John Nack on Adobe

February 6, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Bananas, evil, & more

• Dig this super fun Chiquita banana redesign. I want the luchador sticker! [Via]
• Here's a high-res set of 60 Recent Movie Posters. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but there's some solid Photoshop action here. (I like the Crank 2 and Terminator Salvation pieces in particular--more than the corresponding flicks themselves.)
• Newsweek features "Unattainable Beauty: The Decade's Biggest Airbrushing Scandals."
• Infographics:
  • "My Heart is Divided"--fun schematic shirt from the Chopping Block.
  • Meet The Milky Way Transit Authority: our galaxy as tube map. [Via Ellis Vener]
  • Man, does Japan have fast broadband. This and other stats get visualized via the State of the Internet Explained In One Giant Infographic.
• "Evil and Lazy" shirt. How nice. (Couldn't get the Adobe font right, though.)

February 5, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Fake UIs in movies, solid caricatures, and more

• "What you need, my friend, is an Internet Online Website!" Clever tool for educating newbie clients. [Via]
• UI designer Mark Coleran appeared on NPR, talking about creating fictional computer UIs for movies. [Via]
• Depression Press serves up a tasty carnival of retro logos & illustrations.
• I dig these groovy caricatures from Fernando Vicente. [Via]
• Heh--here's a wry comment on the excessive comping of screens in Photoshop.
• 50 cars or 1 bus? Here's a vivid visualization of the impact of mass transit.

January 22, 2010

(rt) Illustration: "Crayola's Law," Photoshop, & the Beatles

CUTUP-MX showcases the unintentional art of cut-up Mexican billboards (apparently mashed up by billboard owners during lulls between paying advertisers).
• Penney Design imagines recent movie posters as Atari 2600 cartridges. (Tangentially related: I was mentioning Panic's awesome homage to Atari art to Adobe's Russell Brown, and he mentioned that he'd worked at Atari in 1984. "I created in store displays to attract young 14 year olds into buying PacMan and Centipede games," he says. You owe me some quarters, Cochese...)
• Jonny Wan creates funky gun illustrations & more.
• Infographics:
  • Fun: "Crayola's Law" shows a doubling of colors every 28 years. [Via]
  • Micheal Deal is exploring the Beatles through lovely infographics. [Via]
  • Anatoly Zenkov traced mouse usage in a Photoshop project over time. See the comments here for links to the tool he used. [Via]

January 16, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Best & Worst Logos of '09, more

• Logos:
  • Brand New collects The Best and Worst Identities of 2009. [Via]
  • I dig the logo for Colossal Pictures.
  • The Museum of Flight features a wealth of classic, vintage airline logos. [Via]
  • Ouch: it's a tongue-in-cheek TSA logo design contest. [Via]
• Distressed zest: the Mister Retro "Machine Wash Deluxe" filter has been updated. [Via]
• Infographics:
  • Dollars spent vs. life expectancy around the world: US = WTF? [Via]
  • Enjoy some beautiful Victorian infographics. [Via]

January 14, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Classic letterheads, the retro future, & more

• "Batgirl Is Now Prince": Classic album covers get reinterpreted via superheroes. [Via]
• "V is for Vanish": Robert Samuel Hanson makes beautifully clean, simple illustrations. [Via]
• Dig these rather spectacular Japanese-flavored vector art from Sheena Aw.
• Printing:
  • Letterheady.com features the custom letterheads of everyone from Einstein to Hitler to Johnny Cash.
  • Maggie Frost has created a tasty papercraft-flavored concert poster.
• The future of the past:
  • The year 2010, as seen from a kids' book in 1972. [Via]
  • Matthew Lyons illustrates with a retro sci-fi kick. [Via]

January 9, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Killer posters, plus Nic Cage everywhere

• Kings of the road:
  • Here's a cool large-scale Photoshop job: "Snakes on a Bus." [Via]
  • Okay, I'm reaching in calling this illustration, but I dig Art Lebedev's concept for a "transparent" semi truck. [Via]
• VectorTuts has some great ideas/techniques for building a face from typography.
• Posters:
  • Brandon Schaefer makes terrific minimalist movie poster designs. [Via]
  • Check out these cool poster designs for Slaughterhouse Five, Moby Dick, & more.
• Cinematic hacks:
  • "Photoshopped Movies": kind of speaks for itself. [Via]
  • Photoshop, what hath ye wrought? There's a whole blog of Nic Cage as Everyone.

January 7, 2010

"Gee, I wish I were a man...": Vintage ads & posters

• "Attack Attack Attack!" VectorTuts features 80+ Amazing WWII Allied Propaganda Posters. (Seems they really wanted to muzzle the Al Gore of antiquity.)
• The Vintage Ad Browser offers "100,000+ vintage advertisements to explore." Dig the old-school computer ads in particular. (64kb of RAM for a mere $1495 in 70's dollars? Make it so!) [Via Marc Pawliger]

December 27, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Cereal selection, nukes, & killer jellyfish

• "Are you Chuck Norris? Are you high?" Here's a hilarious cereal-choosing infographic. [Via]
• Solid old cutaways: Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts
• Just about every designer will recognize The Dreaded Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design Favors!

December 26, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Negative space, minimalism, & more

• I dig these beautiful minimalist renderings of TV shows from Albert Exergian. See also his excellent portfolio site.
• The Web Design Ledger showcases clever negative space in logo design. [Via]
• Crazy, often beautiful: Matt Kish is doing one drawing for every page of Moby-Dick.
• True copy & paste: Billboard hacking with Doom's HUD. Solid. [Via] Reminds me of Photoshop "adbusting" in Berlin.
• How to make dotted borders in Photoshop. (Not hard, but we should simplify the process.) [Via]
• Amazing--EyeWriter: Physically Paralyzed Artist Draws Graffiti on Buildings w/His Eyes.

December 16, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Top 10 Book Covers, Man-hunger, & more

• Book design:
  • "Man Hungry!" Gotta love vintage pulp novel covers. [Via]
  • The Book Cover Archive rounds up the Top Ten Book Covers of the '00s. Some good stuff, but somehow I'm not quite as blown away as I'd hoped to be. [Via]
• Impediments:
  • Inspired set of "Ideas & their enemies." (But come on, marketing managers are the Big Bad Wolf? That's giving 'em too much credit.)
  • "Four Obstacles to Writing"--funny illustration from Tom Gauld.
• Violence Illustrated:
  • I dig "The Ancient Circle of Mutual Aggression" & other illustrations from Juan Molinet. [Via]
  • "Theatre of Cruelty": Medieval peeps really did get medieval.
• The "Aqualta" project presents visions of New York & Tokyo under water. [Via]

December 13, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Accidental geography, Expressionist video games, & more

• "Accidental Geography" consists of photos of objects weirdly resembling recognizable landmasses. (via @kottke)
• Superfly Wi-Fi:
  • "Ernie & Birch": Christoph Niemann illustrates with nothing but leaves. (Love the "wireless ginko.") [Via]
  • Check out this beautifully simple ad for Wi-Fi at Mickey D's.
• Toddler-vision:
  • Our lad Finnegan sees the Champion sportswear logo and says "Mailbox!" He just might be onto something.
  • Finn + Marker + Kix Box = A.M. "art" lesson w/Dad. "Unicorn lady... beard... tattoo!"
• Distilled to the limit: "Expressionist" renderings of classic arcade games. [Via]

December 7, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Megafonzies, mind mapping, & more

• Megafonzies, Kilowarhols, & more: Wired lists some fun units of geeky measure. ("1 Warhol equals 15 minutes of fame, so if you've been famous for three years, that's just over 105 kilowarhols.") [Via]
• "Create Random Acronyms Pointlessly": Core77 features a funny beatdown of "mind mapping" cliches.
• The Onion's infographic take on Jim Brown: "The good kind of crazy, but just barely." (Love the bit about his empty uniform carrying on after his retirement.)
• Visual Aid: Cool infographics available as posters. (Dig the spacecraft size comparison.)
• Interesting infographic: "Tokyo vs Cairo": Using word analysis to compare Obama's foreign policy speeches.

December 5, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Great business card designs, laser-etched Macs, & more

• DesignrFix rounds up 40 solid business card designs. Dig the illustrated characters in particular, plus the obsessive behavior of Marian Bantjes. [Via]
• Physical graffiti:
  • Peep some sweet hand bags made using book cover illustrations. [Via]
  • Laser-etch art onto your MacBook, Moleskine, etc. [Via]
• Photoshop CS4 wins over an industrial designer for concept sketching. Adam O'Hern shares his findings and tips.
• Europa:
  • Dig the detailed vintage style on display in this "Caricature map of Europe, 1914." [Via]
  • See Bibliodyssey's "Theatre of Cruelty": Medieval peeps really did get medieval.

• Heh--fun poster for the Jewish Film Festival. [Via]

November 29, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Edgy ads, clean vectors, and more

• "Nothing Really Mattress..." Creative, often edgy ads from around the world. [Via]
• Eastern Bloc:
  • Cyrillic lettering Яocks. More cool Russian posters. (Just don't try to match drinks with this guy.)
  • Abduzeedo hosts a fun collection of modern Constructivist-style posters & illustrations.
• Artists interpret literary figures at Hey Oscar Wilde. (Love the Chekov, Lord of the Flies pieces.)
• Simplicity:
  • I dig the flat, clean illustrations of Katie Kirk. [Via]
  • Nice, simple vector/raster animal art from Ty Wilkins. ("'Vector/raster' = Illustrator/Photoshop," he notes in reply.) [Via]

November 25, 2009

Animation: Visualizing the fall of empires

Here's a rather fascinating animated infographic from Pedro M. Cruz. Stick around for those late-20th-century fireworks:

Here's some behind-the-scenes info on the project. [Via]

November 18, 2009

Fascinating slow motion water drops

Trippy!

[Via]

Coincidentally, here's a cool tutorial on milk-drop typography using Photoshop.

November 16, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Violent death, Hey Jude, & more

• Brutal: "In my Swedish elevator i discovered one of the worst ways to die." [Via]
• This excellent interactive infographic shows the relative size of objects, from coffee beans to atoms.
• "Hey Jude" as a flowchart. [Via]
• I love this set of fanciful theme park maps. (As a kid I used to pore over my posters of Great America & Brookfield Zoo.) [Via]

November 9, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Amazing concept art, Vintage VDubs, & more

• Check out some incredible concept art from Rodolfo Damaggio.
• I love these automotive manual cutaway drawings turned into giant wall art. If the imagery trips your trigger, Bryan Hughes suggests How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. [Via]
• Cool map to the LA Olympics... of 1932: (More info is here.)
• Tutorials:
  • Slick--How to Create Smoky Brushes and Type In Illustrator CS4.
  • Halloween+Photoshop: Russell Brown shows how to turn people into monsters.

November 1, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Japanese monsters, skulls, beer, and more

• Seasonal creepiness:
  • I love these bizarre illustrations: Anatomy of Japanese Folk Monsters. [Via]
  • "I want your skulls..." Lots of cool illustrations.
  • Oh, this heart doesn't look healthy, does it? Here's more such weirdness. [Via]
• Abduzeedo rounds up great Guinness ads past & present.
• The Chopping Block crew has posted tips on using Photoshop to Prep & Color Scanned Drawings.

October 30, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Friday Infographics

• Man, what a gorgeous space infographic. See also the lovely Race to the Moon.
• A three-year-old's view of the NYC subway. (I have to get my illustration mojo back & start doing things like this for our boys. I keep wanting to do a diagram of baby Henry scootching around his crib, a la the sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa.)
• A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades. [Via]
• Map of how long it takes to get to a 'major' city (+50k people). [Via]

October 27, 2009

How goes the war?

• The Big Picture's Afghanistan, September 2009 gallery is full of striking, often heartbreaking images.

• Matthew Cook filters the Iraq war through a hazy, watercolor prism. [Via]

October 23, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Martians, killers, and more

• Infographics:
  • A lovely, highly readable, one-image history of missions to Mars. [Via]
  • "A billion here, a billion there..." Gigantic expenditures visualized.
  • "A Killer Among Us??" The Science News Cycle as a handy infographic. [Via]
• Cool: Sketchbook Mobile for iPhone now emails layered PSD files. [Via]
• The recent evolution of various logos (Hilton, Hertz, more).
• Chris Haines makes some amazing photo illustrations (Thom Yorke & others). (They get better as you scroll down.)

October 18, 2009

Video: The creation of the CBS Eye logo

October 15, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Mickey D's to Decapitated KFC's

• Infographics:
  • Map of the US, visualized by the distance to nearest McDonald's. Here's more info. [Via]
  • Beautiful "Nonsensical Infographics" by Chad Hagen.
• I love the excellently simple Decibel Fest poster.
• Check out the nifty retro illustrations from Lab Partners. More are on their blog. [Via]
• The best flag in the world. [Via]
• Filed under Stuff You Were Previously Unlikely To See Today: A dog fox eating Col. Sanders' head, courtesy of graffiti artist Banksy. Brainstem-lickin' good.

October 10, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Bold type, controversial covers, & more

• The original IBM ThinkPad (Spoiler: It's an actual pad.) [Via]

• Dang--artist Eric Natzke keeps raising his game: "Is it made with Paint or Code?" [Via]
• Tutorials:
  • How to Create Vintage Vector Bottle Caps In Illustrator CS4.
  • Dig the bold 3D type in this poster tutorial.

• "Is God Dead?" The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time. [Via Jackie Lincoln-Owyang]
• Getting clever:
  • "Shoot forth thunder." Visual plays on Shakespearian lines, as sprinkled through "Romeo + Juliet."
  • A great set of logos featuring visual puns. [Via]

October 9, 2009

Sneak peek: Illustrator + Flash + Dreamweaver -> CANVAS

Check out this demo of Illustrator handing vector art to Dreamweaver, and DW binding the artwork to data so that it can be displayed via the HTML5 CANVAS tag:

Mordy Golding summarizes the demo as follows:

[The engineer] starts by taking art drawn in Illustrator and copies it to the clipboard. Then he goes into Dreamweaver, selects a DIV and chooses a function called Smart Paste. Dreamweaver then pastes an FXG conversion of the Illustrator art directly into the page. If you aren't familiar with FXG, it's basically a better SVG* (you can get more information on the open source FXG spec here). In other words, you draw in Illustrator, copy and paste into Dreamweaver (which converts it to code), and the art displays as vector art in a web browser. What's more, the engineer proceeded to actually bind XML data to the chart.

