How to get yourself noticed and remembered by a creative agency when you’re a typographer? Well the guys (and gals?) of Taylor Lane found a way. Use something everybody uses. Something ordinary, everyday object; a calendar:

The “Escola Superioir de Artes e Design” from Matosinhos, Portugal (Europe), has been filming lectures by designers for over 4 years now. They placed most, if not all, of them on their website, free to watch and enjoy. See people like Neville Brody, Ellen Lupton, Experimental Jetset, Erik Spiekermann, and Wim Crouwel talk about designrelated subjects. Most lectures are about 1,5 hour long, so don’t do this when you’ve only got a few minutes to spare!

From 23/05/2008 till 29/06/2008 there is a graphic design festival in the city of Breda, in the Netherlands. Ranging from seminars to workshops, you wan’t it, they’ve got it. Look on their website for more information!

Jos Buivenga is a Dutch (or Belgian) font designer. And he gives them away for free (well most of them). And even though they are free, they look gorgeous, unlike most free fonts. Check out his font Museo, which I fell in love with. or look at the other 7 fonts he has on his website.

Typeculture:
This website collects, amongst other things, essays on typography.

Al Jaffee’s MAD fold-ins:
Al Jaffee has created numerous fold-ins for MAD magazine. The New York Times had put some in a flash gallery. Humorous drawings, with a hidden message.

Barrier Art (a Flickr photo set):
Barrier Art consists of Mural drawings made by US forces in Iraq. Some are pretty nice, but most look like crap (artistically speaking). But it does explain what they do in their spare time.

Adobe TV:
Adobe has opened their own online TV channel. Focussing on their products (duh!), they’ve put some good tutorials, and interviews online.

Joge-e; The way of the 2way pictures:
Joge-e is the Japanese art of drawing pictures that can be viewed upside down as well as downside up. Which makes them fascinating to look at.

Atlas Monsters (another Flickr gathering):
A resurrected online collaborative continuation of Ashley Holt’s 1999 project entitled Our Bullets Are Useless*. At least that’s how they describe it. Interesting, nonetheless.

Hi-Fructose Magazine:
Well, it’s hard to describe, all I can say it’s another online magazine, but that’s wouldn’t quite explain it. Just look for yourself.

Richard Wilkinson is a British illustrator, who borrows his influences from various places, of which one of them is Japanese art (I think). Very interesting and relaxing work he creates. With very soft colors he tends to create a ‘relaxed’ illustration.

30 Days 30 Pieces:
30 Days 30 Pieces is a website featuring graphic designers and illustrators whom have lost their focus on pure design and are trying to regain that. They each create one piece a day, 30 days in a row.

JeremyPettis.com:
Jeremy Pettis has made an effort to animalize type. He’s made 26 fonts / namelogo’s that each represent their own animal.

Typotheque.com:
This website has some interesting articles on graphic design and typography.

Logoserver.com:
An overview of American sports logo’s. See their proces over ages, and sometimes reverting back to earlier design.

Vinyl Abuse:
A toy and art magazine.

Candykiller:
Website of Brian Taylor, whom creates very cartoony but disturbing artwork. Also check out his blog!

The Little Chimp Society:
They call themselves ‘the illustration news portal’ and their members make quite intriging work. Some fancy it, others don’t, make your own decision.

Sarah Mensinga:

An illustrator that has a very nice style. It makes me think of Monkey Island 3. Always liked the graphics in that game.

During the period of 1918 and 1932 there was a Dutch magazine called “Wendingen”(it translates to English as something like “Curvings”). It was a very designwise groundbreaking magazine. And it’s influences were quite big, (in terms of Dutch graphic design), even De Stijl borrowed some influence from it.

The website (Dutch) below has made an effort of showing an overview ofmost the magazine releases:
http://www.zuidelijkewandelweg.nl/architectuur/wendingen.htm

The interesting thing of “wendingen” was that it didn’t only feature graphic designers. It was a magazine dedicated to architecture and related subjects, but still featured a lot interesting design and typography.

