt Stevens pays tribute to some of his favorite illustrators, designers, and poster artists with his AirMax1-a-Day Tribute Gallery. (Via NCZ.)
The paintings of Jeremy Geddes. Sublime. Of course, I'm a sucker for Cosmonauts.
Because every country is the best at something, International Number Ones.
For BB, a fab 2010 World Cup wall chart.
Wolfgang Schmittel's Process Visual. Gorgeous and also, out-of-print. Via
Artist Bern Porter, USA 1911-2004. A selection of Founds including Do's, Don'ts, and Gee Whizzles from the MoMA Library. Via gmt+9 (-15).
Artist Saimir Strati holds four Guinness World Records for largest mosaics made of nails, toothpicks, corks, and paintbrushes.
Information Architects' Cosmic 140 poster showing the 140 most influential people on twitter, sorted by #name #handle #category #influence #activity.
My First Book of Geography, France, 1959. Lovely.
Kawaii characters by Jerrod Maruyama.
Mike Leavitt's action figures.
Gail Armstrong's paper sculptures.
From artist Juan Pablo Bravo who previously brought us 100 characters scales of Pixar, the fab 250 character scales of Disney.
The Google logo drawn by kids.
Kent Barton's scratchboard art and process.
Ben Heine's Pencil vs. Camera is terrific. He shoots, he draws, he tears and he shoots again. Check his Girl with the Pearl Earring and Palais des Beaux Arts.
Recto|Verso, rare and unusual images from F.A. Bernett Books in Boston. Bookmarked. Check these images from a Futurist trade catalogue from Milan in 1924. Beautiful. Thanks for the tip Peacay.
Journey Round on Gyula Derkovits' cycle of woodcuts 1514. Great find.
1977.
The folks at If It's Hip, It's Here have a sneak peek at some the entries in this year's Vader Project.
Born In Concrete is the blog of Vancouver based illustrator Derek Stenning. He's using it primarily as a repository for a sort of retro-sci-fi series titled Entartete Kunst, which "is German for 'Degenerate Art,' and was a term developed by Nazi theorists to describe most modern art, as they felt it was socially corruptive..." While it sounds high-minded, the work is anything but, it's superb and full of Cosmonauts and hexagrams and beautiful type.
Love the watercolors of Grzegorz Wróbel, especially the architectural ones like this and this.
Fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta passed away yesterday. Jim, now how will we know what colors to paint our lead figures?
Apropos of nothing. Footage of the 1967 unveiling of Chicago's Picasso. I distinctly remember hearing Hizzonner's speech on the car radio that day, and being quite confused. Still am. Via Edward Lifson.
"The Main Street Bozeman sketchbook is an attempt to document every building on Main Street in Bozeman, Montana between Rouse and Grand Avenues. Each spread was drawn on location." Sweet. By Paul Heaston. Check these portraits too. Via Public School.
Awesome paper sculptures.
Everything You Want, Right Now!
Yoritsuki, a collection of 35 icons associated with hot springs in Japan.
Fab collection of vintage book covers 1902-1984.
Soviet poster recreated using Barbie dolls.
A FotA-fest: 20x200 and Significant Objects have teamed up with Kate Bingaman-Burt in offering up these prints, chronicling all of the Significant Objects objects thus far and raising money for the non-profit Girls Write Now.
Brazilian graffiti duo Os Gemeos have a new blog. It means "the twins" in Portuguese. Via Aaron Rose.
Great round up of vintage bullet boxes .
We Are Happy. To Serve You. Leslie Buck, creator of the iconic coffee cup, dies at 87.
Great set of graphic design for Olivetti.
Some more great process elaboration (with a wonderful video, too), this time from students at Winthrop University for their senior show.
Meet 48 Hour Magazine: "As the name suggests, we're going to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days." With your help.
100,000 staples make a mini-city landscape, Ephemicropolis. You can see how it was made here.
From artist Karla Murray, very cool photorealistic paintings, Small American Towns.
Youngstown, in color. And now it looks like a trip to Wauconda, Illinois, is in order.
From artist Ben Heine, Pencil vs. Camera!.
Ohio: Far more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts were so nicely illustrated.
"I create large geometric configurations from carefully folded and stacked second-hand clothing. These structures take the form of wedges, columns, walls and enclosures, typically weighing between five hundred pounds and two tons." Via Sweet Station.
Meet Quad Royal, "a blog about posters and graphics." Some great visual inspirado there.
Art made out of money.
Local note: ADC Young Guns winners The Little Friends of Printmaking are speaking tonight at the Apple store.
Rebranding Chrysler, in which three designers (including friend of CP & NCZ Aaron Draplin) attempt to restore some of that showroom shine to the automaker.
The Minister on an illustration for Handyman's Modern Manuals. Aegir always finds the coolest stuff, you should have his site bookmarked.
From the makers of Brand New, meet Brand New Classroom. School's in session, and we can't wait to see the results.
"Eating: If you must eat on the Subway, avoid foods that are messy, smelly or otherwise disruptive to other passengers. No one wants to smell your food or grab the pole and get bbq sauce on their hand. It's a train, not the food court." Metropolitan Etiquette Authority signs.
"I recently got into the hands of a small album of silhouettes of Fyodor Tolstoy, stored in the Hermitage. I can not share this pleasure and invite them to your attention." Translated. Via Peacay.
The anatomy of a tribble.
More process pornography to start your week, this time for the cover of The Exquisite Book.
A fascinating process read: "Evolving the System: The New Adobe Desktop Brand," parts one and two.
We're in love with vintage packaging, so this gallery of old European matchbox covers is right up our alley - and probably yours. Via Lovely Package.
There are wedding bells in the air at Northcoast Zeitgeist, so when the time came to produce our save-the-dates, we wanted to press some letters. The photographic results.
13th Street's "Stationery of Horror". Great concept, very aptly described.
This is what happens when you combine three friends, some beers, wood and metal type, a proof press, one big election and some Celebrity Pilots.
Designed to create awareness about endangered species and their disappearing habitats, the Philadelphia Zoo has launched an exhibit called "Creatures of Habitat" featuring animals made entirely of Legos.
Icons are some of the most "put up or shut up" pieces in design. In working with Monocle, Always With Honor has, as always, put up.
Aaron at the mighty DDC's got the details on an awesome design-meets-civic-pride project in the pages of GOOD.
Some really nice unified book covers by Iain Burke. Via Words and Eggs.
Stuck in a creative rut? Head to your local library and wander through the stacks, choosing at random. Works for us every time.
I'm a hopeless process addict. Strawberry Luna, you're doing nothing to curb my habit. Nothing at all.
Welcome to the Experimental Food Society.
I love what Wil Freeborn can do within the confines of his journal. Via stmjr.
House Industries prints a catalog.
How adorable are these new pieces from Rachael Novak? I'm pretty sure I own the outfit depicted in the third one. Yes, 100% sure.
"My students are awesome." Jessica Hische, you are correct.
"Now that the internet is a fad of the past (Jennifer Daniel) has successfully launched a new website." What Would Jennifer Do. Yay.
"The Working Proof seeks to promote art and social responsibility. Each print is paired with a charity of the artist's choice, to which we are donating 15% of the sale of each print - creating what we believe to be a product with not just aesthetic, but social value." Via The Donut Project.
"Just because it's graphical, it doesn't mean it's useful." Phil Gyford's Infographic.
Three illustrated cities from Blanca Gomez. Via Words and Eggs.
Previewing Marian Bantjes' I Wonder.
A superb process and an even better final product in this Johnny Cash letterpress poster.
As we celebrate the 75th birthday of the Works Progress Administration, why not take a look at some of the most recognizable fruits of its labor: The posters of the Federal Art Project, a program we wouldn't mind seeing return.
Two of our favorite people are Alissa Walker and Kate Bingaman-Burt so it's nice to find this piece at Fast Company, written by one about the other.
The results of AIGA Cleveland and Cranky Pressman's Cranky Camp letterpress printing workshop.
Meet The Hello Project, "an online social collaboration giving people the chance to say hi, hello, or hola on one of today's most common yet neglected canvases: the Post-it."
"Cakeland also can serve as an analogue for the search for temporal love; the experience can be incredibly sweet and indulgent, punctuated by moments of insecurity and terror." Cakeland.
Suiting Up For Space, illustrator unknown. This gives me an idea for a poster set and I know just the guy to talk to about it.
Drawings of the life cycles of assorted parasites. Via MeFi.
"Woke up feeling motivated. To help facilitate future motivation, I made this giant 3' X 4' 'Motivational Poster' for a blank wall in my newish Portland apartment. 9 bucks at FedEx Kinkos. Easy." Adam Garcia's Motivational Poster.
infographic showing the results from the World Database of Happiness.
Northeast Ohio is a signage fan's dream. Our personal favorite? The hand-painted signs at Alesci's, a nearby Italian grocery. There really is quite a bit to see on Ohio's north coast.
Kate Bingaman-Burt publishes the awesome Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today? Her friends pay tribute by re-creating the book's illustrated cover. So cool.
We're huge fans of infographics. And these, from Aaron Kraus, only encourage our habit.
Carli Dottore got to live the letterpress dream recently, interning at Hatch Show Print. Here's the excellent Think Pink poster, one of her pieces done there, along with the process behind it.
Hey! It's Vinyl Cat, Mikey Burton's art print for Cleveland's own Music Saves. And don't forget - Record Store Day is right around the corner.
Adorable bears, soaring eagles and, of course, logging. Our humble submission for the MoOM: Stan Galli's illustrations for Weyerhaeuser.
So great, 100 character scales of Pixar.
When Twitter met Letterpress: Sharp-looking promotion cards printed for shadow works by Ohio's Cranky Pressman.
Gorgeous book sculptures from artist Jaqueline Rush lee.
Daily drawings using the same paper, same pencil, no erasers, no Photoshop and some colored marker here and there.
Characters from LOST: The Animated Series.
Star Wars stencil graffiti around the world.
The Art of Money. A design analysis of typography, iconography, color and technologies used on major paper currencies.
Meet the Avant Gardeners t-shirt and card set.
Tron vs Saul Bass posters.
FotA Kate Bingaman-Burt illustrates the 500 worst passwords.
Zombies vs. Unicorns. Via Kitsune Noir.
Chrome postcards of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Motels, hotels, restaurants, streets, towns and tourist attractions. Fab.
"From the moment they leave the easel, paintings begin to change. That certainly applies to The Bedroom, which was already damaged during Van Gogh's lifetime." The famous painting is undergoing a major restoration. Video of conservator Ella Hendricks' examination. Follow the work on this blog and learn more at Lines and Colors.
Aqua-Velvet's World of Logotypes - Part Three is an inspirational way to start the week. If you need more. here are parts one and two.
Hero Josef Muller-Brockmann, beginning to end. Via Antonio Carusone.
"A sequence of 500 'illuminations' at 250-metre intervals will roll westwards from Segedunum fort, Wallsend, at 5:45pm, reaching Carlisle three quarters of an hour later and ending on the final, largely fragmentary stretch of the wall above the Solway." The public participates in a large scale work of art, lighting up Hadrian's Wall. Check the video here.
An interactive infographic showing the difference between the quakes in Haiti and Chile.
For DW, the Periodic Table of Sci-Fi film and television.
Aegir Hallmundur's illustration for Wired is money.
A collection of portraits of Star Trek characters. Gnar Trek.
Ground, Yes and Struct. Lovely illustration work from Philipe Nicolas, via Grain Edit.
More on today's theme, Lester Beall, American graphic design pioneer and notes from Alexandra Lange.
David Pearson's hand-stamped covers for new editions of Cormac McCarthy's books.
The Alexander Girard era at Braniff Airlines and an article about it by Jason Mojica. Thanks Ken.
The human body as a subway map. Fab.
Masterpieces of minimalism or cheap furniture? An artist or an ape? Familiar-looking online quizzes as art satire.
Awesome, a graph showing water consumption in Edmonton during the Olympic Gold Medal hockey game.
So great, a re-envisioning of the beloved childhood classic for the Star Wars fan, Goodnight Forest Moon.
Lovely proposed identity for a print & apparel shop by Mattias Mackler, Inkgredient. Via the latest link drop from Michael Surtees.
From artist Dan Kenneally, Lunchbox. I'll take the Reuben, thanks.
Grain Edit interviews Sanjay Patel about Ramayana, Divine Loophole, his new book of 150 vibrant illustrations that tell the story of Rama and "his quest to rescue his wife Sita after she was kidnapped by a demon king."
Whitey on the Moon is a collection of 10 space drawings by artist Joey Parlett. Each drawing is a grid study referencing space photographs from NASA, LIFE magazine and thrift store science books. Via Book By Its Cover.
Black Harbor illustrated interview with artist Wesley Eggebrecht. Love his style, more work can be seen at his site.
Brian Rea is afraid, very afraid.
Illustrator Robert McCall, whose work embodied and inspired North America's fascination with space travel in the 60s, passed away last Friday. McCall may be familiar to many for his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Via Flavorwire
Maximilian Toth's Little Beasts are in the TMN Galleries this week.
As you'd expect, The Canadian Design Resource has been on an Olympics kick lately, with lots of Canadian Olympics collateral, past and present.
So cool, letterpress prints made with dice.
A boat transformed into a model of itself. Michael Johansson's Dinghy at 1:1 Scale. See also his installation, Some Assembly Required. Via Designboom.
"It is the delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, the landscape have been trapped inside the book all this time and are now suddenly released." Gorgeous book-cut sculpture from artist Su Blackwell.
So you know, a graphic guide to the sport of Curling.
"Two hundred artists, architects, and designers propose their dream interventions in Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling rotunda." Contemplating The Void.
Pr*tty Sh*tty talks to Paula Scher. Good stuff!
Great infographic showing the numbers behind the Academy Awards.
The Casual Optimist on ten Flickr groups for book design and inspiration.
Museum of Modern Tweets isn't so much a museum as it is Odessa Begay's very funny weekly illustrations of bizarre celebrity tweets. Via Doobybrain.
"I remember 90% of the dwarves' poem and all of their names by heart." Illustrator Sam Blogsma started a series of sketches based on The Hobbit late last year. He's still at it, and his style is wonderful. Check this post on his process. Via Picture Book Report.
"This major exhibition of Constructivist art was shown in Basel in 1937, at a time when just a few miles north this kind of modernist painting and scuplture was denounced as "degenerate art" by the Nazi regime." Book (Design) Story #700: Kosntruktivisten, designed by Jan Tschichold.
Nate makes words pretty.
Very cool graphic showing the depth of the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean. Via Brandflakesforbreakfast.
Adad Hannah, painstakingly recreated Theodore Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa" in photography. So cool. For background information and behind the scenes photos Check this post at PFOAC.
The illustrations of Leandro Castelao. Via Grain Edit.
Simple Desktops, designed to make your computer beautiful without distraction.
Oldbook vintage masking tape.
"70 workers are building a wooden 4 x 12 m 'digital' time display in real time: a work that involves 1611 changes within 24 hour period." Standard Time.
Vanity Barcodes. Scan-compliant barcodes in every style, from bread to helicopter to magic wand. Via Swiss Miss.
Paper Jam Press makes fab handcrafted letterpress posters.
Facebook profiles broken down by country, state, and city and show as a graphic visualization. More info here.
Stephen is drawing the members on the United States Senate, one member at a time. Via Surfstation.
Illustrations by Emma Kelly.
Lady Gaga dollas.
Something Is Happening.
The Whitney Museum of American Art has created a series of videos promoting the artists, curators, and events for the upcoming Whitney Biennial 2010, check them out here.
"A dream world, drawn with sepia-colored ink on cream-colored ceramic. Magical forests, childhood memories, tree houses..." "Les Maisons Enchantées" 21 piece service set.
Amazing photography, typography and composition in service of a classic and precise editorial style. Below Mag from Ushuaia, Terra Del Fuego, Argentina. Fab.
"Fifteen illustrators will reach out to their favorite books and create wonderful pieces of art in response to the text that has moved them, shaped them, or excited them." Picture Book Report. Via Super Duper.
Artist Josef Schulz's Sign Out, removing the logos and lettering from roadway business signs.
Helen Musselwhite's papercuts under glass domes.
Art School Girl releases a new letterpressed art print just in time for Valentine's Day.
Open Call to Artists and Curators: Pop-Up Art Loop converts empty Chicago storefronts into galleries.
Digital Graffiti Animations, via Book of Joe.
Oh yeah. Selected works by Roger Dean, as chosen by those he has inspired. Progtastic. My personal fave. BB?
From the National Museum of Health and Medicine, vintage medical propaganda ephemera.
Lehel Kovács' Google Street View Sketches, via Coolhunting.
Love the Office and Office 2 series by Ruud Van Empel. Via Junkculture.
Fred Seibert on William Golden, "Talk about unsung heroes. For those of you interested in graphic design or broadcasting or branding or marketing -or you're just a media freak like me- you really should read this book." Via @grainedit.
When smoking was cool, 50 gorgeous vintage matchbook covers. Via MeFi.
Found on the way to finding something else. Digging Chicago designer Kyle Poff's work, especially the marks for Cy's Tavern and The A-Frame Brewery.
Paul Rand's Ford logo that almost was. Thanks Bram.
The Little Guys Blog, where drawings of little guys will appear every day (except when more appear).
Pretend you are smarter than you are with these book jackets. Brilliant. Unless you are actually reading these books, then just have a very cool jacket to protect the prose.
Coloring with Yuko Shimizu.
Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010.
The White Tape Project.
Matthew Lyons is a 21 year old student studying illustration and animation at Loughborough University in England. His work is amazing.
Album covers recreated using MS Paint.
Very nice paintings of trucks, by Shane Neufeld. Via Art Hound.
Nice illustrations by Leandro Castelao.
The New York Delft porcelain dinnerware collection.
Julie Cloutier's Timed Drawings measure the duration of domestic activities, while exploring the length and width of her stroke.
D&D Player's Handbook design over time: analyzed.
Ghost signs in Chicago
David Sotelo's photographs of El Dorado Hotel dwellings before they were converted into high-end lofts.
I have quite a few pieces of original art in my house from FotA Rod Hunting from The Post Family. And I think I may be adding more as I just saw his Airplane Print #1. It's big and there will be more on the way which makes it perfect for the wall I have not been able to commit to, art-wise, in my dining room. Been waiting 6 years to put something there. Thanks Rod, dilemma solved.
What's there to smile about? A scientist has announced that the Mona Lisa likely had very high cholesterol.
Local Note: Concoction a show by FOTA Chad Kouri opens this Friday at Rotofugi.
Comenius and Admir take the most popular YouTube videos and make drawings of them. Without You Baby, There Ain't No Us.
Clockwork Love.
A graphical visualization of when fruits and vegetables are in season near you
Caricaturist David Levine RIP.
A great collection of Victorian infographics.
Handcrafted wooden toys of recently extinct animals.
A newly discovered letter leads to the latest van Gogh ear theory: he chopped it off himself over news of his brother's marriage.
"I am trying to draw every person in New York. I will be drawing people everyday and posting as frequently as I can. It is possible that I will draw you without you knowing it." Via J-Walk.
