General Eclectic's incoherent Universe

50 ways to be creative

2011-06-24T00:16:00.001+02:00

I found this list on BauBauHaus and although I think it should be called: What To Do When Stuck, I agree with a lot of the tips; they work for me; for instance "finish something".
It's an interesting topic, even if this was maybe meant tongue in cheek. Maybe more later. Please post your own favourite method for clearing Creative Bottlenecks.

Internet Movie Cars Database

2011-05-15T12:41:00.001+02:00

I came across an interesting sibling of the IMDB, the IMCDB, or the Internet Movie-Cars DataBase. It's this huge awesome archive of cars as they appear in movie's. Every make, model, is represented and presented in the same bureaucratic but clear order that defines the IMDB itself. This archive is not only paradise for car-lovers, but also for movie stills-lovers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians (or designers like myself) or a combination of all. Here are some samples (Yes, I like 50's and 60's movies and cars). Dive into this site and get lost forever.

Flickr

2011-02-08T20:22:00.001+01:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The works of Jillian Tamaki

2010-10-29T14:27:00.001+02:00

Jillian Tamaki is a Brooklyn based illustrator and graphic artist. She makes brilliant work. She really controls her tools and is very experimental with styles, materials, colors and textures. I love it.
She also has a blog in which she shows her sketches.

penguin series

2010-10-29T13:43:00.001+02:00

This is a fantastic Book series from Penguin; GREAT LOVES. Beautiful serene illustrations and extremely sober typography. This are some small samples. I came across the whole series in the bookstore (uncoated paper covers, just the right weight). A lot of the covers are illustrated by Victoria Sawdon (site is inactive) whose work I realy like. The series has a flower/plant theme and all illustrations are botanical metaphors for the stories inside. The authors, subjects and styles are diverse and eclectic; kierkegaard, Turgenevd, Sagan, Updike, Boccaccio, Nin. I found this link on the NY Times books blog where David Pearson (who made one of the most beautiful covers) explains part of the design process. Pearson (link to his site) is a designer over at Penguin Press and one of the most talented book designers and illustrators workin today. The whole illustration is done with rubber stamps (which seems to me to be a complicated way to add texture and tactility, although I appreciate the crafty gesture and it makes for great original artwork). <br>There's an interview with Pearson here, in which he talks about his influences and about the other elaborate and fantastic series he did for Penguin: Great Ideas, which has a much more typographical appraoch. His work is stunning. <br />Penguin has alway had a stable of the best designers and illustrators, and they keep up this tradition. I love their bold, clean and imaginitive approach.
Besides Great Loves and Great Ideas there's also a Great Journeys series. Again an illustrative series with very limited and distinct color pallettes which tie the whole series together.
There is one thumbs down for penguin; I found out, looking for this series over at Penguin's that they don't credit their cover designers in the info sections that go with the books. So I hope it's is okay for me to do this for them and praise them with this post.

eye movement of women when looking at a man

2010-09-03T16:05:00.001+02:00

Public Collectors published this scan from an old book on psychology - Psychology - The Fundamentals of Human Adjustment, by Norman L. Munn, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1946. More psychological illustrations from this book here.

The Bridge through the Living Room

2010-09-03T15:51:00.001+02:00

From the site of Girder & Panels - a vintage toymaker that seems to be back in business. I love this photo!

chrysler advertisement goodie

2010-08-26T17:26:00.001+02:00

some more fine examples of old branding

2010-08-26T17:21:00.001+02:00

beautiful Lux soap packaging

2010-08-26T17:07:00.001+02:00

I want to spend post on some beautiful examples of packaging. I am really into food packaging at the moment . I found this great Lux soap wrap in an article and found the pictures on ebay where someone offers a 1940 bar of soap for 4,99 dollars !

I also love the back of the packaging. Such tempting copywriting.

Julien Vallée

2010-07-08T13:27:00.001+02:00

Julien Vallée makes familiar yet slightly more refined animations. This is a nice little movie. I also like the song.

OFFF Paris 2010 Sponsors titles from Julien Vallée on Vimeo.

2010-06-23T21:18:00.001+02:00

seems to me that if you want to make serious money there's an idea right here.

idea - dating by sense of humour

2010-06-16T13:43:00.001+02:00

I found this in the Ideas section of BordFunk.de A Wonderful designer. I think most of the ideas are rather arty farty, or already done, but this one I found both functional and funny in itself.

Idea 11 - Find your love

Build a website that offers to find someone's perfect partner.
Try to achieve this by presenting a set of jokes and asking
whether they find them funny or not. If people have a
significant amount of matching jokes, they can contact each other...

The Way Things Go

2010-06-15T11:02:00.000+02:00

cool clip for Zzz

2010-06-09T15:40:00.001+02:00

cool clip by Roel Wouters (among others). I knew the drummer of ZZZ form back in the days in Maastricht and he's a huge guy who's very funny. He burped in my face when I bumped into him some time ago, which I thought was less funny.

spider

2010-06-08T23:27:00.001+02:00

Very Funny.

Micah Lidberg

2010-06-07T23:21:00.003+02:00

One of my favourite illustrators at this moment Micah Lidberg. (and I'm not alone). His moods are dark and fantastic. His sense of line, color and shape is astonishing. He's also a great typographer, or actually a great letterer.

cool speedy animation about motivation

2010-06-04T12:48:00.001+02:00

Interesting story too!

Walter Naeslund on a worrysome trend

2010-06-02T15:42:00.001+02:00

The wise Walter Naeslund writes:

As I read in Dagens Nyheter about “virals” being the advertising trend of the decade, I feel a slight jolt of motion sickness as I sit on the train from Stockholm to Gothenburg. I can’t tell if it’s the tilting of the high speed X2000 train or if it’s actually a jolt of worry for our future recruitment to Honesty and the reputation of our business.

The clownvertising virus has truly spread like the swineflu across the board now that viral marketing has reached the radar of the mainstream advertising agencies and creatives are celebrated across the board for creating highly irrelevant YouTube hits instead of boosting their client’s bottom line. This in turn creates “heroes” among young creatives for precisely the wrong reasons, and has them filling their portfolios with “fun”. I don’t want to get a bunch of people here banging on my door wanting to create films with the sole purpose of grabbing YouTube-views by use of humor, and where every strategic positioning is going to be the “fun”-position to excuse the use of humor as a shortcut to major traffic. This is wrong.