It's kind of funny to see this demo now, as Illustrator could export XML vector graphics (SVG) to the Web some 10 years ago. Later people made various efforts to display & manipulate SVG using Flash. This new demo uses different tools & a different display engine to do similar things.

I think this is a key point: Adobe makes money selling tools, not distributing viewing software. Those tools must address customer needs. If Flash Player is the right choice for some projects & HTML/CANVAS for others, no problem: we get paid to help you solve problems, not to force one implementation vs. another.

* I have no idea whether FXG is "better" than SVG overall & don't want to get into a debate on that subject. FXG is based on SVG but maps more closely to the Flash drawing model.

October 4, 2009

A little Adobe-flavored bloodletting

Longtime InDesign PM Will Eisley has decorated his inner forearms with some bold type (larger image). Replying to my sharp-eyed wife, he says, "Yes, the marks are color and grayscale bars which are part of InDesign's printing marks." Hard core.

Next up, he says is "a series of 3's in ITC Franklin Gothic Heavy. One of the best 3's in all of typography, IMO." Will also recommends checking out Body Type, dedicated to tattoo typography.

Previously:

• The Adobe logo as tattoo
• This blog's logo as tattoo

[Photo courtesy of John Cornicello]

September 28, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Charlie Parker, Busted coffee, & more

• One bedtime treat is reading young Finnegan an ABC book from the amazing Charley Harper. (Reading him the marvelously weird Charlie Parker Played Be Bop is another.)
• The Photoshop team coffee pot was recently broken again--and yes, QE has graphed the impact!
• This "Tech support cheat sheet" from xkcd is spot-on funny. [Via]
• Here's a 6-minute video on how Wired makes mag covers. One involved a 1GB (!) Transformers .PSD rendered by ILM. [Via Adam Pratt]
• Check out some impressive photo manipulations/illustrations from Erik Johansson. [Via Kirsten Harris]

September 22, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Escher, Che-on-Che, & more

• Volkswagen has created a fun MC Escher homage. (Click the images for larger versions.)
• Heh: from the Onion, the "Che Wearing Che T-shirt T-shirt."
• Fancy a beer? Make mine a Berserker. ("Lumberjacks give them the grunt of approval.")
• Check out the beautifully simple "Redacted Book Series" project.
• Gene Gable rounds up solid vintage Ex Libris illustrations. I like this one for Woodrow Wilson.
• Enjoy some "Dirty Prancing" with the Swayzaur--not to mention Robocop + unicorns.

September 21, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Retro-modern Coke heads

• Retro modern:
  • Jonathan Haggard is dynamite. The images illustrating this interview start slow and get better as you scroll.
  • Check out the badassery on tap in ColourLovers' "retro modern" gallery.
• Coke heads:
  • Brand New charts the evolution of Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi branding over more than a century.
  • From 1923 come these slightly abstract brand usage guidelines for Coke. (Click for a larger image.)

September 7, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Filter Heroes, puke-inducing logos, & more

[Quick reminder: The "(rt)" in the post headline signifies that I've previously posted these links on my Twitter account.]

• Infographics:
  • Venn diagram of mythical creatures. Pretty excellent. [Via]
  • Great infographic: Caffeine vs. calories. [Via]
• Check out the Photoshop Filter Heroes t-shirt from our pals at Chopping Block.
• Eye-popping monstrous illustrated goodness from Niark1. Lots more to like at Niark1.com.
• Design Won't Save the World. See other words of wisdom for budding designers:
• Layers for iPhone does photo compositing + natural media & exports PSDs (!).
• Awfulness:
  • Ouch: YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com. (But the "Johnston County Cornhole" does richly deserve it.)
  • Hard-core awesome Web design: Havenworks and uh, this thing. ("How can you even look at that without having a seizure?," asks my wife.) [Via Sam Potts]

September 2, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Mosaics of waste, Pantone rainbows, & more

• I find Chris Jordan's photo illustrations, visualizing the sheer scale of human consumption, totally fascinating.
• Basheer Graphic Books commissioned a giant rainbow made from Pantone chips (8 meters, composed of 5,000 chips).
• The Wrath of Kant: Literature as video game cartridges. [Via]
• I love Tenfold Collective's design for Odell Brewing.
• Check out Amy Martin's highly diggable posters (available for purchase here). [Via]

August 29, 2009

Saturday Infographics: Delicious-nasty coffee & more

• Christoph Niemann has built a Periodic Table of Metaphors--classics, clichés, and more. See the rest of his site for lots more good stuff. [Via]
• The uncanny valley of beverages? Check out the Coffee Temperature Acceptability Index.
• What if you got rid of the NYC subway? You'd need a hell of a lot of parking lots, for one thing. [Via]
• The NYT quite effectively shows the volume of music sales by medium over time (more interesting than you'd think).

August 22, 2009

(rt) Illustration: CS4 cupcakes, Orc pee, & more

• "Game over, man--game over.": Don't be this (8-bit) guy. The image is part of a funky "Make Something Cool Every Day" collection.
• Colour Lovers features a collection of beautiful vintage typewriter tins.
• Of new Mountain Dew, Neven Mrgan writes, "Two-word review: Orc pee." And speaking of oddball snack products, apparently Asia features Crotch-Kick Flavor Doritos.
• CS4 icon cupcakes! (Just don't get the icing on your Creative Suite pillows.) (via Jeff Warnock)
• Awesome URL o' the day: http://jon.dntfckwth.us/ (Worth a click for some awesome art there, too.)
• Vegetable steamer = awesome spaceship. I *so* did that as a kid.

August 18, 2009

Vector graphics software... from 1963

JFK was in office, and yet the app Sketchpad (from then-25-year-old Ivan Sutherland) offered multitouch input, auto-correction of vector strokes, and even reusable symbols (a la Flash, Illustrator, etc.). Very cool:

Apparently Dr. Sutherland once employed--you guessed it--John Warnock, seen here introducing Adobe Illustrator in 1987. [Via]

August 16, 2009

Sunday Illustrations: Creepy ads, Fruit cannibalism, & more

• Somsara Rielly is creating a collage a day for 365 days: Art Design 3(6)5. I'm a huge sucker for this faux-Photoshop error message. [Via]
• Frank Chimero makes nifty laser-etched wood panels featuring his work.
• Off-putting:
  • "Is it always illegal to kill a woman?," asks one of The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time. (Who says we don't make at least a little progress?) The self-slicing pig reminds me of SNL's old Cluckin' Chicken ad.
  • There's weirdness a plenty in these 30 controversial album covers. (Now I'll look even more askance as my neighbor's crapped-out Crown Vic with the homemade Cannibal Corpse seat covers.)
• I have no useful way to introduce the work of Joel Trussell (illustrator for Gama-Go and more), but the guy's got skills. (Poor Mr. Wobbles...)

August 10, 2009

Neat 3D sketching tools

• According to Gizmodo, "By using a ubiquitous interface metaphor (the Etch-A-Sketch), Sketch-3D allows anyone to participate in generating stereoscopic imagery in a way that is simple and engaging." Very cool, though what's nerdier than an adult playing with an Etch-a-Sketch? An adult playing with an Etch-a-Sketch while wearing those glasses. [Via]
• The always intriguing Amit Pitaru created Rhonda, a 3D sketching tool that's best understood through the short video on the site. Apparently they're looking for beta testers as they move forward.
• I could swear I've blogged previously about the even more ambitious ILoveSketch, but I guess not. Developer Seok-Hyung Bae has visited Adobe to demo the app & discuss ideas for the future.

August 6, 2009

Thursday Infographics: Maps as fashion & more

• Navigate the Big Apple in style with the NYC Metro Cuff.
• The NYT offers a cool interactive graphic on How Different Groups Spend Their Day. Click various segments (age, ethnicity, job status, etc.) and then mouse around to slice the data.
• "It's all {Greek} to me..." Yeah, but what do the Greeks say (and Swedes & Russians, for that matter)?
• From the Ukraine comes a massive outdoor crossword puzzle

August 4, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Pimp my warp drive & more

• The Star Trek movie site features some bitchin' alternate USS Enterprises [Via Jerry Harris]
• ColourLovers rounds up lovely & colorful desktop images.
• Eleanor Wood makes collages the old-fashioned way. [Via]
• The Container Corp. of America commissioned some great artwork in the '30s-'60s. (See also galleries two and three.) [Via]
• CH Workshops host super cool tape drawings.

July 29, 2009

(rt) Illustration: AT-ATs, optical illusions, & more

• Here's an awesome "Oakland AT-AT" t-shirt. I love those things (both kinds). (via @5tu)
• Vandelay Design rounds up 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Illustrator. Lots of neat ideas here, and I especially like the "Vibrant 3D Pixel Type Treatment."
• The Daily Mail shows a set of garage doors as optical illusions. (I'm a sucker for folding-wing F/A-18's myself.) Get 'em here. [Via]
• What's on Earth Tonight? If extraterrestrials are monitoring our TV broadcasts, here's what they're seeing. [Via]
• RT @khoi: Illustrator S. Britt's homepage violates all rules of good Web navigation-but it's so good.
• Fast Food Mafia presents mascots as gangsters. (Click for the higher-res version.) [Via]
• What Apple's web site would have looked like if the Internet existed in 1984. (via @davecross)
• Teehan + Lax have created a new PSD to facilitate designing for Palm Pre. (They're the same guys who made the iPhone GUI PSD.)

July 23, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Amazing light paintings & more

• Jan Wöllert and Jörg Miedza create amazing long-exposure light paintings.
• Creative Suite icons done via human pixels from Italy. (via @jdowdell)
• Free 3D models from NASA; can be loaded into Photoshop Extended. (via Pete Falco)
• Finally an Illustrator tutorial that takes advantage of warping tools + blending modes, not just c1990-era stuff: Creating an MRE package.
• "404 Humor Not Found": fun error pages. More here. (via @gridirondaniel & @inspiredm)
• A personal ad in infographic form: My kind of girl!
• Nicknames for famous corporate logos. (My fave: "Two and a Half Hotdogs")
• Simple, powerful book cover design for "Busted."

July 19, 2009

Quick Illustrator tips: Create a ribbon; batch convert

A few Adobe technical folks bounced around some ideas last week, responding to a question about how one would create a pink ribbon-style illustration. Stéphane Baril made some great suggestions in this very brief, five-step tutorial (PDF). (Live Paint is your friend!)

Elsewhere, developer Richard Bates has created a free utility & notes on Batch SWF Conversion with AIR and Illustrator CS4. [Via David Macy]

July 18, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Paper madness, Grassfitti, & more

• Interesting surfaces:
  • Frank Chimero makes nifty laser-etched wood panels featuring his work.
  • "[Screw] Round-Up. Grassfitti can't be stopped." [Via]
• Insane paper contraptions:
  • Wataru Itou's paper castle took four years to construct & features electrical lights and a moving train.
  • Far less involved, but OCD in its own way, is this lined paper created using red & blue thread.
  • Sipho Mabona creates amazingly intricate origami pieces.

July 14, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Man vs. tank, Pixar vs. Dreamworks, & more

• Can one commission Chinese artists to batch-paint the Tiananmen "tank man"? One man tries.
• The iPhone GUI PSD has been updated for iPhone 3.0. Way to go, guys! [Via Mark Coleran]
• I like the idea of a Lego Remote: The cartoon is similar in spirit to Adobe Configurator.
• "There is bad taste and then there is this"--the new MSFT Bing logo. [Via Mark Coleran]
• Oof--a probably unfair but funny Pixar vs. Dreamworks smackdown. (via @5tu)
• I had a little weekend fun with Illustrator's Live Trace feature.

July 13, 2009

Illustrations: Creepshows

• Winkler & Noah's The Puppet Show is a collection of photos of real children modified to look like puppets. So, um, they've got that going for them. [Via]
• RetroComedy has picked out the "15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time." [Via]

July 12, 2009

(rt) Illustration: PS Playboy, World War III, and more

• Photoshop named Playboy's "Employee of the Month." [Via Michael Ninness]
• Optical illusion pavement art: giant hole in bike path. [Via Stephen Shankland]
• Killer hair-based illustration o' the day [Via Mordy Golding]
• "Someone Tweeted!" Check out these WWIII Propaganda Posters.
• Would you trust this man to draw on your face? If so, that makes one of us. (And yes, the girl turned out to be lying.)
• What's the difference between a bug and a feature?

July 8, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Geekery, skating, & more

• Browser-related:
  • One seriously excellent error message: Hatin' on IE6.
  • Sub Pop celebrates horrible, horrible 1996-era Web design with a new promo page. [Via]
• Skate & create:
  • Smashing Magazine rounds up 40 Beautiful Skateboard Designs.
  • Adobe & Nike folks talk about the behind-the-scenes process of creating & streaming the Nike Skateboarding Debacle HD video. [Via]
  • I spied this Joel Tudor board in Santa Cruz the other day, chuckled, and had to snap a pic.
  • Core77 reviews New Skateboard Graphics.
• I'm not sure what's up with John MacConnell's head, but he might want to have it looked into.

July 7, 2009

Tuesday Infographics

• White Glove Tracking "asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean," producing all sorts of creative visualizations of the resulting data. [Via]
• "A love of baseball plus a love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly Ball." Fascinating & beautifully executed stuff. [Via]
• Narcissism + Stalking + ADHD = Twitter! It's the Social Media Venn Diagram Tee.
• Ben Fry's All Streets is an image of the US comprised of "26 million individual road segments." [Via]

July 6, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Snacks + Chroma

• Chow:
  • I love Louise Fili's intricate, stamp-themed design for the Bedford Post cafe.
  • Lunch gets a whole lot weirder through Ginou Choueiri's Potato Portraits.
• Color:
  • ColourLovers hosts a collection of beautiful vintage circus posters. (A Ringling Bros. poster hung over my childhood bed for years, and I'd endlessly pour over the details of trains receding into infinity.)
  • Dig Comex paint's cartoon-themed ad for their color-matching prowess.
  • This Cube's for you, print geeks: Ignacio Pilotto's Pantone-themed Rubitone Rubik's Cube.