The work of artist/illustrator Kate O'Leary.
Room A in London's National Gallery, spoil the secret why don't you?
For JC: scientists have exhumed Caravaggio's remains to try and figure out how the hard-living artist actually died.
Local note. One word regarding Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus currently on display at the The Art Institute of Chicago, go.
Behind the New York Times Magazine's redesign.
Kate MacDowell's porcelain creations.
Get on over to 20 x 200 and sign up for their newsletter, stat! Tomorrow morning, they'll release a new print from artists Doug + Mike Starn and all email subscribers will get first shot at getting prints before they go public.
Humans as monsters.
Some pretty remarkable fan-made art in a variety of mediums and from a wide assortment of age groups, for FotA James Kennedy's book The Order of Odd-Fish. James has also put out a call for submissions for a live show this spring.
Huge collection of Perry Rhodan Sci Fi book covers.
Points of body contact while walking the sidewalks of NYC.
Web services as Penguin book covers.
"A clever way of repurposing all that footage of extra cables that lamps and computer devices have: draw with it." Maisie Maud Broadhead's Cable Drawings. Via Archinect.
"On the second night, I thought, my God, don't they care anything at all about me? Are they going to leave me here to die?" Roger Ebert's great story about covering Chris Burden's performance art piece Doomed in 1975. Via Atencioblog.
The folks over at Hey Studio are creating a Christmas calendar, a new character illustration every day for the month of December. This is just about the cutest Darth Vader I have ever seen.
How far does your produce travel?
Scott Teplin's Alphabet City prints.
Expressionist paintings of arcade games, by Brock Davis.
"...sexy, torrid - simply killer - illustrations." Dan Shepelavy on True Romance and Robert McGinnis.
Art Strikes Back.
Great collection of passport covers. Think this might be the one for me. Camping=spiders=no go zone. See you at the hotel!
Money faces art.
The Evolution of Storage.
Nation In a Scuzzy Notebook, an article from the Sunday Glasgow Herald on Wil Freeborn of Ghostschool. Yay.
Snow White in apples.
Too cute, Super Emo Friends. Sold out but hoping he'll print more. Via Newsarama.
Possible new logo design for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.
"It is ambiguous at best, and as sexy as the obese, shapeless humans living on Axiom, the flagship of the BnL fleet in Pixar movie 'WALL-E." What designers think of AOL's new logo. You can add your two cents in the comments section.
Aurora Borealis (Marlon Brando, Neil Young and Pocahontas)
Appendage no. 6, by John Transue. Via vvork.
Design Police's Visual Enforcement Kit.
Picasso Superheroes.
"For Butler the greatest form of strength is openness. For his model of vulnerability, Luke Butler looks to a most stout and reliable figure. He didn't have to make one up- if you have watched enough TV, you know this to be true." Thanks Mike.
Good magazine has a graphic visualization of the effects of bike commuting on obesity.
From artist David Brownings, Nike shoes made out of paper. Fab.
Aqualta, Studio Lindfors' illustrations of what New York and Tokyo might be like if they were flooded.
Tangentially related to today's Eye. Gerhart Richter's stained glass window at Cologne Cathedral.
From artist Stephan Walter, fab techinical illustrations.
Fitting for today, Luke Butler's Enterprise paintings.
Fantastic (in the truest sense of the word) science-fiction illustrations by Peter Elson in a sweet site designed by Martin Lucas. Via Millenium People.
The city and it's flooded double.
Illustrations by Laura Berger.
"Daniele admits that the hardest part is not the painting itself, but rather having to watch his paintings be washed down the drain and disappear on a daily basis."
Someone please start selling prints of Maurizio Strippoli's illustrations and photos so I can start buying them.
To help promote the upcoming Tim Burton Retrospective, the director and MOMA have teamed up to create this adorable promo spot.
The New York Public Library logo gets a facelift.
"Five shapes, with two sides, on a nail, create 3520 artworks.". Via Josh.
"Mostly I was asked to paint witty and silly paintings to help drive interest in the company and add some fun to the new space." Drew Beam's paintings for Fahrenheit 212.
"...because of their small size, they are the sort of thing one might pay very little attention to when reading the column or flipping through the magazine." Leif Peng,'s Lowell Hess: In Praise of the Little Things. Beware Peng's archives if you hope to accomplish something today.
Nice illustrations by Gemma Correll's.
Mummified Barbies.
Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity opens at MoMA today. Ouroussoff's NYT review. The accompanying site is excellent, take Kandinsky's Questionnaire.
20 years later, restorations to original paintings on the Berlin Wall.
Scott Campbell's laser-cut cash.
Frank Chimero's The States. "Take the silhouette of a US state, and fit something inside of it."
Next year the Royal Mail will launch its stamp program with a set of ten 1st class stamps designed by Studio Dempsey that celebrate classic British album covers.
Scott Wade's dirty pictures.
Steven Heller on Diagramming Fritz Kahn, "a master at making analogies, comparing an ear with a car or a bird's feather with railroad tracks, to explain phenomena while triggering imagination."
Infographic showing the change in carbon emissions.
Lovely, Paris as a star map.
Artist Rod Dickinson's beautifully executed project Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, "composed solely of fragments of press statements from the cold war onward that focused on the way in which similar declarations and political rhetoric have been repeated."
My Tree and Me designs and customizes modern genealogy charts. Via d*s.
Cute aliens invading grandpa's postcards.
Amazing papercraft architecture from student, yes, I said student Wataru Itou, Castle on the Ocean.
Illustrations by Julian Callos, especially this beauty. Via Kitsune Noir.
A graphic visualization of how five cities are using technology to reduce police response time.
An Italian Renaissance sketchbook on Military Art.
A fab 1970's brochure for a chain of hotels in Portugal.
Stephen Wiltshire is drawing the Manhattan skyline from memory.
Lovely, from artist Michael Salter, Robots: Evolution of a Contemporary Icon. Via Design You Trust.
"All this is to say there are things one senses in the future and that really come about." BibliOdyssey on The Van Gogh Letter Sketches, with lovely scans and transcriptions. Fascinating. More on the book.
An optical illusion the size of a town.
Viennese designer Michael Paukner marries math, science and history in spectacular visualizations. For example, The Hundredth Monkey Effect, Stonehenge Rebuilt, Prime Number Circle and The Great Circle.
Creative Review takes a look at the new home of the Herb Lubalin Study Center.
Valerie Hegarty's destruction art. Via Who Killed Bambi?
100+ years of Design Manifestos.
"Coined the master of miniatures, Russian artist Nikolai Aldunin works between the beats of his heart, in order to keep his hands perfectly still. Using superglue, syringes and toothpicks, he creates works of art so tiny, a microscope is needed to see them." Holy cow, Master of the Miniatures. Via Design You Trust.
Jessica Hische's viney alphabet letterpress print.
The deadline is approaching for the cutoff for pre-order pledges to make the print run for Designing Obama happen. Get yours in today.
Love this tote bag by artist Nate Williams. It's made from recycled grain bags and water bottles and 1% of each purchase goes to The Nature Conservancy. Nice.
Chad Hagen's Nonsensical Infographics.
"A fundamental instrument for understanding." Milton Glaser on drawing while drawing. Fab. Via, appropriately, Drawn.
Alexander Alexeieff, color wood engraving for Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, 1923. Lovely.
An interview with artist Steve Powers who, in a partnership with the Philadelphia Mural Arts and a grant from the Pew charitable trusts, is painting murals in Philly that are "Love Letters to a fictional girl from a fictional guy for her to read as she takes the elevated subway line in West Philadelphia from 47th to 63rd and back again."
Over the weekend, graffiti artists Agents of Change transformed Scottish ghost town Polphaill scheduled to be demolished in December. Here's a trailer for their short film about the project, more photos here.
Daniel Emma's Solids and Shapes collections.
The Wooster Collective have launched their own YouTube channel.
Nice black and white illustrations by Nanami Cowdroy.
Trippy space-age toy art.
8 days and 3700 miles driving into the sun as told in illustrations.
Gah! Too cute, origami Yoda.
"Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess." The Berlin Reunion.
Painted stop motion animation by Donato Sansone. Sort of violent if I do say.
"We spend our lives being directed by signage, but what do the signs get up to when they have no one to tell what to do? Reactive signage, giving a look into the lives of overworked pictograms."
Drawings and paintings by Janelle Lile.
"Urban Sketchers (USk) is a network of artists around the world who who draw the cities where they live and travel to." Via NotCot.
The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000.
Hey MS, maybe you could do something like this with your spiders.
The illustrations of Rey Misterio aka Juan Molinet of Buenos Aires. Via Kitsune Noir.
Art made from packing tape.
Wouldn't work in Chicago because we were smart to build alleys, but still appreciate Adrian K's TRASH: anycoloryoulike project. "Artist-created biodegradable bags transform standard piles of trash into vivid sculptures of color."
Gehard Demetz's woodcarvings.
Lovely, illustrated Missed Connections.
"Moment and memory, absorption and evaporation, light and shadow are some of the triggers that inspire me and relate to my work. My 'glass pyrograph' drawings are made by imprinting hot glass onto paper, which is one way to capture and eternalize the immediacy of a moment." Via Today and Tomorrow.
Famille Summerbelle's NYC prints based off of an amazing paper cut design. Via d*s.
A Curious Bestiary by Kaitlin Beckett.
Josh Brill's birds.
Local Note, Tonight!: Buy art, do good. Firebelly Design hosts their second annual art show with proceeds benefitting Reason to Give.
You know him from your favorite New Yorker covers and arts section illustrations, the portfolio of Adrian Tomine. Via It's Nice That.
The intricate art of the banknote
For the BB and DW households, a Vespa wall sticker.
Facemakr does exactly what you'd think it would, and it's analog too.
MyPantone.
Anastassia Elias' paper cut rolls.
Scandinavian logos from the 1960s & 70s. Via Grain Edit.
From artist Jacob Dahlgren, foodcans and steel, From Art to Life to Art.
If you live in the Los Angeles area, get yourself over to the Nucleus Gallery because the Terrible Yellow Eyes show is now open. Would love to see that in person.
Kevin Cyr paints vans and trucks. Totally fab. Via Made in England.
Rod Hunting's vintage cameras silkscreened on wood, cut out and ready to hang.
The portfolio of Montreal's Julien Vallée, check "Paper Sculpture" among other sweet projects.
Collected Per Åhlin illustrations.
If you printed the internet.....
Local note NYC: Vermeer's Masterpiece The Milkmaid at the Met. If you can't make it, or even if you can, check Jonathan Janson's interactive study of the lead item from the exhibition.
Local note: Art School Girl's totally biased top 10 for this weekend's Renegade Craft Fair.
If you are one of the lucky folks in the Connecticut area, get yourself over to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and take a gander at the last week of Tom Sach's exhibit DYT Cameras. Exhibit ends September 16th so get on it.
Nerd Venn Diagram. It's a fine line, my friends.
Confidence is good, there is a point when it might go overboard, Just Sayin.
Local Note: How much is that artist in the window? FOTA Chad Kouri and Jesse Brown take over the Renegade Handmade storefront window Sept 7-13.
"WOO will dress empty shop windows with external, high quality vinyls which will feature contemporary digital designs that respond to their setting." Windows of Opportunity. Brilliant idea. Found via Josh.
So you know, Now and then: How film titles have evolved.
Gorgeous. Each month is it's own pop-up sculpture, Johann Volkmer's Faltjahr 2010 pop-up calendar.
Dirt Po(or)ster, the recipient completes by revealing spot-varnished type with hands made dirty by handling the poster.
Paint My Album, "redoing classic album covers using Microsoft Paint."
The $400 Million Club. Via Slash Film.
Book jacket designers talk about the ones that got away.
Milwaukee neighborhood posters. Via AT.
Artist and illustrator Jonathan Wilkinson has begun taking commissions to turn your house into a WeLiveHere print. Via I Like.
I want to be ordinary. "Super Market" an installation by Industry of the Ordinary opening next week. Brilliant work, here is an old favorite.
Great visual graphic on how the International Space Station comes together.
"Art" is usually a very difficult thing to define. However, with these examples of "creative grooming" it's all right there. This is art in perhaps its purest form. Thanks Claire.
Cool Old Stuff.
The Dollar ReDe$ign winner and runners up. Via The Post Family.
Two years ago, Eric F. Myers set out to draw 50 banjo paintings. He is finally finished. Via J-Walk.
A Keith Haring wooden domino set.
ISO50 features a sweet film on the rebranding of Swisscom.
Illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi has some especially nice work.
Gallery Nucleus, which sells beautiful prints, has opened itself up to outside illustrators and artists. That might be you.
Ork Posters does The Great Lakes
Time to get things done. Mini Goals Chalkboards may help with that. Type nerds note: each chalkboard is hand lettered.
"Every one of them is a clearly shaped artistic form with distinct typographic nature. The long and thorough work is evident in every detail. The essentials of the subject that has to be presented are discovered. An ingenious idea has been presented by the artist in the most adequate artistic form for this content." Trade marks and symbols by Bulgarian design icon Stefan Kanchev. Part of a spectacular new online tribute and gallery by a team led by Andrian Dimitrov.
Cotton Monsters!
The MoMA has a terrific, genuinely funny (not just "haughtily ironic") exhibition of James Ensor's work. And, they've paired it with this comprehensive Web catalogue.
The Billion Dollar Gram.
Lovely round up of Slovak book covers.
Have to say there are some surprising new ones here I have not seen before. Solid. Gold. 25 worst album covers of all time. A dying art, my friends.
Brandon Blommaert's eco_station. Via Kitsune Noir.
10 levels of intimacy in today's communication. Via Josh
Some friends had a hard time finding a ketubah that didn't look like someone vomited an ornate rainbow. Finally, they found these nice, simple designs.
"A postcard series documenting the New York city break of some indescribably horrible tourists."
Great illustrated interview with Joel Templin and Katie Jain of entrepreneurial San Francisco design firm Hatch, Part one is at ISO50 and part two at Grain Edit.
24 Colors of chalkboard paint.
Rob Walker on the story of New Orleans sign-painter, Lester Carey and the effort to preserve his work.
Sketches from a British soldier with the initials JM, created while serving active duty in World War One.
Rice Paddy art.
Steven Heller on Erin Piester's hand-drawn grocery store signs. Related: it should be noted that our current guest editor, Andy Ross, spent some time as a muralist and signage illustrator for Trader Joe's.
Multimedia collaborative North American Wildlife brings their music and art to Post Family's "Family Room,", Friday at 6.
A nice collection of Chinese posters.
Romeo & Juliet by Sam Winston.
500 Pencils.
Digging the visual blog of Siong Chin this morning. Bookmarked.
Christina Weber's Woven Art using "leaves, barks and grasses
found and foraged on urban walks." Via 2 or 3 Things.
Ed Fella. Nuff said.
A visualization, if the Twitter community was 100 people.
Film Family Portraits.
"I draw on cups. Yes." Cheeming Boey's Styrofoam Coffee Cup Illustrations.
Dan Lacey's Paintings of Obama, Naked with Unicorns, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Andres Amador's sand art.
So great, Quotes/Citations.
Kim Herbst's very funny "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Rucksack" painting and Tom Whalen's fantastic Dragon's Lair print, are but a taste of the goodies to be had at the 8 Bit and Beyond Art Show. Via Peachfuzz.
In The Air is a visualization project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid's air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc), to see how they perform, react and interact with the rest of the city.
The world's most beautiful currencies.
Some realistic (and creepy) human sculptures by Sam Jinks.
So you know, the 2010 Death and Taxes poster.
300 collected profiles of the same woman, hung side by side inside two deep green rooms. Fabiola by Francis Alÿs. More here by Richard Dorment, including a video.
Posted without comment: "ANDY!" a series of pieces by the always weird team of Ondrej Brody and Kristofer Paetau (and this time, with help by a very hydrated dog named Mambo).
A former oil rig worker spent 15 years building an exact replica of a North Sea platform out of more than four million matchsticks. Wow.
Mucca Design's great work for Brooklyn Fare. Via Aisle One.
Artist Evan Roth's great description of cataloguing and studying the stylistic diversity found in Parisian graffiti tags for the Fondation Cartier's exhibition Born in the Streets - Graffiti. Also worth revisiting Roth's original Graffiti Taxonomy project from 2004 which looked at tags from NYC.
"Ink Calendar makes use of the timed pace of the ink spreading on the paper to indicate time. The ink is absorbed slowly, and the numbers in the calendar are 'printed' daily."
Sophie Blackwell illustrates NYC Missed Connections like Phoenix With Crutches. Via Hrrrthrrr.
CP fave/local genius Rod Hunting is "Artist of the Month" at Coop, with an opening Friday evening.
"I don't think my feet have gotten anymore dextrous." Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp decides to try sketching with all four of her appendages. Via Torrez.
NO!SPEC is fighting design spec work. Thanks, Mr. Rutzky.
Cleveland Will Kill New York.
A look inside Tom Gauld's beautifully illustrated new book The Gigantic Robot. Via We Made This.
Aarg! The Noisy Alphabet. Via Fffound.
No wonder I have been productive lately. I had totally forgotten about the Design Disease Pool. I. II. III. IV. V.
Great Flickr set of the Herb Lubalin archives at Cooper Union. Via So Much Pileup.
Happy Days.
Last Night in Aix, from the sketchbooks of Badaude.
"I am plugging the time, place and date of each photograph into a computer program that makes a map of the stars from any place at any time. I am printing out the star maps and drawing the stars by hand onto acetate and printing them, photographically." From artist Lisa Oppenheim, 100 photographs that changed the world.
Peter Nidzgorski's This Isn't Happiness, or maybe perhaps, it is. Case in point.
Laurent Champoussin's Cardiovascular Paper.
Fab, Characters for an Epic Tale.
The elusive and horribly disfigured Wilhelm Staehle and his perennial beauty, T.D.Rio, have finally launched an online store, The Bazaarium, to sell their Victorian-inspired goods and wares. Via bblinks.
Information on artist Zoe Beloff's stereoscopic surround sound installation, The Ideoplastic Materializations of Eva C., wherein "phantoms reenact a series of ten seances held in Algeria and Paris from 1904 to 1912 with the French medium Eva C."
Following the same process as a digital printer, thehumanprinter generates the printed product by hand.
Dezeen has a great podcast with former Penguin editor Judith Burnley, early Penguin designer David Pelham and current art director Jim Stoddart, Penguin Covers, Then and Now.
Wow, that is a lot of chewing gum.
The work of artist Kathryn Parker Almanas who crafts gory scenes using food. The "Pastry Anatomy" series is particularly good.
Charley Harper bonanza in my inbox: lost paintings found; several Harper posters available cheap at the US Government Bookstore (search for "Harper, C"). Via Kate O'Leary and Apelad, respectively.
Will Freeborn went to a series of concerts by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow. Lucky for us he brought his sketchbook. Via Glass.
Cool. Lame. Cool.
London Calling: Cassette Tape on Canvas. Via Dan Telfer.
A disturbing illustration of our current Guest Editor, Fuzzy Gerdes, and his lovely wife Erica. Part of Reverend Aitor's beloved Unflattering Portraits series.