The challenge is not in creating the maximum number of views on YouTube. It’s to build brands and move goods out the door, while ALSO creating real value (can in some cases be humor) that can be the vehicle for these goals. It’s a non-zero-sum-game where everybody wins, where value is created and where efficiency is increased. Much like the evolutionary origins of social psychology and trade. Some of these creatives would really need to get a book on business and one on evolutionary psychology for christmas. Maybe we can do a viral fund raiser on Facebook?

I couldn't agree more

original article here. This post for my personal reference only

jobs interview transcript

2010-06-02T15:36:00.001+02:00

from an article by Brier Dudley, orginal article here:

"
Swisher jumped right into the interview with Jobs, asking for his thoughts on Apple surpassing Microsoft's market capitalization last week.

"For those of us who have been in the industry a long time it's surreal," Jobs said. "But it doesn't matter very much, it's not what's important ... it's not why any of our customers buy our products. So I think it's good for us to keep that in mind."

Walt Mossberg kept up the pressure, asking Jobs about his controversial decision not to support Adobe's Flash technology on mobile devicies and how it's affecting consumers and developers.

Jobs said Apple's makes technical decisions to support what it sees as emerging technologies such as its early decision to support the 3.5-inch computer disc over the 5-inch floppy disc and to drop serial ports on the Mac. He said Apple believes Flash is on the "wane" and HTML5 is in its spring phase.

"Sometimes when we get rid of things like the floppy disc drive in the first iMac people call us crazy," Jobs said.

"Or at least premature," Walt said.

"No they call us crazy," Jobs said.

Mossberg said consumers may not agree it was the best choice when their iPads show Web sites with holes where Flash items should be displayed.

"What if people say the iPad is crippled in this respect," he asked, drawing a heated reaction from Jobs.

"Things are packages of emphasis," Jobs said. "Some things are emphasized in a products, some things are not done as well in a product ... so different people make different choices."

Jobs said Apple has "the courage of our convictions."

"We're going to take the heat because we want to make the best product for customers. .... they're paying us to make those choices. That's what a lot of customers pay us to do - to try to make the best products we can. If we succeed, they'll but them. If we don't, they won't. I.... so far I have to say that people seem to be liking iPads. We've sold one every three seconds since launching it."

Swisher and Mossberg also pressed Jobs to discuss the more tense relationship Apple now has with Google. They also tried to pin him down on whether Apple will replace Google as the search service on its mobile devices - some have speculated Microsoft's Bing may take its place - but Jobs sidestepped the question.

What changed in the relationship between Apple and Google?

"They decided to compete with us and so they are," Jobs said.

How about PC operating systems with Google's Chrome O.S.?

"Chrome is not really baked yet so we'll see," Jobs said.

Asked about Apple's long platform war with Microsoft, Jobs said he never thought about the competition that way.

"We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft," Jobs said. "Maybe that's why we lost - we saw ourselves buiding the best computers we could build."

Jobs also drew laughs talking about why he prefers the consumer market over the business enterprise market.

"What I love about the consumer market and I always hated about the enterprise market is we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it and every person votes for it themselves. They vote yes or no," Jobs said.

"The enterprise market, it's not so simple - the people that use the product don't decide for themselves. The people that make those decisions sometimes are confused."

Their conversion elicited an interesting story about the genesis of the iPad. Jobs said he'd asked his team to develop some kind of display he could type on early in the decade and they produced an amazing touchscreeen system. Scrolling and other features made him think, "my god, we can build a phone out of this."

Phones were a more important market so the tablet was shelved while the iPhone was created.

"When we got our wind back and thought we could take on something next, (we) pulled the tablet off the shelf, took everything we learned from the phone and went to work on the tablet."

Jobs predicted that PCs going to be used less and less as new computing devices emerge. PCs - including Macs and Windows systems - "are going to be like trucks but they're going to be used by one out of x people."

What the dominant computing device will be is unclear.

"Is it the iPad? Who knows. Will it happen five years or seven years from now, who knows?" Jobs said. "But I think we're headed that direction."

Swisher asked Jobs about future plans for the iPad and how it could help the struggling news industry. Jobs said he hopes that he's helping newspapers "find new ways of expression so they can afford to get paid, so they can keep their news gathering organizations intact."

"Even more than magazines, some of these newspapers - the news gathering and editorial organizations are really important," Jobs said. "I don't want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers myself. I think we need editorial more than ever right now."

Apple's also going to enter the advertising business itself, but Jobs said the company won't make a lot of money with the new venture. He said the objective is to help developers make money so they can keep providing free or low-cost apps.

"We're not going to make much money in the ad business," he said. "We're doing it for our developers."

During questions from the audience, Jobs told an iPhone owner frustrated by poor network service in Houston that improvements are on the way. Jobs said he's been told that the network is being upgraded with faster connections and switches and improvements should be there by the end of summer.

Jobs said he's been told that "things - when they start to fix them - get worse before they get better. If you believe that, things should be getting a lot better soon."

News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch opened the event, recalling how Steve Jobs appeared at the first D conference eight years ago. Jobs talked then about misunderstandings between technology and content creators, a gap that Murdoch believes has since narrowed.

The worlds of technology and content have moved much closer since our first gathering," Murdoch said. "In fact sometimes the line between them has been completely erased."

Content is also key to technology products such as music players and e-readers, Murdoch said.

"You need content too - after all, what is an iPod without music?"

Murdoch used his introduction to assert the need for content to be paid for online, and noted that the Wall Street Journal is growing circulation despite it's subscription approach. He also noted that the paper already has more than 10,000 iPad subscribers.

"We need a fair price for our content," he said. "There's no great secret here. In response to skeptics who say technology is killing the news business, I believe technology is ushering in a new golden age for those willing to embrace it."

the wonderful work of Sarah Charlesworth

2010-05-31T22:14:00.001+02:00

These series by artist Sarah Charlesworth are based on newspaper. By blacking out certain parts of the original lay-out she leaves us with a different sort of "news" (is truth). The reconfigured works are show the essence of a medium and confront us with an aesthetic and editorial bias. It reminds me of the concrete poetry of Paul van Ostaijen, though I think his interest is more in the language itself en in the inherent eclectic beauty of the early newspapers.

2010-05-27T23:24:00.001+02:00

beck, tweedy, kotch & more friends sing All Come To Meet Her from Skip Spence, the other tracks from Becks record club are also worth checking out.

Record Club: Skip Spence "All Come To Meet Her" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

beautiful musical instruments of Harry Partch (1968)

2010-05-27T22:58:00.001+02:00

This clip I found on Beck's fantastic Site.

