grain edit posted a post about another poster (person) who posted about the travel posters (wall art) of daphne padden, a british illustrator and designer. in the 50's and 60's, padden created posters for Royal Blue Coach Services (a UK bus company) which make up the majority of the collection shown. the rest of padden's posters are just as whimsical.
and you can see the collection here.
in no way is this new - but in most ways, it's super cool.
typetester is a site where you can play with font, leading, tracking, color, word spacing and decoration (and more), click on "get code" and get the css code for your website.
it's like a typographer's web dream.
speak up posted an article about a great find found on the obama campaign's website. i'm not going to post my views on who should be the next president, but i'm really liking the multiple-audience-identification here and the smart design. i think it'd be interesting seeing who people would vote for based on the candidate's logo. might be something to investigate.
low and behold, john sent me a link this morning to a site he said i'd love: designers-who-blog - a site that features blogs about design by designers, about life by designers, about blogs by designers, and, of course, designers who blog. it's probably one of my most favorite sites to come across, as it has led me to many many more sites that have been added to my bookmarks bar - like joshuaink (pictured left, which i bookmarked bc it is a greatly illustrative yet simply designed blog that i read very quickly but was amazed bc of how pretty it is - so yes, i basically just "looked at the pictures").
i'm not only jealous of the sites they feature bc some of them are extremely gorgeous and are evidence that these designers know way more about designing blogs than i do, but bc my other form of green-ness is they're featured on the designers-who-blog site.
my jealousy is miniscule to the tremendous amount of jubilation i have to finding a great resource and community of like-minded bloggers. it's like discovering mecca.
so i sent john this link earlier today, after kevin sent it to me. but since i was trying to finagle my myspace profile (which i think i broke), i hadn't posted it on desidioms.
anyway, i sent the link for amnesty international's microsite where you can watch their parody of the "home shopping network" selling AK-47s like they were the latest craze in middle-aged women's gaucho pants.
i'm looking through my messy bookmarks page folder and find day 26 - a great photographic journal of Erick and Lisa - a married couple documenting their lives online.
i know i didnt bookmark it so i could see them everyday (though you can sign up for their newsletter if you start to feel particularly attached) - i bookmarked the site bc of the great design of their site as a whole and i like how the navigation matches the friendliness of their big idea.
and it's great to satiate your voyeuristic tendencies once in a while.
who's there? knock knock - a "semi-spanking new design company with aspirations to greatness" (so says their homepage banner).
knock knock is not a "store" but they do sell a bunch of cool items from to-do pads, library kits, to party banners that say, "mad props" and personal library kits for the books, movies, and music you might lend out. all the goods are fun and nicely designed - clean - sharp - funny - same stuff you can find at urban outfitters, without the jacked-up price.
my co-worker sent me the site for GRAHAM ROUMIEU, an illustrator who's done work for Harper's, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Penguin Books (and much much more).
i like his site - i am a big fan of hand drawn type. beats verdana's butt any day. plus, make sure to check out the "special" section. there's a lot of fun work in there. heck - the whole site has great work all over it.
a friend sent me the link to the top 50 music videos of 2005. there's nothing bad to say about the whole site. it's obviously a blogger blog, but the authors cleaned up the blogger template (see the address). but i give them props for taking the time to post the best videos of 2005, and helping me fill my friday afternoon with something else to do besides work.
i found another great site full of really fun and sometimes raunchy ads from around the world. surprisingly enough, it's called ads of the world. be sure to have your headphones plugged in and make sure your boss isn't walking behind you, bc some of the quicktime ads posted aren't all pg-13.
i got back to work yesterday after a weeklong break, and found a package from art prositute. enclosed was a bunch of flyers for national forest design's steven harrington and justin krietemeyer's exhibition at the art prostitute gallery in denton and their artist's talk at january's dsvc meeting.
i took a look at their site and their work. very very nice. if you're in the dallas area, i encourage you to haul yourself and your design inspired friends and go see their work in denton, and see their talk on wednesday january 4. they start at 7pm at cityplace.