Pentagram takes on cigarette marketing.
"Love of baseball plus love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly Ball." Via @johnmoe.
Devastating. Pictures by survivors of the Atomic bomb. Via Dark Roasted Blend.
Pizza Hut has a new branding strategy.
Of local note: spaces are still available to book your Unflattering Portraits in the window of Uncle Fun this Saturday. (Sunday sees button making in the same venue.) Via JillyB.
Wood engravings by Barry Moser.
Dan Meth strikes again with his Futuristic Movie Timeline.
Lovely Fleurette-de-lis prints by Sougwen.
"An unforgettable spectacle unfolds each summer night in the Place Stanislas, an 18th-century public square in Nancy, France." Monumental Visions.
So great, 3 frame movies.
One of the greatest wedding invites I have ever seen, Jill and Matt met at work.
Point Never, "an independent publication devoted to the diffusion of images and texts relating to surfing culture." Via 2 or 3 Things.
Nice art installation at the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna.
Early 20th century magazine covers from Japan.
A look inside the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery's top secret Banksy exhibition. "Plans for the summer show were kept from Bristol City Council chiefs until Friday - the day before it was due to open."
Nice illustrations by Drake Brodahl.
For SD, Flight of the Conchords spring 2009 poster series.
First ever Layer Tennis Qualifier contestant Mig Reyes puts the right spin on it: Your Logo Makes Me Barf is chock-full of potential clients.
The Bread Art Project.
Before taking your next carload of stuff to Goodwill, it's probably a smart idea to make sure it isn't worth $150,000 first.
So you know, a graphic representation of the largest bankruptcies in history.
For your inspiration, 30 awesome examples of light graffiti.
Ever wonder how people create those huge sand sculptures? Here's a sneak peek.
Everyone was impressed with the New Yorker cover drawn with an iPhone app, but Anil Dash wants to make sure you don't just buy the app, but also support the artist.
These are not the aggies and cats eyes marbles of my youth. Via Making Light.
El Rey Del Art paints video game landscapes in the Fauvist style.
A lovely collection of Japanese painted manhole covers.
The work of artist Ross Racine, whose hand drawn images look like satellite photos of subdivisions that never were.
We just received our copy of Kevin Dart's book, Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 in the mail and man, it's beautiful. Order you own or maybe you can win one in this new Grain Edit contest. And check the theatrical trailer that Kevin and Stephane Coedel made for A Kiss From Tokyo.
Lovely, luggage labels from 1895-1910.
Skulls by Jim.
"His inventive use of type, a minimalist color palette and label co-founder Wolff's black and white photographs created a truly unique visual language for the label and helped it establish itself as the coolest of all jazz labels." Blue Note Records cover art by Reid Miles.
A Journey Round My Skull has posted a big group of Harry Clarke illustrations from a 1923 Edgar Allen Poe anthology. The BxW ones are especially delicious. And check this animated Tell-Tale Heart from 1953.
Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise, an installation by Christopher Baker of hundreds upon hundreds of online video diaries. Via Denver Egotist.
"Below are just about all the pieces included in my hypothetical Wes Anderson Film Festival. Fab. Via NFG.
365 Days, 365 Drawings.
"One-of-a-kind multi-layered, hand-sewn and cut paper theaters illuminated with light emitting diodes (LED)." Lovely work from artist Andrea Dezso. Via Grow a Brain.
Check out some footage of Matt Shlian's paper sculptures in action. Via Paper Forest.
"I chose the potato to portray human faces because of the many striking parallels. Not only is their skin porous like ours, but their skin texture and color is very similar, and like us, they come in different sizes, shapes and forms. Potatoes grow, live, and then decay, mirroring the ephemeral existence and fragility of our own human nature."
2009 Logo design trends.
The Dude-a-Day caricatures are sweet.
Vintage Indian Pulp Book of the Month Club. Now that's something worth subscribing to.
Cute ads for Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie.
Sketches from Morocco.
Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books.
Beautiful Cityscapes by Spanish illustrator and designer Borja Bonaque.
I want this deck of cards.
Awesome "Cutaway" illustrations of various businesses from the 40s and 50s by Frank Soltesz. Via Mefi.
Album covers inspired by Blue Notes Records.
Nice die-cut dust jacket and cover for Denis Johnson's novel Nobody Move.
"High-flying ups and sideways-spiraling downs. False starts and fresh starts. The creative process can be unpredictable. Brent Barson's short film F is for Fail is the story of one person's creative roller coaster, told through type in an evocative A to Z."
So you know, who is coming to America.
I'm with Cookie, I have no idea what this is all about either but that doesn't really matter. Check 9000's Photostream for a wealth of inscrutable and beautiful images and designs. I. II. III.
Related to the last, a poster celebrating 10 years of Lego Star Wars minifigs.
Lovely collection of 1920s and 1930s travel ephemera.
"Everyday our mailboxes are flooded with unsolicited offers of porn material, pirate software, viagra, illegal financial services and advice on women seduction: if this is annoying for the average user, we really love it." Spamghetto.
Homage to the stamp by Gavin Potenza. Via Booooooom.
"Celebrating passion for music and human creativity, I handpaint portraits of musicians with white acrylic on their vinyl record albums."
Illustrations by Rubens.
Grain Edit flips through a classic, Ladislav Sutnar's Catalog Design Progress.
The Art of Penguin Science Fiction.
A blog dedicated to owl tattoos.
Nice illustrations by Brock Davis. Via Booooooom.
From Light Cometh Darkness, new work from Luke Chueh. Found in a listing of ten toy designers, by Paola Mendez for Netdiver.
"Here are some tea paintings that range from Alaskan Mask Carvers to Art Noveau girls."
Local note: FoTA Mr. Walters of NERFECT fame has a show this weekend at Fly Bird.
Space has never looked so good, the paintings of Robert McCall, by Tom Muller, who will be playing Layer Tennis live for us this Friday.
"Excelsior 1968 is a high school yearbook for the fictional Bristol County Secondary School in the fictional Staedtler, Ontario. Each student here is redrawn (and renamed) from my mother's actual 1968 high school yearbook."
Fast food packaging art. Via Drawn.
Tiled motifs on the Victoria Line in London.
"Indeed, drawing endless pictures of Kurt Cobain, taking deep puffs from a contraband bong (often my only confidant in these late hours), eating tonnes of Goldfish snacks - this was my ritual, my communion, my glimmer of hope in an awful, awful childhood." From the journals of Samuel Van Hoogstraten, painter of the unparalleled Still Life with Ziplock Bag of Weed, Tom Petty Cassette, c. 1666-1668.
"Through relief printing and a laborious rubbing technique Bryan created the print Hemlock 82. At the grand size of 52" long x 38.5" wide the actual diameter, texture and pattern of this tree section is gorgeously translated onto paper."
Lovely work by Ryuji Nakamura.
Sculptural paper tableware from Wasara in Japan; reminiscent of the pure forms of celebrated potter Taizo Kuroda (represented by Matin in Los Angeles).
Brock is making something cool every day in 2009.
"Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal." Tweenbots. Be sure to check out the video.
Sluice, Vex, Heave and Retch. Four pigeon feather installations by Kate MccGwire.
Colorful sketches by Antoinette Fleur.
Twitter street art.
Helbotica.
Richard Sarson's The Circle Project, drawn on 45gsm newsprint using a compass and ink. Beautiful, as is the rest of his online portfolio. Via Issue #1 of the print version of It's Nice That which arrived in the post yesterday. Highly recommended.
A visual representation of the USA's 10 largest trade deficits.
Helen Musselwhite's hand cut paper scenes. Via d*s.
Ryan Kapp's beautiful illustration Skokie Night. Via bblinks.
A mid-century modern furniture poster by James Provost
mcbess 2D.
So you know, swearing in The Guardian newspaper 1998-2008. Via Gawker.
For BB, a custom katamari painting. Via BB.
Star Wars + Mario.
"Executed by renowned paper engineer Bruce Foster, the issue features moveable images, three-dimensional scenes, and surprise reveals, The Pop-up folios are housed in a dark purple cloth-covered case with a magnetized closure and engraved number metal plaque." You catch a sneak preview of Visionaire's 55 Surprise issue here.
I don't need flowery words, seductive prose, or promises that are made to be broken, just tell me what you are going to do to me.
"Whoever makes a Design without the knowledge of Perspective will be liable to such absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece."
One of the few times I dragged myself away from the pool in the last week was to go see Chihuly at the Desert Gardens. SD, if you guys have time when you are out there next week, it's worth a walkthrough.
Helmut Smit's "Dead Pixel in Google Earth."
How to Burn the Oxford English Dictionary, "a documentation of the process used in making DATABASE, a laser-cut sculpture by Michael Mandiberg."
Karen Schmidt wants you to send her your head for an ongoing series of 3" x 3" portraits. Thanks Dean.
"I look at the beautiful exterior of the body. And I look deep within the body, reminding you how delicately put together your body is, by taking the body apart and showing you." Paintings by Billy Reynolds.
Dear Gretchen. So great. Via Q.
"For those who are not yet convinced that sphere or globe logos are not particulary original and differentiating, here's sixty more."
Atari-era video game packaging recreated in fabric and vinyl.
Nick McClendon's ASCII Mandelbrot set.
Get excited and make things.
Posted without comment: Russian Artist to Melt Corpses Down to Art.
Alex Pardee's zombie Steve Urkel.
Drawing Tops by Thomas Forsyth. Via d*s.
The work of artist Christelle Bonnet puts to use a whole lot of paper.
Nice prints by Sanna Annukka.
From artist Toby Ng, The World of 100.
Meet British illustrator Sophie Henson by way of her portfolio. Via It's Nice That.
"In total, Andrew Novick estimates he has over a hundred collections: Barbie dolls of every variety, Chihuahua figurines, clown paintings, anything related to teeth or braces. The truth is he has far more things than will or can ever be organized into a 'collection.'" A new exhibit at The Lab at Belmar, The Astounding Problem of Andrew Novick. You can view some of Andrew's collections online here.
Illustrations by Devin McGrath.
Get on over and sign up to win Grain Edit's Design Stimulus Package Giveaway. Fab.
From Sunday's T Mag The Meatball and The Worm. Nasa logos. I'm most decidedly a wormist.
How to hide out in an Ikea without being spotted: Urban Camouflage.
"This blog is devoted to graphics showing how to do something, how something works, or a formula for something." How To Graphics; The art of instructional design. Via Joy Engine.
A visual depiction of the Evolution of Art and Design from 1845 to 1980.
Alastair Heseltine's wood sculptures.
From artist Simon Evans, Everything I have.
For lack of a better description, Christian Faur uses crayons as pixels. Beautiful.
Ariane Spanier's design portfolio. Innovative work, check the Europan 9 Norway book project.
The Design Process diagram.
Just $10 gets you a 5x7" drawing on white paper or brown grocery bag paper. Via Design Crush.
Computerlove talks with Todd St. John. Great work, much of it analog and/or sculptural. Here's his portfolio. Via Glass.
The Design Museum has announced the winners of the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2009.
Great graphic showing The most used subway systems in the US and around the world.
Anna Magnowska is an artist and a waitress.
"I just want everyone to know that although she is a very outspoken critic of my artwork, my daughter is really a delightful and well behaved girl!" The Tiny Art Director
Graphicology takes a look, from a design perspective, at the viability plans proposed to Congress by Chrysler and GM
Matthew Curry's abstract art.
"This website is dedicated to presenting, in as clear a fashion as possible, what the Bible says, what fundamentalists believe, but also how historians and scholars view the scriptures." Biblediagrams. Via Information Aesthetics.
The illustration portfolio of Zara Picken and her blog too.
"Do not alter the logo, even in humor." Inside the Graphic Design Archives at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A spectacular show & tell from Armin at Speak Up. Not sure how we missed this the first time but thanks to The DDC for the pointer.
Will Freeborn of Ghostschool has posted his sketchbook pages from December to February.
Sete Dias (Seven Days), illustration through collage and composition by Cristisan Couceiro. Click on everything. Sublime. Via Acejet170.
Too cute, robot wallpaper.
M.S. Corley redesigns the Harry Potter books to look like Penguin Classics.
Short video and profile of Jen Stark and her intricate and beautiful cut paper art. Via The Post Family.
An interview with Brock Davis, the talented artist and designer.
"EXPECTATION is a large ephemeral sand painting portraying the likeness of Barack Obama, located in the Catalan city of Barcelona. It was created before the 2008 US presidential election using a large-scale vector graphic, a GPS topography system and approximately 650 tons of sand." Wow. Via Grow a Brain.
Illustrations by Andrew Holder. Via d*s.
Mark Langan's corrugated art. Via TH.
Nice roundup of designs by Saul Bass.
Walk through this amazing set of images by Moscow illustrator and photo-manipulator Dmitry Maximov. Note to self: This guy would be great in a Layer Tennis match.
Cute prints by 64 Colors.
Armin's bookmarks, The Netherlands.
Denise Fort draws on walls.
Stamp collecting in the age of email by Leonardo Bonanni. Via Design Observer.
Multi-talented artist Steven Harrington has a sweet new site up. Layer Tennis fans might remember Steven's wild battle with Chuck Anderson from last season.
Winners announced for the New Yorker's Eustace Tilly illustration competition. Congratulations!
The evolution of the Super Bowl logo.
Check the work of Me and Mister Jones, Fanny Khoo and Tom Merckx, based in Singapore. Lots more here, including the fab "How To Behave" calendar. Via DesignNotes.
One of these Gatorade bottles will be here on Monday morning, will it be SD or BB's version?
William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand have launched the Winterhouse Institute for design and social impact.
Paul-Rand.com.
Acejet170 has recently made some additions our favorite Penguin and Pelican Collection, including this beauty and this one too.
"Nornberg's super stereophonic masterpiece features 180 nearly ancient stereos from the 1950's to the 1970's piled high in arresting fashion, proving that while old technologies may fade, art always finds a way to rescue that which is obsolete." Moses Nornberg's Soundboard installation. Fab. Via Josh.
Amazing works of art using push pins
Nice paintings by Michelle Ramin. Via d*s.
"Painting on money also gives me some sense of power to determine - rather than be controlled by - money's function within society." Artist Hanna von Goeler's series "My Money, My Currency." Click "Currency" under "Work."
If you need a leather mask, Tom Banwell's your man.
Nominate worthy design and designers for the Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Triennial.
FotA Brandy Agerbeck's illustrated conceptual map of Obama's inauguration speech.
Our Kiev correspondent has a nice Barry O. desktop background.
The Bush Years: As Told By MAD Magazine Covers. The parody of Shepard Fairey's Esquire cover is terrific.
I Love You More Than Blank.
Artist and Let's Paint TV host John Kilduff takes my favorite show Let's Paint, Exercise & Blend Drinks TV to the streets of downtown LA.
"The ensemble fulfills almost too completely Mr. Murakami's stated desire to make art "that makes your mind go blank, that leaves you gaping." Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum.
Great exhibition photos of a sweet new show currently up in Chicago: Dimension + Typography: A Survey of Letterforms in Space and Time.
This "Entropa" sculpture is the fun-est European-art-outrage since the London 2012 logo was unveiled. It couldn't be better if the KLF was behind it. Here are some good photos, and the official statement. (The design of the eu2009.cz site and collateral, are fantastic, btw.)
British designers interpret Tokyo in posters
The collaboration between Spain's Prado Museum and Google Earth, allowing you to zoom in very, very close throughout the museum's collections.
For BB, a flow chart of Heavy Metal band names.
UK artist Olly Moss designs some fab movie posters He's looking for a job, if you're smart, you'd hire him yesterday. Check his portfolio here
Paul Sahre has a whole section of his website dedicated to his Regrets, which he will discuss without regrets in NY on February 6.
Urban Sketchers, a big site full of beautiful and surprising work. Bookmarked. I. II. III.
A Short History of Marketing.
Really great work from illustrator Jose Cruz.
Marco Hemmerling's Cityscope.
Finally we can close the book on 2008 now that Nick Felton has published his personal annual report about it. Beautiful as always.
"I braved designer scorn to champion the kings of Californian airbrush." Norman Hathaway on his gorgeous book, Overspray. Via Subtraction.
Country Club Chicago pays tribute to Solve, the local street artist who was stabbed to death in Logan Square last June. with a gallery show opening Friday.
826 LA launches the live variety show Tiny Vaudeville, with posters by the talented Amy Martin.
The original press kit from the Apollo 8 mission. Via Grow a Brain.
100 beautiful iPhone wallpapers. Sorry BB, don't think these will work on your new Blackberry Storm.
"Newsweek would like to know how you feel about Bush's job prospects upon leaving the White House. And, while we're at it, what should his shadowy second-in-command, Dick Cheney, do next?" Download the template, design their new career clothes and Give These Men a Job. Deadline is January 20th so get your entries in soon.
From artist Amy Bennett, amazing oil paintings that look like photos of miniature models.
Shoot the baddies.
Artist Alex Pardee's show "Letters From Digested Children" opens tomorrow in San Francisco.
Really great collection of vintage German illustrations.
The mechanical art of destroying the rainforest.
Sayaka Yamamoto's imaginary insects found in a kitchen. Don't worry MS, there aren't any spiders.
FotA and Caveman Robot co-creator Jason Bell has a painting show at Thomas Robertello opening Friday.
Great packaging for a cafe and catering company with a fabulous name, Harried and Hungry. Yes, I am.
Photos from the 2007-8 Harbin Snow Sculpture Art Fair. The 2009 festival starts tomorrow.
Hyper real paintings from Roberto Bernardi.
The fantastic British Design Classics stamp set will be available for purchase January 13th, 2009. Via NotCot.
Illustrator Scotty Reifsnyder took the lyrics from the Johnny Cash song The Man Who Couldn't Cry and turned it into a gorgeous children's book. Via Design Milk.
Nice to see how dogs, band names and gig posters can work hand in hand as Dog Art Today proves. Via FitaCola.
Sit on Grain Edit's lap while you flip through Italia Modern Design.
From designer Andy Mangold, a gorgeous redesign of the Monopoly board game.
Very fitting for today, Beau Bergeron's snow boxes.
Aspen Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3, December 1966. Each issue of Aspen had a different editor and designer. No. 3's designer was Andy Warhol. Via PCL.
"1983 was the year of the video game crash and that year's Sears Wishbook was chock full of the detritus of a bloated dying industry. You got the handhelds, Vectrex, Gemini, Colecovision, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 in this issue." The Video Game Systems of the 1983 Sears Wishbook.
Jason de Caires Taylor's underwater sculpture park. Thanks Stephen.
Calligraffiti.
Readerville's most coveted covers.
Brothers in Craft, a visual survey of potential careers for the ambitious 14th century German.
"A modern tale about caring, mending and letting-go, drawn with letters and punctuation marks." Victor & Susie. Via Cool Hunting.
30 Ways to Die of Electrocution, the flickr set from bre pettis.
Tie me to your favorite thing. Via Anamorphosis.
A neat calendar of matches. Via Design Crush.