I want this

2010-05-22T23:08:00.000+02:00

Ain't this the dearest fox? The attachment of the legs to the body is like fingers to a hand. And besides that the poor thing is either bashful or slightly ashamed of killing a wee chicken.

cool shirt

2010-05-18T14:25:00.001+02:00

Check out this cool shirt made of Lacoste logo's, for sale here

map works

2010-04-22T10:48:00.001+02:00

funny maps by Christoph Niemann.

world street

2010-04-22T10:43:00.001+02:00

this is an intersting idea; what would the ideal street look like, if you could pick the best stores, bars, homes etc from all over the world and line them up in a long street? The idea is better than the execution, but google street view could maybe help out here? Since it's now limited to the dull reality of registration, users could maybe compose their ideal world? Combine bits and pieces to create new parks, villages, countries even?

A Splendid Eye

2010-04-22T10:36:00.001+02:00

Eric Tabuchi has a splendid eye for the tragic melodramatic, tragi-comic everyday theatre of abandonded objects. Artifacts of human behaviour. Not a single "person" appears in his photo's, but the buildings, objects, debris and trash become characters. really beaytiful work, check it out.

camera axe trigger

2010-04-21T14:28:00.001+02:00

the post made use used the camera axe.

see article here

drop capturing

2010-04-21T13:41:00.001+02:00

the beauty of drops photographed with the use of technology. here's a set up instruction

Massimo Vignelli's Bicentennial Poster

2010-04-21T09:47:00.001+02:00

What a fantastic Typgraphic design.

i want this!

2010-04-21T09:46:00.001+02:00

Unfolded designed this really cool Tea Pot. I am not much for Tea, coffee is more my drink when it comes to hot beverages. Still, I wouldn't mind having this polygone tea pot. It was based on the first complex 3d model:
The Utah teapot is a 3D model created in 1975 by Martin Newell which has become a standard reference object in the computer graphics community. It is a simple, round, partially concave mathematical model of an ordinary teapot. The objective of Utanalog by Unfold is to return the iconographic teapot to its roots as a piece of functional dish-ware while showing its status as an icon of the digital world.
On the website they state it's for sale and has been actually produced. I sent a mail about the price, though I am afraid it will be quite expensive.

Fantastic Type Illustrations

2010-04-07T00:12:00.000+02:00

Really nice imaginitive typography: Alex Trochut

2010-04-07T00:11:00.001+02:00

De Groene Amsterdammer - Verbale oorlog

2010-04-02T12:24:00.000+02:00

De Groene Amsterdammer - Verbale oorlog

Polaroids by Anna Verlet

2010-02-08T12:52:00.001+01:00

Beautiful polaroids by Anna Verlet, who has great eyes. These are two of my favourites, though there's many other.

Norwich Textile Pattern Book

2010-02-07T16:59:00.001+01:00

On of those typical cases of serendipity. I was searching for graphic patterns of South American Tapestry and came across what must be one of the most astonishing book"works" that have ever been made. It is a pattern book from the 18th century and it is filled with sample strips of fabric. It must weigh a ton. I own the giant Book of Ornaments Taschen republished and that's amazing in it's printed form. This is the real deal, tactile, handmade...

wrangler interactive cinematic catalogue

2010-02-05T10:15:00.001+01:00

this is one excellently made website for wrangler jeans. the interaction is just soo smooth and cinematic. it also loads like a fucker, so that really good work in the compression department. the overall impact of the movieclips, the use of sound/music and the graphic handling of typography and buttons makes for a really immersive user experience. There's also the advantage of being able to see the jeans and shirts from different angle, so the stuntman like behaviour - or is it judo? - of the character is still functional in some odd way.
if in the end this experience will result to me buying wrangler jeans is another issue. Don't think so. There seems to be real trend to pimping the way products are presented.

Stephen Wiltshire drawing from memory

2009-11-11T11:58:00.001+01:00

from designboom

Here you can follow the live creation of a drawing of the Manhattan Skyline by memory by british artist Stephen Wiltshire. Stephen Wiltshire is an artist who draws and paints detailed cityscapes. He has a particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate representations of cities, sometimes after having only observed them briefly.
I don't really like the drawings stylewise, but it fascinates me that people with a photographic memory only need a brief view of a scene to render it accurately. Like having a build-in camera. Of course you need a double competence; one for memorizing and one for reproducing the memorized. It is the quality of this conversion which makes us call it art.. or not.

Mc Sweeney en de toekomst van de onderzoeksjournalistiek

2009-10-29T23:29:00.001+01:00

Onderstaand mailtje is afkomstig van Mc Sweeney's. Het geesteskind van wonderkind Dave Eggers; auteur en uitgever.
Mc Sweeney's publiceert naast Mc Sweeney's quarterly concern; het mooist uitgegeven boek/blad ooit (nou ja..), ook mijn lijfblad The Believer het leukste en breedste literaire maandblad dat ik ken, de vierjaarlijks film/documentaire periodiek Wolphin en uitgeverij. Allen zeer aan te raden en voor ons Hollanders belachelijk goedkoop door de lage stand van de dollar en de relatief hoge oplages (the Believer heeft een oplage van 15.000 en toch geen adverteerders!).
U hoort het ik ben fan. Ik vind dat dit een groep mensen is die er toe doen, die hun nek uitsteken, die iniatieven ontplooien, die kosten nog moeite sprane, die de wereld niet mooier maar wel inzichtelijker willen maken en die staan voor alles waar Amerikanen echt trots op mogen zijn. Amen.

De mail die ik kreeg is een verzoek. Een verzoek in eerste gericht aan lezers en betrokkenen uit Amerika, of zelfs San Fransisco. Niet het eerste verzoek wat ik kreeg. Het beroemde blad the Nation is ook al maanden aan het bedelen voor voortbestaan en bestaat inmiddels bij gratie van giften en donaties. Eigen schuld "printed media"? Of is er iets anders aan de hand? En is het eigen schuld onafhankelijke media? Allemaal vragen die nu niet aan de orde moeten komen maar die wel ten grondslag liggen aan deze e-mails.