July 4, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: From subways to space

• Happy Fourth:
  • Crackerpacks.com wraps an enormous set of fireworks packaging art in some eye-wateringly ghetto "vintage" Web design.
  • Rosemarie Fiore creates drawings by containing and controlling firework explosions.
• These Tokyo "subway manner posters", designed by Bunpei Yorifuji, manage to inform & entertain without condescension. [Via]
• Brushes & patterns:
  • If you think Illustrator can do only crisp vectors, look again. Think Design has shared 15 paintstroke Illustrator paint brushes. I've taken them for a spin & found them quite nice.
  • Handy when the moment arises: Susan Libertiny has created a free set of passport stamp & postmark Photoshop brushes. [Via]
  • YouWorkForThem is selling sets of intricate line patterns of the sort that appear on currency.
• Wipe your feet on this great, nerdy doormat. [Via]
• Mischa McLachlan has created a slick 2001: A Space Odyssey icon set. [Via]

June 25, 2009

Infographics in motion

• Hot Rocks: The NYT presents an interesting 2:30 overview on the dangers of drilling deep to tap geothermal power.
• Realtime 3D Airtraffic Network Simulation: Lufthansa's Brand Academy features "a 14-meter-wide, 180-degree projection [that] lets the visitors dive into the fully navigable, realtime 3D visualization of 16,000 daily Lufthansa and Star Alliance flights." Check out the video. [Via] Update: Looks like the links have been pulled, at least for the moment. Check out alternate links (courtesy of Ken Beegle) in comments.

June 24, 2009

Assorted Pixar Awesomeness

• Former Pixar production artist Lou Romano has posted a wealth of materials (videos, photos, paintings, and more) showing how the art of UP came to be. He shows how everything from gouache & miniatures to Photoshop & After Effects come together to explore & prototype the work.
• In a follow-up post, Lou has shared higher-res images of the complete color script for UP. [Via]
• The Art of the Title Sequence celebrates the wonderful end titles from WALL-E, interviewing director Jim Capobianco and animator Alexander Woo. [Via]
• Amazon lists Tim Hauser's The Art of UP and The Art of WALL-E.

June 22, 2009

Monday Illustrations: All tutes, all the time

• Veerle Pieters offers up some nice Illustrator tutorials:
  • First up is using Illustrator swatches & blends to make a quantized gradient background.
  • She then puts Illustrator's blending modes & masks to good use in creating a lovely poster, step by step.
• From Layers Mag:
  • Corey Barker shows how to get some slick results using Illustrator's Live Trace, symbols, and brushes.
  • Dave Cross maps a vector logo onto a t-shirt, keeping it scalable & editable even when rippled via the Displace filter.

June 18, 2009

Thursday Infographics: From Rambo to D&D

• How does Rambo's shirtlessness affect his per-minute killing prowess? Flowing Data has the answer! [Tangentially related: Five terrible fake Sylvester Stallone franchise revivals. Even more tangential: My wife has ancestors named Rambo, but strangely she won't sign up for using "Rambo" as our forthcoming son's middle name.]
• "Effing Hail!" It's infographics as a game. [Via]
• Crossing a couple of nerd-streams, check out these D&D-style maps of the C++ programming language.
• Wikipedia shows the mean center of United States population as it has evolved throughout the years. [Via]
• oobject collects maps of 12 of the world's most fascinating tunnel networks. [Via]

June 11, 2009

Cool recent infographics

• "Dustin Curtis is a Statistic," presenting his life as a series of data points. [Via]
• The GOOD Transparencies Archive offers a terrific set of infographics. [Via]
• NYC
  • Horizonless New York presents a really unique take on city topography.
  • iPhone app UpNext NYC is an interactive 3D map to explore Manhattan.
• The Joy of Tech has a funny take on How Apple Approves iPhone Apps. [Via]
• Oh yes--this is American Apparel in a nutshell.

June 8, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Monsters, luchadores, and more

• Jon Hicks creates Daniel's Daily Monster for his son. "Every morning when making his lunch, I give myself 5 minutes to draw a monster on paper from one of those memo pad things, give it a name and quickly photograph it with the iPhone." Awesome.
• I love Steve Bonner's intricate take on the classic Stormtrooper.
• Paper:
  • Jen Stark makes beautiful, incredibly intricate cut-paper sculptures. She even animates them in kaleidoscopic blooms.
  • StarWars.com features Star Wars lucha libre masks. (Our little guy will go nuts for these in a year or two.) [Via]
• Logos:
  • "Get Excited and Make Things" is a nice riff on "Keep Calm and Carry On" (a WWII-era poster that's hung on Adobe's West 9 for quite some time).
  • Killed Productions; heh.
  10:10 AM | Permalink | No Comments

June 4, 2009

Logos a-Go-Go

• Alex Faaborg & his Mozilla crew really, really sweat the details of Firefox icon design. [Via John Dowdell]
• "...no one knows you're a dog." I dig the ID for the Internet Identity Workshop. [Via]
• Colour Lovers features a great collection of vintage airline logos.
• "There is bad taste and then there is this:" the new Microsoft Bing logo. [Via Mark Coleran]
• tschka-tschka-"Trends" (Demitri Martin-style)
  • Bill Gardner rounds up dozens of current examples in exploring logo trends. [Via]
  • Bill Marsh examines before & after versions of "warmer, fuzzier" logos.
• Jane Sample uses logos to create a "brand timeline portrait," showing the different brands she uses and interacts with during the course of a typical day. [Via]

June 3, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Lines, holes, & more

• Line Art:
  • Air Lines is "an art project showing worldwide airliner routes. Every single scheduled flight on any given day is reresented by a fine line from its point of origin to its port of destination, thereby forming a net of thousands of lines." [Via]
  • Simplicity rules these ads for the Ikea Assembly Service. (I wonder if they have a service for gluing all that shattered MDF back together again.)
• On the street
  • Love the juxtaposition of big diver, little girl.
  • Makita drilled over 20,000 holes to create one large image.
  • No explanation of this Tel Aviv wall art from Pilpeled, but I dig it anyway. More from the artist is here.

May 30, 2009

Illusions & explorations

• Richard Russell created "The Illusion of Sex" by using only image contrast to affect our perceptions of masculinity & femininity in a face. [Via Nicolas Chaunu]
• WebExhibits uses a simple Flash viewer to demonstrate some of the magic behind Monet's Impression: Sunrise. [Via Todor Georgiev]
• Mark Frauenfelder points out some optical illusions you can explore using by Photoshop to check real color values.

May 29, 2009

Friday Illustrations: iPhone art, Mao, & mo'

• In case you've somehow missed coverage elsewhere: Jorge Colombo drew this week’s New Yorker cover using an iPhone while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. His site features more of his work.
• What the hell, exactly, is going on with this Spanish kids' game and its morbid illustrations? [Via]
• Elliot Weaver makes illustrations from spam subject lines. [Via]
• Ian Wright has made an awesome Mao mosaic using silk-covered buttons.
• I really likes me some shark-mouth illustrations, and this custom USS Enterprise from House Industries answers the mail.

May 28, 2009

Keepin' it real... hostile

• Flickr user 9000 just doesn't like marketers. At all.
• What possible search terms would produce this stock photo? [Via Mark Coleran]

May 25, 2009

Video game art, 8 bits at a time

• The 8-Bit Fatalities project presents the killing in pixelated video games as realistic illustrations. [Via]
• Mario scores magic mushrooms, thanks to t-shirt illustrator Ian Summers.
• In tangentially related news, Video-Game Character Feeling Healthier After Eating Turkey Leg Off Ground.
• I dig Sean Mort's Gaming Revolution T-shirt [Via]
• Not entirely sure I want to know what's going on here.

May 23, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: DIY Terminator, useful AI scripts, and more

• Planet Photoshop's Corey Barker shows how to turn a human skull into a Terminator face.
• Sato Hiroyuki has created a bunch of useful scripts for Illustrator. ("Downloading these scripts is like jumping through a magic portal to awesome-land," enthuses designer Adam O'Hern.)
• Paul Hollingsworth gives a peek into the development of his CS4 launch illustration. [Via Rufus Deuchler]
• I'm enjoying Mark Weaver's sometimes freaky collages. Much more is on his site.
• Sweller than Swell: Gene Gable rounds up unintentionally absurd vintage advertising.

May 20, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Swine flu, Gang bangers, & more

• Illustrated masks:
  • The Vader Project features "100 reimagined helmets."
  • Gizmodo rounds up some awesomely illustrated anti-flu masks from Mexico.
• Chicago's gang cards of the '70s are a particularly odd form of folk art. I imagine my uncle cracking these thugs' heads back in the day.
• The Rare Book Room site "has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world."
• Paper Moon brings beautiful monochrome illustration to 2D gaming.
• Urban infrastructure:
  • Subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale.
  • Triptrop creates slick heat maps on the fly to show how far by subway any point in New York is from any other.
  • Perpetual Kid offers manhole cover coasters.

May 18, 2009

Monday motion goodness: Waves in HD, bearded hippies, and more

• BBC cinematographers captured waves from under the surface in gorgeous high-def slow-mo. [Via]

• Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg used chalkboard drawings to produce the Autumn Story music video for Firekites. [Via]
• Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational early-70's Scanimate demo. Some part of me kind of wishes that Adobe tools involved more retro levers, switches, cable splicing, etc.--and of course that their use was accompanied by funky 70's horn sections.
• Infographics:
  • Melih Bilgil's The History of the Internet tells, well, you know, using minimal lines but loads of attention to detail. (The fly-over of Cuba is terrific.) Adobe designer Ethan Eismann writes, "My new personal mission in life is to bring this level or higher of engaging instruction to an Adobe welcome screen near you."
  • Slagsmålsklubben would be cool just for its name.

May 13, 2009

Infographic comedy jams

• I love Jessica Hagy's clever, minimal index card diagrams. [Via]
• The Photographer's Math blog consists of nothing but snarky little equations. [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes]
• Artist "lunchbreath" nails the creative design process. His Flickr stream is full of great stuff (e.g. fun with Bluetooth).

May 12, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Terminators, Punx, & more

• Invisible Skoda! Artist Sara Watson ("a dead ringer for a healthy, human Lindsay Lohan") has pimped her ride right out of existence (or visibility, anyway). [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes]
• Simon Schubert creates ghostly 2-D scenes by folding paper slightly. [Via]
• In Apocalypse How, designer Martin Laing narrates his team's process for creating the world of Terminator: Salvation.
• With Springfield Punx, illustrator Dean Fraser renders famous faces Simpsons-style. [Via Adrian Such]
• Barnaby Ward uses Twitter to show his sketching process in Photoshop.

May 5, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Paper, pantslessness, & more

• Alberto Cerriteño offers great illustrations as laptop-skin decals. (My wife says this skin is more up my alley, though.) Peep his whole portfolio for more excellence.
• Paper:
  • Noriko Ambe cuts shapes into books and stacks of paper.
  • Jill Sylvia creates incredibly intricate structures from ledger paper. [Via]
  • Jacquet Fritz Junior makes sculptures from toilet paper rolls.
• "Watch your favorite artists live today." Deeply weird illustrations promote Tzabar ticket services. (Fortunately Danny Gans was not included in the list.)
• Uhh...
  • Pantsless, by Laura George
  • It hurts when I pee. Yes, I'd imagine so. Lots more here.

May 1, 2009

Illustrator 1.0 - The complete video

Last year I uploaded the first ten or so minutes of the instructional video that accompanied Illustrator 1.0, hosted by Adobe co-founder/Illustrator developer John Warnock. I received some requests for the full recording, and now Adobe evangelist Rufus Deuchler has tuned up the audio & posted the entire video, split into five segments.

Seeing the video, and remembering that Dr. Warnock was (as I recall) one of just four names on the Illustrator splash screen, I can't help but think of videos posted now by the developers/founders/executives/chief bottle-washers of various Twitter-related startups. (Here's a good one for Birdhouse.) 20 years from now, will we be passing around one of these links, remembering when so-and-so got her start?

April 29, 2009

Wednesday Logos

• I love Google's salute to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• "Chicago Bulls logo + upside down + some color = robot reading the bible on a bench!? Ahh logo ruined." You be the judge.
• Hidden Meaning--nicely done.
• Iron Man Ironing Service makes clothes maintenance look pretty butch.
• HelloLED is a bright little guy.

April 27, 2009

Monday illustration tips, tutorials

• Scott Hansen has created a tutorial (with source files) demoing the techniques used to create a Dylan poster homage.
• Heh--I had no idea that it's possible to designate a "key object" in Illustrator & align objects to it. Check out Terry Hemphill's quick tip to learn more.
• The Chopping Block does symmetry with these Illustrator reflection templates. (Illustrator's combo of live effects + the ability to target anything from individual paths to groups to layers is enormously powerful--and woefully underused. The Appearance panel in CS4 makes things much easier, but I find that many artists just won't make the cognitive leaps necessary to harness this power.)
• PSDTUTS shows how to create insectoid 3D text using Photoshop + Cinema 4D.

April 26, 2009

Business card excellence (and horror)

• "Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients: MEAT AND LASERS." Oh, hell yeah. [Via]
• Equally aggro, far less cool: "Your business card is crap." (Is this guy for real? Hard to tell.)
• Assorted kickassery is on display in Francesco Muganai's round-up of "the best 65 business cards of the year."
• More than meets the eye:
  • Dan Ross, publisher/apparent vintage Nissan fan, invites you to cruise off with his card.
  • Core77's latest 1-Hour Design Challenge features a business card that transforms into 3D glasses.
• Not overwhelmed yet? Card Observer will soon solve that problem.