Adolf Wölfli, 1864-1930. "Through a complex web of texts, drawings, collages and musical compositions, Wölfli constructed a new history of his childhood and a glorious future with its own personal mythology." Via It's Nice That.
Nice collection of icon sets. I see one in particular that BB and I can use.
This time lapse video of Antarctica is quite smooth. Via Blake Whitman.
On Asphalt. "Our goal is to inspire change in the way we think about asphalt spaces." Also: an interesting write up in the Boston Globe about their most recent "Steamroller Printing" project.
Vintage Space Age illustrations. Via Look at This.
Related to an earlier post, a QTVR of The Vermeers at The Rijksmuseum.
OK, let's forget all these precious "Top 10 Book Covers" lists. Caustic Cover Critic's list rounds up the ones that prove Sturgeon's Law, which states that "ninety percent of everything is crap."
She's in Rome currently and Jonathan Janson spent some time with her. "Secrets of a 17th Century Damsel," Parts One and Two. This not the first time they've met.
Christoph Niemann's coffee illustrations.
The BBC profiles some street artists.
Amazing paper cutouts by Hina Aoyama.
From designer Hampus Jageland, really great packaging designs.
Kevin Dart creates fabulous lobby cards for non-existent action films starring his own sexy hero, the beautiful and resourceful Yuki 7. For example, To Catch a Temptress. Via Kane.
The portfolio of designer, Shaz Madani, especially "Man or Mouse."
"Air Lines is an art project showing worldwide airliner routes. Every single scheduled flight on any given day is represented by a fine line from it's point of origin to it's port of destination." Gorgeous, from artist Mario Freese, Air Lines. Via Elledecor.
Nice illustrations by Denise Fort.
Hans Holbein the Younger. Unknown Gentleman with Far Side Comics and Bong, 1534. "Holbein's deftness at capturing the nuanced characters of his subjects is on full display here."
The fine-art paintings of Petar Meseldzija combine the fantastic with classical forms and humor. For example, "The Return of Snowwhite to the Land of Abundance."
Elbow-Toe's fab 17 pages of doodles with a red felt-tip pen. Looks like we better send that dude some Field Notes.
The NYPL collection of dust jackets from American and European Books, 1926-47. More than 2,000 original specimens. I. II. III.
Need to stop finding things like this coloring book wallpaper or we'll never finish decorating the house. Same goes for you, Boskke Sky Planter. Both via bblinks.
The screenprinting work of General Pattern.
Booooooom on the paintings of Francoise Nielly. Luscious.
Doll artist Noel Cruz. Neato!
"I've painted retro detectives, femme fatales, fantasy heroes, Sci-Fi rockets & Jedis, western bandits and Hammer-style vampires." Glen Orbik and Laurel Blechman.
"The messages are printed in braille on used 1/2-inch Ampex audio tape. The end of each message
is wound and adhered to the respective leather corks." Text Message Bottles. Via Notcot.
Covers from The Chicagoan, a magazine from the 20s and 30s which is the subject of a new book by Neil Harris. Beautiful. Via Luckypix.
The First 100 Days is a graphical layout of what every President from FDR on has done in their first 100 days in office.
Cut paper, photography and no bunnies. The portfolio of Julien Vallee.
Cut paper, photography and some bunnies. The portfolio of Pierre Vanni.
A to Z of New Zealand Stamps, all of which are beautifully illustrated but, unless you live there and are already familiar with the vernacular, are utterly baffling. Via 1+1=3.
Patrick Moberg's illustration "November 4, 2008."
Scans from the new book The Art of Romance: Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs, from the illustrated, pre-Fabio era of romance novels.
Annette Streyl's Knitted German Architecture. More info over at Yatzer.
Covers for Penguin's series of ten horror books by masters of the genre. Via JSM.
Melted Street Signs. Via The Dutchess.
For your inspiration, 45 Years of creativity from the D & D Annual. Via NDG.
Illustrator Yann Lebec re-imagines film posters of great classics. My fave is the one for "M".
Supersteady, the portfolio of Paolo Lim.
The WSJ on the MLB logo.
"Bejing New Lightning Babe." An illustrated review of New Graphic Design in China.
"Confessions of a hot-blooded sheik, or How the Insistent Metal from Alcoa turns a cold shoulder to desert heat" A fantastic collection of retro car ads.
The new Design Criticism MFA program at the School of Visual Arts is hosting an Open House this Saturday with Russell Flinchum, Steven Heller, Karrie Jacobs, Leital Molad, and Alice Twemlow.
Just picked up Rod Hunting's latest print Universal Grinder. Cha-Ching.
Lovely wayfinding system for the West London Academy by Graphic Thought Facility. Also check their marketing campaign for the 2007 Frieze Art Fair. Wow. Via Kitsune Noir.
Illustrator Geoff Grandfield's covers from the Penguin and Folio Society Graham Greene series.
A look at the kinetic sculptures from artist Theo Jensen.
Salvador, Zorro, Burt, Django or Clark. One for every day of the work week, pencil mustaches.
A wooden Wall-E, stunning.
Mattias Inks is full of great illustrations. Scroll through them or let him flip through his latest sketchbook for you.
Another local note: "Nothing To Do With A Red Pick-Up Truck" Studio/Video show featuring FotA Britton Walters and live music from Ten Speed Music and Tiger Trio, at the Underscene Friday and Saturday night.
Local note: Chris Roberson reception at Country Club tomorrow and Friday. (Interview here.)
Micro Schematic, dissecting a Lego character. Via Giz.
Obama street art.
Dig the interactive timeline display of covers at Clip/Stamp/Fold. Click "Magazines."
Gorgeous. Designer Marion Bataille's book ABC3D. You can buy it here. Via Apples and Owls.
Sci-Fi-O-Rama, a repository for fantastic art and graphics. Found among other things.
"The on-going usage of the notes will create a constantly changing display of color and shapes that could make your workplace a tad more enjoyable and functional than a plain wall." Make your workplace a bit more interesting with Pixelnotes.
Chicago Graphics '65, a book that inspires the Delicious Design League and us too. Thanks Whet.
For your inspiration, 22 creative alphabets.
Where fish sticks swim free and chicken nuggets self-dip. Banksy's Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill. Video footage here.
Jason makes fabulous balloon sculptures.
TBDR on the new Harper Perennial Olive Editions, designed and illustrated by Milan Bozic.
The paintings of Chicago artist Ann Toebbe. Check "Burning Down the Second House." Via
There's only one cure for what ails us at this time. Donuts! Donuts! Donuts! Courtesy of master illustrator/baker Bob Staake. More here.
The American presidential wrestling heavyweight championship poster.
Spiral Signal Visual Analysis distributes data points on an Archimedean spiral. Trippy. Via Infosthetics.
For BB, an illustrated discography of The Smiths and Morrissey.
Zina Saunder's editorial illustrations. Via P.Z.
"Commercial work is often all about compromise, but that's the nature of the beast isn't it? At the end of the day you've got to like what you do…" Illustrated interview with Adrian Johnson at Grain Edit.
For JC and MS, Flat Pets. Via d*s.
Vanitas with Concert Tickets and Bong, Barthel Bruyn, 16th Century. Via TMN.
50 books, 50 covers, part of AIGA'S "365," year in design feature. Via tBDR.
Scene 360 Illusion, a curated look at a variety of visual projects from Adriana de Barros.
Artist Daniel Arsham's beautifully unsettling work (particularly from this series).
Russian sausage art.
Grain Edit's first anniversary post features a ton of links to great collections, interviews and articles. If you haven't bookmarked Dave's site about classic design work from the 50s to the 70s this would be a good time to do so.
Fab illustrations from artist Aled Lewis.
Goon City. Via Rory's.
The Kinetic Balloon Sculpture creatures out in front of the newly opened Museum of Arts and Design this weekend. And some video, too.
Dead Star.
Really great collection of Cinderella stamps.
100 artists create their own versions of the London Underground logo. Via Design Observer.
A perfect subject and some great results for Debbie Smyth's "pins and threads" drawings. Via Monoscope.
The evolution of some well-known logos. Some sequences you've probably seen, some not. Good stuff.
The Pantone spring 2009 fashion color report.
Grain Edit on a beautiful Spanish animal matchbox set designed by Jose Maria Cruz Novillo + Olmos.
"You're welcome to come over when you're done, if you haven't any plans. 1:29 am." Embroidered text messages of love.
Very cool war scenes in miniature.
Mandatory new bookmark. So Much Pileup.
The Memory of the Netherlands, a repository of children's book art. Via Fed By Birds.
The work of Maurizio Pellegrin. This and this are both just stunning. Via 2 or 3 Things.
The identity of the "Milk Bottle Banksy" has been uncovered and it's artist Charlotte Hughes-Martin. "I have been engraving milk bottles with various different images and leaving them on random doorsteps." Via Arbroath.
What a blast, a guy used ten bucks worth of Sharpie markers to decorate his basement walls. Get a 360 view here. Via Neatorama.
Finalists for the best magazine covers of 2008 from the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Hand-cut paper by Kako Ueda. Via Paper Forest.
Logos by Paul Rand for your inspiration, via ISO50.
Ads for Lisbon Airport's new look.
The Face Magazine cover collection, 1980-2004.
It's almost like you were there, a review of the Venice Biennale.
Cal Lane's filigree metalwork creates altars out of oil cans, and tapestries out of car parts.
Some really interesting interpretations of Batman.
Famous pieces of art w/ extra duck.
Jayme McGowan's pop-up illustrations.
So you know, some examples of successful logo redesigns.
Various Ronald Searle book covers. Via Drawn.
Since I collect and make art from found grocery lists myself, I was interested to check out this feature on Hillary Carlip's work and the completely different way in which she approaches the people and stories behind the lists.
Tokyo City Flags.
Netflix origami.
In a political campaign far, far away...
Apologies for the generalization, but this short bit about a protester in front of the new Jeff Koons exhibit in Paris couldn't possibly be any more French: "He then pulled out balloons with names that rhyme with Koons written on them and popped them one by one."
How well can you sort color?
TateShots is a selection of short videos each month, also available as a podcast on iTunes, with a focus on modern and contemporary art at the Tate museums and galleries.
"Really? Just pick one (or two). This isn't a f*cking contemporary living room." A critique of the Oklahoma City Thunder logo.
"Panos 2013 Fake Streetsigns, a collaborative project that takes the work of artists from around the world, in the form of fake road signs, and turns the streets of Lyon, France into an enormous gallery without walls." Delightful. Via Grow a Brain.
Working 14 hours a day for 28 days to create a stunning cork mosaic.
Jean Jullien's design and costume project for the band Niwoiunwouin. So cool.
And going along with SE's post below, you can further expand your faux-Hirst collection by combining this plastic great white shark ($2) and this goldfish bowl ($9).
Johanna Lundberg's portfolio site is under construction, but what's there already is sweet.
Great illustration work from artist Sean Tubridy.
Prints by Jessica C. White of Heroes and Criminals Press.
Mainly because it sounds lovely, the Voronoi algorithm and biomimetic butterflies.
The subtle and powerful ideas of the Reverse Graffiti Project, via the DDC.
Related to the last, a chart that shows the frequency of words used at both conventions, The Words They Used. Via Design Observer.
2016 Logos for the remaining seven cities.
Fab, the Usborne Book of the Future from 1979. Via DRB.
PingMag talks to designer Tom Hingston about visualizing music.
My car is so boring in comparison.
So adorable, Creatures from a Square.
Noted without comment, an exploding banana mask.
Alex Steinweiss album covers.
Awesome paper sculptures by Zoe Bradley. Via d*s.
Friday. Liverpool. Giant spider.
See the word, pick the color.
Tommy Penton's brilliant illustrated walk in book form, Tate to Tate. More on the CR Blog. Via Ace Jet 170.
The Guardian's picks for The 50 Greatest Arts Videos on YouTube. Via One Good Move.
Huge collection of very cool skateboard graphics.
A friend in the Bay Area has been talking about the exhibition of Otl Aicher's Olympic Graphic Design for the 1972 Munich Olympics, now at San José State University. Looks just great.
Bansky commemorates Katrina. Via Gawker.
Spend a little time over at illustrator Dave Perillo's Montygog's Art-O-Rama. Really great stuff.
Brazilian designers create the illusion of a skate bowl in the middle of a metro station to promote a street festival.
The winner of the This American Life tee shirt design contest is announced. I am so getting the snowman tee.
Nice collection of mid century ephemera from ships and airlines.
Illustrations by Kareena Zerefos. Via d*s.
Fabulous collection of vintage paperback covers.
The Egg Press 2009 calendar.
Great collection of iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers.
The history of graphic design. Via AisleOne.
Denver has been polished to a fine sheen for the DNC this week, and is showing off its art museums among other cultural offerings.
Weirdomatic's collection of "Old Creepy Ads."
Wow, that's a lot of silverware.
1923 Grimm's Fairy Tales illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Luscious.
Michael's grandfather collected door hangers. Lovely. Via Grow a Brain.
You know when you're in a bookstore and you see a book cover and it just calls to you? More than likely, you can thank Jonathan Gray.
Artist Helena Bangert's amazing sand and ice scupltures.
We Made This posts up their own design guide to Newcastle.
Super cute greeting cards from She's so creative.
Custom 'Beware of Dog' Signs from Nepal. Thanks Henry.
Pentagram's work for San Francisco's bi-annual Black and White Ball.
Photos of just about every Olympic medal ever made.
Lovely installation from artist Nele Azevedo, Melting Men. Via Neatorama.
If you are feeling down you might try counting chimneys.
More plastic bag in the shape of an animal over a subway grate installations by Joshua Allen Harris.
Winners of the Rebrand 2008 contest, the Metro Los Angeles. Check out the website here. Hope you're paying attention Chicago.
"Ideas about reincarnation and the richness of life after death." Farmer Bob's Farm, the artwork of Robert Hardgrave.
David Byrne's Bike Racks in NYC.
Podcasts of Steven Heller's interviews with speakers from Icon5, the illustration conference.
Interesting Grain Edit interview with Matte Stephens.
Simple and charming cardboard shadow box.
Hand-Drawn Movie Posters, all the rage this year.
Great roundup of classic and modern pop artists.
"For seven children from Westover Lake Orphanage, the worst day of their lives has begun. And when they need each other more than ever, their friendships start to unravel. Can they band together before darkness gains the upper hand?" A graphic novel released in three parts, Light Children.
Great place to get lost for a couple of hours, Book Design Stories.
Great variety here: logos of the various regions of Spain.
Artist Kim Rugg takes the front pages of newspapers, cuts them apart and puts them back together by color gradation in her series Don't Mention the War.
So you know, some examples of really great album cover art.
Billy Chasen's clock.
So you know, 2008 trends in logo design.
Fabulous, movie box office data shown graphically.
Some great examples of street art in Melbourne.
So you know, logos of countries around the world.
Lena Gieseke's 3D exploration of Picasso's Guernica. Via Fimoculous.
Procrastination.
A peek at the Beijing Olympic Gardens.
Marian Bantjes' Love Stories, a monograph for Creative Review is totally brilliant and beautiful. Via Debbie Millman who was kind enough to share a bittersweet love story of her own at our Field Tested Books reading in NYC last night.
Logos and their "twins", including the infamous SimpleBits ripoff.
Nice new site for The Heads of State.
San Francisco in 100,000 toothpicks.
For SE, metro logos from around the world.
A preview of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.
It always amazes me the things people can create with sand.
Entries in the Architectural Jelly Design Competition.
"Iconic North American brands such as these give us both comfort and identity, yet we feel ambivalent or even negative toward their hegemony over our cultural and economic landscape." The American comfort quilt.
Artist Jeremy Everett uses water and detergent to turn porn magazines into actual pieces of art. SFW.
Illustrations by Fontaine Anderson.
Handcuff prints.
Proof that googly eyes always makes foliage better.
When the economy gets sad, so do the Wall Street Journal's stipple portraits. And for more: a brief history of the 'hedcuts.'
Grain Edit on Giovanni Pintori's exhibition catalog of design for Olivetti. Luscious.
Neat fish prints by Annie Sessler done using the gyotaku technique, an old Japanese printing method for recording fish sizes. Via d*s.
Tell a Lie, a series of three photographs mimicking Photoshop effects. Via We Made This.
Images from Owen Jones' 1853 book, The Grammar of Ornament, from the University of Wisconsin.
See Frida. Buy Frida. Be Frida! C-Monster reports on SFMOMA's Frida Kahlo gift shop for the currently running Kahlo retrospective.
Nice graphic shows How Obama reinvented campaign finance.
So you know. How to create a 17 foot tall cardboard Gandhi.
Tommy Kane, illustrator.
How much of our own art and design is based upon the work of others? We all do it in some form or another, but approaches can range from ethical and considerate to exploitative. Here is a recent critical article by Liam O'Donoghue about one popular designer's practice. A fascinating related item is the controversy regarding image recycling of the "Molotov Man" image - see pdf.
Sketches done during a lunch hour.
IKEA coffins.
Pictogramas Olimpicos de Beijing.
Josef Müller-Brockmann à Chaumont.
3-D Chinese zodiac animals.
In case you missed it at Grain Edit, the full set of stamps in Iain Follet's collection.
Every so often I come across a logo and WISH that I could glimpse the process behind it. Um, here's one.
The Mid-Century Illustrated. A very deep pool. I. II. III.
Related to the last. Everything Vermeer, all in one place, including the complete catalogue.
Blik's Super Mario Bros. Wall Graphics.
Stamps by land or by sea. Via d*s.
"We own a newfoundland named Gigi. We like to think of her as an explorer of the Alaskan tundra. We sent a photoshopped version of her to a portrait artist in Omaha to be painted by hand. Just got an image back the other night." Kevin's dog goes exploring.
I like the new mark for MillerCoors, but I do wish they hadn't felt they needed to spell things out with the video intro.
Cardboard and string objects by Ferry Staverman. Via Design Milk.
Great set of nine ads for East Midlands Trains.
A PDF of guidelines for the recent BBC website redesign. Via AisleOne.
Roman Tolici's series of paintings The Gospel According to Santa Claus is sublime. The essay by Dan Popescu that accompanies the images is excellent.
Penguin Student Design Awards, winners and shortlist announced. Nice work. Via theBDR.
A giant pig in NYC.
Friendship bracelet paintings by Ray Fenwick. Via BB.
The paintings of Kim Cogan and his weblog.
Lovely, the Artist's Playground at Sudeley Castle.
Peacay on Puerto Rican graphic artist Lorenzo Homar.
Remember when you ate 47 shrimp at the late night buffet and you got sick? Or the salsa dancing lessons your folks made you take with Ramon and Kiki? Who could forget the time Aunt Bertha sang the Love Boat theme song to the entire Pirates Cove lounge after one too many Pina Coladas. Bring that cruise ship feeling with you wherever you go, the portable shuffleboard set.
Recently the world's first Graphic Design Museum opened in Breda, the Netherlands.
Nice prints by Dan McCarthy.
The illustration work of Tim Tomkinson. How can you resist an artist who titles his sketchbooks "Normal, Semi-Normal, Strange and Very Strange?" Thanks Ant.