A father and his son (presumably)  both write the alphabet with a brush on paper; interesting experiment. But whom has the most experience in writing?
A fine example of technique and craftsmanship coming with age:

Since it’s the 80th birthday of the Academy Award movieposteraddict.com has collected (allmost?) all of the winners’ movieposters up to date:

Check out the list here:

I found this list on a blog about one of my minors: Illustration. My teacher probably posted it.
It’s quite a list, so I’ve put in under the ‘more’ tag. Click it and see!

Mr. Doob has some interesting stuff on his website. Hard to describe, but just take a look. The bookshelf on top is the menu.

Basically he has a digital lab where he does experiments with techniques such as Flash, Rex, PV3D and others. But the interesting part of his site is that for most of his experiments he also published the sourcecode. Which lets you take a look inside the things he created. All of the effects are code generated which makes them, in my opinion, quite impressive.

And while you’re there, check out his blog, for other design related posts.

Two of my classmates did a presentation on animation in music video’s. Very diffent kinds of music, and style, but all contain the same thing; illustration:

Check these out(also look at the ‘more’ section):
One of the first ‘animated videoclips’:

1974 – roger glover – love is all:

1984 – Bob Dylan – Gotta Serve Somebody:

1984 – A-Ha – Take on Me:

19?? – Pearl Jam – Do The Evolution:

199? – Korn – Freak On A Leash:

199? – Royksopp – Remind me:

199? – Royksopp – Poor Leno:

199? – Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger:

And I like them. Dark roasted Blend has made a collection of interesting, strange and /or just plain cool advertisements. Some of the advertisements were done by Christophe Huet, whom I mentioned before, and some by others. Just take a look at them:

Cool Ads, Part 1 Some neat ads DRB has stumbled upon

Cool Ads, Part 2 Powerful advertising at work

Click on more to see the rest of the list

Cool Ads, Part 3 – Urban Commuting Discover cool ads on your way to work

Cool Ads, Part 4 Explosion of Creativity (2 pages)

Cool Ads, Issue 5 Creativity and (wonderfully twisted) imagination

Cool Ads, Issue 5 (Continued) Page 2 – Love & Romance

Cool Ads, part 6 Another batch of splendid marketing ideas

Cool Ads, Issue 7 Prepare to be persuaded to buy stuff

Creative Ads, Issue 8 Commercial Weirdness Showcase

Just a list:

• Peepshow ©
• Rasterform ©
• Arnida Europeo
• NetDiver M
• Colourbox ©
• Black Convoy ©
• DigMeOut M
• 
  

More to follow!

© = collective
M = (online) magazine

I went to visit my sister today at my dad’s house. And there I discovered some interesting panels on the wall (I totally forgot about them). I think they’re Indonesian, but I’m not sure since they’re from my uncle’s heritage. And he can’t tell no more. But still I find them rather intriging (is this spelled right?).
Anyways enjoy! (the XL .jpg can be found here and is about 1.54 mb, so be patient if you want to look at it. It’s really worth the waiting!)

The image is a bit out of perspective by the way, since it’s a really huge photomerge done with photoshop cs 3. (it’s always a bit of tricky to get it completely right if you use more than 3 or 4 images / photo’s)

P.S. My dad’s also got a room divider / clothing screen / dressing screen / whatever it is called, in the same style. I’ll try to make some photographs of it next time, and also post them.

Check out coverbrowser.com. They’ve got a database filled with (mostly American) comic covers, from the 1930’s till about 2000 and something. All arranged in several categories. Even when you’re not looking for inspiration it’s still a nice way to spend some spare time with! They also have some cd covers and some magazine covers. And while you’re there check out their Labs page.

