Secret Still

Closing out design week (I’m off tomorrow) is what might be one of the finest pieces of design thinking I’ve ever witnessed. This time we dip into the world of Industrial Design with power designers Mike and Maaike who are behind some of the best designed products you use, including The Girl’s G1 Android phone. Core77 has a wonderful post detailing M&M’s process and ideas behind their Autonomobile project, which literally and completely redesigns not only the task of driving, but the idea. It’s not often that we get to see this kind of innovation so thoughtfully explained, and in a manner that is wholly feasible within the next 5 years. If I were a billionaire you can bet your sweet ass this would be what I would sink my billions into. As it stands, I’m poor, and I don’t think I would even qualify for an internship with Mike and Maaike. I’m gonna let them do the talking about this project, as they understand and explain it better than I ever could. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna cross the Bay and sit outside the M&M offices with a sad puppy look on my face and hope they let me just hang out with their ideas for a while.

Core77: The End of Driving

Mike and Maaike

Designer Mikey Burton rounds out design week with a solid portfolio of seriously unserious work. Great use of type, great use of color, and most of all a good eye for overall effect. I’m sorry to tell most of you in school for design degrees out there, but the latter talent is innate, not taught. You got it or you don’t. Mikey’s got it, and he’s making good use of it. Dude even did the identity for 20×200. I’ve got a couple of those cards attached to prints that I bought from 20×200, so I’ve now got work by some of my favorite artists, and one of my new favorite designers. Score.

Mikey Burton

Today’s designer spotlight is another type master, but this time the focus is more on hand-drawn type. Comparable to the prolific work of Andy Smith (previously mentioned), the work of Jon Contino specializes in amazingly well-crafted, hand-drawn letterforms. I haven’t drawn any type for a few months now, but one look through Contino’s portfolio and I got flooded with ideas. There are even a couple of tricks I’m going to swipe for future tattoos. If I’m willing to afix it permanently to my skin, it must be great.

Jon Contino

This week I’m gonna shine the spotlight on design exclusively, and to make things easier on you, I’ll only be talking about one designer a day. You might have heard of these designers, and you might not, but they’re work speaks volumes. For example, today’s designer, Paul Torres, has some great logo/identity work as well as a solid web design sampling. You don’t usually find those two disciplines together in one person, and even if you do they are almost never both well done. If you love identity, things like web design tend to atrophy. Torres is definitely the exception to the rule. His work is classy, simple, clever and very well executed. And he takes identity a lot further than most, even straying into packaging design. His site says that he’s looking for full-time employment, which baffles me, because someone should’ve snapped him up by now. But it seems like he could make a killing in the freelance world; a designer who can create your identity and a website to go along with it is worth his/her weight in gold. That’s a fact.

Paul Torres

The best part of waking up.

Sigur Ros live in 1999

Deadline

CPH Pro 09 Finals

Operation Midnight Climax

Helluva illustrator. Helluva photographer. Helluva site design. Hot people. Hot fashion. If it weren’t for the ocean between us, I might propose.

Kelly Thompson

Jacko fade to blacko.

HunterGatherer

Creating Art with McLaren F1

Zoom into a Tooth

Fluid Sculpture

Please Say Something

I know absolutely nothing about this comic, except that it’s fantastic and weird and blew my mind down my spine and out my behind. The Japanese just keep being better than everyone else at things. Head nod to Matt for showing me the comic in the first place. You’re a giant poose*, Matt, but you keep me entertained.

*moose pussy

Abstraction

Brooklyn artist Sarah Bedford kind of took me by surprise the other day. Not like she jumped out from behind a door or something like that, that would be kinda fucked up, but more that I was just cruising along, not expecting to see anything interesting, and then I ran headlong into her work. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of Doze Green’s work, even though the visual similarities are few. I can also see ties with Erika Somogyi (previously mentioned) and her naturescapes gone psychedelic. But where Somogyi leans more toward the Impressionist, Bedford uses more of the abstract in her compositions. We can sit here and talk about it all day, but art wasn’t made for talk, it was made for looking at. Go look at it.

Sarah Bedford

For once in my life I came up with a perfect description of an artist’s work, and the lucky artist is Katogi Mari, a Japanese illustrator of many fine things. The work itself is (are you ready for the perfect description?) like a precious moments painting meets an anthropologie/urban outfitters catalog. At first I thought that would sound a little insulting, but if you look at these storybook illustrations, the gouache especially, you’ll see that the description is apt and complimentary. I couldn’t insult work this good if I tried. All of you hipster chicks out there looking for your next girly tattoo to impress your friends, this is a good place to start. At least it proves you have good taste.

Katogi Mari