April 25, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Lucky teens, giant walkers, & more

• Striking Empire:
  • Best Tattoo Ever? An AT-AT goes Dalí.
  • Similarly excellent: the AT-AT Anatomy t-shirt. [Via]
• Fortunate Teens Party With Morrissey, 1994. Sometime I'll have to tell you about Bryan Hughes driving by the Mozzer's house and getting invited in for a "choco-milk."
• Josh Poehlein's Modern History project is "a series of collages assembled exclusively from screen grabs of Youtube videos." [Via]
• I'm really enjoying Jon Klassen's beautiful palettes & delicate linework. Animated pieces & more appear on his site.
• Looking at once totally annoying & like a technical tour-de-force: the Toyota Venza takeover. [Via]

April 17, 2009

Friday Science: All space, all the time

• Wanderingspace has created 19 fetching Planetary iPhone Wallpapers.
• An old chart illustrates the "Unbelievable Time Required to Cover Immense Distances of Space." [Via]
• 40 hours of exposure time were required to create this composite of the night sky. [Via]
• Ministry of Type highlights some great science and technology ads from the 50s and 60s, found in a much larger Flickr set of the same.
• In a short & interesting slideshow/audio piece on the NYT, "The Hubble Repairman" John Grunsfeld talks about his arduous missions to the space telescope.
• Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 looks like a groovy kids book.

March 31, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Creeps, guns, & more

• I'm Creepin' While You're Sleepin': I have no idea what's going on with this giant Neckface mural, and I'm pretty sure I want to keep it that way.
• Al Farrow's gun-based sculptures mix the sacred & propellant, creating reliquaries made from guns n' ammo. [Via Margot Nack]
• Emilie Chollat's site encourages & rewards exploration. Dig those fun photo montages. [Via]
• For no particular reason:
  • Bad Paintings of Barack Obama. [Via]
  • Liquified Google [Via]
• Class up your grip tape with some oil-painted nudes on skateboard decks. [Via]

March 28, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: All autos, all the time

• Jalopnik profiles master car cutaway artist Yoshihiro Inomoto.
• Bavarian propellerheads:
  • Robin Rhode used a BMW Z4 as a giant paint brush. See it in action on the BMW site.
  • Coincidentally, the NYT features a slideshow accompanying its piece about the BMW art cars being displayed at Grand Central Station. (The Jenny Holzer ride will likely always be my fave.)
  • Speaking of BMW, it's tangential, but this computer prototype BMW Group Designworks USA is pretty stylin'.
• GM is seeking to attach some cachet to their design efforts with their Inside Chevy site.

March 27, 2009

Friday Illustrations

• Famed pop artist David Hockney has started using Photoshop as his new medium. Apparently Russell Brown & co. had him out for a visit to Adobe nearly 20 years ago to introduce Photoshop; looks like the seed has finally sprouted.
• Emma McNally's pencil drawings feature a "borderline OCD" level of detail.
• Liquify, anyone? I like the subtlety of this Bosch ad.
• Get yer geek on with a set of Nerd Merit Badges.
• Kuler:
  • PSDTUTS offers pointers for Using Adobe Kuler to Enhance Your Photoshop Color Workflow.
  • This isn't just theoretical hand-waving, either: kickass illustrator Nick La uses Kuler in his design process. Check out his portfolio to see some beautiful pieces. [Via]

March 22, 2009

Sunday Logos

• Spacesick has fun doing a little Evil movie megacorporation rebranding. (With all the bad news coming out of Detroit, I wonder how long it'll be until OCP actually does step in.)
• The "Web 2.0" aesthetic makes me think of this set of Web logos as origami. [Via]
• Abduzeedo collects a set of clever logos. (The "Eight" piece is up my alley.)
• The endlessly popular Helvetica anchors at least 40 well-known logos.
• I can hear buzzing out the window in the Insomnia Entertainment identity.
• The Closing Logos wiki rounds up an overwhelming set of movie company logos modified to fit the film at hand.

March 21, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Fast cars, skiing toilets, & more

• I dig Sam Weber's soft palettes & surreal imagery.
• Poster designs:
  • A White-Hot Juggernaut At 200 Miles Per Hour! PSDTUTS hosts 50 Brilliantly Photoshopped Movie Posters. I especially dig the Death Proof & Lord of War pieces.
  • COLOURlovers rounds up a great set of Mid-20th c. Euro Poster Art.
• I could try to describe this crazy Japanese ski-bathroom, but you'd better just see it yourself.
• In Matt Silber's series of floating logos, “Elimination of the support structure in the photographs allows the signs to literally float above the earth." More photos appear in part 2 of the series. [Via]
• Illustrator:
  • Matt Kloskowski has a great idea: raid Illustrator's library for art to use in Photoshop.
  • Abduzeedo features some great ideas for using scatter brushes in Illustrator. (Man, there's so much underused power in that app.)

March 11, 2009

New Illustrator team blog launches

I'm happy to see that the Illustrator team has launched Infinite Resolution, their new blog. On it they're looking forward to "sharing knowledge about Illustrator and vector graphics in general as well as linking to and discussing some of the things we see going on in the world of vectors." I'm expecting some good give-and-take between passionate customers & app-builders.

Wednesday Illustrations: Super Mario, free textures, & more

• I love this crafty little Super Mario riff from NYC.
• Omid Sadri made himself some awesome multi-functional businesscards: "There are three different cards within the set. One which suggests to use portion a of the card as a dental floss, one for cleaning under nails, and one for chewing gum."
• I'm digging Paul Lee's crazy characters & punchy palettes.
• Speaking of punchy, check out the colors & images in Jimmy Roberts and Brian Christopher's collaborative project Exquisite Corpse. [Via]
• Free resources:
  • There's a big free texture archive on Flickr. [Via]
  • Sketchory hosts more than a quarter million Creative Commons-licensed sketches. (You largely get what you pay for, of course.) [Via]

March 3, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Crayons as pixels, tutorials, & more

• Squared Eye brings lovely illustrations & color choices to their work. [Via]
• Tutorials:
  • Veerle shows how to create a beautiful diamond flower in Illustrator.
  • FlashEnabled links to good resources in their Illustrator Tutorials Roundup.
• Low res:
  • Chritian Faur uses crayons as pixels. [Via]
  • OMGif amasses numerous animated GIFs. I dig the total lack of rhyme or reason.
• Historic bits:
  • COLOURlovers hosts a great collection of vintage Israeli postage stamps.
  • General Mills is trotting out retro cereal boxes. [Via]

February 28, 2009

Covers, best & worst

• Joseph Sullivan from the NY Times shares his Favorite Book Covers of 2008.
• Pitchfork offers a funny take on The 20 Worst Album Covers of 2008. (Hey man, I like the Death Cab piece.)
• Sans value judgements, The Book Cover Archive offers up a trove of inspiration.
• Cedillas + Op Art = 60's & 70's Brazilian Album Covers
• There's tons to love in this Ode To Criterion Box Art.

February 27, 2009

Friday Illin': Edgiest quilts ever & more

• Quiltsrÿche promises to let you "bark at the moon in the coziness of a hard-rocking, handcrafted heirloom."
• MoMA's The Printed Picture is "an exhibition of physical specimens made using all the different ways that type and image can be printed on paper, metal, glass, etc, with a special emphasis on dozens of photography techniques, from albumen prints to dagguereotypes to color photography." [Via]
• I like the ghostly simplicity of Levi van Veluw’s ‘Light’ Portraits. (To spare you any suspense, nothing really happens in the videos.)
• You can view now extremely high-res presentations of famous artwork, courtesy of Google Earth.
• These brand-name ripoffs seem like dyslexic Photoshop jobs, but they’re apparently real. [Via]

February 18, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Excellent Photoshoppery, scary logos, & more

• Strength in numbers:
  • PSDTUTS hosts a collection of 40 Brilliantly Photoshopped Print Ads. (Roygalan shows the downside of eating too much Cadbury.)
  • Smashing Magazine collects 100 (Really) Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers.
  • Toxel rounds up 24 Creative Business Card Designs. The printed peanuts look informative and delicious. [Via reader Trace]
  • Andrew Lindstrom's collection of 45 vintage space age illustrations makes me want to play polo on a jet ski. Or not. [Via]
• Logos:
  • Tell me you'll ever look at the new Pepsi logo again and not see this. [Via]
  • This Horror Films logo is "so simple it's scary."
• The imagery on the Mobiado 105GMT is very JNack-blog-positive, wouldn't you say?

February 13, 2009

Friday Illin'

• Maira Kalman is back on the NYT (yeah!). "The Inauguration. At Last" is packed with great color, brushwork, and observations.
• The laser-cut grip tape in Core77's 1-hour design challenge is pretty rad. (Man, how much did I love Powell-Peralta, VSW, and Jim Phillips/Santa Cruz skate art back in the day?)
• Speaking of that, Powell has created The Ripper Art Show, celebrating their most iconic image.  (I had a huge poster of it hanging over my bed.)  Some 58 artists created their own interpretations. [Via]
• Janine Rewell makes much vectory goodness. (Dig "Helsinki in Berlin.") [Via]
• Monochrome:
  • Having grown up on David Macaulay, I'm a sucker for good B&W detail like that found in this piece from The London Police.
  • I love the simplicity of Core77's welcome from '08 to '09.
  • Chroma has no place in the new Good Housekeeping logo.

• Is there anything not to like about this animated GIF of a magical little deer? (Answer: no.) [Via]

February 6, 2009

Friday Illustrations: Painting as a game & more

• Paint your way out of this: The Unfinished Swan is "a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden." [Via]
• I'm digging Pablo Perra's work--especially the funky "Detector Series." (Click images for a larger view.) [Via]
• Mark Verhaagen's portfolio showcases some rich vector stylings. [Via]
• Flix:
  • Movie Poster Floating Heads guy takes his job a little too seriously.
  • Neatorama's brief history of movie studio logos offers some entertaining details. [Via]
• Save gas & save space with cutely smushed cars.

February 5, 2009

Recent infographics

• The NYT shows Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl organized by time & geography.
• The paper also charts the grim state of print advertising.
• Queens of InfoVis: "Ever see an awesome graphic or visualization in the New York Times and wonder who did it?" asks MetaFilter. "Chances are it's either Amanda Cox or Megan Jaegerman." The site links to some notable examples. [Via]
• Andreas Nicolas Fischer has turned financial charts converted to computer-generated 3D wooden sculptures. [Via]
• A poster from Very Small Array graphs the genre of #1 hit songs in the USA, 1950-present, though unfortunately it's not possible to zoom in on the design.

February 3, 2009

Lego NYC

Drawing from sound

• "Want to try something hard?" asks Ze Frank.  His sound-powered drawing toy produces some wacky results.  Low volume produces counterclockwise curves, medium volume goes straight, and high volume curves clockwise.  I'd love to see videos of people trying to use this thing.  (I'm letting it run in a team meeting, but voices are too faint to do much interesting.) [Via]
• Johannes Kreidler fed Microsoft Songsmith with charts based on plunging stocks, deaths in Iraq, and other dismaying stats.  The results are kind of depressingly awesome. [Via]
  

January 31, 2009

Logos n' details

• Logos:
  • The NYT features some great alternate logo designs for the Superbowl. [Via]
  • Brand New rounds up the Best & Worst Logos of 2008.
  • I dig Ben Pieratt's Oil Slick logo, among many, many others.
• A2Detail:
  • Alex Trochut creates wonderfully intricate images. (His site's navigation is clever, though I wished I could just flip through his work more easily.)
  • The WWF has commissioned some beautifully detailed illustrations from Ogilvy & Mather India. Commenters point out the similarity to Albrecht Dürer's rhino.
  • PSDTUTS has some cool ideas for How to Simulate Fractals in Photoshop.

January 27, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Killer movie posters, RUN-DC, & more

• Retro remixes:
  • Olly Moss’s Poster Remakes are pretty damn terrific. [Via]
  • Same goes for Mitch Ansara's Retro “I Can Read Movies” Book Covers. The Close Encounters and Sixteen Candles entries are especially solid. [Via]
• The continuing Obamarama:
  • RUN-DC: Awesome.
  • Obama painted via motor oil.
• Mac bits:
  • Is the Snow Leopard UI going really, really old school? This I'd kind of love to see. [Via]
  • Layers is a screenshot tool that saves your windows as a layered PSD file. Nice! [Via Michael Ninness]

January 18, 2009

Interesting Inaugural bits from the NYT

• The New York Times features an interactive photography portfolio called Obama's People, offering portraits of key staffers. The audio commentary (via the link below the photos) is worth a listen, describing the subjects' choices in what to bring to the shoot (e.g. a chocolate chip cookie for David Axelrod).  The separate making-of piece features Kathy Ryan talking about how shooting digitally has enhanced the collaborative aspects--and maybe the time pressures--of portraiture.  [Update: Ellis Vener points out a hilarious "Real Behind-the-Scenes" take on the shoot, followed by some good discussion in the comments.  "Blue Steel..."]

• The paper (that term seems more than a little outmoded, doesn't it?) also features an excellent overview of the Inauguration Day goings-on via a 3D-rendered map and timeline.

• Looking back, another piece depicts the changing configuration of the White House.

I'd love to be in DC in person, but that map triggers a memory of having gotten stuck on the Metro under the Potomac on a sweltering July 4 years ago.  With Tuesday temperatures due to hover around freezing, maybe I'm okay with TV after all.

January 17, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Stalactites, stained glass, & more

• Speak freely: I love Experimental Jetset’s Loose Lips poster. [Via]
• Stained glass gets frisky in these ads for Bishop’s Finger beer.
• Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint on the 16,000-square-foot elliptical dome for the UN's Geneva offices. The BBC has details. [Via]
• Jon Hicks shows the sketch-to-final-rendering evolution of his icon design for Font Explorer Pro.
• Svenska Karamel! The packaging for these Swedish candies is pretty darn cute.
• Shoot the Baddies has fun with some familiar silhouettes. (Roll over each for its name.) [Via]
• RISD is hosting a symposium on dazzle, the World War I/II camouflage technique meant to confuse enemy submarines. The site points out that a Greek billionaire recently commissioned Jeff Koons to dazzle his yacht.

