{ Monthly Archives }
In my daily design sojourn I came across this flickr photoset featuring images from the Giant Golden Book of Biology with illustrations by Charley Harper, which combines my love of kid’s books with great illustration. I’ve never met a Harper image I didn’t love, and these are no exception. If you’re ever at a lack of ideas for gifts to buy me, any Charley Harper illustrated book is a winner. I never get tired of looking at them.
Canadian Illustrator/Designer Neil Doshi is right up my alley. Did you ever notice how dirty that phrase sounds? But Doshi’s work is anything but dirty, in fact it’s as clean as they come. It’s got the solid expression that fortifies the work of artists like Geoff McFetridge, but without such a rigid style that things seem monotonous. I’m especially digging the design that he made for the new The Quiet Life t-shirt. Mothers, lock up your daughters, he seems unstoppable.
Sometimes I should just skip over the artist’s bios on their sites. I stared incredulously at Kristina Collantes’ bio because it says that she was born in 1987, making her five years younger than me. It’s hard to fathom so much talent coming from someone who was born when I was just getting out of Tonka shirts. Regardless of her age, her work is great. I love the color, the intricate patterns, and the delicacy. It’s like lace made from those dots that float in my vision when I stare at the sky. Seeing that she’s tattooed herself with her own work makes perfect sense. Who wouldn’t want those elegant spirals twisting across their body? If I had a piece by her I would definitely get it tattooed, probably onto my right arm; incorporate it with the beehive pattern that’s on my shoulder. If only.
Aside from having a sweet Victorian name Oliver Munday also has some clean, well-thought-out design. It figures that he’s designed decks for Stereo skateboards; he’s got the perfect style for them. I like that his work is both playful and simple, not something that most designers manage to balance well. His work for the New York Times is a whole other level of awesome. Damn good stuff.
I’m a little late in posting this one, but Sweet GIFs is giving the animated GIF a makeover for the 22nd century.
1) TSA Ganstaz. Since TSA can apparently steal your laptop and make you give them the password for it, this thug parody is far from the truth.
2) Wind Turbine Explosion. That is just spectacular. Via Boing Boing.
3) Growth of a Venus Fly Trap. The camera rig used to capture this video is equally as impressive. Via Ibid.
4) Italian Spiderman. More amazing than I can even describe.
Without the fat, orange cat this comic strip is nothing short of amazing. I never realized how much of an existential journey it was. Who knew Garfield was just fucking up the brilliance all along?
With the anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s death having just recently passed (February 20th), a day that preceded a lunar eclipse, a day that was both storm-ridden and sunny, it’s a strange coincidence that I should stumble across a set of photos from a show at M+B Gallery from over a year ago. No single author has been so influential to my own style, and what’s more, my own life than Thompson. I have to wonder about a person that can create so many changes in so many people, but then be reduced to a series of images and words, fragments of memories floating through our collective subconscious. I’m staring out a window at the same California sky that Thompson walked under for a better part of his life, looking at pictures of the times and places that he thought important or just vivid enough to need a reminder of, and I’m not questioning my mortality or anything as trite as that. I’m just enjoying a sky that a friend of mine once enjoyed, a friend I never met.
Illustrator Wayne Harris has a really straight-forward site design, and I think it’s the perfect compliment to his work. His characters are so vivid and expressive that the site around them doesn’t need any dressing-up. The work speaks volumes for itself. Harris has that flat-plane 3-D vector style that never fails to look good to me. It reminds me of an updated version of the classic Golden Books illustration style that I grew up on, but with a dash of Saturday morning cartoons thrown in. I could side-scroll this stuff all day long.
1) Coraline Teaser. If you haven’t read the book by Neil Gaiman yet you should probably get your ass up and go get it. Let’s hope this movie turns out better than fucking MirrorMask. Via Drawn!
2) Annual Report. I guess “life caching” is the next trend. It’s impressive that someone can keep such meticulous track of their life for a year. I think the better question is who really gives a shit? Via Core77.
3) Trunk Monkey. That pretty much explains itself. Via Boing Boing.
4) iBand. One Nintendo DS and two iPhones. That’s pretty rad.
5) Live Action Gmail. Video to promote Gmail in Russia created by Saatchi & Saatchi.
6) Post Comment.
7) The Pyrotechnic Imagination. Gunpowder drawings.