Dit verzoek, deze mail, kan worden uitgelegd als het zoeken naar nieuwe vormen van journalistiek en de financiering daarvan maar ook als een wanhoopsoproep om private financiering van de en als een slecht teken met betrekking tot de stand van hoe onderzoeksjournalistiek A.D. 2009 gefinancierd wordt (en misschien ook wel moèt worden; for the people, by the people). Een interessant staaltje moderne fondsenwerving voor een gigantische journalistiek project (een 96 pagina's artikel! Dat is in Nederland zeker nog nooit vertoond). Er klinkt (over)moed maar ook lichte paniek
Mocht iemand nog twijfelen over aanschaf van het bewuste nummer dan wel steun aan dit project; verder in het nummer medewerking van de drie allergrootste graphic novellists/striptekenaars en stukken van enkele van de beste fictie en non fictieschrijvers die er op dit moment zijn (I.M.H.O.).
Mijn doel is overigens niet om geld, dan wel abonnees te werven, hoewel het me goed lijkt als dat zo is. Ik ben slechts geboeid door deze ogenschijnlijk geïsoleerde oproep – een Amerikaans tijdschrift vraagt geld voor een zeer diepgravend onderzoek naar een brug in San Fransisco – en vraag me af of dit een blijvende ontwikkeling binnen de (kritische) journalistiek is. Er lijkt op zijn minst al sinds enkele jaren sprake van een professionalisering van de zogenaamde grassroots bewegingen. Eenzelfde professionalisering die deels heeft geleid tot Obama's verkiezingszege (een interessant artikel daarover trouwens in voorgenoemde Believer). Ook lijkt het te duiden op een definitieve verschuiving van de verhoudingen in de relatie tussen opdrachtgever/uitgever/journalist/publiek. In die zin heeft deze ontwikkeling ook grote gevolgen voor ons medialandschap. ik zie in Nederland bijvoorbeeld parallellen met de ledenwerfactie en het succes van GeenStijl. Ander doel, andere organisatie, ander land en mediastelsel, maar wel eveneens een rigoreuze Call to Arms buiten het bestaande journalistieke stelsel om.

M c S W E E N E Y ' S

---------
If you live in the Bay Area, as we do, you may have noticed that Tuesday night a five-thousand-pound piece of steel fell off the top of the Bay Bridge and onto a small truck. Now the bridge (the whole bridge! Used by 280,000 drivers a day!) is closed indefinitely, the six-week-old emergency repair that put that piece of steel there has been called into question—and the twelve-year-old, $4.5-billion-over-budget Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit is looking more ill-conceived by the minute. What on earth is going on?

It seems like as good a time as any to announce that our next issue will feature a genuinely groundbreaking report, written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Bob Porterfield and structural-engineer-turned-reporter Patricia Decker, on just what has brought our dear bridge to where it is today. Our correspondents, with the help of San Francisco's Public Press, have been digging into this for months, following the money through Chinese steel refineries and Sacramento bureaucracies, and what they've found will recast the way Tuesday's bridge-breaking and the last decade of bridge-mending is understood. It's an incredible story, and we're going to shed more light on it than any investigation to date.

You'll be able to read the whole thing in Issue 33, but you can also, right now, help Porterfield and Decker secure the resources they still need—we're funding their investigation through Spot.Us, and we're hoping that the next few weeks will see their budget goal reached. It's a new approach for us, but the prospect of reader support is what's making this piece possible.

And, if you are wondering why we're running long-form investigative infrastructure reporting in our literary quarterly—it is because Issue 33 of McSweeney's is a one-time-only, Sunday-edition-sized newspaper. We are calling it the San Francisco Panorama, and it may well be the biggest project we have ever undertaken: there is, besides a ninety-six page broadsheet dedicated to the news of the day and of the Bay,

• a sixteen-page, full-color, 15" x 22" comics section with work from Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, and Art Spiegelman;
• extraordinary reportage from William T. Vollmann and Nicholson Baker;
• a 100+ page magazine featuring essays from Antarctica and Israel and Andrew Sean Greer at a NASCAR race;
• a 100+ page book review with new fiction by George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, James Franco interviewing Miranda July, and Joshuah Bearman on romance-novel cover models;
• China Miéville reviewing The Road and Stephen King watching the world series;
• and also possibly, seriously, the best food section that has ever appeared in any newspaper anywhere, with an incredible modular ramen recipe from New York's own David Chang and a fifty-eight-step lamb-belly photo essay from San Francisco's Ryan Farr.

We have been working nonstop on this one since the spring, and we couldn't be more excited about every ounce of it—but as ever, this thing depends on the commitment of our readers, so if any of this sounds like something you'd like to see on your doorstep, sign up for it today. And if you are a store, any kind of store, or even a museum or something like that, and you are interested in carrying our paper in the Bay Area or anywhere else—well, email adam@mcsweeneys.net and he will sell it to you!

Meanwhile: we'll be putting up glimpses of the issue on our site until it's out, so please do check back there as well. There's all kinds of exciting stuff to come.

interactive typeface

2009-10-26T00:14:00.001+01:00

This is a nice typeface called 'laika' by michael fluckiger and nicolas kunz. It reacts to various circumstances.

LAIKA from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo.

site here.

Tree/map

2009-10-25T21:30:00.001+01:00

When looking at the thumbnail I thought this was the reflection of a tree in a pool of water. It is a map of Kentucky though. Could be a useful mix up one day.

victorian tradecards

2009-09-24T00:13:00.001+02:00

A site completely devoted to the Victorian age. Tradecards of every possible make and category are on display!

camouflage 3

2009-08-17T11:52:00.001+02:00

here is more on the art of dazzle camouflage, razzle dazzle, or dazzle painting
The primary object of this scheme was not so much to cause the enemy to miss his shot when actually in firing position, but to mislead him, when the ship was first sighted, as to the correct position to take up. [Dazzle was a] method to produce an effect by paint in such a way that all accepted forms of a ship are broken up by masses of strongly contrasted colour, consequently making it a matter of difficulty for a submarine to decide on the exact course of the vessel to be attacked.... The colours mostly in use were black, white, blue and green.... When making a design for a vessel, vertical lines were largely avoided. Sloping lines, curves and stripes are by far the best and give greater distortion.
here is an interesting article about the relationship between artists and the war industry in a review of an exhibition called artists and camouflage.
here is good article as well.

camouflage 2

2009-08-17T11:24:00.001+02:00

Apparently Jeff Koons designed the exterior of the yacht Guilty, owned by billionaire Dakis Joannou. His design is inspired by the camouflage mentioned in the first post, and by, I think, lego and obviously Roy Liechtenstein.
By the way the designer of the boats camouflage in the post of yesterday is called Maurice Freedman, He was, and I quote, the district camoufleur for the 4th district of the U.S. Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation. The plans shown are not for war vessels but for merchant ships.

camouflage

2009-08-16T21:18:00.001+02:00

I found this article about the camouflage of war vessels around WWI. I came across the painting "dazzle ships in drydock in Liverpool" by Edward Wadsworth.