January 14, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Presidencies to video games

• Infographics:
  • Good Magazine features The First 100 Days, chronicling the early terms of various US presidents.
  • The NYT shows what people spend, and on what, around the world. [Via]
• Maps:
  • Milky Way Transit Authority: Samuel Arbesman has mapped our galaxy in the style of a subway map. [Via]
  • Korean designers Zero Per Zero have created a beautiful heart-shaped map of the NYC subway system. They’ve likewise done Seoul as Yin-Yang, Tokyo, and more. [Via]
  • Also check out the NY subway map in ASCII! [Via]
• 2D gone 3D:
  • Disney gets deconstructed with the Cartoon Particles project.
  • Dotter Dotter features Lego-like 3D renderings of 2D video games like Donkey Kong & Excitebike. [Via]

January 13, 2009

Photoshop Subvertising

Artist-vandals in Berlin have rather brilliantly hacked a set of subway posters, overlaying them with stickers showing the Photoshop UI. [Via Mark Stern, Serge Jespers, Jeff Lietz, and others]

I have a soft spot for the trippy impromptu public art projects that subway posters often become--everything from Van Dycks & puke lines to political commentary.  I got an unreasonably big kick out of a Bourne Identity poster in the NY subway that featured three images of Matt Damon on which someone had scrawled, respectively, "Loner... gun owner... stern taskmaster." (Told you it was unreasonable.)

[Update: Kottke links to more photos on Flickr.  Apparently the project is called "Don't Forget..." [Via]]

[Previously: Real-world Photoshop.]

January 9, 2009

Kuler adds Community Pulse

The team behind Kuler, Adobe's color harmony creation & sharing site, has introduced a neat new feature:

Explore the Kuler global community with Community Pulse, a big picture view of color usage. This is a beta feature, using data visualization (screenshot) to show the relative popularity of colors across a sampling of countries, time periods, and tags.

To check it out,

• Sign in with your Adobe ID to play around with it
• Mouse over the histogram to see the hues on the color wheel
• Try the granularity slider to see more/less color detail
• Use the comparison icon (two circles) to compare/contrast

If you have questions, check out Kuler Help.  And don't forget to check out the Kuler panel in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and InDesign CS4 (see Window->Extensions->Kuler).  Here's a couple of screenshots, plus a video demo. [Via]

January 1, 2009

Pen Zen for 2009

Mordy Golding offers 10 Illustrator Resolutions for 2009--ten great suggestions for getting more out of this amazingly powerful app.  My notes:

• If you do nothing else, try double clicking your artwork to enter "isolation mode."  It's just like editing a symbol in place in Flash.  Stop doing the whole lock/unlock, group/ungroup dance.  Isolation mode is your friend, particularly in CS4.

• Mordy is right on about the power of the Appearance panel.  In CS4 the panel is at last just what I'd hoped it could be--namely, a killer one-stop shop for adding and editing object effects and parameters.

• My personal addition to the list?  Envelope distortions.  Create some artwork, then choose Object->Envelope Distort, then either Make With Warp or Make With Mesh.  I like choosing the latter, then selecting the Free Transform Tool (E), clicking and dragging on one corner, and then while still moused down holding Cmd/Ctrl to do a perspective transform.  Bam, instant re-editable Star Wars text.

If you really want to brush up on your fundamentals & really wrap your head around the Pen tool, I recommend a couple of great resources:

• Sharon Steuer's Zen of the Pen PDF goes back a few releases, but it remains clear and relevant today.
• To learn more about the pen in PS, check out Ian Yates's Photoshop’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide from PSDTUTS.

And oh yeah, Happy New Year!  We'll see whether my blogging can hold up under not one but two bambinos.  Bring him/her on! ;-)

December 19, 2008

Friday Illustrations: Vader, fractals, & more

• I love, love, love this Vader "Self Maintenance" drawing.
• Logopond features a terrific logo for Ed's Electric. The one for ETA ain't bad, either, though I'm not sure I'd have read the letters correctly without some guidance.
• PSDTUTS has a great tutorial on how to simulate fractals in Photoshop.
• Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint on the 16,000-square-foot elliptical dome for the UN's Geneva offices. [Via]
• These are, without question, the most deeply messed up soda ads I've ever seen.

December 8, 2008

Monday Illustrations: Fast cars & dirty fingers

• Beginnings & endings:
  • Drink Smoke Shutchomouth: David Cole has created an excellent set of truthful title cards. [Via]
  • Tom Djll has amassed "The End," a great collection of closing title cards for movies. [Via]
• Motor speed:
  • The NYT features a gallery of beautiful race car concept designs. See the accompanying article for more.
  • Watch Vaughan Ling go to town in Photoshop in this 1-Hour Design Challenge
• Funky media:
  • “Make Jar Jar Binks from potatoes (and hastily devour this hateful creature)” with this set of creative food manipulation. [Via]
  • Repubblica.it features photographs of a series of elaborate hand paintings. [Via]
• ColourLovers features interesting overviews on The Colors Of Global Brand Identities and The Color of Money from Around the World.

December 1, 2008

Illustrator CS4: Faster launches, new scripts, & more

Win XP	CS3	CS4
Cold Launch on Benchmark Machine*	21.7s	12.8s
Cold Launch on User Machine**	36.4s	19.5s
iMac (Leopard)
Cold Launch	25.5s	16.4s

 

* Benchmark machine is the optimized setup machine for taking consistent launch performance numbers. It has no virus scanner and a totally defragmented hard disk.

** User machine is the one similar to user environment, having a virus scanner, fragmented hard disk with a few common applications installed.

• The team has posted a series of how-to guides and source files created by leading designers.
• Jack Westbrook came up with a set of scripts for exporting each AI layer as a separate PNG.

November 22, 2008

New Illustrations: Mad Men to Hot Rocks

Dept. of Mad Chops:

• Rik Oostenbroek makes some beautiful abstract pieces in Photoshop, and he's interviewed on PSDTUTS. (Oh, and he's 18. Man, if you saw what I did in PS at age 18, you'd have me fed to wild dogs.)
• Depthcore pulls together some terrific noirish monochrome illustrations. I especially like Karol Kolodzinski's piece.

Illustrated misfortune:

• I'll have the drumstick in this recent Photoshop disaster.
• Certain things about cartoon characters, you'd just really rather not know.

Self-aggrandizement:

• The pixel masters at eBoy featured yours truly among a field of 'Dobe peeps. Thanks, guys! (Incidentally, this illustration plays ridiculously well with content-aware scaling in PSCS4.)
• At the recent party to celebrate shipping CS4, Photoshop engineer Geoff Scott took a cool shot of me that I turned into a quasi-Hot Rocks-style illustration via the new PS Pixel Bender plug-in. (I used subblue's Droste Effect filter kernel--a free download.)

November 15, 2008

Illustrated Miscellany: Obama, the Joker, & molten wax

History & politics:

• #44: Outstanding. [Via]
• David Klein created striking images in an earlier era. [Via]
• Bat-fans might be feeling The Audacity of Joke from James Lillis. (The layers build up, with audio, on YouTube.)

Packaging & Objects:

• Veerle showcases some beautiful packaging.
• Go Media sells PSD templates that can help you drop artwork onto various wrinkly shirts.
• Virgil O. Stamps will print on just about any crazy material--duct tape, shredded targets, National Geographic pages, etc. [Via]

Cool Devices:

• The notional Virtuo virtual palette "uses sensors and light to mix digital colour and apply it to a screen." [Via Jerry Harris]
• Man, I can't wait for our son to get old enough to rock out with the Crayola Glow Station. (My mom used to let me paint with crayons using paper on a hot plate. Ah, the '70s: a simpler, less safety-conscious time. ;-))

November 6, 2008

Real-world Photoshop

Straight-up awesome. :-) [Via Lori Grunin & Adam Jerugim]


Update: By popular demand, here's a higher-res version, plus the making-of photo set. [Via Rob Christensen]

Update 2: According to Laughing Squid, ad agency Bates 141 created the project for Software Asli. [Via Keith Johnson]

November 5, 2008

Post-election bits

I'm finding it hard to get back into the blogging game after such a* historic election.  Doesn't blogging about megapixels and keyboard shortcuts just seem kind of... trite?

In an effort to spool back up, here are some interesting visual bits I've encountered:

• Oh yeah!: "The Final Endgame Go Time Alpha Action Lift-off Decide-icidal Hungry Man's Extreme Raw Power Ultimate Voteslam Smackdown '08 No Mercy: Judgement Day '08."  That's what I'm talkin' about.  Peep The Daily Show's ode to/mockery of over-the-top motion graphics.
• Jason Kottke has aggregated a huge list of election maps from around the world, from whiteboards to the Onion.  I love the way various maps, including the one on the NY Times site, let you zoom into states to see a county-by-county patchwork of voting.  Also check out the way the NYT map features "county bubbles" and a voting trend comparison slider.
• Mark Newman's maps offer insight into voting patterns by geography and population. [Via]
• The Guardian features a gallery of newspaper front pages from around the world. [Via]
• In The Living Room Candidate, the Museum of the Moving Image features TV ads from US presidential races, 1952-2008.
• Typography:
  • Channeling campaign fatigue into type, This [Farging] Election aggregates many of the year's memorable phrases into a single column.
  • Obama + dingbats = ObamaBats, courtesy of Jeff Domke. [Via]

* Not "an".  Hah; I knew it.  We're not Cockney, for crying out loud.

October 31, 2008

A handful of Halloween art

• Goodwill Halloween--awesome. :-)
• Obey Alfred E. Neuman! Related: A million and one Obama poster parodies.
• Calamity Coach is an Edward Gorey-esque tale of vehicular woe. [Via] For a less frightening, more nostalgic trip, see Gene Gable’s round-up of vintage Greyhound bus art.
• John McConnell shows how to turn Tom Cruise into an alien. (Isn't that a little redundant?) [Via]
• What the hell is going on with this broccoli?? [Via Matthew Richmond]

October 24, 2008

Recent political illustrations, animations, & fruit

The US presidential election is motivating all kinds of creativity, from posters to pumpkins. (And before anyone flips out, let me say that A) I’m trying to be evenhanded in the distribution of links below, and B) I picked things to share based not on political affiliation, but based on creative/graphical interestingness.)

• Comics:
  • IDW Publishing has created comic book biographies of the two presidential candidates. [Via]
  • Meanwhile, in the Marvel universe, Stephen Colbert is a presidential candidate, so naturally (?) he’s teaming up with Spiderman. [Via]
• Start your day right with Cap’n McCain’s and Obamaos (and annoying jingles!).
• MC Yogi’s pro-Obama video shows skillful type chops. [Via]
• Ceremonial fruit orbs:
  • Better Homes and Gardens offers downloadable pumpkin-carving stencils for creating the likenesses of the candidates, not to mention media figures from Colbert to Oprah.
  • Orange State’s Yes We Carve project is all Obama, all the time.
  • You may just want to tune out the politics, rocking out with Yoda, Space Invaders, and other geekery. [Via]
• Posters:
  • Designers for Obama brings together graphic artists in support of the candidate. Examples feature some cool typography and color palettes. In a similar vein the Obama Art Report shows off more solid illustration & type.
  • Meanwhile community-made McCain posters are on Zazzle and CafePress.
• The NY Times features an interactive presentation that tracks their editorial endorsements for president through history, including blurbs from the endorsements, links to full articles, and an indication of which candidate prevailed.
• Well, you can’t say you don’t know what to expect with this one: The Brokers With Their Hands On Faces Blog.

October 20, 2008

Monday Illustrations

A slightly random sampling for a Monday morning:

• Same actor, different role: clever, and kind of self-explanatory once clicked.

• Who needs to wait for a bank collapse when you've got this ATM mugger?  (Lose money the old fashioned way, I say.)
• Folicular stylings (perfect for our XD group):
  • Desktop facial hair contest
  • I {Heart} 'Stache
  • Related/previous: this offbeat Beard font.

• Tutorials & resources:
  • Veerle offers guidance on drawing Apple's cloverleaf "Command" shape in Illustrator (or, if you prefer, call it a Swedish campground symbol).
    • Along similar lines, dig Nicholas Guarino's piece. [Via]
  • 40 Dark and Futuristic Photoshop Effects [Via]
  • 40 Sets of Abstract Glow Brushes
• Dilbert creator Scott Adams is all over Photoshop + Wacom Cintiq. [Via many people]

October 6, 2008

Monday Illustrations: Current events to optical illusions

• Current events:
  • The Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart [Via]
  • An NYT infographic shows how Congress voted, district by district, on the bailout plan (first time around) [Via]
• From the history books:
  • While the Supreme Court considers tobacco company advertising practices, Contexts.org posts some vintage Marlboro ads targeted at moms. [Via]
  • CreativePro's got a roundup of strange old illustrations found by Gene Gable.  (SF is so colorful and gay!)
  • James White pulls together Saul Bass's most iconic logos.  [Via]
• I love Bryan Katzel's super cool long-scrolling design.  Scroll down the page to see how it mixes foreground elements with a stationary background. [Via]
• Optical tricks:
  • Axel Peemoeller has crafted a parking lot signage system whose messages can be read only from certain angles.
  • I have no idea how this works, but I like it: Math, art, and the Droste effect

October 1, 2008

"Dear InDesign, Illustrator..."

Continuing a bit of a theme:

• InDesign Sr. PM Michael Ninness has responded to nearly all the top 25 beefs reported on DearAdobe.com.  He's also provided another 15 responses to other gripes that they plan to address in a future blog entry.  (Regarding the gripe about the lack of a color picker, although it's not exactly what's being requested, I'd point out that InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, and Photoshop CS4 all feature the same Kuler panel (screenshot) for color selection.  We're sharing more code, but it's not an overnight thing.)
• Meanwhile former Illustrator PM Mordy Golding has surveyed the remarks about Illustrator, and he's posted responses to the top 25 comments along with good points about what does--and doesn't--constitute useful, actionable feedback.
  