"... i hope to find these under thee..."
so, to counter the upping of my dork factor with this post title and lead-in line, i'm offering the special little tid-bits i learned from an email newsletter sent to me by daily candy:
alpha, gear for gents is selling $50.00 lomography fisheye cameras for $37.50 with the check out code: ALPHDC. enter that code to recieve 25% off everything on that site.
DEALS is the code to recieve 25% off items at shop intuition (everything is pretty pricey to begin with, so you'd still be spending a lot of dough, but if you like a good deal, and that deal means saving 80 bucks off a dress that starts at 240, then go for it!).
and last of the deals i'm willing to tout is 25% off of bongenre.com items by entering the code: DCPLATES. the site is worth checking out even if you're not going to take advantage of the discount. it's full of cool melamine tableware in distinct patterns to rival your ikea shopping arch nemesis.
so, it's been almost five years since i graduated from university - graduated the communication design program - and yet, the book, "the elements of typographic style" is again infiltrating my desktop. but instead of the wooden desktop i used to work on - the one full of scratches, sticky with spray mount and decorated with the out-of-the-line markings of prisma colors - it's my 2-d computer desktop, with the rotating pictures of my nephew and my cat.
this time, it's the the elements of typographic style applied to the web. finally, something to reference when our programmers tell us we have to live with their inability (or lack of professional accountability) to make our body copy look halfway decent.
my friend sent me this link for fancy parking. it's a fun site with videos, photos and tutorials about parking atleast 5 times fancier than your neighbors. and it's not badly designed either. props to the diagram makers. if only driver's ed had graphics this cool.
twiddling my thumbs at work, wondering when the motivation will come for me to draw up some pencils for this annual report i'm supposed to be working on. so surfing online for inspiration, and decided, "hey, why not see what's new on the art prostitute site." and so i did.
as i am already attention-deficit this morning, i'm not really reading the site info - unless you count the intern's blog of short notes without too much substance or informative information. that might actually be the reason i'm just listening to the music and only looking at pictures, like the linked sites on their homepage...
leading into my picks for posting as "cool lookin sites" that i'll admit, i'm just looking at them, not really reading them:
poundabearhug.com which leads to the 1300 gallery which is a distraction, go back to obey which i think is a store, and then i finally find the event page and scroll to the triple crown link and the site of the month, - both of which are my favorite discoveries in my art prostitute workday tangent.
boden has these rubber cowboy boots, aka "cuban wellies" for all-weather-cowboy-boot-scootin. the color and patterns available are pretty loud, but if you must wear cowboy boots in sludge or rain, these would be a much better option than soiling the boots you bought at nieman's.
pitchfork media dissects the worst record covers of all time today.
i thought this one by ted nugent was particularly interesting. as i was perusing through the 10 page article, i found some real gems, like little feat's "hoy-hoy!" on page 5.
and upon stumbling across the corey feldman album cover, i can't help but think of the splendidness of today's poppy bands and their cd booklet covers. not the same amount of square inches, but enough to spark the beginnings of some tween memories.
or maybe not.
i got an invitation to the movie game/scene maker. basically, you and your friends alternate making scenes in a storyboard, by selecting a background, characters, props, bubbles where you add the text.
right now, me and two other art directors are working on "wtf_omg_LOL". we're doing this instead of working. i'll prob have to come in on saturday.
this is just stupid fun.
i found everything i know in the sidebar of we make money not art today. it's a site about "interaction design and design in general," and rory hamilton's "effort to get years of experience out of my head and into the world."
to quote kurt vonnegut, i think it's "nice, nice, very nice" - for a world of designers to get the equivalent of a mentor's input from the same (online) device.
michael anastassiades' social light and anti-social lite are part of the Design For Thought exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jeruselum through 1/31/06.
the social light requires chatter to keep it glowing - a good cue as to whether your party needs an infusion of excitement. unless you have a silent shindig, such as a book reading, where the anti-social light would be more appropriate.
the anti-social light, is the opposite of its social counterpart. the light source will actually dim down and eventually go out if there's too much noise occurring around it.
more cool stuff from the exhibition here.
(links via thedesignweblog via we make money not art)