the great site but does it float has an article about camouflage, and it links to a nice site of the RISD with tens of sketches of the graphically stunning designs for the war vessels which can be found here.

science imagery blog

2009-03-17T00:41:00.001+01:00

very inspiring blog about science and its fascinating imagery.

fruit under the microscope

2009-03-17T00:39:00.000+01:00

cool bbc film of fruit under a microscope. beautiful images.

fifties illustration techniques

2009-03-02T00:10:00.001+01:00

I have been searching the web for what seems like forever to find something meaningful on the techniques of fifties storybook style illustration. I finally found a true treasure island of insight techniques, expert explanations and excellent examples: John K's Blog. Blessed be the good man.
He posted an interview with one of comic's greatest artists; Art Lozzi. This interview covers about the whole subject of illustration techniques and it sure answered a lot of maddening questions i had about how to obtain certain effects (like the grainy shading that is so typical of the "Golden Book" style. (Partly this involves acrylics, rollers and sponges)
Thanks John, and Thanks Art!
The interview is here (scroll down a bit)

nice animation

2008-12-18T22:37:00.001+01:00

beautifully animated short film. Course and sweet. Charlie Harper meets tatsuro kiuchi, or something like that!
Thanks José!

Lee Miller in Adolf Hitler's bathtub

2008-12-07T21:58:00.001+01:00

I saw this image in an episode of Roel van broekhoven en Geert Maks's "In Europ (an episode about horrific revenge on the german's).
I googled the picture and would like to keep it on loan on this blog so that I can look at it everytime I am here. This is such a loaded image when you know it's context. This photographer Lee Miller taking a bath in the bath of the führer. Her boots neatly in front of the bath. There are two exposures which seem to have been taken seconds after eachother.
There is the dramatic historical context. The fact that a liberal american woman reporter is sitting in the bath of a fascist leader. The venus-like statue on the table which whose movement is mirrored by Lee Miller. The small portrait of Hitler, who aparantly was so narcistic that even when he was taking a bath he needed an idealized image rather than a mirror.
This photo is endlessly fascinating....

resource links

2008-12-05T00:21:00.001+01:00

resource links stolen from the site mentioned in the last post. Yummy

bibliodyssey

2008-12-05T00:19:00.001+01:00

a marvellous blog about historic maps and charts. Stunning...

cooper

2008-12-05T00:00:00.001+01:00

Cooper is debunking the myths about webdesign. Very good article. I know he's talking about me and my fellow imagemakers/designers. Yet he's so right.... and we're so wrong in thinking that the web is just another medium..
this food for thought.

chris Jordan

2008-12-04T23:26:00.001+01:00

Chris Jordan is a fantastic photographer/artist.

Life photo archive disclosed

2008-11-18T22:30:00.000+01:00

Fantastic! Millions of photo's from the Life archives are now searchable. Google is involved :)

1500 SCI-FI covers. Urania sixties

2008-11-16T16:38:00.000+01:00

1500 Covers of Urania, an Italian Sci Fi series ... incredible artwork and some really crazy images; monsters, semi nude women, it's all there.
Illustrator is Karel Thole. Yes a dutchman who moved to Milano in 1958. Graphic Designer, Cartoonist, Illustrator, dopehead?
I came across it googling for the illustrator of a sixties edition of Don Camillo which I found lying on a desk at my wife's parents.

Typotecture

2008-11-14T22:50:00.000+01:00

A blog about typography as architecure, or architecture as typography? Anyway dig!

ffffound

2008-11-13T23:52:00.002+01:00

nice collection of visual inspiration.

GrainEdit

2008-11-13T23:48:00.000+01:00

GrainEdit is a nice bloglike site with interviews with the best illustrators. They also have and even more interesting site on flickr where they keep and store the goodies. Hot Damn! Vault after vault is opened. Where does one find the time tom cherish all these delicacies?

tips and tricks for designers

2008-11-13T23:41:00.000+01:00

This website, called Before and After contains a lot of tool tips, practical guidelines on essential design elements

Bram Schouw commercial for Sensoor

2008-09-25T23:11:00.001+02:00

Tonight I saw a good commercial (in dutch) on AT5 from director Bram Schouw for Sensoor. check it out.

slimaq

2008-09-09T22:34:00.001+02:00

Nice work from this illustrator. Slimaq

>

Paul Sahre's dog's stick collection

2008-08-25T23:19:00.001+02:00

I also found this on Paul Sahre's site. A collection of sticks from his dog which they started in 1994 .

Paul Sahre bookcover designs

2008-08-25T23:09:00.001+02:00

I found out about this very good book-designer called Paul Sahre from New York. He designs mostly book covers but also makes pretty illustrations. He's amazing with both typography and imagery. All his covers are distinctie, very funny, original and they fit the content beautifully.
Paul, if you read this, I hope you don't me showing the ten people who read this blog your artwork. If you do, please let me know.

logo evolution

2008-06-18T23:15:00.001+02:00

delillo II

2008-06-17T20:23:00.001+02:00

This review of Delillo's Americana. One of my favorite novels is so well written, it's almost as good as the book.:

The time, the age, the epoch, the season, the culrue, and the genius at full bloom at the outset, March 13, 2007

By	P.K. Lipson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Americana (Paperback)

No need to write the great American Novel.
It has already been written.
This is it. Vonnegut
in his fiction wrote that all you
need to know how to live is in the Brother's
Karamazov, but it's not enough anymore. If you live
in America, this is the supplement. In the negative sense.
One almost should enjoy this novel one sentence at a time.
Each one is genius. I also like the way Delillo micromanages words,
and sentences. The page is extremely claustrophobic, but it is an extremely cozy nook. The vividness with which this novel comes alive is perhaps its triumph. Delillo has described the journey of David Bell so well, that one can live in it vicariously, and doesn't have to make it themselves. I do not want to make that cross country sojourn anymore to writhe the experience out of Americana, get some vital juice out of being an American. He describes the currents and undercurrents very well.

The heart of the book is, I believe, on page 130.

...Something else was left over for the rest of us, or some of the rest of us, and it was the dream of the good life, innocent enough, simple enough on the surface, beginning for me as soon as I could read and continuing through the era of the early astronauts, the red carpet welcome on the aircraft carrier as the band played on. It encompassed all those things that people are said to want, materials and objects and the shadows they cast, and yet the dream had its complexities, its edges of illusion and self-deception, an implication of serio-comic death. To achieve an existence totally symbolic is less simple than mining the buried metals of other countries or sending the pilots of your squadron to hang their bombs over some illiterate village." [...]