September 25, 2008

Illustrator CS4 goodness

Among the comments on my list of details polished in Photoshop CS4, a number of people wished for a similar list for Illustrator & suggested that the Illustrator team start a blog.  As it happens, my friend & former Illustrator PM Mordy Golding runs the great Real World Illustrator blog, and he's posted some illuminating resources:

• Illustrator CS4 - The Facts is a pretty comprehensive round-up of what's new in this release. (The Appearance panel is killer--everything I always asked that it be.)
• His interview with Illustrator PM David Macy offers good perspective on the team's thinking & discusses other points of polish in CS4.

In the past I've said "I swear because I care," and caring a lot about Illustrator, I've directed some well-intentioned swearing in their direction over the years.  I distinctly remember sitting at my desk at Agency.com some nine years ago and hearing a (long since departed) Illustrator PM dismiss my request by saying, "Oh, customers don't want multiple pages."  (At that point I started wondering, "Now, is it still murder if it wasn't premeditated, and can I claim temporary insanity...?")  That's why I'm delighted that they've both addressed some eternal requests (yay, multiple pages--er, artboards!) and have polished lots of existing functionality.  As Mordy writes,

In the past, Illustrator had a reputation of adding new features, but never really going back to refine them in subsequent versions (i.e.,gradient mesh, 3D, brushes, graphs). With an improved Appearance panel, more capable graphic styles, a revamped gradient feature, better clipping mask behavior, isolation mode, and Smart Guides in CS4, it's refreshing to see the team adding much needed polish to some of these "older" features.

 

The more I've played with the new Illustrator, the more I've found the "little" changes to have a big impact.  I think you will, too.

September 19, 2008

Friday P-shoppery

• What would happen if you applied every single filter in Photoshop to an image?  Well, someone had to try. [Via]
• If you ask people on forums to edit your images, you never know what you'll get (possibly NSFW). [Via Michael Ninness]
  

September 17, 2008

Political illustrations

• Photographer Jill Greenberg is under fire for doing a cover shoot with John McCain for The Atlantic Monthly, then using the outtakes to create harshly anti-McCain photo illustrations.  The magazine has disavowed her actions, and Mark Tucker asks a number of questions (while linking to more commentary).  Greenberg has posted her images at manipulator.com.
• On a much lighter note, I'd vote Tauntaun any time.  (Not so much actual Hope, though.) [Update: Also, McCain gets the Frank Miller treatment. (Via Steven Johnson)]
  

September 14, 2008

Vintage Sunday

• "Dyna Moe" has produced the excellent series Mad Men illustrated.  (Yes, I resisted watching that show for a long time, then gave up.  You should, too.)  Love Peggy, Sal, and Joan, but Don looks too generic & happy.  Useful bonus: Sally Draper's Cocktail Cheat Sheet. [Via]
• Veerle rounds up numerous classic movie title sequences.  The premium-blend mentholated Thank You For Smoking would fit right in on Mad Men.
• Gene Gable's posted a great collection of letterheads.
• Motortype: Adam Polselli rounds up a set of lovely vintage car logos.
  

September 6, 2008

New infographics: Hockey Moms to Wu-Tang Clan

• The NYT visually represents word usage at the Democractic & Republican conventions.  Hmm, the Dems must really want "four more years" of this "Bush" character... [Via Ken Lawson]
• DIY 411: MIT's Mycrocosm is "a Web site that makes it possible for people to use statistical graphs and other visual language tools for expressive social communication. In particular it provides an alternative to purely text based micro-blogging software." [Via]
• Reader "PW" (presumably not PW Herman) points out Pratt's interesting mechanism for navigating classes & faculty.
• Mission Creep illustrates US troop presence worldwide by country over the last half century. [Via]
• Slate's got a short history of information visualizations.  It's good to be reminded of beautiful work like Ben Fry's Genome Valence (video). [Via]
• It's not an infographic per se, but it riffs nicely on their familiar shapes: Sony's new Walkman ads play with the forms of famous subway maps.  Zooming in on the Sydney piece, you can see that station names have been replaced by bands.

September 5, 2008

P-shopped Chrome

Heh--good for a Friday laugh: Google's Chrome browser comic gets mauled by a bunch of wiseasses.  (Mocking goateed hipsters will always, always sort me out.) [Via Fergus Hammond]

Other random graffiti-ish bits:

• Big mugs: Wooster Collective turns up some very cool huge faces in Carthagena, plus even more massive faces projected in Quebec City.
• CNET talks about "Green graffiti"--using various forms of technology (lasers, LEDs) to create paint-free messaging.  I love this little safetyman busting out.

September 2, 2008

Spraygun Mona Lisa, hipster anatomy, & more

Recent illustration finds:

• At the Nvision conference across from Adobe last week, the Mythbusters guys showed how to paint the Mona Lisa in 80 milliseconds. [Via]
• "Part medical and part American Apparel": Hipster anatomical drawings. [Via]
• Radiating:
  • I want to run around with Dan Funderburgh's array of sharp things, letterpressed into a poster.
  • Dig Sam Winston's pencil shavings.
• Hot cartographic action:
  • National Geographic offers a map o' the day feature, displaying high-res maps through what appears to be Zoomify. [Via]
  • Adding perspective to maps: Mark Mayers demonstrates how to give flat Illustrator maps a third dimension by using the Free Transform tool and a custom perspective grid.
  • Mark Simonson surveys the cartographic typography of the Indiana Jones series.
• This poop-scooping illustration doesn't stink. [Via David Macy]

September 1, 2008

Chinese political illustration, then & now

• Ethan Persoff has gathered a collection of anti-US Chinese political cartoons c.1958-1960.  Without translations or other context, many are baffling, but I find this one especially creepy.  [Via]
• Drawing your own political messages in China is less welcome: James Powderly of the Graffiti Research Lab (see previous) was detained for six days for attempting to display Tibet-related protest messages during the Olympics.  He tells the story in a series of interviews.
• History repeating as farce: Now you can get a hand-painted version of your face in a Chinese propaganda poster.  [Via]

August 29, 2008

Friday Illustrations: Beer, bathrooms, & The Shining

• Stay frosty:

  • For the Beck's Canvas project, "Four young artists will be selected by a panel of judges from the Royal College of Art to showcase their art on the labels of over 27 million bottles to be distributed nationwide from August 2008." [Via]
  • Bryan Hughes came across a great Photoshop beer-drawing tutorial from Eren Göksel.
• How to draw anything in one step: Draw a dog covering the thing you can't draw.  (You may want to combine this with the drinking.) [Via]
• It's the Waiting for Guffman of puzzle-making: Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker is a subtle, insanely well observed parody of craftsmen who are just a tad too into their work.
• Love this set of paintings of families from films (the Torrances from The Shining, the Griswolds from Vacation, and more).
• Interesting bathroom decorating idea: pixels to tiles.

August 28, 2008

On-demand skate decks & more

I'm always intrigued by technologies that enable on-the-fly creation of media (print, Web, video)--what Adobe dubbed "network publishing."  Recent examples I've found interesting:

• "MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we'll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more."  (Kind of a step up from my 8th-grade experiences publishing a skate 'zine with a friend's Mac & my dad's office Xerox.)
• On another skating note, Zazzle now enables creation of customized skateboard decks. [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes]
• Faber Finds publishes out-of-print titles, generating a unique cover for each on the fly. [Via]

August 27, 2008

Recent infographic goodness

• Stefanie Posavec creates beautiful, sometimes abstract images from data in her "On the Map" project.
• The NYT renders Olympic medal counts by country, also enabling the user to navigate through time.  (Tossing it around too freely, I managed to blow up Safari.)
• "UFO sighting convincibility" is on the rise, thanks to Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
• xach.com offers a cool way to visualize 2008 box office results. [Via]
• I think I should chart my mood on a line stretching from "Earnest" to "Scurrilous*," as Vanity Fair does with the content of their Blogopticon. [Via Tom Hogarty]  It's similar to New York Mag's Approval Matrix.

*Defined as "grossly or obscenely abusive... characterized by or using low buffoonery; coarsely jocular or derisive."  Hells yeah.

August 25, 2008

iPhone GUI bits

• The guys at teehan+lax have created a slick, well organized iPhone GUI PSD file.  Geoff Teehan writes, "We created our own Photoshop file that has a fairly comprehensive library of assets – all fully editable."  Nicely done! [Via Joel Eby]
• Felix Sockwell offers a detailed walk-through of how he developed icons for the NY Times' iPhone app.
• Vaunted info-design expert Edward Tufte critiques iPhone interfaces in terms of their info-to-overhead ratio. [Via]

Marginally related at best, but too good not to share: the highly unique unboxing video for the Samsung Omnia. [Via Russell Williams]

August 23, 2008

Saturday drawerings, from Tron to rayguns

• I love the Chopping Block's Tron tee.  (Would the dog try to stick its head out the window of a lightcycle, too?)
• Going the other direction, Bibliodyssey points out this ancient tank design--from 1646. (Don't mistake it for a ThinkPad.) [Via]
• Illustrator-fu:
  • Veerle shows some great, simple applications of Illustrator's underused Make with Mesh command.
  • Chad Neuman has a cool idea--splashing real paint, then using Illustrator's Live Trace feature to vectorize it.
• In Little Chicken Growing Up, scientific illustrator Mieke Roth chronicled the growth of a baby chicken through a series of lovely drawings. [Via]
• Vintage:
  • Flickr features a huge mid-century illustration archive, grouped by illustrator. [Via]
  • Apropos of nothing, I stumbled upon a solid raygun illustration. [Via]

August 12, 2008

Tuesday Illustration: Iron Man, lasers, and more

• If you're feeling "cleared for weird," peep the intricate, disturbing paintings of Ryohei Hase, all painted in Photoshop.
• The UI Resource Center features a long and detailed interview with the team that designed Iron Man's heads-up display.

• Semi-political strangeness:
  • Politicians often serve as pincushions, but it's rare that they're actually made of pins, as in this Thumbtack Obama. [Via]
  • Gene Tempest's long but interesting essay covers the Posters of Paris '68, talking (among other things) about how the French artists played on memories of Nazi collaboration.
  • "Did United Artists doctor a photo of anti-Hitler plotter Claus von Stauffenberg to make him look more like the Top Gun actor?" asks the Guardian. [Via]  (Even weirder: My wife just glanced at the image and said, "I thought that was you for a second.")
• Designer Marian Bantjes has been producing great stuff lately:
  • Her Design Ignites Change is a limited-edition, laser-cut poster that dramatically changes appearance under different conditions.  Proceeds benefit kids orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Kenya. [Via]
  • In Love Stories she creates a riot of great type--some of it edible!

July 27, 2008

Killer animations o' the day

• Despite finding it some time ago, I've been avoiding blog The Art of the Title Sequence, knowing that it would likely take over my life.  Sure enough, it's loaded with good stuff.  Check out the beautiful titles for El Don, whipped up by Santiago artists Smog.  I saw motion graphics pioneer Kyle Cooper (SE7EN, etc.) speak years ago and remember him saying that every frame should hold up on its own as graphic design.  This piece aces that test.  (For unrelated goodness, see Smog's "monkey-headed dancing guy" (or whatever "un mono bailarín" is).)
• Motion artist PES creates incredible stop-motion films using found objects.  KaBoom and Western Spaghetti are particularly great (c'mon, Candy Corn as flames?).  Check out his work before People for the Ethical Treatment of Upholstery shut him down. [Via John Peterson & Maria Brenny, "Because (re: KaBoom) I know what you do in the desert"]
• My Drive Thru is a new stop-motion video for Converse, produced by the team at Psyop.  Behind the scenes, Pharrell Williams talks about rescuing Chuck Taylors from the taint of Punky Brewster, and Glossy interviews the Psyop crew while posting some high-res stills. [Via]
• Superfad has kicked out a trio of stylish ads for Sprint.  The Hurricane Katrina spot is particularly worth a look.  

July 22, 2008

*Real* Real-World Photoshop, Vitruvian Wookies, and more

• In his Tell a Lie project, Henry Hadlow "uses a camera to mimic common Photoshop effects."  Killer! [Via Paul McJones]
• Vader Crossing the Delaware: On Worth1000, P-shoppers mash up Star Wars with fine art.  Surveying a couple of the pieces, Bryan Hughes remarked, "Man, that is some seriously disturbing stuff. Sort of like Joe Satriani for the eyes ...which is to say that, yeah, I know there’s crazy talent there... but what a way to misuse it!" [Via Dave Dobish]
  

• Green Patriot Posters bring kick-ass poster art to the fight against climate change.  Nick Snyder writes, "Contributions from other designers will be featured in the coming months. In September, Green Patriot Posters will launch an online competition where participants may submit Green Patriot Poster designs, view other posters and vote on designs."

July 20, 2008

Walruses, Wolverine Monkeys, & mo'

• Animation:
  • In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview.  38 years later, I Met The Walrus is the Oscar-nominated short film that resulted--5 minutes of fluid, often surreal images morphing into one another over the recording.  YouTube hosts the full piece in high quality.
  • I'm not sure what to say about the coffee-stirrer-based (?) Endless Not stick animation, but I can dig it. [Via]
• I love the crazy little characters made by Matthew Porter.  (His Dr. Wagner portrait is staring down at me now.).  Next time you need to commission a Wolverine monkey, you'll know where to turn. [Via Margot]
• Coca-Cola's very cool WE8 site brings together illustrators, musicians, and other artists from West & East in the spirt of friendship (well, that and of selling tasty sugar water).  The site features interactive 3D Flash versions of the packaging they've created, downloadable desktop images and more. [Via Terri Stone]
• Peep the charming skulls of Kristina Collantes desktop wallpapers.
• Public service:
  • Speed bump: $1500.  Drawing of a speed bump: $80.  Effectiveness: pretty comparable--at least until people catch on. [Via]
  • What do the "Safetymen" on signage do all day?  Signs of Life aims to shed light.

July 18, 2008

The Ocelot, in ink

Wow--now this you don't see every day: John Pischke, an Image Capture Manager at Quad/Graphics in Minneapolis, has used the "Ocelot Rampant" image from this blog in a tattoo on his arm. I furnished him with the original Illustrator file last year, and on Tuesday it was turned into ink. "You’ll be happy to know it was completely designed in Photoshop," writes John P. Nice!