Nice collection of 170 transport logos and symbols.
A good case for hording: you might accidentally throw out a Damien Hirst painting.
Garbage art.
"Traditional snow globes house relaxing winter scenes of Evergreen trees, snow-capped houses and horse drawn carriages. However, these snow globes tell a different story."
"The final results are paper representations of digital representations of real objects, including all the flaws that copying entails." Artists Linda Kostowski and Sascha Pohflepp take objects from Second Life and re-create them in real life as paper models, Export to the World.
Reverse Graffiti, creating art by removing grime. Via Glass.
Awesome series of illustrations of UEFA European tournament champions since 1960, by the illustrators of the book Football Heroes.
The anatomy of a gummi bear. Via Geekologie.
Illustrations by Hannah Stouffer.
Eye-popping Tadanori Yoko designed brochure for The 1968 Mazda Cosmo "Super Car."
Fantastic, artist David Mach creates sculptures out of coat hangers.
Layer Tennis victor, artist and illustrator Steven Harrington's show "Our Mountain," is traveling through Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Milan. Check the 3D flyers and Steven's tour blog too.
European Design Award Winners 2008.
Tons to explore at Ghostpatrol. The paintings on pencils and sketchbooks are amazing. Also, check this panorama from a recent show.
Patching brick walls with Lego pieces. Via Fun Forever.
Matt Cipov's Bird Survey print set. (Love seeing our Field Notes as a 'related item' to something so cool.)
"Good design on paper" Yes, it is.
Artist Russell Stutler read all 60 Sherlock homes stories and then decided to create a floorplan of 221B Baker Street.
Leif Peng chatted with classic magazine illustrator Dick Stone and collected some samples of his work.
Inner City Snail, a slow-moving street art project.
Truth's cubist block installations. Via Torc.
Annual reports are generally boring and mundane. Not these reports. For your inspiration, 25 fantastic annual reports.
Nice illustrations by Jason Limon. Via Netdiver.
The portfolio of designer Jonas Valtysson from Reykjavik. Via The Strange Attractor.
Museums confront the issue of preserving art that was not meant to last.
PingMag interview with frequently psychedelic designer Steven Wilson. Here's the artist's portfolio site.
Nice illustrations by Felipe Cunha. Via Dirty Mouse.
"After performing Google Image searches for headphones, telephones, radios, and similar objects, the images are traced directly off the computer monitor, onto office paper, using a mechanical pencil." Artist Marisa Olson's Monitor Tracings.
Diversified Industry keeps the economy on an even keel in Greater Philadelphia. An epic illustration by Frank Reilly for a 1964 PEC ad.
How me breaking up with you is like Jon Lester pitching a no-hitter against the Royals, by Michael Nelson Price.
In a whole new light.
Great set of pulp paperback covers, movie cards and other paintings by Robert McGinnis. Via
PCL. If we ever were to really publish something like this, he would be the guy.
The illustrations of Jean Spezial.
Art n' sketching n' psychadelia n' more.
Henry Yee's striking and abstract cover for Violence by Slavoj Zizek Via theBDR. Yee's site is full of great designs and sketches from his previous projects.
It takes Sue to tango, the blog of Dutch illustrator Sue Doeksen.
A_B_ is a limited edition of 20 dual-sided posters screen printed by K2 Screen London. The A_ side is printed verso in metallic graphite ink while the B_ side is printed recto in pearlescent white ink on GFSmith 180 gsm Transclear paper. Wow. Via AisleOne.
Making things out of pencils and staples. Via Yewknee.
Artist Valerie Green took photos of 583 shoppers and then created a sculptural installation where she arranged them by location and bag type, Shoppers. Fantastic.
Thais Beltrame's Childhood Cruelty illustration set.
So you know, 13 inspirational illustrators.
Found while looking for something else entirely. Various Viking and Middle Ages scenes illustrated.
Information Design Patterns. Your one stop source for how to make nifty infographics.
Relink. "Lustig's works for New Directions are his most well known, I have to say I'm partial to his earlier work for the Ward Ritchie Press in the late 1930's and early 1940's. The above pages are from Ghost in the Underblows, an epic poem by Alfred Young Fisher." Divine as in "providence of God."
Selected paintings by Ben Grasso including "Ascending House."
A zillion bank logos.
Fun but kinda easy, aside from the anglocentric "R": The Brand Alphabet,
via p+p.
Lisa in the Sky with Type. Lisa Rienermann forms letters out of buildings and sky. The rest of her portfolio is worth a good look too.
The illustrations of Jules Le Barazer. Via It's Nice That.
World history in graffiti.
A Beautiful Revolution.
Juana Gaita, a Latvian magazine turns 50 and shares 50 years of their covers through the decades. Astounding.
Christopher Silas Neal has some excellent illustration and poster work but also shares insight into how he gets it done. Not your typical show posters either.
Tea at the Ritz Cafe.
ROJO TV, videos by artist-filmmakers. Via CH.
Michael Gillette painted 14 covers for the fabulous new Penguin Books' James Bond series of hardcovers. Sold. Via Daring Fireball.
"So this is how it works: Zak draws something. Shawn draws something that will fight it. Zak draws his thing fighting back. Shawn draws his thing fighting back and maybe tripping over a statue. Then maybe Zak's thing kills Shawn's with the statue's head. Then Shawn draws a new thing. Zak's surviving thing attacks it. And so on." On the road of knives... Via twenty2woblog.
Classic illustration by subject. Woah. Via the DDC.
Collected covers from Faber and Faber's 20th Century Classics series. Via I Like.
One art project a day for a year. Crowded Teeth.
Newwork Magazine, Issue No.1.
Meetings, meetings, and drawings from magazines. Via The Flock.
Illustrations by Jules Guerin for The Chateaux of Touraine, 1906. Fab.
Designer Massimo Vignelli has updated his famous 1972 NYC subway map and there are a limited number of signed prints for sale.
Robert Bradford's sculptures made out of toys.
"All I want to be is someone who makes new things and thinks about them."
Design Sponge interview with our friend and occasional co-conspirator Kate Bingaman-Burt.
The Retro Kid photo pool administered by Ward Jenkins always has something cool and inspirational going on.
Zoo York Skateboards. "The six boards represent the socio-cultural realms of Literature, Architecture, The Arts, Transit, Food and Tourism."
Fantastic work from illustrator Pascal Blanchet.
Some lovely sculpture/furniture pieces by Anna ter Haar. Via Design Milk.
Psyho Studio's Pieces of Paradise, little slices of the world to enjoy. Via Dark Roasted.
Karen Caldicott's Clay Celebrities.
Derrick Hodgson's wooden creatures. Here's a little slideshow of how they're made.
Li Wei art.
Great collection of vintage and retro design.
Aaron and Mandy Dietz's Haircut Art. Via bblinks.
The Future of Books. More photos on Kyle Bean's portfolio site (at the very bottom of the page). Via bblinks.
Thirty years of Granta covers. Via Eightface.
Expect to see this site show up in plenty of "via" attributions going forward. Julia Rothman's most excellent Book By Its Cover, a collection of hand-made and other nice books.
"I installed a hotline straight to God in my living room, in case of, you know emergencies. But so far he hasn't called me even once." Tiny Ghosts. Via MeFi.
The paintings of "El Joven." An anonymous artist with a magnificent, classical style. Via Jen Bradford.
Came across the Smithsonian's collection of work by William Christenberry and admired both his photography and his sculptural work. I love the Alabama Wall construction as well as photographs that deal with weathered and rusty subject matter. He also deals with his abhorrence of the KKK by making some disturbing work about that subject.
CNN is Like the Worst "News" Source. Ever. Illustrations based on headline crawls. Via Torrez.
Berwyn, IL's famous "Spindle" is for sale on eBay.
New Graphic Design in China.
Rob Pettit's cell phone art.
Thermal camera tracking and high power laser beam animation onto the smoke from a coal burning power plant. Nuage Vert.
Byroglyphics.
Henry Sene Yee's cover design for a new paperback edition The Right Stuff and some sketches done along the way.
The portfolio of Barcelona graphic designer Alex Trochut.
Icographic magazine images from the 70s. Via AisleOne.
The glorious results of Peat Wollaeger's Luchador Collab-O-Mask project.
Soap art.
A great photo archive of psychedelic and mod advertising from the '50s,'60s, and '70s. Thanks, Skylab Bob!
Lovely. Clean and modern canvas prints using names of cities. Via Design Milk.
We could use one of these to go with Bucky. (via Kyu Hwang)
Who says coloring books are just for kids? Mario Mandala
The Swarm of Possible Meanings Surrounding the Ancient Pyramids, by Timothy Hull. Via Bezembinder's.
"'Ten Thousand Cents' is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task."
From Grammy to Stanley Cup. A trophy size comparison chart.
Neat collection of comic book sound effects. Via dfckr.
Here's a way to collect Star Wars figures without having to clear off room on that shelf, or clean them. The Kenner Star Wars figure print. Via Not Martha.
Glueless, paper toy diagrams. Via Paper Forest.
Adam Haynes' Stickfort. Terrific illustration, including this Mad Magazine style fold-in for Nike, flat and folded.
Clay Ketter's Gulf Coast Slabs, looking at destroyed houses in New Orleans from above. Via 2 or 3 Things.
Just as we Yanks finally get colorful $5 bills, The Royal Mint raises the bar for coin design.
Risa Fukui and the darkness of graphical papercut reflections.
Following that last post: an NPR interview with Trevor Paglen heard a while back, about how he got into collecting those "black ops" patches.
George Lois' Esquire Covers at MoMA. Via p+p.
Video of "Le Cyclop" (in French) by Jean Tinguely and friends. Located in the woods just outside of Paris, this massive metal construction moves and interacts with its visitors.
Who doesn't need a low resolution couch?
These are awesome. "Street art at its best", indeed.
"We can love a 200-year old farmhouse and a minimalist canvas equally. The marriage of these opposites can be unexpected and refreshing." Gallery in the Garden at the Design Sponge guest blog.
Lots of Things Like This, an exhibit filled with small drawings by famous artists, curated by Dave Eggers.
Gallery Notcot's second showing is the works of Michael Salter and "his incredibly playful vector creatures, spaces, and basically the coolest things i've ever laid eyes on made of styrofoam."
Collection of 1950s to 1970s print pieces. Nice.
Jeremy Dickinson, selected paintings in oil, including the fab "Truckpark Catapult." Via The Breadboard.
Ping takes a look at taxi lights in Tokyo.
I have to say, I'd take these robots over Transformers any day.
The Many Views of Abbey Road, a collection of copies and parodies.
"The knitted television covers have three images from late night shows embroidered on them; Oprah Winfrey, a Tell-Sell order screen and a picture from a scrambled porn channel." Via I Like.
Great collection of vintage logos from the 1970s.
Cute Decor-a-Boards by French.
Devorah Sperber's Mirror Universe.
Tommi Brem has a fine eye for science-fiction bookcovers. Via Rashomon. I. II. III.
"Variations in design of the less popular side of postcards, circa 1920s-50s. Found in an old shoe-box in the attic." A collection of blank postcard backs. Via I Like.
Oh yeah! Old Apple ads and branding. Makes me nostalgic for the Apple II we had when I was a kid.
The Penrose Annual 1958 Volume 52. Totally fab, via Ace Jet 170. I. II. III.
Cool site for MOMA's current Color Chart exhibition.
Awesome portraits by Insomnia Jones from Gapers Block, her latest: a penitent Eliot Spitzer.
The archives of Public Illumination Magazine, started in 1979, "originally non-weekly, later non-monthly, then non-biannual, now non-occasional." Via Clusterflock.
Peacay on a series of color plates from a German "Festival Book" from 1596, A Casual Baptism.
"'Cabinet' is made of 256 expanded polyestiren figures, randomly (de)formed by the action of heat." From artist Leonardo Solaas.
Dusting off a few bookmarks, I came across my link to the Depero Virtual Museum.
Chermayeff, the marks.
Opera78 by illustrator exraordinaire Fiodor Sumkin. I. II. III.
Judge this bible by its cover, designed by Crush.
Hand lettering by Nate Williams.
Nestography. Via Neatorama.
The other art of courtroom sketch artists, from Ironic Sans.
Awesome art hotels. Via Gadling.
Citroen brochures from the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, and the 1980's,
Our friends at Letterform host a show by our friends at The Post Family, opening tomorrow night. If you liked Julie's Foodie Cards and/or Rod's T-shirts and posters from our Swap Meat, be there! (Sorry for the late notice).
Junk Mail: From Debris to Design, sculptures made from and about junk mail.
"You know long it takes to do simple? About ten times longer than fast and dirty." Paul Giambarba was interviewed for CBS Sunday Morning, talking about The Branding of Polaroid, 1957-77. Perhaps it will air this week?
Richard Meier's City Hall in the center of The Hague, served as a public gallery for ten of the world's finest graphic designers and illustrators, via projection, in 2006 and again in 2007. The project was curated by Maxalot from Barcelona.
The very first Photoshop icon. Wow.
Wil brought his sketchbook to the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern.
Scott Teplin's Rated R and Alphabet Neighborhood.
New over at the TMN galleries, Antiquities.
"If the ladder's shoddy, I'm not going to try and do something that's got a lot of detail on top. I decide the color scheme based on how much paint there is..." FF interviews artist and muralist Maya Hayuk.
Great collection of drawings and still from the cartoon Symphony in Slang. You can watch the cartoon here
Name that color.
Works by Banksy.
Cyborg animals. Via FF.
Gorgeous wall decals, prints, and posters to give your house some style. Hard to choose but I think this might be my fave.
E. McKnight Kauffer's The World in 2030 from 1930.
ArtInfo's interview with Michel Gondry about his Be Kind Rewind art exhibition in NY.
For Valentine's Day: "Love is Embarrassing." An oldie but a goodie from the always awesome Ava Thursdays on Ward-o-matic.
Nice oil on wood paintings by Audrey Kawasaki.
The Design Disease Pool.
Organographie of a Life, the portfolio of São Paulo based art director Peèle Lemos. Fab. Via Monoscope.
"The States project started out with an off-the-cuff remark I made during a conversation when I said that I always thought California kind of looked like a snuffed out cigarette. After some discussion and quick sketch, I decided that I could sort of make a game for myself out of doing the same exercise with the other 49 states."
Dancing on sugar.
Some people use Post-it notes to well, write notes. Artist Rebecca Murtaugh uses them to mark a significant space. Very cool.
Damien Hirst will likely open a retail store in Marylebone, featuring items such as a painted skull and rolls of "Pharmacy" wallpaper.
Still speaking of Holograms: Has anybody been to the Museum of Holography, which, according to little brown signs on surrounding streets, is right around the corner from Coudal HQ? (Note to Jason Fried: Do not click on that link or you'll be all-day angry at that web site.)
Cardboard Safari offers cardboard animal figures in a range of sizes.
Portuguese wall and floor tiles.
How well can you identify work by Donald Judd?
"Twenty six hand carved, intricate, ornate and delicate letters, each depicting a bug, flower or illustration that starts with the corresponding letter." Via Speak Up.
Cultural icons from history. How many do you recognize?
Take a peek at the Paul Rand modern graphic design fan club photo pool. And for your viewing pleasure, what might be the only film with a Paul Rand reference in it, Copy Goes Here.
Paris breakfast watercolors by Carol Gillott.
People have gathered and watch in amazement as a giant yellow rubber duck approaches.
Cloud, by Katarina Andersson.
Wilhelm Deffke: Modern Mark Maker.
Nice illustrations by Alex Dukal.
Veerle chats with illustrator Jacob Souva.
"His installations are spectacular and attention grabbing, but as for what it all means... well, to put it bluntly, I don't think it extends too far beyond, 'Wow. That's a lot of naked people.'" Ignoring Spencer Tunick.
CP fave/Layer Tennis star Chuck Anderson of NOPATTERN is hosting a gallery show at Country Club Chicago (1100 N. Damen, Chicago) Thursday night.
For the future graffiti artist in your household, the street art coloring book.
Hubcap Creatures.
Fantastic collection of mid-century illustrated ads, start with Gallery I.
Fantastic, Spookypop: The Art of Doktor A..
Who doesn't love monkeys? Mitsy Groenendijk has created some fantastic sculptures. Via MoCo.
"A topology of strange yet oddly familiar creatures." Bears by Kent Rogowski.
Sweet childrens' book illustrations and more by Cristian Turdera. Via Netdiver.
Artist Jennifer Maestre creates sculptures out of ordinary objects, pencils, nails, and beads.
Customised fruit, by Sarah King.
The Met's next director will have to know how to create a great juxtaposition, as well as fill some pretty big shoes now that Philippe de Montebello has announced his retirement.
The Ancient Tree, part of the Jinhua Architectural Park southwest of Shanghai. Z & G has a great collection of park photos on Flickr.
Sprout is a series of symbols designed to cultivate change. Don't miss the stunning polar bear image. Via (NON) 2.
Superexpresso, graphic design out of Barcelona by Michele Angelo.
Science Fiction and the Statue of Liberty, a match made in heaven. Via Cynical C.
Great toothpick sculptures by Steven Backman.
Artist Mike Stilkey makes sculptures out of books.
"Does Every Poster That a Designer Makes Have To Be Displayed Like This?" I know we're guilty of it, but we've also had subtle variations. Via Torrez.
Chewing gum sculptures by Maurizio Savini.
Masks from Louis Tussaud's House of Wax are headed to auction. "So bad are the models at the 53-year-old institution in Great Yarmouth that it has achieved notoriety for being one of the worst museums in the world."
Fill the Tennis void: Chip Kidd kicks off the fifth season of Debbie Millman's Design Matters, live today at 2pm Chicago time
Wow, building Coruscant.
Cal Lane has been doing a lot of plasma cutting.
Political party emblems from when there were more than two.
Gorgeous wooden toys by Takeji Nakagawa. Via Cpluv
Great packaging design work by designer Jesse Kirsch. Scroll down for "Brand" work, fab.
Black is the new black.
Waterfalls in NYC this summer.
Lovely illustrations by Asli Saktanber.
Wish You Were Here! Postcards from our Awesome Future.
Fans of supercute/supercool Japanese illustrators - have you seen Cozy Tomato?
Pentagram updates Dairy Today magazine. Looks so good, I'd buy it.
There goes the afternoon, vintage print ads.
ArtInfo's picks for Best Art Books of 2007. Both Hopper ones look terrific.
The illustrations of Yuko Shimizu. Fantastic. Check the covers for Moriboto Guardian of the Spirit and The Smackdown. Via Ectoplasmosis.
Artist Perry Hall creates sound drawings using still frames of sound waves moving through paint.
"Copying a photograph is not interesting to me. I like texture too much. So that is something the photo cannot provide." An illustrated interview with painter Alyssa Monk from TMN.
Suburban angst and the paintings of Peter Drake. Notably
Siege of Syosset and Overlook. Via Bezembinder's.
Speak Up has a look at the Obama campaign logo design.
Draw your own version of Eustace Tilley.
Packing tape artwork by Mark Khaisman. Via ReubenMiller.