I think this is what Americans are striving to ultimately do, (speaking of the general culture) and this is of course, as Delillo points out in the novel is not only destructive but impossible.

He also talks truth about the role of statistics in the national consciousness. Everyone, will, or should find a foible of Americana that they can appropriate as knowledge, something to call their own form now `till death.

One can get distracted, but the entire message for me is this: There is nothing in the American culture worth having. On the fringes, or in the mainstream. Pick your poison. A book dedicated to this is monumental. This really is, I think, the great American Novel, which is as fertile today as it was in 1971.

delillo

2008-06-17T20:18:00.001+02:00

came across this blurb on amazon.
"For Mark Osteen, the most bracing and unsettling feature of DeLillo's
work is that, although his fiction may satirize cultural forms, it
never does so from a privileged position outside the culture. His work
brilliantly mimics the argots of the very phenomena it dissects:
violent thrillers and conspiracy theories, pop music, advertising,
science fiction, film, and television. As a result, DeLillo has been
read both as a denouncer and as a defender of contemporary culture; in
fact, Osteen argues, neither description is adequate. DeLillo's
dialogue with modern institutions, such as chemical companies, the CIA,
and the media, respects their power and ingenuity while criticizing
their dangerous consequences. Even as DeLillo borrows from their
discourses, he maintains a tenaciously opposing stance toward the
sources of collective power."

I think this is remarkably well put. And it explains an attitude/dialogue which I try to hold high.

coolness

2008-06-16T22:41:00.001+02:00

no other word for it: cool. every link a journey in itself. Great great site. It contains so much stuff I am really interested in I don't know where to start.
Everyone Forever. Twinned by equally cool Advanced Beauty and Universal Everything

more about book covers

2008-06-16T22:27:00.001+02:00

This weblog is all about book covers. Good stuff for book- and illustration lovers (oui, moi)
It also has a post about a bookdesign by Seth (I'm a big fan). I saw this book in the store this afternoon and it's very pretty.
Here's a funny comic of a talk given by seth and Chris Ware. thanks to strippedcomics.

alice tait

2008-06-16T13:54:00.001+02:00

When browsing in the bookstore I came across a beautiful cover illustration. I (barely) remembered the last name"tait" and when I came home I googled it. Her name is Alice Tait and boy what a gems I found on her website.

By the way I bought a wonderful book: the collected stories of Joan Didion: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. And that's the truth.

Edel rodriguez

2008-06-06T19:06:00.001+02:00

Edel rodriguez: I love this man's work!!
Especially the "chalkiness", the linework and the colors.

fabulous poster designs

2008-05-14T15:36:00.001+02:00

The Mountain Goats Noise Pop Concert Poster by Nate Duval

Explosions in the Sky Concert Poster by Nate Duval
Damn, I missed out on the Explosions in the Sky concert last monday in the Paradiso. Such a shame

the Decemberists by Jason munn of the Small Stakes

The Arcade Fire London Concert Poster (#1) by Burlesque Design

by Burlesque Design

Rage Against the Machine Poster by Ken Taylor (a shame about the typography, such a dragging cliché those soviet letterings). The man can draw and design though

Snow Patrol, Hot Hot Heat Concert Poster by Daniel Danger

Decemberists by Jeff Kleinsmith

Hot Chocolate Art Print by Dan McCarthy. this guy is real find for me. I love his work. He;s obviously fascinated by contours and lines.

By the way, I took most of the images from posters and toys, where I got myself three posters! Can't wait!

why wasn't I told? film leaders

2008-05-14T12:41:00.001+02:00

Submarinechannel: Supposedly this is one of the 100 websites you must have seen (before you die?), I mean this part of the site: All the great leaders, opening sequences and so on of movies. Subtitle: Forget the film, watch the titles.
A delight it is indeed.

Great Motion Graphics Design

2008-05-14T12:17:00.001+02:00

This is a great intro for "300" by Garson Yu of yU+co (interview here).
Found this on Motiongrapher, a pretty and elaborate and very informative site about, you guessed it, motion graphics.
There I also found a clip of a commercial by 180 Amsterdam for HTC, the Iphone rip-off. Very nice.

cool furniture

2008-05-05T12:00:00.001+02:00

This piece of furniture designed by Giuseppe Canevese features the artwork of graphic artist Guido Crepax (1933-2003), who was influential in the development of European comic art in the second half of the 20th century. His most famous storyline, featuring the character “Valentina“, was created in 1965.
(quote from here and here)
Creator of Erotic comic art, graphically brilliant.

shepard fairey copycat

2008-05-04T17:03:00.001+02:00

Shepard Fairey of Obey design made a poster for the Barack Obama campaign.

The poster was for sale at the obama website, but is sold out ( print run of 5000). I noticed the prices are throught the roof on ebay. Originally sold for $70,- they now fetch at least 200 bucks. Now that's change we can believe in :)

It is a nice enough poster as far as the image is concerned. The iconic value is pretty dubious though, since the aestethics rely heavily on leftwing propaganda. As a poster said: "Good grief, where did this guy study -- the Joseph Stalin Art Institute? This stuff looks absolutely Soviet."
The cause is a worthy one though but the price is too steep for me.

Googling for poster info I came across this interesting article by Mark Vallen. The article points at the plagiarism that is very obvious in the work of Obey (Fairey).
The proof Vallen gives in his examples Vallen can't be denied. This is plagiarism (or nothing is). I am not that familiar with the work of Obey, though I have come across it many times (led zeppelin cover etc). I am not that big a fan (I have seen work like this that is better) , but the blatant stealing of iconic anti-establishment imagery makes obey fall from grace. Although stealing, reproducing, copying and lending is an old phenomenon in protest movements (see Che) I guess every generation gets the protest-imagery it deserves. The thing that bugs me most is that Obey is not a protest movement but a successful design agency (critcally acclaimed). In other words; I can't blame the guy in black, with the dirty ropey hair and the lousy dogs for not coming up with anything more original than using 80's squat lingo, but I can blame Fairey for deliberately stealing images of better and more original artists without giving them credit. Most of all I blame him for making dangerous art harmless by making it "nice looking".
The only credit I give him is that he made a poster for Obama. Though I am getting seriously suspicious about the retro look of the poster. I am sure we'll find out that was a rip-off as well in the future. It is obviously "inspired" by propaganda and the psychedelic sixties (see earlier posts about Griffin, Grimshaw and others), as is all of his work. Since all the images that can be seen here are oviously copied I guess the (style of) the Obama poster must be aswell. Seems the lot of the work just has the word "obey" pasted into it.