Tangentially related surreality:

• Bleedin' for the 'Dobe
• My life as a CS3 icon

July 17, 2008

Great #$!@!'in Type

• What the %@^! does one call those "random non-alphabet characters to indicate cursing?"  Answer: Grawlix.  (Bonus cutting aside: "Is that the sound of a designer waiting for Adobe Updater to complete?"  Oh, from the top rope!) [Via]
• On Flickr, user "el estratografico" collects "retronomatopeya"--classic sound effects in cartoons.
• Batman may have gone all modern & hardcore, but "Las onomatopeyas o Batsigns" showcases the sound-effect renderings of his classic, corny past. [Via Rob Corell]
  

July 16, 2008

Wednesday Illustration: Cash money & Mo'

• Ducats:
  • Weird juxtapositions rule in these money/celebrities mash-ups.
  • "What Could Be More Unforgettable Than Dollar Bill Albert Einstein?"  Check out Cabel Sasser's fireworks packaging round-up.
• The Etch A Sketch has been reborn as an iPhone app!  (Shake the phone to clear the screen.)
• How do Californians perceive their fellow Americans?  Counterpoint: How New Yorkers see the rest of the world.  (This all reminds me of the Onion t-shirt "Stereotypes are a real time-saver.")
• Mordy Golding has a solid tutorial on embossing text in Illustrator. In it he produces a pretty convincing license plate.
• Posters:
  • Dig BLT's elegant new Batman poster.
  • "You'll gargle with fear!" I love the homage to classic poster styles in these Futurama illustrations

July 9, 2008

Wednesday Illustrations: Smoke, fire, and floods

• Put down the menthols & peep these beautifully rendered Brazilian anti-smoking ads.  (I wonder what illustrator Clement Hurd would think.)
• The Paper Version of the Web takes me back to my roots as a Web designer, sketching up pages for British Airways and others.  I always like being reminded that technology aside, it's the ideas that count. [Via]
• Flooded London "depicts imaginary scenes in London in 2090, when rising sea levels have inundated the city." [Via]
• Rat finks unite in this collection of Big Daddy Roth illustrations.
• Buy N' Large Wal-Mart is getting a new logo. [Via]  Here's a timeline of their designs.
• Laser-etched tattoos: hey, what's the worst that could happen...?

June 25, 2008

Wednesday Illustrations

• The Executive Coloring Book (from 1961) will really make you want to claw your way to middle management.
• I love the slamming, superheroic quality of Evgeny Parfenov's portraits.
• Yeondoo Jung does real-life recreations of children's drawings. [Via]
• Photoshop UI designer Julie Meridian loves to sneak these weird vintage magician bits into her interface mockups.

June 19, 2008

Infographic stylings: From bacon to Ludacris

• Love bacon, love the bacon flowchart.  "Are you wearing pants?"  (Evidently this will prove important.)
• Men's Vogue celebrates Massimo Vignelli's sleek 1972 New York subway map.
• The Boston Globe teaches you to nap. [Via]
• Stefanie Gray maps the area codes in which Ludacris claims to... uh, know ladies.  [Via]
• Mark Rabinowitz uses the graphical language of nutrition facts to illustrate some truths about prostitution.
• How many employees does Google have?  About this many.  [Via]
• It's tangentially related, maybe, but I dig these out-of-context small boat images. [Via]

June 18, 2008

The Color & the Shape, in PS & AI

• Dr. Woohoo has been creating some very cool images by driving Illustrator and Photoshop from Adobe AIR.  Check out Generative Painting in AI with 3D Symbols, as well as some good bits on Flickr.  "For this animation," says the Adobe Design Center, "Dr. Woohoo developed an AIR app that drives the colors, brushes, and animation timeline in Photoshop CS3 via a swfPanel in Illustrator CS3."
• Veerle Pieters talks about making simple organic shapes in Photoshop.  If that trips your trigger, you might also like her quick tutorials on creating a spiral ornament in Illustrator, and making light motion trails & glowing sparks in PS.
  

June 14, 2008

Random Saturday brilliance

Gold-plated vertically integrated batter-dipped Photoshop-rendered AJAX-flavored Flash/Flex 3D RIA workflow mash-ups: Impressive.

Also impressive: A Sharpie, a stove, and something to say.  (I wonder whether any dead people read my blog.) [Via]

Elsewhere: Willie Nelson in Kiss make-up (hey, why not?).

Off to eat BBQ,

J.

June 11, 2008

Dolla Dolla Bill, Mickey D's, and more

• "Change We Can Believe In": the typography.com guys compare the new currency designs of the UK & US.  (Honestly, the giant purple Helvetica "5" is a prank... right?) [Via]

• Vintage:
  • BibliOdyssey offers up a collection of knight attire.
  • Frank Chimero inserted a historic map of Europe, personifying the various countries, into his set.
• Packaging:
  • I really dig the skin of this Victorian-styled Mac Mini.  (Wish I could find a higher-res shot of it, though.) [Via]
  • Check out the great DVD packaging for Mad Men.
• The Smithsonian features an article about and small gallery of Afghan war rugs, featuring scenes of 9/11 and more. [Via]
• McDonald's channels David Carson*? [Via]  (Company spokesman R. McDonald responds with a violent outburst.)

*or "David Car-five-n," as an art director of mine used to call him due to his once-unorthodox method of substituting characters, e.g. "5" for "s"

June 10, 2008

Infographic goodness

The NYT has been kicking out the good infographic jams lately:

• Andrew Kuo created a funny, handsome infographic on why music festivals are worth skipping.  For more from Andrew, see his blog + previous.
• Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter and Amanda Cox have created an interesting Flash-based infographic that totes up "All of Inflation’s Little Parts."  I often find presentations like this dense, impenetrable, and/or over-designed, but this one's an exception.  [Via]
• Adobe XD guy Ethan Eismann points out a couple of video-based info presentations. In one of them, interactive voting is tied in with the content.

Elsewhere:

• Ben Terrett pulls together lots of interesting visualizations. [Via]

• Rorschach Economics: Japan's Phillips Curve looks like Japan; cigarette consumption looks like Virginia.
• It's been around a while, but I still dig Michal Migurski's flashy newsmap

June 9, 2008

Monday Illustrations: In Cars

• Frank Chimero renders the various United States as objects with similar shapes.  (Florida has been scrupulously omitted.) [Via]
• The cover of a recent Vice magazine featured a glowing, ghosted BMW illustration.
• Vehicular cruelty?:
  • "Flower Power" isn't just for aging first-gen iMacs anymore.  Check out this drawn-upon Bentley Continental.
  • "Pimped" doesn't begin to capture the illustrated, bejewelled craziness of these Pakistani custom vehicles.
• Game theories:
  • The Playstation blog talks about using Photoshop to Make Your Own PS3 Themes. [Via]
  • Not to be outdone, an Xbox blog talks about paint customization features in the NASCAR '09 game.  "The online connectivity of Paint Booth allows players to download a car template from easports.com and import it into editing programs, such as Photoshop, giving users a multitude of design options."

June 1, 2008

Sunday Illustration

• Jacqueline Pytyck produces some seriously foxy work with a nice sense of depth.  I especially like her self portrait. [Via]
• PingMag covers Steven Wilson's cool Psychedelia, made using Illustrator & Photoshop.
• Right 'round like a record:
  • What likes beyond The Wall?  Find out in a great design challenge to extending album art.
  • In Cover Stories, Old and New, Khoi Vinh surveys past & present album art from long-serving artists.
• Politcally themed:
  • "God Is a Graphic Designer?"  Chip Kidd plumbs the meaning of a curiously torn newspaper.  (This reminds me of when I returned to my laptop once and found the "Y" key missing from the keyboard.  I was convinced that my legitimately crazy and dangerous roommate was trying to send me a message.  Turned out to be the work of my cat, though... I think.)
  • Somewhere I stumbled upon a cool Obama illustration.
• Veerle Pieters has been featuring some great illustrators:
  • She interviews Alberto Seveso, creator of a really distinctive photo-illustration style.  (For a number of links to his work, see previous.)
  • Elsewhere she chats with the wonderfully talented Oksana Grivina.

May 24, 2008

Miscellaneous interestingness

New fatherhood -> sleep deprivation (yeah, still) -> abandoning any pretense of categorization.  That said, here are a few interesting bits I've seen lately:

• The New Yorker reports on the world of high-end retouching in "Pixel Perfect -- Pascal Dangin’s virtual reality." (Hey, someone uses the Smudge tool!) [Via Ivan Cavero Belaunde, Clare McLean, Gary Cosimini, Claiborne Brown, and seemingly everyone else I know ;-)]
• The Times Online features "Billion-pixel panoramas — from your own camera" [Via Jeffrey Warnock]
• As I've said before, Logo design = Bullet magnetism.  Now "OGC unveils new logo to red faces," says the Telegraph.  Er, um, yes.  (But hey, it's no worse than the "Lisa Simpson" London Olympics logo.)   [Via Lori Grunin]
• "Oh man... two words: Photoshop Filter," says Adobe's Chris Arkenberg.  Behold Man Babies.

May 21, 2008

Viva frilly bits

Who doesn't like the occasional dingbat & swash?

• Cameron Moll demonstrates great attention to detail with the little embellishments on his site.  In response to reader questions, he offers 25 resources for ornaments, fleurons, and "frilly bits."
• On a related note, Illene Strizver answers questions about typographic dingbats on CreativePro.com.
  

May 18, 2008

Illustration in motion

• The hallucinogenic visions of graffiti artist Blu play out across walls in Buenos Aires & Baden.  Fascinating.  For more from him, see previous. [Via]
• Chad Pugh wired his computer to take a screen capture every 5 seconds while he worked in Illustrator, resulting in this blistering condensation of a 40-hour process.  Photo-sensitive pre-teens need not watch.
• Jackie A-Go-O: Illustrator Chris Ware offers up a great animation for This American Life.
• The Etch-a-Sketch clock automatically redraws time.

May 12, 2008

I say "Adobe" you say...

...what, exactly?  That's what Noah Brier's fun Brand Tags project asks, and here's what people have said so far.  It's kind of fun to read the small print, too: "arcane awesome bastards... stucco structure... techy teepee telefónica terrorists..."  (Too bad Adobe doesn't make people think "hot cyclone action," like Dyson does.)  You can play your own word association game on the main page, and you can go backwards, playing name that brand based on what people say. [Via Mark Baltzegar & John Dowdell]

May 10, 2008

Calef Brown rocks

Having a wee man in the house certainly cuts into the time I'd otherwise put into scouring the Web for good bits to share; hence the dearth of illustration, photography, and type links lately.  On the other hand, it exposes me to books and illustrations I'd never otherwise see (not, y'know, being in the typical Pat the Bunny demographic).

My wife Margot turned me on to the works of the wonderful Calef Brown, poet & illustrator extraordinare.  Both the text and the art are hilariously loopy.  Check out some samples from Polkabats and Octopus Slacks to see what I mean.

Of course, it's fun to revisit the classics as well--Goodnight Moon especially.  Each night as I read it aloud, I try to amuse Margot by sneaking in some new reference to illustrator Clement Hurd's smoking habit--a penchant now hidden through Photoshop.  A little Googling reveals that other Photoshoppers couldn't leave that news alone, staging a "What Is Clement Holding?" contest.  (Keep kids off the Soloflex!)

Next up, I need to prevail on my folks to send us my old & very well-loved set of Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and a Frog books--totally wonderful.

April 18, 2008

Strange Photochops

• From the "Why Do It To Yourself?" chronicles:
  • Why choose when you can have a Hillary/Barack hybrid?
  • Freaking News started a Photoshop contest to replace celebrities' eyes with their own mouths.  Bleaugh. [Via]
• Photoshop + pro wrestling + the South = "Nipplegate."
• People looooove the Hitler History Channel and its endless exploration of WWII.  Did the Germans really have an Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer (Superheavy Armored Walking Tank)?  Scroll down to view the evidence. [Via]
• Copyright this: Adobe's Serge Jespers reports on a Belgian exhibitor looking for 100 Photoshoppers to remove a famous building from all their images. Bizarre. [Via]
• I really have no business passing this along, but knowing that our product helped land a giant Mr. T Cabbage Patch doll on SF brings a tear of pride to my eye.

April 15, 2008

Lasers, Orwell, and Mad Magazine

New illustrated biz:

• The NYT offers a great interactive presentation of Al Jaffee's Mad Magazine fold-ins.
• "Putting the king back in stalking." Big ups to Barska binoculars for breaking some new ground with their ads. "I prefer to think of myself as a 'stranger enthusiast'..." [Via]
• Art nerds who really want wedgies can opt for this laser-etched Moleskine unicorn notebook.  I wonder whether you can read it from inside the darkened locker where you've been stuffed.  [Via]
• Shout-outs to the Eastern Bloc:
  • Shepard Fairey does George Orwell, via covers for Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm.
  • Peep some crisp label designs for Lovejoy Vodka [Via]
• Logos:
  • Toyota offers Scion users the ability to roll their own logos.
  • Apple vs. the Big Apple: Mom, Dad, don't fight!
  • The logo for the Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is a crafty little ambigram.
  • I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: The NYT features a slideshow of the logos of secret US military programs, along with an accompanying article.  Trevor Paglen's book of the logos is here.

April 12, 2008

Adventures in album artwork

• Nikolay Saveliev's rad Pop Matters project consists of "Vinyl record sleeves with 2-sided insert featuring faux-academic material on pop music and the state of the record industry... Snuck onto used& new record store shelves."  Personal fave: "Nickelback: The Recursiveness of Professional Mediocrity."
• Pitchfork picks The Worst Album Covers of 2007.
• Listropolis has translated the artwork for Rolling Stone’s Top 20 Albums into color palettes. [Via]
• Should classic album covers be redesigned every few years?  Ben Wardle makes that case, with examples. [Via]
  

March 22, 2008

Logo trends, past and future

• The mid-70's book The World of Logotypes features hundreds of vintage logos, now scanned and presented on Flickr. [Via Durin Gleaves]
• The peace symbol has turned 50.  Apparently the shape incorporates the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament).  Here's a brief history. [Update: More good details from the BBC.] [Via]
• Are "waves the new swooshes"?  Yes, says Logorange, in predicting 10 trends that will define logo design in 2008.
• Jon Hicks, creator of the Firefox logo, provides a quick walk-through of his icon design process.
• I dig this logotype for Big Boss, as well as the little color chips of Dreamscape Design.
  