From Andrew, The WSJ has a little fun with graphics for once.
Work by Hong Hao, who catalogs the material aspects of his life in large photographic pieces.
A fine new set of galleries at Things Magazine, The Pelican Project.
Great work by Koren Shadmi. Be sure to stop by his live journal for more on how his final illustrations come about. Via NOTCOT.
One of a kind products created using old tapestries. Via The Style Files.
FotA Suzanna Bierwirth and her studio, Binth, were featured in the final issue of Blueprint. See more photos of/from the mag over at p+p.
Check out illustrator Bo Lundberg's work. Sweet.
When Jaime makes selections from a vintage design book, it's best to pay attention. The Nonist on the 71/72 Graphis Annual.
Tiny Buildings.
"This is a collection of photography of the design work of Erik Nitsche maintained by collectors Derrick Schultz and Katie Varrati over the past three years or so. We are not related to Nitsche in any way, but maintain this archive as both a personal inventory as well as a service to the design community and Nitsche's legacy." Via ISO50.
Harmonie Interieure's faves. An unstoppable Flickr set.
The paintings of Holly Farrell.
Michael Namer on Finding the Holy Grail of Graffiti.
We love it when Fecal Face goes visiting. This time they're at the studio of David Choong Lee and Brian Barneclo in San Francisco just as they are preparing for a show.
More regrettable incidents in a life filled with bitter remorse. Found among other things.
Cool, panoramic city view wallpaper borders.
Edward Tufte illustrated post on Megan Jaegerman's news graphics for the NYT, 1990-98. Via CulturalSnow.
As long as we're on a bit of a Dutch design theme this morning...
De Grote Bosatlas, from 1968. A fantastic set of pix of the volume, designed by Wim Crouwel. Via Ace Jet 170.
Black Round & Red Star. The portfolio of Emmanuel Polanco.
"Triptych" by UVA, a sculptural LED installation for Nuit Blanche in Paris. "...three brooding presences that respond to the movements of people approaching them." Check the video.
PingMag on animal characters as Japanese shipping logos.
These are not photos of actual people, they are hyper-real sculptures by artist Duane Hanson. Via Mental Floss.
The portfolio of Romanian designer Stefan Lucut.
Nils Nova's Opposition of Memory. Ink-jet print on blueback-paper, pasted on the wall. Via Bezembinder's.
In anticipation of a mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2008, "we are featuring some
less familiar works by Cai Guo-Qiang."
Great collection of Decca Records covers.
"Chris Kenny produces an unexpected kind of poetry with his three-dimensional 'drawings' and constructions made from twigs, fragments of maps and strips of found text." Beautiful. Via Ffffound.
Check the "woodcuts" gallery at Klonek. Via Wrong Distance.
There are plenty of inventive art experiments collected at Daniel Eatock's site. Today, the DDC points to his whip-smart Pantone Pen Project. I'm partial to the poignancy of the simple Dead Mans Cup.
So well-done and interesting. Spam one-liners by Linzie Hunter.
Mr. Bingo's dollar. Mr. Bingo's portfolio.
Strange perhaps but still lovely, paintings made from EEG patterns, brain paintings. Via Grow A Brain.
If you were one of the lucky few to pick up SM001, Rod Hunting has made a new camera poster that would look great next to it. Look for new Swap Meat goodness from Rod and others coming very soon.
Spectacular illustrations by Eric Feng. Via NOTCOT.
Been enjoying this Flickr set of letterpress pieces by Ophelia Chong, made from found images run through the press. This is nice, and this and this. Via swissmiss.
For some reason, I usually like this sort of thing.
NHL Tournament of Logos, full of fantastic concept stuff, from the ridiculous to the really cool.
Download Your Own Money, from Jake and Dinos Chapman. Via We Made This.
Bo Lundberg's fab illustration portfolio. Via Grain Edit.
Hats off to Hans Hartmann, Swiss designer.
Eric Drooker's New Yorker covers and other illustrations. Fab. Via The Cartoonist.
New over at the TMN galleries, Amy Tiemann and The Laptop Club.
Get your kid started on the right foot with the Modern Classics Alphabet.
Impress that cute coffee shop waitress: Bre at Makezine makes a origami flower with three $1 bills.
Certainly of no help to any current headache sufferer: Sweet Gifs. Via Byrdhouse.
Elizabeth Perry, "From October 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, my plan was to visit the public spaces of the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, every day the museums were open. I drew something in a small sketchbook in response to each day's experience." Found among other things.
Via the Serif, a transcript of a Subway Sect radio interview with Peter Saville. I picked up his book at the MCA "Art and Rock" show where the only truly exciting thing (to me, anyway) on exhibit was the LP sleeve sketches and mockups for Power, Corruption, and Lies.
The illustrations of Marcela Restrepo from Sydney. Via DiK.
Album Cover Collage print ads. Via That's How.
Kids vs Artists.
Gorgeous paper sculptures by Richard Sweeney.
Lane Twitchell's Mementos from Basquiat's Grave.
Here's what happens when you mix surfer jargon with art, gorgeous prints by Aaron Parazette. This is my fave.
Local note, FotA Anne Petrosky is showing some of her work tonight at the IIDA Annual Bizarre Bazaar. The event is tonight from 5:30pm - 8:30pm at the Merchandise Mart, 10th floor and features over 50 local artisians. Stop by and take a look.
An interesting juxtaposition of cultures. Great use of materials. This piece by Lei Xue has both.
"Next time art critic Michael Kimmelman pans a show that actually includes a fair number of women and artists of color like his hysterical rant against the Whitney Biennial of 1993 we're going to send him a year's supply of Midol." An interview with Guerrilla Girl, "Frida Kahlo."
If I got Spam that looked like this, I'd actually read it.
"Don't try to be original, just try to be good." A tribute to Paul Rand. After you watch that, take eleven minutes to watch what could be the only film with a Paul Rand gag in it, our very own Copy Goes Here.
Stephen Doyle: A Few Words. "Clever" comes mind on just about every slide.
Christophe Huet shows step by step slides of some of his Photoshop creations. Neat. Via The Serif.
Hey MS, at least the spiders you find at home don't look like this. Via Fun Forever.
In a departure from my grocery list thing, I'm enjoying these bookshelf lists, via swissmiss.
I Am As You Will Be: The Skeleton in Art, a group show at Cheim & Read NYC. Via gmt+9 (-15).
A designer packing tape review. Via Geekologie.
Da Vinci's Last Supper in super hi def,view online in 16 billion pixels.
The portfolio of Argentinian designer and illustrator Gianluca Fallone. Fab.
The currency of Antarctica.
Green Graffiti by Edina Tokodi.
Translucent sculptures by Kirsten Hassenfeld. Via d*s.
NAGO is a foundation set up to preserve and display the work of Dutch graphic designers. I'd say they're doing a fine job. Via the always observant Airbag Industries.
Posted without comment as it involves the CIA and I don't want to visit Gitmo. Feast your eyes on the "Terrorist Buster" logo
Ambigraphic (I just made that up), but I think it best describes the work of Rex Whistler. Via Graphpaper.
From p+p: A series of NYT articles about the new NYC Taxi logo
"Paradise has become an uneasy dwelling place; the sublime sea frames of our vunerability, the precarious nature of life itself." Richard Misrach's On the Beach is currently showing at Art Institute.
Masking tape art.
The Met's Gary Tinterow on how to install a 20 ton, $8 million dollar shark.
Lovely. Eames House of Cards. While you're there, take a look around, great stuff.
Paintings of "depopulated urban interiors" by Carl Hammond. Via Another Company.
"There are strong arguments on both sides that he is either putting himself together or taking himself apart. I like the idea that he is a self-made man." Nice job if you can get it.
Yesterday's tomorrow, today. All the covers from Modern Mechanix Magazine. Slow but worth the wait. Via The DDC.
Book plates for kids from the mind of Quentin Blake. Via the Miss who is Swiss.
Art Info's picks for the best of the Frieze Art Fair.
Dress sculptures by Kelly Gardner made of book pages and copper wire. Via R&B.
Darth Vader in Samurai Armor. And 10" tall. Via Cynical-C.
The AIGA Design Conference 2007 begins today here in Boulder and Denver with some interesting studio tours and presentations. I'm really glad to see an interactive design workshop listed right next to a letterpress workshop, and so many friends of the agency in the lineup. And, being Colorado, a combination international poster show/microbrewery tour is included, as are "optional post-conference excursions".
The "Color Forecasting" Print by illustrator Tavis Coburn. Found hunting around on his temporary site.
Using the grafarc explorer, you can visit some classic graffiti spots, see what they looked like in the past and explore how they have changed over the years.
Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth is a perfect work for this powerful space.
Every year the Peace Tower will light up from October 9th to December 8th in Rekjavik.
This is Tengu! Via Torc.
"He's a fictional character: a professional in the midst of a midlife crisis who has just discovered art. He saw a 1962 Morris Louis exhibition at the Andre Emmerich Gallery and decided, 'I'm going to give this a shot. Any idiot could do it.'" Rodney Graham, The Gifted Amateur.
Franc Grom uses a small electric drill to create approximately 2,500 to 3,500 holes in each eggshell.
I am not a wallpaper person, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a pattern of any kind in my life. But I really admire the collection at Nama Rococo, and their single sheets look great on their own.
Full frontal nudity, 75,000 times over.
Tokyo in Pictograms from Ping.
UK illustrator Stuart Kolakovic's Sketch Book. Via Drawn.
Also in Beijing, a 250m by 30m LED screen installed in the ceiling of a mall.
Selected pages from the Graphis Annual in the 1960's. Fab. I. II. III.
Wolff Olins' new Wacom logo. I'm wondering if maybe I was totally wrong about their 2012 Olympics logo.
Pascal Blanchet, illustrator. I. II. III.
Stina Persson's fab illustration portfolio, out of Stockholm.
Flower Taxis in NYC, via p+p.
Everything you've ever wanted to know about the most popular painting at Tate Britain, from notes for a show that opens tomorrow.
Peacay on the graphic design of Erik Nitsche (1908-98) and an excellent overview of "The Reluctant Modernist" by Steven Heller.
Turn of the century reproductions of the paintings of Eduard von Grutzner, happy monks, mostly drinking.
Fabulous. A sneak preview of Danny Gregory's book An Illustrated Life. Via TMN.
Star Wars vs. Star Trek.
Twenty-second and last Porch Auction of Illustration and Cartoon Art, September 20 and 21. View Lots. I. II. III.
"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in cyberspace." The Graphic Work of Christopher David Ryan, Atmostheory. Selected works available for purchase at My Little Underground.
Photos from last weekend's Kitefest 2007 in Toronto. Lovely.
The Bravo design team out of Buenos Aires makes cool flyers, interstitials and folders.
Tom Phillips selectively draws right onto the pages of a Victorian novel. Brian Dettmer takes it a step further and carves into the z-axis of a book. It's all about layers, you see.
Brazilian artist Carlo Giovani makes cool things, some of them out of paper.
Ffffound! Great random collection of visuals. Bookmarked.
The paintings of Craig Kosak.
A country by country winners' showcase has been posted for the European logo design annual, Eulda 2007.
Robbie Dingo gives The Starry Night a second life. Wow.
Underpass as Photoshop. View Layers. Via infosthetics.
Shadow Monsters adds some verve to the art of hand silhouetting.
Luke Chueh's Painting Of Hope and Hopelessness. Via Design in the Fishbowl.
100 Girls On Cheap Paper, illustrations by Tina Berning.
Kate Bingaman-Burt makes her NYC debut later this month in a solo show, Obsessive Consumption at Jen Bekman. Kate's Limited, Hand-Made Print Edition is available in our Swap Meat. Get yours now before she become super-famous.
This well-illustrated Design et Typo piece on
Alexandre Rodchenko [translate] coincides with an exhibition currently on display at Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris.
French prints from 1910 that show a glimpse of life in the year 2000.
A woman a day, the Pre-Raphaelite way.
Lehel Kovacs illustration out of Budapest. So cool. Via Kitsune Noir.
Perhaps a little late in the season for this, but here it is anyway: 3D Swimming Pools.
Rob Cordiner's Tank-Focused Design portfolio. Via Netdiver.
Our friends at Nerfect painted a horse for one of those plaster-animal-decoration civic pride schemes, and it's up for charity auction soon, along with dozens of far-less-awesome examples.
Creative Pro on Pantone's new "Goe" color matching system.
Another little logo critique, this time of MLB's 2008 All-Star Game logo.
Obelisco Transportable, currently on display in Central Park, is a 20-foot tall portable obelisk on wheels. Via Pruned.
"People often swear the first time they see my work. I like that."
Neighborhoods is a series of multimedia installations in the gutted homes of folks rebuilding in New Orleans.
Jason Robert Bell, co-creator of Bad Spock Drawings and Caveman Robot, is selling his Visible Centaur Sculpture. If that's too pricey, how about some Unicorn Turds?
Turning old books into sculptures.
A collection of classic Motor Mundial magazine covers at Cartype. Fab.
Kane on Alexey Brodovitch.
Giornale Nuovo on Brian Dettmer "Using surgical tools, (he) removes paper like an archeologist releasing a fossil from layers of sediment, thereby unveiling connections between words and images hundreds of pages away from each other." More here.
The Magic of Antarctic Colors. Via Plep.
"From 1974 until the end of his life, Warhol kept a box beside his desk into which he swept all the ephemera that passed through his hands.
When it became full, it was taped shut, dated and sent into storage. By the time of his death, aged 58, in 1987, Warhol had filled more than 600 boxes. Warhol's ephemera goes on display.
Toothpick and Nails Art. Via Make.
Related and just awesome. Jonathan Janson's interactive analysis of Vermeer's painting and to take it one step further, his in-depth study.
Structural, mechanical, philosophical and even a bit Victorian, the art of Conrad Shawcross. Via Vvork.
Crazy crayon sculptures by Pete Goldlust. Stephanie also sent us some tiny Crayon Men.
"I cannot make you buy a book, but I can try to help make you pick it up." Chip Kidd's How to Make People Buy Books.
Peacay writes, "Diaporama Graphisme has a wealth of iconic graphic art, from the Étienne Mineur archives." Whoa.
"The project documents every instance of the phrase 'is the new' encountered from various sources in 2005. It is intended to map the iterations of a peculiarly common marketing and literary device." Is the New by LeisureArts. Via Eyebeam.
"The effect is remarkable. By slowing down just five seconds of conventional dance movements Michalek reveals a rich world of hidden undulations, minuscule adjustments, and concealed strain. It takes 10 minutes for each five-second sequence to unspool."
Surface View makes huge wall murals that can be customized to specific measurements. Via Retro To Go.
HTTP errors illustrated. Via Boing Boing.
Kinda Casiotone, but you gotta love "PMS 187 runs deep in my veins, Metallic 8643 in my gold chains:" Original Design Gangsta.
New over at the TMN galleries, Hand Job.
The Design Sponge Letterpress Guide is a really great resource if you're looking for a letterpress studio or some beautiful pieces to purchase online.
Nice collection of images from photorealist artist Richard Estes.
Enjoying some nice pieces of work in the portfolio of Chad Kouri.
Great illustrations of European cities and architecture by Paola Serrao. Via d*s.
Similar Diversity by Andreas Koller and Philipp Steinweber, a huge infographic displaying text analysis of the holy books of five world religions. Via Notcot.
Howard Hallis is not without ambition. He's drawing the picture of everything. Via Fontblog.
The Global History of Art as depicted in icons by Slovakian artist Stano Masár.
Lee Jungjin's Pagoda series, photo emulsion on rice paper. Via Moon River
All the Vermeers in New York and other places and pretty much everything else you'd ever want to know about them.
Adobe put this interactive billboard in the NYC Virgin Megastore. Via creativebits
Seven Golden Camels shares J. H. Vanderpoel's chapter on eyes from The Human Figure, accompanied by beautiful scans.
Amazing.
Our old friends Kirsten and Ana have a great new design blog, pica+pixel.
"Do it. If it is not good enough, observe more and think. And then do it again." PingMag interviews SK Lam of All Rights Reserved, From Hong Kong To The World.
Artist David Gunnarsson, the man behind the (goalie) masks.
Honda: The Power of Dreams. Illustrations by Brosmind Studio in Barcelona.
New Esperia Mission Logo for Paolo Nespoli's shuttle mission to the International Space Station.
Worth a repost: Frank R. Paul's science fiction magazine covers from the '20s and '30s.
Industrial-Organic, the portfolio of Justin Thomas Kay.
Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety.
The illustrations of Brandi K. Milne. Via PCL.
Exhibition made by 104 for their new identity which was designed by Experimental Jetset. This event shows all the work in progress. Via The Serif.
It's a very specialized industry, and not often I'd need the services of a faux bois artist. A google search turns up tons of links that lead me nowhere, but now I've found the one to use. Thanks to M.
New prints from Edward Tufte, selections from his books Beautiful Evidence, Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations. Via bblinks.
A painting at auction in Leicestershire UK was expected to bring £300-500. When the bidding was done it went for £205,000.
Pow. A great set of package design and advertising to wake up your eyes this morning. I. II. III.
Short notice for me to get to Seattle, but I am in the market for a new couch.
Alison Kendall's art portfolio at Left Hand Light. Hmm, a screenprint or giclee of Scuba Polaroid would sure look good in the Swap Meat.
"The original designs for these decorative book bindings incorporate figurative and geometric representations and rhythms that are strikingly realized when seen as significantly larger images."
Art graduate Lauren Porter knitted a Ferrari for her degree at Bath Spa University.
A unique meeting between typography and ceramics, the work of Stephanie DeArmond is full of interesting visual references.
Lego Remakes of Fine Art. Via Cynical C.
Public works by Kristi Sword. Via d*s.
Dan McPharlin put together these neat minature cardboard models of audio equipment. Via CH. If you're looking for something larger we still have some of Rod Hunting's Vintage Reel-to-Reel prints.
Yosuked Ueno's Spaceegg Jornal. "I've been drawing all the day these days. I cannot stop drawing." Via wm$na.
Design & Typo's tribute to Herbert Lubalin. I. II. III.
New sketchbook pages at Will Freeborn's Ghostschool.
Amazing light graffiti.
Andy Ducett's fantastic found photo collages. Via 30gms.
Photoset of the moment: book covers and posters by Irwin McFadden from the late 60s and early 70s.
Ideas for hunting down original Bob Ross paintings. Via Byrdhouse.
The Serif's great new registry of 169 design agencies.
PingMag meets up with Sento artist, Toshimitsu Hayakawa, at work at the "Asahiyu" bath house in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Shinnakano.
The Lambiek Comiclopedia is a comics compendium with over 8,000 comic artists from around the world. It's published by Europe's first comics shop, which was founded in 1968 in Amsterdam.
Nice illustrations by Luis Vázquez.
Communication Arts interviews Marian Bantjes, who recently had four of her pieces accepted into the permanent collection at Cooper-Hewitt and, we're proud to say, has another piece available exclusively in our Swap Meat.
"I'm making 999 wooden black cubes. Every cube has the same shape, appearance and dimensions. The strange thing is that there is something inside the cube! If the cube is opened this sense is lost irreparably. The cube is the material representation of human curiosity." Via bblinks.