I like this image below graphically, but the title (the title is on the guitar) is stolen from the words on the guitar of my hero Woody Guthrie.

elegant flash design

2008-05-03T23:19:00.001+02:00

this website uses flash in such an elegant manner. I know, that word elegant is old fashioned and it is not very fashionable to describe something that is amde recently. But it is the right word. I envy this design (and the knowledge of flash). I actually tore down the swf with a small app called flash decompiler, and it looks as gorgeous under the hood as the coachwork that carries it.

army man with cool new issuu gadget page viewer!!!

2008-05-03T23:10:00.001+02:00

Following the also quite smart Picasa webalbum of the army man scans here is an even cooler thing. I absolutely LOVE Issuu. I have been searching for a page flip code souce for hours and hours (and found several) untill I found Issuu. It's free, it's gorgeous and smart and web 2.0 savvy (share, share, share). This is how to do it. Design smart web apps.
Expect to see me using this for the publication of some interactive sketchbooks (reason why I was searching).

talking about magazines... Army Man scans

2008-05-02T21:32:00.001+02:00

oh yeah...
Talking about magazines (and genius writers like Gossage). There is one serious hiatus in the "best of" list that I just have to mention here.
It is of course "Army Man - America's Only Magazine" (even the title and subtitle are thè best ever).
This must be the funniest magazine ever. I found out about this magazine when the believer (the number 2 on my list, naah #1) issued a facsimile of the much sought after #1 issue.
Editor George Meyer (read a brilliant profile from...again a favourite magazine, the New Yorker here) is called the funniest man on eart and I believe there is a lot of truth to that claim.

Because I am such a generous man I will post scans of Army man's pages here. I came across them years ago and have treasured them on my harddisk (I moved them with each new one). Thanks for the guy that did the scanning then, unfortunately I do not know a a name or a link. Too bad the pics aren't bigger (the old days?). What I did was print them and try to read them and memorize them.
Do as I did and give this as a gift to yourself and your offspring.
Favourite? Ask Uncle Trivia.

army man scans

Send me yr goddamn manuscripts. Cut me in on yr freak-beams. I'll print anything.

2008-05-01T23:22:00.001+02:00

Also on the list in the list mentioned in the previous post "fuck you / a magazine of the arts.
Here's the blahblah (the picture above tells it all me thinks)

Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts

Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. (1962-1965). Thirteen issues, considered one of the most influential underground magazine of the early Sixties. Started by Ed Sanders--Beat poet, Fugs band member, and proprietor of the underground Peace Eye Bookshop--Fuck You was a deliberately provocative mimeographed journal, at first emphasizing poetry and later expanding to include other writing. Each issue is illustrated with line drawings by Sanders.

Contributors included Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg (also of the Fugs), Carol Bergé, John Wieners, Andy Warhol, Ray Bremser, Lenore Kandel, Charles Olson, Joel Oppenheimer, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Julian Beck, Frank O'Hara, Leroi Jones, Diane DiPrima, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Robert Kelly, Judith Malina, Carl Solomon, Gregory Corso, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Gilbert Sorrentino, and many others--a virtual "who's who" of avant garde poetry in the Sixties.

I wish I could get my hands on a copy of this. I love underground magazines and especially ones where the editor note says: "Send me yr goddamn manuscripts. Cut me in on yr freak-beams. I'll print anything."

There is a vol 1 issue 2 listed on abebooks for the slight amount of $1400,- How counterculture babyboomers devour their own children.

the best magazines ever

2008-05-01T23:05:00.001+02:00

Best of lists are always a highly dubious claim, but they make for an interesting read. This article lists the 50 best (*Smartest, Prettiest, Coolest, Funniest, Most Influential, Most Necessary, Most Important, Most Essential, etc.) magazines of "all times" and at least some of my favourite magazines are on the list (and period correct).

Howard Gossage

2008-05-01T22:08:00.001+02:00

this is a site dedicated to the life and works of advertising genius Howard Gossage (1917-1969) The socrates of San Fransisco.
He did some truly brilliant, disruptive and highly onconventional ads. The guy's a true legend and inspiration.
Here's an article on how he is still relevant, to online advertising (indeed, indeed, strange times).
be sure to read the copy below. It is of the highest quality; monty python would be proud (though I realize prosumers don't read anymore.)

Among the many quotes that are worth being cut in stone and driven through the big glass facades of ad agencies are his : "Advertising: A multibillion dollar hammer pounding a ten cent thumbtack." and "You don't have to bruise an elephant all over to kill him. One shot in the right place will do."
He also had some refreshing approaches to the "consumer" and target audiences:
"I don't know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody." and:
"To ask consumers how they like ads is like asking a galley slave what he thinks of his job calisthenics-wise."

This is an ad for Fina.
and one for eagle shirtmakers.

and quantas.

thanks to addbuzz and ciadvertising
I did not mean to steal officer, just to borrow..

CIA handbook on overthrowing the Nicaraguan government

2008-05-01T21:34:00.001+02:00

the mirror world of the worldwide web sure is a strange place. the "original" image, the real world, is (obviously) even weirder (since it has ubstance instead of pixels).
On Flickr I found scanned in pages of a CIA manual to overthrow a government (apparantly the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in this case). It is a fascinating studies in civil disobedience. One should come late to work (or call in sick), hide and damage tools, spread rumours, make false hotel reservations, threaten the boss by telephone, disable cars ,make molotov cocktails.
There are also more clumsy tips (it he above weren't clumsy enough); spill liquids on documents, cut and perforate the upholstery of vehicles (what the hell for? you already put dirt in the gastank on page 9).
My favourite is; "plant flowers on State Farms" pure poetry.

For those among you (whoever the hell that is :)) who are looking for tips and tricks to overthrow a government (americans among you?) without making your hands dirty, here are the things you always wanted to know about CIA methods but were afraid to imagine.
As funny as this is, it makes you wonder what the hell those people in the pentagon think they're doing. Now and again...
Whoooo if al quaida were to come across this manual. I have often wondered what it would be like if terrorism was exterted in a more daily, less spectacular mode. It would certainly scare the shit out of me.
Then again, they don't scare me nearly as bad as the guys at work in the agency.
as Hunter 'd say "it never got weird enough for me".
If the book is real that is.