For an example have a look at these nice covers:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/detective-comics
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/peter-rabbit
http://www.coverbrowser.com/top/pulp

UPDATE:
Some more interesting sites and databases with comic covers:
The Silver Age Marvel Comic Covers Index : Marvel Comics from the 1950’s till 1970’s and a bit later
Grand Comic Book Database (GCD) : only a searchable database but with a lot of different terms to search on
612 French Comic Books (1901-2002) & 520 American Comic books (1938-2001)
Ben Samuels Classic Golden-Age Comic Cover Gallery : Nice site with Ben Samuels personal collection, divided into Superhero & War, Good Girl & Romance and Crime & Horror Comics, and some artistspecific galleries.
superdickery.com/galleries : A different, sarcastic view on comic covers, mostly American
Holey Moley Comic Book Quest : American Comics from the 1940’s – 1950’s grouped by publisher and series (to bad it’s a free host, so beware of the ads)

L’Ecole Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques (L’ESMA) is a French School of Art, based in Montpellier, and the’ve made some of the nicest animations I’ve seen. There are 6 short films (about 8 min. each) of them on the internet, but I can’t wait to see more of them!

- Replay
- Le Nouveau
- Oracle
- Hugh
- Tong
- Jungle Jail
- In Memoriam

Some of the films are in French, without subtitles, some have English subs. Click on More to see them!

Replay:

Le Nouveau (About an intern):

Oracle:

Hugh:

Tong:

Jungle Jail:

In Memoriam:

Browsing around YouTube I stumbled upon this guy Mike McHugh. His YouTube description reads this:

Mike McHugh is Australia’s top Adobe Creative Suite Trainer, and is an Adobe Ambassador. Also the Author “How to Wow with InDesign CS2″ and “How to Wow with Photoshop Elements”. And now a great new Podcast Creative SWEET TV. If you are looking for onsite training you have come to the right place.

He has a nice set of videotutorials (36) relating to some of the niftier tips and tricks with the Adobe Creative Suite (Also known as Adobe CS) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 (also known as CS3). Mike has made an effort of showing some of his tips ‘n tricks in his podcasts, and although he commonly uses quite ugly examples to show them, they are quite interesting.

Click on ‘more’ to see his video’s.

Creative Sweet TV:

Creative Sweet TV Episode 2:

Creative Sweet TV Episode 5:

Creative Sweet TV Episode 6:

Creative Sweet TV Episode 7 (Quick Tips):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 8 (Vector Logo):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 9 (Map Warp Illustrator):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 10 (Healing Brush Photoshop):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 11 (Blend Tool Illustrator):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 12 (InDesign and text):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 13 (Black ‘n white in Photoshop):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 14 (Photomanipulation InDesign vs Photoshop):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 15 (Photoenlargement in Photoshop):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 16 (Color Libraries in CS):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 17 (Typography in InDesign):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 18 (Sharpening in Photoshop):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 19 (Font Design Tips):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 20 (feathered Masking):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 21 (Adobe Kuler):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 22 (Illustrator to InDesign):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 23 (CS 3):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 24 (3D in Photoshop CS 3):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 25 (Place multiple files at once in InDesign CS 3):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 26 (Flash teams up with Illustrator):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 27 (Photoshop CS 3 Clone Source):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 28 (Dreamweaver CS3; add code, for the none coders!):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 29 (Photoshop CS3 retouching):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 30 (Adobe Premiere Express; Remixer on YouTube):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 31 (InDesign CS 3 FX):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 32 (Photoshop People remover):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 33 (Photoshop Videostills):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 34 (Sharing Gradients in Illustrator):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 35 (Camera Raw Basics):

Creative Sweet TV Episode 36 (InDesign optical typography):

Christophe Huet, a man who’s photomanipulating skills are quite interesting. But the most interesting reason I posted about him, is because he shows how he does it. In a few steps he shows you image from start to finish, showing where he began, and where he ended.

Check it out yourself. Not interested in knowing how? Then just check out his portfolio; it looks good anyways.