Building a 3D Bonsai Tree one LED at a time. Via Eyebeam.
The illustrations of Pietari. Love this series on the Giro d'Italia and this quick Barcelona Sketchbook too. Via Efimera.
Scenes From a Roboted Life, Martin Postler's "Life/Machine" project.
Aynaku, an island hopping illustrated blog.
Buying a Brand: Advertising Spending in Graphics.
Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey's architectural projects, photography and miscellaneous pieces of artwork, completely made out of grass.
11 hearts, 8 arrows, 2 animals, 5 things that could be interpreted as penises, and 7 elements that were hand drawn, scanned and traced. Armin's 100 unused logos and what they reveal about his design inclinations.
Amazing pencil carvings.
"What we have as a constant thread in our work is trying to boil things down to being strong and very simple and looking as though they happened very fast - which they may not have." Designboom interview with Ivan Chermayeff.
Noriko Ambe makes beautiful art out of paper, but not in the ways you'd expect. Via 30gms.
Daily Dose of Architecture on Beatrice Coron and the return of the silhouette.
A beautiful and massive collection of etchings by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77) and an overview on how they were made at The University of Toronto. I. II. III. Via BSR.
"Florry Walker, my sweetheart." Recently uncovered love note in impressionist Arthur Streeton's Spring, painted 130 years ago. Via 1+1=3.
"The Grand Tour is a collection of priceless paintings set free around the streets of London." For example, Noisy Decent Graphics saw a Degas and a Constable on the way to work today. Now how do we get a Velazquez over on North May Street?
Interactive billboards for BBC World News in America.
Donald Evans created tiny, beautiful, hand-painted postage stamps of made-up countries before he died in in a windmill fire in 1977.
Street Installations by Mark Jenkins.
"Suzanne and Bruce walking on the Vitava, Prague 2007," and much more to explore at Julian Opie.
Ward Jenkins on illustrator extraordinaire, Charley Harper.
Adalberto Abbate's microsculptural dioramas.
A smart Getty installation that might reflect well on you. Edward Lifson on the museum's presentation of Edward Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere."
Watch St. Louis-based stencil graffiti artist Peat Wollaeger paint a room at the Hotel Des Arts in San Francisco, Luchador style. Nice.
Paintings of industrial landscapes by Gineke Zikken. Via Shoepal.
Josef Muller-Bockwurst. "Inspired by all the sausages in Berlin." Brilliant. Via Chris Glass.
Jeffrey Veen asks: Can there really be any worse logo than from the 1959 MLB All Star Game?
Meri Page Design creates some pretty neat stained glass incorporating seashells and minerals. Via MoCo.
Top 14 Logo Lookalikes, such as Mary Kate Olsen and the Charlotte Hornet. Via AdFreak.
Geoff on an art installation in London called The LightHive, described at "luminous architectural surveillance."
Mister Aitch on the Arabesque, geometric ornamentation in which "plants and leaves grow according to the laws of geometry rather than nature, forming interlaced straps, zizags, spirals, scrolls and knots."
Drawn reminds us that it's a good idea to shuffle though the Illustration House auction lots periodically. Found amid the cowboys and pinups in the June 2 batch, this Michael Whelan cover from a Heinlein paperback.
Vermeer's finest details, now zoomified.
"...the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption." Mark Luthringer's Ridgemont Typologies. Surprising and beautiful, check Team Colors. Via Infosthetics.
Speaking of sketchbooks with "ghost" in their title, there's lots of new stuff at Will Freeborn's Ghostschool. Will helped us out in February as a Guest Editor.
Britta is having an 1896 map of Hannover tattooed on her back.
Vojtech Kubasta, The 'Other' Illustrated Books, Ephemera, and Graphic Designs, 1914-92. I. II. III. Via Efimera.
Related to the last, Ace Jet 170's Penguin posts.
Interventions, sprinkles and other work by Kristi Sword. Via NotCot.
Photos from the Otl Aicher and the Munich Olympiad exhibit in London. Via Design Info.
Timothy Tompkins begins with a series of photographs, breaks the images down to their core colors and then paints on aluminum with high-gloss commercial enamel sign paint.
Flags of the world by color usage.
"The Ephemera Society is a non-profit body concerned with the collection, preservation, study and educational uses of hand-written and printed ephemera." Right on.
The Hidden Power of Everyday Things, a four-panel series of paintings by Alex Dodge. Sublime.
Four-part online exhibition of contemporary Japanese hanga or print art. On the Cutting Edge. I. II. III.
Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait by Chris Jordan.
121 sweet Etch-A-Sketch drawings. I'm not even going to try to choose favorites.
Humorous collage work by Tod Kapke.
Hopper at the MFA, Boston. The 'sketchbook' feature is more than a bit clumsy but it's well worth fumbling around to get at the goods. Why are big museums so consistently stupid about presenting things online? Sheesh. Sketchbook style text and images can be handled masterfully.
The paintings of Justin McAllister. Via Another Company.
The illustration of Rick Froberg. Via Roshomon.
Speaking of famous nudes, I just learned that one of my favorite paintings is also one of Terry Gilliam's favorite paintings.
Shigeo Fukuda's work portrays deception in the style of MC Escher. "Lunch with a Helmut on" is a shadow sculpture made entirely of welded forks, spoons, and knives.
"As-Found is a creative response to the trillions of images available on the Internet." Via Designboom.
About "The Night Watch," at Jonathan Janson's excellent Rembrandt site.
Yesterday's post on Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching is justthisclose to becoming an obsession around here. Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" resides at the Rijksmuseum, check the feature on it in the the 'Masterpieces' section of the museum site.
Interview about Helvetica and the newish identity for La Réunion des Musées Nationaux which was created by just about our fave studio anywhere, Experimental Jetset.
Jeff Wall, In His Own Words, smart online exhibition from MoMA and SFMOMA, created by Group94 in Belgium.
Kate Bingaman draws pictures of the things she buys (NYT 'Consumed') and more at Obsessive Consumption. Currently, Kate has work showing here in Chicago at Fraction Workspace at one of our favorite interesections, Honore and Wabansia.
We need one of these for the studio, pronto: The Gocco Machine, "like the Easy Bake Oven of at home printing." Via Torrez.
Build. Recent works.
Still one of the best art projects ever. Had no idea they'd also released do it yourself instructions when they pulled off the stunt: PDF from The Barbie Liberation Organization. If you're unfamiliar with the whole thing, there's more info here. Via WMMNA.
Martin Konrad's Dirty 2006, "a series of books as reminder of ongoing censorship and restrictions on intellectual freedom." Via La Petite Claudine.
Dan Hill has a nice set of penguins. This is an excellent book on the subject btw.
Diptychs by Bari DeJaynes. Via swissmiss.
The life and times of Andy Virgil, illustrator. A lovely tribute to a prodigious talent.
The third and final installment of Ace Jet 170's All My Pelicans. Is "All My Penguins" next?
Download Daniel McPharlin's portfolio. Fab. Via K10K.
Peacay on Russian artist Sergey Tyukanov's "retro fantasy folk whimsy."
Leif Peng's huge collection of vintage advertising and editorial illustration, organized mostly by artist. The scans are beautiful but beware, this will be the end of your morning, productivity-wise.
Rumor has it The DDC may be in the house later today. Fridge is stocked.
Weirdly fascinating. 40 years of animated stingers from "The Mountain of Entertainment."
The Life and Works of Hardie Gramatky 1907-79, American watercolorist.
Seven Golden Camels on the secret sketchbook of Ronald Searle. "If you feel uncomfortable when people catch you drawing them, imagine how hard it would be to draw the patrons in a strip club."
Some cool coconut art from Thailand. Via Vagablond.
This collection of Van Gogh's unabridged, cross-indexed and annotated letters is one the smartest, best-organized and presented collection of personal writings anywhere. "And my aim in my life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'" Vincent to Theo 11/19/1883.
Bangers, A Collection of Black & White Explorations by Matt W. Moore. Hypnotic. Check these examples. Cha-ching. Via Illustration Mundo.
Thorsten Brinkmann's Portraits of a Serialsammier. Miscellaneous stuff on heads never looked so good. Via WMMNA.
Nadine Jarvis' Post Mortem Research. Via IBC.
Noticed this on the drive in this morning, but didn't think to take a photo. Luckily Chris Glass noticed too: Is Chris Ware illustrating for BP?
Honestly, if Matt Michaluk, a student in Bath UK, and his collaborators were to send to the Swap Meat an issue of their photocopied A0 Magazine which is French-folded and stitched down the spine and 'blessed with fluro orange type' we would mostly likely swap it with something of our own. So we cold keep it. Via The Serif.
FotA Aesthetic Apparatus' gorgeous new Armistead Maupin Book Jackets. If you want to see the guys in action, check out the film we made about them: Found & Reused.
Fun, click-thru work showcase at Meda and Cheeky's Poana. Via Netdiver.
Following on from his critically acclaimed All My Pelicans: Part 1, here is the eagerly anticipated
All My Pelicans: Part 2, from Ace Jet 170.
"Occasionally, printers will run disposable sheets of paper through the press several times in order to fine-tune the press, or to clean the rollers." Examples from Mister Aitch's collection.
As soon as I saw the title I knew I'd love it. Chipotle Menu Art.
"Un-Scared" and "Wounded People." Drawings and sketches by Mel Kadel. Sublime. Via gmt+9 (-15).
"Last year a call went out across Australia for drawings. Hundreds sent in work and sixteen were selected. All artists selected did their work in Melbourne. Thus Conceived on a Tram was born." Looks terrific. Via 1+1=3.
Ace Jet 170's All My Pelicans: Part 1. Ahhh.
Graphic design and art direction work by Rob Brearley.
Blake Ink, poster design out of Boston. Thanks Andrew.
Beauty is a vexed matter in scenes of suffering, cruelty and death.
Oh yikes. The Dairy Queen logo has been "enhanced with gold and blue curved swishes signifying food and treats". Via Brand New.
Beautiful vapor trails. "Minutiae" by Nathan Abels. Acrylic on Panel.
The illustration portfolio of Lauren Simkin Berke.
You never know when you'll encounter Ketchup Art.
Marian Bantjes has created an intricate and beautiful limited-edition cover for the current Wallpaper Magazine.
Massive gallery of the work of Dick Bruna, prolific illustrator and graphic designer at Zwarte Beertjes (Black Bear), Holland's largest publishing house. Great stuff. I. II. III. Via Kane.
Luke Hayman's Time Magazine redesign is out and only perfect. Wow.
Jim Woodring made a moleskine popup.
Jen Stark's vibrant, amazing paper sculpture and an explosion of a sketchbook too. Via Design et Typo.
"I create two kinds of boxes: those whose purpose is to re-create an atmosphere that has delighted me... and the more objective pieces that are the result of a detailed examination of the 'realistic truth' of a certain place." Giornale Nuovo on Charles Matton.
Record cover of the moment. Ricky Tillblad Zion's design for Joia 024's 12" Click. Via Cpluv.
"Without Reason is a limited edition art book dedicated to the roots and lifestyle of street culture, capturing the works of graffiti artists, painters, designers, illustrators, photographers and tattoo artists from Australia, America, Canada and the UK." Beautiful.
Mixed media, collage, graphic-based work, photography and found objects at the new site for artist and furniture designer Chris Ferebee. A couple highlights, the Supercollider and Tartan series.
"Ten Minutes After the End of Gravity" and other painings by Adam Cvijanovic. Via Moon River.
Otl Aicher and the Munich Olympiad, a new exhibit highlighting his work for the '72 Olympics. Via Designboom.
A nice list of famous brands in logo design history. Via Design Observer.
Illustrations and artwork by Alberto Cerriteno.
Will Freeborn, who contributed illustrations to Fresh Signals last month, finds a unique way to say thank you.
Ace Jet 170 shares our love for designer Ladislav Sutnar. Tons more on the man and his work at this tribute site. Required reading.
Mystery, sci-fi and assorted vintage paperback covers from the Travelin' Librarian. I. II. III. Via Designhör.
Likely the thing that would make any home feel complete. Or at least more gaudy. Rock and Royal's custom chandeliers. Via Springwise.
Twelve Rare Books of the Avant Garde.
"...contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on." Running the Numbers, a project by Chris Jordan.
The illustration and art of Oliver Jeffers. Via Drawn.
The Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design. Make sure to follow the link over to the publisher, CAP.
"Drift" is a 12-monitor video installation by German artist HC Gilje. More video and images under "projects." Via Vvork.
"Paolozzi was walking past Harrods store one morning and saw a window dresser setting up a display which included a plaster cast of the head of Michelangelo's marble sculpture of David."
Chris Ware speaking about his work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. About one-third of the way in, Chris presents some slides and talks about his creative process. Via Kottke.
The art and sculpture of Michael A. Salter, including a huge, beautiful robot made from styrofoam.
Collage, selected works by Freek Drent. Via Bezembinder.
Peacay, on Swiss-born American graphic designer, Erik Nitsche (1908-1998).
Meet the World, a series of political statements using maps as graphs, by Icaro Doria.
Datajunkie's Galaxy of Wood and World of Wood. That's Wally Wood, sci-fi illustrator extraordinaire. I. II. III.
Captivated by images like this one by artist Binh Danh, who makes prints on leaves by using their natural chlorophyl. Here are some more images, and a NPR piece about his work.
Heavy Water, a sketch series by Scott Teplin. Via Life Without Buildings.
Don't worry Marian, no one's valentine is nicer than the valentine you sent to me. See all of Ms. Bantjes' 150 hand-drawn hearts here. Mine is about 60% of the way down, in the center. A thoughtful and beautiful idea. But that's no surprise, given the source.
The work of Buro North. Make sure to check out the link to their project for Inside magazine (the one with the orange and red paint explosion). Via Reluct.
"Performer is an interactive installation in which a virtual audio audience applauds viewers lit by a spotlight. Viewers actually feel as if they are being observed by a real 100 member audience." Make sure to check out all the other Adam Frank pieces on the site. It's all great. Via Chris Glass.
"The Football Drawings show the ball movements during a soccer game as viewed from above." Super cool.
The illustrations, paintings and sketches of "Onze" (Stefano Centonze). Via
The nice thing about art made out of money is that, even if you buy a piece and it doesn't wind up increasing in value, at least you could take it apart and not lose all your money. Via designboom.
"You got one chance with no do-overs." Corporate logos, built to change. We're proponents of a similar sort of flexibility. Via Design Observer.
"All this arranging is so natural for man." Pessi Rautio on the photographic constructions of of Ilkka Halso. More of Halso's work here. Via Another Company.
Greg writes about updates to the excellent Alvin Lustig site including limited-edition screen prints. Take some time the explore the whole site, it's spectacular.
I wish you would have never told us that painting was worth millions.
80 of 500 Hand Drawn Posters, from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Via Byrdhouse.
So you know, how to make moss graffiti.
Chuck Anderson's beautiful "Places You Can't Imagine." Via Josh Spear.
Thomas Raschke's sculptures are wire frames. Thanks Coop.
Friend of the Agency, Ken Meier has a new portfolio up that demonstrates a healthy typographic obsession.
"Places You Can't Imagine," a new site and print from Mr. Chuck "Nopattern" Anderson.
Newseum gets an unspectacular new design, teases their new building and continues to show tons of today's front pages.
Geostationary Banana Over Texas. Sure, why not?
Artist Bethany Bristow, Asia, New York. "On the street one encounters a temporal vulnerable sculpture made from melted glass bottles and jars, feathers and corn syrup; and sometimes myself and an accomplice in the act of installing and photographing the process." Via Bezembinder's.
Creativebits interviews icon designer Jonas Rask.
Nice collection of Modern Mechanix Magazine Covers. Thanks Kevin.
Artist Steven Harrington. Flip through the "prints" and the "etc" sections. Real fresh. Real beautiful.
"Something between a comic and a children's book...Teplin's 'Heavy Water' series was inspired by a Hezbollah military strategy that called for the placement of missile launchers in private suburban homes." Via Life Without Buildings.
"I'm very rich. I have many lions." Two great Ghostschool journal pages from Wil Freeborn.
"The Present History is a grand attempt to create a book which is beautiful, sad and hopeful." Via bblinks.
Obsessive, Catholic, Technicolor Paintings by Kate Kretz, including Blessed Art Thou and Jesus Nightlight.
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. I love Ic, Te, Kn, and there's really nothing that does the job like an Hh. Via Design Observer.
Bookslut's most dreadful book covers of 2006, by genre.
"With the Olympics' visuals, he created what he called 'a game with rules.' He defined a very simple set of graphic elements and he created certain rules to apply these elements." Metropolis interview with Markus Rathgeb about his new book on Otl Aicher. Via Design Observer.
Heidelberger Totentanz, published in 1488, it was the first book with illustrations of the Dance of Death, "an artistic response across Europe to the devastation brought about by the plague or black death." Via Designboom.
With my2007 Colette asked different designers, artists and illustrators to express their view of the new year.
Perspective gone awry. Via Chris Glass.
It's that time of year to once again download and print another amazing Lounge72 Calendar.
Comprehensive, beautiful site on legendary American designer Alvin Lustig. Created by Kind Company. Mandatory visit. There won't be a test, but there should be.
Artist Thomas Broome draws things by writing their names, in his Modern Mantra series.
Extra fabulous. Chart representing a flow of products through the UK textile industry from the intake of raw materials to the finished product. Designed by Lock/Petterson in 1968. Via The DDC.
Tyler Green on Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo's Maryhill Double, a massive, architectural art installation near the Oregon/Washington border. More photos here.
Pentagram reached back for a new Saks Fifth Avenue identity and then they cut it into squares in order to remix it an infinite number of ways. Smart.
Czech Book Covers from the 20's and 30's. Browse around, there is a lot to appreciate, including this extraordinarily forward looking layout from 1931 by Ladislav Sutnar. Via Plep.
"Each side of the diamond measures 1.8 kilometres. The letters that spell out 'READYMIX' are 240 metres high by 180 metres wide, with each stroke estimated to be about 12 metres wide." Via one+one=thr33.
Wil Freeborn's Ghostschool is part links blog, part portfolio and lots and lots of sweet pages from his Moleskin. Like these two.
Steve Powers, Service Is Our Only Product, "All pieces were hand painted at the Surf Avenue Sign Shop in beat-you-full Coney Island in the fall of 2006." Via Veer.
It goes without saying that everyone wants a girl as cool as Kim Deal, but
you should also remember Kelley Deal, who shows
you how to knit a wool bag here. A perfect project for those long trips
driving on 9. Via Chris Glass.
Sculpture from Anthony McCall, Solid Light Films.
Falling Garden at the 2003 Venice Biennial. Via bblinks.
Church marketing does suck, so bravo to Church Marketing Sucks for trying to do something about it. (found while reading about a 62-foot-tall Jesus torso outside Dayton, OH).
His work is very much based around characters. Strange but endearing fantasy creatures with human and animalistic features. The subject focus immediately leads one to consider the artist primarily as a character designer. Johan Potma, however, won't be labelled that easily.