Paris, may 1968, poster gallery

2008-05-01T21:10:00.001+02:00

Here is a small gallery of posters that were made in 1968 during the french student protests. Here is another, and another. Some of these posters still look vital although most have become iconic (and thus a bit "safe" because of their vernacular hipness and worth). A style had been set though and a lot of current protest art can at least learn something from the clean and "sec" language, both textually and visually.

Lou Dorfsman and the gastrotypographicalassemblage

2008-04-22T00:05:00.001+02:00

I found this post on the I Live Typography blog. A more complete piece is here on the AIGA site.
Both deal with a great piece of typographic art by Lou dorfsman (bio here) that goes by the name of the Gastrotypographicalassemblage. Apparantly this piece was made for the cafetaria in the CBS bulding in the sixties and took six years in the making. He worked with John Alcorn and the great Herb Lubalin, who did brilliant stuff like this:

Footage of this work and a restoration project can be found on flickr here.
It sure looks delicious. I also love the photo's of the "making of" which is actually a restauration process. The big letters look like loafs of bread. The organization that does the noble work is called the center for design study.

the global village

2008-04-17T10:40:00.001+02:00

This site archives images of people from round the globe and shows our "sameness". This sameness has a very american focus, but I don't mind.

many same is an archive of universal sameness –
as observed through the internet.

in isolation from their original context images acquire new meaning. similarity is amplified while any inherent significance or value is diminished. ultimately the viewer is prompted to re-interpret the message, placing new cultural, aesthetic and emotional qualities upon it.

as a publication tool the Internet has facilitated an unprecedented accumulation of privately owned images, which are for the most part freely accessible. this constitutes a vast repository of the ‘everyday’ that provides a unique perspective of minute social and cultural phenomena.

A good idea. And some nice image galleries. I especially like windowseat, leaning tower from the kodak moments section (although the idea is stolen from Martin Parr) golden arches and jesus saves.

directness (to be continued)

2008-04-12T22:47:00.001+02:00

Print is not dead. It just smells funny

2008-04-12T22:17:00.001+02:00

Check out the photoset on flickr of an exhibtion called Radar Eyes: A Survey of Hallucinogenic Printmaking that took place in Chicago from 7-22 march. Of course the usual gibberish of line and color vomit and random "droodle style" artwork is well represented, but soem works suceed in making me hopefull for the future of printmaking.
I am gladly adding to this, in the spirit of my posting on Haight Ashbury (the book is long finished, it was great and inspiring) that (well made) psychedlic art is not dead either. Indeed it just smells funny, but that's the whole purpose. By the way; bad psychedlic art has never died aswell and will probably be around to amuse cockroaches that survived a nuclear holocaust.

Robert Kennedy's Funeral train by Paul Fusco

2008-04-12T00:34:00.002+02:00

On june 8 1968 Robert Kennedy's body was transported in a funeral train to it's final resting place. He had been shot three days earlier in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. Here's the whole story.
I came across this story because of a stunning series of photographs by Paul Fusco.
I think the images are truly moving, both literaly and figurely.
I was especially touched by this image.
I think it is one of the best photographs I know. Both chilling, compassionate and intriguing. Epic is also a word. Who needs words though with images like this.
By the way there are also some video interviews with Paul Fusco on the site.

and here's another brilliant photo.

By the way I hope the copyrightholder for who I have the greatest respect won't mind me showing these treasures to those who were not aware they existed, like myself.

and another cool huge pixel art world

2008-04-11T14:05:00.001+02:00

here. nice and big.

world's tallest virtual building

2008-04-11T14:00:00.001+02:00

coool building.

prairie schooner

2008-04-02T22:54:00.001+02:00

all you Chris Ware hunters out there: The Prairie Schooner, a quarterly of fiction (and more), features a cover by Mister Ware.
Looks good. Too bad the jpg is so small. hey don't feel the need to mention him in the credits. One point less for this magazine, which looks nice enough. I also love the title.
Unfortunately there's no information on international shipping...

Dan Nadels' Comic Visionairies

2008-04-01T16:27:00.001+02:00

Dan Nadel, who is a faculty member of Parsons school for design illustration department, wrote a good book about unknown comic visionaries. In this interesting interview that appears on the website of the ComicsJournal he talsk about the book and some of the comic artists that appear in it.
Among those artist is a fellow named Charles Forbell who I didn't know. Nadel points out that the panel lay-out and the inventive way of telling graphic stories is a predecessor to the likes of Chris Ware.
The picture below proves this to be the case.

how the rich live

2008-04-01T00:01:00.002+02:00

While browsing for images of Adam Dant I came across this excellent blog. It features a series about the most expensive real estate worldwide.
Bizarre palaces, villa's, high tech residences. Somewhere down the line you probably financed a tiny part of them.
Check it out.
PS - scroll down

Adam Dant

2008-03-31T23:48:00.001+02:00

Adam Dant is a 37 year old London bases artist. His work consist,among other things, of obsessively detailed images of rooms, architecture and public spaces . The works are quite large, but all the same the amount of scribbly lines is unbelievable. He works in pen and ink. Sometimes black and white, sometimes sepia. Sometimes it's colorized.
A nice collection of images (and maybe even still art for sale) is shown here at Adam Baumgold Gallery. The gallery that also sells the Chris Ware work I am often drooling over :)
This picture shows his work in a gallery context (though not baumgold's)

Here he's shown with one of his works.

Charles Verschuuren

2008-03-31T16:14:00.001+02:00

Charles Verschuuren was born in 1891 in Tilburg, the Netherlands.
He was schooled as an illustrator and a sculptor in Amsterdam. It turns out he lived three streets down from where I live in Amsterdam.

In the twenties he and his family moved to New York. There he worked for the International Display Company but soon he started working for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as a cover-designer/illustrator.

His work is characterised by sharp angles and stark contrasts. Somewhat typical for those days, but at the same time more radical than most "art deco" illustrations.
He also worked as a painter and reached illustration Nirwana with works for the famous magazine the New Yorker.
His work is in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum and The Theater Instituut.
He died in 1955

Summarized from this Dutch site

states

2008-03-31T15:53:00.001+02:00

Every American State has an official "state tree". This is a nice poster listing all state trees.
American states also have official state flowers, songs, dishes, songs etc. But that is another topic.
I am also a big fan of Smokey the bear, the character that was brought to life in 1944 to support the campaign against forest fires.

nice blog

2008-03-17T14:29:00.001+01:00

acejet170 is a nice blog about found typography, old books, good design and smart observations.

It has a great piece on an appearance of Alan Kitching, a god of typography. Here he is holding the poster for his talk.