Pete Goldlust's Carved Crayons and other sculptural work. Via Cpluv.
Create your own pixel art from wood. Via DFCKR.
Russian design magazine, Identity has published their "Best of the Best" for 2006, an international competition of logos, trademarks and corporate identities. A bit uneven as a group, but there are very strong individual showings here.
"The Wonderlost series is my artistic interpretation and dark twist on the numerous characters from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' stories."
The paintings of Laura Brink. Via Bezembinder's.
Dreams of Space. "These books outlined the future the children of the 'baby boom' would grow up in, the world of space." I. II. III.
In order to own things we must first give them names. Then, we must make vivid and lifelike illustrations of them.
Very early ('60s) computer art, much of it prepped on punch-cards and then rendered with pen plotters. Many excellent examples, most with enlightening notes. Via Moon River.
Here's a great way to kill the rest of your day. The NAGO Dutch Design Archive. Tons of inspiring work here. use the drop down on the left, pick a category and then hit 'zoek.'
The illustrations of Igor Hofbauer. Dig the Plan Kruutntoone series. Via Bezembinder's.
In the NYT Magazine: Rob Walker's weekly Consumed column, is about Kate Bingaman-Burt's Obsessive Consumption, featuring a couple of quotes from her very first buyer, our own JC.
Palmer Watson's inspiring redesign of Denmark's Politiken newspaper mirrors a smart change of focus and mission. Excellent on all counts.
Use only what you need.
How do you display your Tiny Showcase Artwork? Via d*s.
The Soviet photomontage, 1917-53. Via gmt+9 (-15).
Jonathan Yuen (2006). Amazing, beautiful, personal portfolio. Via Shift 120.
Brand New: Opinions on Corporate and Brand Identity Work. Great concept for a design site and a forum for discussion, from Armin and the crew at Speak Up.
"I recently found out that Cheeta (world famous movie star of many a Tarzan film from the 1930's & 1940's, not to mention oldest living chimp on the planet), was living out his retirement in Palm Springs while doing commmisioned artwork for those rarified patrons so inclined to, you know, order paintings done by a chimp." Via Secret Fun Blog.
Arthur Rackham's illustrations for the 1909 Grimm's Fairy Tales, parts one and two.
Blossfeldt Fractals and more at Metaphorical.net. Check out Plankton, too. Via Design*Sponge.
Some 140 sketches by Anneke and Arian Blom of life in Dogon and life in Egypt. I. II. III. Via Roshomon.
Seven Camels on Fred Ludekins' technique for thumbnails and "Working for Page Impact."
Illustrations by Simone Jessup. Via Print & Pattern.
The winners and honorable mentions of RetroBlast and Coin-Op TV's video game themed inpirational poster contest.
"The interior surface of the cup is treated so as to stain more in predetermined places. The more the cups are used, the more the pattern is revealed." The Stain Teacup. Via Chris Glass.
"Against the violent baroque agitation of the painting behind her, the woman asserts a quite, imperturbable calm, the quintessence of Vermeer's vision." Interactive study of Woman Holding a Balance.
Tim Knowles and Catherine Morland's Tree Art. Via Drawn.
The sketches and illustrations of Stephane Kardos. Via 30gms.
"I just about burst into flames at the awesomeness of
this cover." What sent Scott David Herman off on a great series of posts about his obsession with Penguin Modern Classics. Via Naz.
Screenprints, drawings and constructions by Emily Nachison. Via d*s.
On the drive back yesterday from a weeklong trip with my dad, the conversation, of course, led to the question "What ever happened to Shadoe Stevens?" That answer can be found at Shadoe.com, including information about Shadoe Stevens, the artist.
Plan59, "If there's one thing a Web site devoted to mid-century illustration isn't complete without, it's ... a gallery of 1950s pro wrestling stars."
"I didn't ask you to touch me like you missed me. I just wanted you to touch me like you were happy to see me..." NotCot on the bittersweet and textured illustration and collage work of Kurt Halsey Frederikson. More here.
Our friend Jason Robert Bell, an indefatigable artist perhaps best known for Caveman Robot, is back in Chicago to exhibit his Kala Series of paintings, opening Friday night at Thomas Robertello Gallery.
The Blanche Neige Project by Catherine Baÿ. Via wm$na
Some pretty interesting objects and installations from Franck Scurti. I love these.
Felt-Tip gallery, part of the London Design Festival 2006. Via cpluv.
Beautiful illustration, typography and animation from Si Scott Design. Via Shift 119.
"Slides are not art. All (Tate director) Sir Nicholas Serota needs to do is to get rid of the few bits of art the Tate does possess. Then he could turn the whole of Tate Modern into a theme park." Sounds like a good plan to me.
Helmick and Schechter create some pretty amazing sculptures. Via Oh Joy!.
Browse Gerhard Richter's The Atlas.
"When I first became aware of FAST Corp., I immediately sent away for their full-color catalog. Upon its arrival I tore open the pages, eager to choose the perfect monstrosity for my front yard." The Birthplace, and Deathplace, of Fiberglass Art. I vote this for the next CP field trip.
An amazing set of commercial and non-commercial projects by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. Via Bezembinder's.
"To prompt a call to Orkin (Pest control services), miniature police tape was placed at locations where pests enter buildings."
Paco Rosic's Sistine Chapel in Waterloo, Iowa and in spraypaint. Via GaB.
Mister Aitch on Antonio Basoli's Alfabeto Pittorico, 1839. Fantastic, as in fanciful or unreal.
Gorgeous new desktop vacation at Hybridworks.
Neshan Design Magazine from Iran. Via Cpluv.
Jakob Printzlau is Plastic Kid. He makes stuff.
Dataisnature on Paul Friedlander's light sculptures.
Joe Kral, "After buying the book Penguin By Design: A Cover Story I started searching local book stores and online for some of the old Penguin and Penican books. Here's what I have so far." Delicious. I. II. III.
We heart Gocco. Yes we do. Via gmt+9 (-15).
The paintings of David Ruhlman "Art should always make people laugh a little and frighten them a little. Anything but bore them. Art has no right to be boring." Via New City Movement.
"In her long career, which stretched over forty years and included the publication of more than forty books, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) portrayed a fascinating segment of the American experience." Via Plep.
"Dellschau's watercolor and collage images form a unified yet cryptic vision. His flying machines, or 'Aeros' as he titled them, are sequentially numbered and carefully rendered to demonstrate their mechanical capabilities." The story of Charles Dellschau, the Henry Darger of aeronautics.
Really bad tattoos, one, two, three, four. Via JSM.
The stunning work of James Jean. Via One Digital Life.
Artist Sharon Baker has created an edible self-portrait in bread.
The economical, beautiful illustrative style of Heywood Sumner (1853-1940), particularly, The New Forest series. Via Rashomon.
Covers from Ranger, the National Boys' Magazine, which folded in 1966 after 40 weeks and then was absorbed into Look and Learn.
Beautiful illustrations by Patricia Toyama. Via print & pattern.
"Police confiscated Mr Wendel's costume and sent him home". A German art student poses as a Terracotta Army warrior in Xian.
Petra Mrzyk and Jean-François Moriceau. Visual surprises and smart installations named, unaccountably, after Bond films. Via Bezembinder's.
Gerhard Richter's stained glass window for the Cologne Cathedral. [translate] The design is based on his 1974 painting 4096 Colors. From Greg.org, via DO.
Porch Auction ending September 22, 2006. Huge, varied collection of original illustrations. Great browsing. I. II. III. Via Paperholic.
Christopher Lee's beast is back.
Waterhalo sketch journal, out of Toronto.
Whoosh. Ben Grasso's Ascending House and other paintings at Sixtyseven.
The illustrations of David Foldvari.
Pictograms for the Beijing Olympic Games.
"...a strange transformation has come about with the result that the foliage of the tree is abundantly producing carbon in the place of oxygen." Smoke Tree. Via wm$nA.
Pingmag on overlooked European graphic design you can lick.
Vintage Karmann-Ghia automotive brochures and ad inserts. So fab. Many look totally fresh, especially the French one from 1963 with this cover and this one from 68. Via the always tasty World of Kane.
A small gallery of blacklight tattoos. Via BoN.
"Everything has a Pantone color. It's just a matter of finding it."
The strange and wonderful paintings of Marion Peck.
London agency Hi-ReS put together this to the point one page styleguide (PDF) for MTV. Via LifeClever.
"These letters spell out the first seven lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They were photographed in order, west to east, as I walked the Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury." Via Things.
Jeremy Adolphson decided to mail a card along with the return postage to some illustrators to see if he received anything back. He did. Via Mefi.
Where they took the photo that became the album cover.
There's lots to like about Today's Inspiration, most notably, the excellent scans of 40s and 50s illustrations and magazine layouts frequently accompanied by passages from unrelated but appropriate books. Via that Miss who is Swiss.
Inking for Mad Magazine, a tutorial by Tom Richmond. Via Drawn!
Michael Deas, painter of stamps, creator of the Columbia Pictures logo. Via Transbuddha.
Calling off all other vacation plans and am now saving for a week's visit. Staying in James Turrell's House of Light.
M is for Modern. B is for Bauhaus. Modern Alphabet Flashcards. Via bblinks.
"Having recently relocated his studio to Las Vegas from Key West, Florida, USA, the artist Pawlick creates his one-of-a-kind abstract-geometric visions exclusively in the medium of dry dog food." Via Cynical-C.
Joe Coleman, Apocalyptic Visionary Painter. Thanks Marshall.
Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz's impressively dark snowglobes. Via BBlinks.
From Our Man in Toronto: Design Times Square: The Urban Forest Project brings 185 banners created by the world's most celebrated designers, artists, photographers and illustrators to New York's Times Square. Each banner uses the form of the tree, or a metaphor for the tree, to make a powerful visual statement.
Grammar of Ornament Part One, Two, Three.
Mark Penxa's sketchbook.
"Fallen Astronaut," the only piece of art on the moon. "It was created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck and installed by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott, along with a plaque bearing the names of the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the service of space exploration."
The Architecture of Color and Identity by Richard Minh Le, 3D artist extraordinaire. Also check his "making of" article about the project. Via NetDiver.
Richard Sweeney. Sculptural pieces created with paper by means of scoring and folding. Many more here.
Back around this time last year, there was some buzz around the studio about typographic tattoos. Now that's all come back to us thanks to Ina Saltz's new book, Body Type. Thanks Margaret.
3D Painted Rooms.
Watercolor illustration by Stina Persson.
Love these embroidery illustrations by Kate O'Connor. Via Swiss Miss.
The simple, skillful design work of Johan Prag is featured by the Tokyo Art Directors Club this month. I'm hypnotized by his spot for Kewpie "Defe." Via Jean Snow.
Vintage magazine illustration by Frederic Varady, especially Love is Boloney. Courtesy of Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration.
"Colour Reading and Contexture," an installation by Jacob Dahlgren at the Malmö Konsthall, wood, tiles, chocolat, carpets, plastic, isolation and a lot more. Via Bezembinder's.
The graphic work of Spanish master Manolo Prieto. Via Peacay.
37signals sits down for a Fireside Chat with Richard Bird, Carlos Segura and JC to discuss Design: Then and Now.
Tons of material from the various film and tv adaptations of The War Of The Worlds plus a must-see gallery of all the book covers. Via Gravity Lens.
Please don't make the logo bigger!
Walter Allner died recently at the age of 97. He was responsible for many beautiful Fortune Magazine Covers and once you get a feel for his style you can pretty much pick them out from the thumbnails. (His are all signed btw.) Here's Steven Heller's obit from the Times.
Ever have any well-conceived logo designs that the client didn't appreciate? Me too. The No Go Logo Show, going on now.
Humus Magazine.
Peter turns the pages of Franco Maria Ricci and Corinna Ferrari's Top Symbols and Trademarks from 1973 so you don't have to. Luscious.
"Rf id mon amour 1.0 is a kit for designers, artists and architects, which allows the realization of interactive exhibitions in a very simple manner, without any specific knowledge of programming or electronics." Via Reluct.
Internet Paintings, along with Google paintings, Web Drawings, and more. Via Cynical-C.
Still life paintings and Postcard from Provence by British painter Julian Merrow-Smith. Thanks Alex.
The transition from million dollar homepages to buildings: The Sandberg Institute is now for sale. Via Designboom.
Two photographs of the same person from years apart, spliced together to entirely unsettling, sometimes comedic, results. Age-Maps.
Recipe for time-wastery: move mouse, click, repeat.
Recipe for time-wastery: move mouse, click, repeat.
Two new issues of Humus, the magazine you watch. Via Lounge72.
Ads from "Clinica Rural" Magazine 1960-70. So cool. Via The DDC.
"One of the strongest emotions between partners is the feeling of jealousy that is, according to the French Littre, a feeling which is 'born in love and which is produced by the fear that the loved person prefers someone else.'" Bjorn Franke's Traces of an Imaginary Affair. Via Reluct.
"Each work is created on an Etch-A-Sketch that take between 60-70 hours to complete."
Some amazing car window art.
Bret Aaker's Hyper Fake series. A lot like Lori Nix's work, which we highlighted over in Depth of Field.
Carmontelle's Transparency: An 18th-Century Motion Picture. Check the interactive "stroll." This can be seen perhaps as a precedent for the photographic work of Kahn and Selesnick, like their epic Scotlandfuturebog. More on K+S in our Depth of Field feature.
"During the period between the two World Wars, the Czechoslovak Republic was an important and prolific center for avant-garde book design. Signed, limited editions showcased experimental design techniques, high-quality materials, and specially commissioned graphics." A Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian joint, Czech Book Covers of the 1920's and 1930's. Great examples, well annotated. Via Design Observer.
Dale Eldred's Seven Views of the Grand Canyon sculpture at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.
The Space Invader Invastion of '06.
The portfolio and video work of Gregori Saavedra.
Every band should do this: An interview with Sanna Annukka about designing the new Keane album artwork. Via design*notes.
"Obscure Presidents and Sally Field On the Water." The titles are as great as the artwork. The Paintings of John Lurie (of Fishing with John fame). Via Transbuddha.
Classic Vogue Magazine covers.
Peacay on FC Vogel's Panorama des Rheins from 1833. Beautiful art and detail.
Michael van den Besselaar. Paintings.
The paintings and murals of Lois Renner. Especially Bea. Via Bezembinder's.
Conan O'Brien vs. Bear. Via Screenhead.
Peacay on Zoomorphic Calligraphy. Try and keep this post from spreading everywhere. Fab.
Stupendous paintings and sketches by Sue Rubira.
A beautiful search result. There's something you don't see every day. From Data is Nature's post on Joseph Albers.
Video excerpt from Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain about Stephen Wiltshire, whose powers of visualization and memory are staggering.
"This guided tour provides an overview of the various color and black and white print processes used to reproduce dime novel and story paper illustrations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."
Luckyface features work by New Orleans painter Adam Hall.
Portraits of Eminent Citizens of Mysore State.
Clothes Peg Iconography by Gad Chamy and Yoav Ziv.
Photoset of the moment: the3robbers' moleskines. Via Drawn!
Mark Jenkins new tape project, "Embeds" debuted on the streets of DC yesterday. Make sure to watch the video, by way of Negatendo.
Splatter your own masterpiece. Thanks Alex.
The sketchbooks and drawings of Mattias Adolfsso. Via Drawn!.
London Views. "This medievalised vision of apocalypse in England's capital city was carved on 14 pieces of linoleum with one small cutting tool. The original blocks make up a picture about twelve feet long." Thanks Alison.
Daniel Reynolds and His (Gigantic) Drinking Birds. Via Excitement Machine.
Tree drawings by Tim Knowles. Maybe not what you expect, but exactly what it is, via VVORK.
For years folks in the CP office endured lunch room stories of art and intrigue from my summers as a houseboy for the Clark family in upstate New York. Now they have to read them in the New York Times.
Custom Creature Taxidermy Arts. Likely to have little artistic competition working in the same medium. Via Byrdhouse.
Meredith Allen's Melting Ice Pops, 1999-2004.
Chris Turnham's and Kevin Dart's fab art prints at Fleet Street Scandal.
I've seen this process in action, and it's absolutely fascinating. How to move and install a Richard Serra sculpture. Via TMN.
The illustrations of Steven Harrington. So cool, especially The Discover Series and The Learn Quilt, found under "prints." Via Bibliodyssey.
Simon Norfolk takes photographs of supercomputers. "The problem is not that these computers might one day resemble humans," he writes; "it is that they already resemble gods." (Flash required; click on "The Supercomputers")
Illustrations by Alexander Blue.
Postcards I've Made. Via Screenhead.
Are wind farms beautiful? Is your answer political or aesthetic? Design Observer tries to find out.
Our friends over at Aesthetic Apparatus are always up to something great. Love these new pieces on wood.
On the heels of a sweet S. Britt print that sold out in minutes last night, Tiny Showcase presents Tiny Letterpress.
"In October of 2004, after my Grandmother Burns passed away, I decided to embark on a new computer generated 3D project. This one was to recreate N. Monroe Street in Lebanon, Missouri as it appeared in the 1960s. The house in the foreground (#166 on the street) was in my family on and off for about 100 years."
Mixing telegraphy, email, glowing alphabets, and messages in a bottle, it's Paul DeMarinis and his Messenger installation.
The hallucinatory painitngs of Erik Edwin Olson, especially My Dinner with Morgoth and The Herbivores.
Brad Guigar's Godzilla Family Tree. Via 1+1=3.
Nikolas Schiller makes cartographic quilts, fractals, and stars - including this mandala-like zoom-whirl down onto the White House and back again.
Michael Bierut on why 8.5" x 11" paper ain't so bad after all.
Fecal Face interviews Vancouver artist Ben Tour. "Satisfaction for me with my art is very short lived, I tend to want to move on to the next piece in the middle of the one I'm working on."
A collection of panoramic maps from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room. Via Pruned.
The paintings Rob Gonsalves have an Escher-type feel, but warmer and more playful. I. II. III. Thanks Markus.
"The Calamitous Quinquennial India Ink Freak-Out."
Answer Stefan Bucher's question, "What would you like to see?" by clicking "thoughts + dreams."
I think this is the third cat post on Fresh Signals. CSA Cat Power gallery at Veer.
More photo studies: this time of the US/Mexico border and Los Angeles product murals. From your friends at Polar Inertia.
Students in Delft have created the world's largest 3D display. It consists of "8,000 suspended ping pong balls that each contain a red LED light," and requires "4 kilometres of copper wire."
Westvaco Paper promotion guides, 1956-61, designed by Bradbury Thompson. Via Speak Up.
Xing Danwen photographs architectural models for proposed developments in downtown Beijing - complete with her own invented micro-scenes: Urban Fiction. Exhibition photos. (Via WMMNA)
Big collection of all things Print & Pattern. Really dig the work of Gillian Blease. Via Andy Rutledge.
Stéphane Bucco's fab portfolio, Socko.
How did I miss this? Antony Hare's Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. I'd like a Polanski to go with that please, or if not, then I'll have the usual.
This dude really, REALLY digs The Neverending Story.