March 18, 2008

New Illustrated Hotness

• Goofing on cartoons:
  • Garfield Minus Garfield is totally weirdly brilliant. [Via]
  • Some Old Man Still Churning Out Marmaduke, reports The Onion. "'I love what I do,' said the elderly cartoonist, his body and mind crippled by an endless and repetitive stream of doodles featuring the Great Dane."
• Know your history:
  • Billboard's got the 25 Best Rock Posters of All Time. [Via]
  • Pay up, suckers!  Gene Gable finds cool vintage artwork for shaking the money tree.  Reminds me of Jesse James's palm (clearer view).
  • Worth1000 features excellent vintage ads for modern products. [Via]
  • Fancy a Victorian DeLorean?  Peep Silhouette Masterpiece Theater. [Via]
• Chroma police:
  • "PixelPastry oozes fresh flavours, tastes that entice tastebuds and well fed clients." I'm inclined to agree. [Via]
• Pablo Bisoglio's work vibrates with color.  I dig this dragon in particular. [Via]
• Pedro Franz sings the eyeball electric.  (Okay, that doesn't mean anything.  But you try coming up with 50 unique ways to say, "Hey, here's a cool site I think you'll like." ;-P)
• The Bible has been reimagined as a graphic novel.
• Dig this well crafted bit of digital imaging for San Patrignano. [Via]
  

March 10, 2008

From D&D to decapitations, in infographics & maps

• Sam Potts has created a hilarious infographic for Sunday's NY Times, part of their sendoff for D&D creator Gary Gygax.
• The NYT has been posting other interesting graphics lately, including How Americans Spend Their Money and the Flash-enabled Ebb & Flow of Movies.
• In Rudimentum Novitiorum, Bibliodyssey surveys maps & other infographics of antiquity.
• With a more modern spin, Colourlovers talks about the use of color in transit maps, offering a number of cool examples.
• How about a world map made from musical notes? [Via]
• What does an hour's worth of movement in front of the TV look like?  One Flickr user endeavored to find out, using a video camera & a grid of masking tape to plot the positions of dad, kids, and cat. [Via]
• For the greater good:
  • Easier voting through graphic design: Marcia Lausen is "determined to apply the highest possible standards of information design to make [voting systems] clear, accessible, easy to use and the results accurate." [Via]
  • John Emerson's Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design offers a guide for NGOs, non-profits and advocacy groups. [Via]
• If you can't go another day without knowing how to stage a realistic decapitation, well, consult these graphics.
  

March 1, 2008

Now showing: The original Photoshop icons

With Photoshop recently having celebrated a birthday, it's fun to stumble across the original Photoshop icons.  Make that "PhotoShop," as the big S was present when the application was briefly bundled by BarneyScan, before it became an Adobe product*.  The original product icon, designed by Photoshop co-creator John Knoll, was replaced by the eye that served from 1990-2003.  John added his perspective in the blog post's comments. [Via]

If this is up your alley, you might also enjoy:

• Photoshop splash screens and toolbars through time
• Derrick Story's brief history of Photoshop (as of 2000, anyway)
• Jeff Schewe's very deep history of the first 10 years (PDF)
• A ppodcast interview with Brett Wickens of MetaDesign, who worked on the CS/CS2 icons and packaging

*Until recently, however, the spellchecker in MS Office insisted on inserting the capital S--completely annoying.  I filed a bug with Microsoft, but I don't know whether the change made it into Office '07.

February 26, 2008

Fun with physics-based drawing

The great thing about computer-based drawing and painting tools is that they do exactly what you expect, over and over [reliability => productivity.]. That's also what kind of sucks about them, though: happy accidents can be hard to come by.

Taking a different spin on things, Umeå University's Phun is "an educational, entertaining and somewhat addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion."  Although it's not a drawing tool per se, Phun mixes literalness with a measure of unpredictability.  Check out this video of it in action. [Via Jerry Harris & Jim Geduldick]

If that's up your alley, take a look at Nelson Chu's amazing MoXi watercolor simulation (details).  Computer power (GPU power in particular) is starting to enable sophisticated simulations on every desktop.  Look at the way an app like Little Big Planet leverages a great physics engine and redefines the process of computer-based creation (in this case using a PlayStation, but so what?).

It seems like every other day I read about some app or other using the Flash platform to partially emulate old versions of Photoshop.  That's all fine, but I'm much more excited about harnessing the platform to build much richer, more immersive, and (optionally) less predictable creation experiences.  We can have the best of both worlds, and that's what keeps me amped & in the game.

February 25, 2008

Poster Flava: eBoy on AIR & more

• Today Adobe launches Adobe AIR (read about it, I dunno, everywhere), and the always wonderful eBoy collective has created a poster for the AIR launch. [Via]
• Veerle Pieters recently kicked off a "What Is Graphic Design?" poster contest, and now she's posted the excellent winners.  (I, of course, have a soft spot for this one.)
• Steven Heller offers a brief survey of US political posters. [Via]
• Film poster John Alvin, creator of pieces for everything from Blazing Saddles to Lord of the Rings, has passed away at age 59.  The NYT offers a short rememberance.  (I wonder what he thought of Trajan.)
  

February 24, 2008

Naked saunas, 3D Flash globes, and other infographic goodness

• My wife and I are nervously quizzing each other on these expert (and very funny) baby care instructions (boosted wholesale, it would seem, from David Sopp's Safe Baby Handling Tips). [Via]
• Wable is "a coffee table that displays a user's web activity via physical bar graphing."  Yes, I remember pining for such a thing not ever. (Are Venn-diagram kiddie pools next?)
• Maps:
  • Concentric circles are coming for us!!  The Onion has fun with news infographics.
  • Seeking to place events into geographical context, Yahoo has created a 3D NewsGlobe using Adobe Flex.  ComputerWorld's got background on the project. [Via]
  • In similar vein of "Learning America Smarter," check out the naked saunas, black metal, and ass-beating of Scandinavia. (And you thought it was all chilling out with MDF.)  [Via]
  • The Gough Map is said to be the oldest accurate map of Britain, dating from around 1360.
• Signage:
  • My little brother Ted let me ride along last month as he drove his garbage truck.  This safeyman image (somewhat dodgy iPhone-cam quality, sorry) I snapped in his cab shows the truck really putting the "screw" back in "screw of Archimedes."
  • "Do not iron while wearing shirt (on an iron-on decal)": more good advice from the safetyman chronicles. [Via]
  • I can get behind this "Faith healing sign" at Disneyland, not to mention Serbian children escaping a triangle.[Via]
• Blogging software has made self-publishing seem simple, but beneath the covers, a whole lot's going on.  Wired has a Flash-based diagram showing what all happens when one hits "Publish." [Via]

February 19, 2008

A history of logos, great desktops, and more

• Logos:
  • Neatorama features a history of tech company logos, from Adobe to Xerox.  Who knew about the 1,000-armed Canon, or Nokia and the fish?
  • Google invites kids to "Doodle 4 Google."  The winner gets a $10,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for his/her school.
  • Tap some taproot with the cute Jacobs & Sons Carrots logo (diggable).  I also enjoy the efficiency of the Colorado Conservation Trust mark.
• Having grown up with the illustrated genius Richard Scarry, and having just gotten some of his books at a baby shower, I'm especially charmed by this Beastie Boys Sure Shot remix. [Via Marc Pawliger]
• Veerle has posted a bunch of lovely patterns, plus plenty of links you can use for further pattern research/inspiration.
• Smashing Magazine offers up some "(Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers."
• Concept art:
  • io9 features a gallery of movie concept art. [Via]
  • Besides being a hilarious mofo, Shaddy Safadi is a talented digital artist who's been working on Neopets, Drake's Fortune, and other popular video games.
• Vintage
  • There's plenty of 50's art and illustration on Plan59.com
  • For related goodness, see the I Love My Electric Appliance!! Flickr pool.  "Lots of overjoyed women leaning on stuff," notes Core77.
  • Vanity Fair hosts a slideshow of classic Hollywood lobby cards from the late screenwriter Leonard Schrader's collection.
  • The Hatch Gallery offers up a sample of contemporary letterpress work. [Via]
  • I enjoy the Art Deco stylings (not to mention the writing) in 1930's The World in 2030. [Via]
  • Also from the Thirties, you might like these Colliers ads and illustrations. [Via]
• Talk about dedication to a (suddenly) losing cause: a guy gets a Pats tat on the head. [Via, of all things, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me]
  

February 18, 2008

Meet Adobe Illustrator (1987)

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I've uploaded a copy of the VHS tape that shipped in the box with Illustrator 1.0, hosted by company co-founder/president/Illustrator developer John Warnock:

Many thanks to Andrew Keith Strauss for digitizing the tape. Of the video Dr. Warnock writes, "That video demo tape was shot live, with no editing. We didn't have video production tools at that time, and we didn’t want to pay for a professional to do it, so I did the demonstration." It's fun to contrast this tape with the Illustrator 88 video made just a year later.

February 15, 2008

Fun & clever recent infographics

I'm endlessly fascinated with how people display information visually.  Here are some cool recent examples:

• JamPhat features a hilarious (and huge!) collection of hip hop-inspired infographics.  Images are helpfully linked to YouTube vids of the related songs. It was a good day...
• Fun with Venn diagrams: I love the simplicity of this clever music elitism t-shirt. (Compare to Wu-Tang Clan.) [Via]
• What if we regarded flags as info visualizations?  That's what Brazilian designer Icaro Doria did for the magazine Grande Reportagem.  [Via]
• Call it "Most Inscrutable. Karaoke Interface. Ever."  Or just call it pretty.  Robert from Flight404 (see previous) has used Processing to create the lovely video Solar, incorporating lyrics from Goldfrapp. [Via]
• HistoryShots sells prints of really cool infographics. 
• ArmsFlow presents global arms transactions, visualized in an interactive map.  Clicking individual countries shows their import/export flow for a given year.  Interesting concept, but the lines overlap so densely that it's hard to see what's happening.  I'd love to see the whole thing taken further.  [Via]
• Knowing things Biblically:
  • Chris Harrison pours ancient texts through graphical filters in his Visualizing the Bible project. [Via]
  • In the early 20th century Clarence Larkin turned his scriptural knowledge into Biblical infographics. [Via]
• Virtual China features a Chinese diagram on how to cook chicken with beer.  [Via]
  

February 7, 2008

Shat Shat Revolution, car cutaways, and more

"Some creators love a great sunset; some have in mind my bloodshot eyes..."  So says William Shatner of The Shatner Show, a gallery presentation and now book of artwork inspired by the man, rendered in every conceivable medium (including Lego).  B to the zzare.  The project reminds me a bit of Naoki Mitsuse's Elvis Paintings.  (I have a particular soft spot for Tiny Elvis.)

In other illustration news:

• Juan Francisco Casas creates large-format artwork using just a ballpoint pen.  In looking at the images, I could swear I just smelled that sticky, sickly Bic scent. [Via]
• The Periodic Table of Elements Printmaking Project brought together 96 artists "to produce 118 prints in any medium; woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or any combination."  Etsy hosts an interview with the organizers. (Apparently my blog is Hassium-powered.) [Via Petra]
• 8-bit jams:
  • Jimi Benedict has made a rather great Super Mario portrait.  He's also made some obligatory Obama artwork (quite the little cottage industry these days).  Oh, and his riot of death-rod imagery makes me think of the recruiting poster my old friend Adam Symons created for AGENCY.COM back in the day (simply ripping off remixing a Pietasters album cover, I believe). [Via]
  • On a Mario-related note, peep Sam Mullins's Super Mario sleeve tattoo.
• Automotive:
  • General Motors CEO Bob Lutz gets into the digital manipulation game, posting a "photochopped" Corvette police car design.  And if that's up your alley check out Rafael Reston's Chrysler 'Cuda mockup.
  • Cartype features a huge gallery of car cutaways. [Via]
• Logos:
  • Get ready for 5000 Web Apps in 333 Seconds. (If you watch for more than a few seconds, try not to swallow your tongue.) [Via]
  • Genius steals?  Behold these Automotive logo ripoffs. [Via]
  • Wilhelm Deffke was a trailblazing German identity designer.  I'm guessing there's one work he'd like to omit from his portfolio, however.
• Musical Notes
  • Play "Connect the Notes" with the Berliner Philharmoniker.
  • This ad seem to say, "Our jazz radio makes people puke!"

January 30, 2008

Recent illustrated goodness

• Obey Giant creator Shepard Fairey is backing Obama through his iconic posters. [Via] (I'm not trying to make this blog political, btw; just passing along interesting intersections of design & campaigning.)
• In the vein of posters and street art, Phelyx's got a how-to on bleach-stenciling a shirt. [Via]
• Russian designer Melamed cranks out powerful work.  Love these gym promotions in particular. [Via]
• Design Observer pointed out a really interesting piece on the many covers of JG Ballards' Crash. [Via]
• "Every time I see the new [Coke] can, I cry," says Mac developer Cabel Sasser. "It took Cola-Balls..." [Via]
• The New Yorker's been running a contest to redesign Eustace Tilly (the monocle-wielding mascot). [Via]
• Sleeveface is all about overlaying record sleeve art on the real world.  SF gate's got the story. [Via Jackie Lincoln-Owyang]
• On a related note, how about overlaying currency illustrations with celebrity photos? [Via]
• Apparently Spike Jonze is making Where The Wild Things Are, and a couple of stills from it have emerged. [Via]
• I love the simplicity of this Heinz volcano cutaway .

January 28, 2008

Back to the Future with Illustrator 88

Pass the banana clips and fire up Less Than Zero: It's time to visit the late 80's with the promotional video for Adobe Illustrator 88.  It's fun to see all that was possible even then, and to hear that the marketing message of "do more, and more easily, so you can focus on being creative" is eternal.  Now I shudder at visions of a besweatered James Spader dropping the French curves and grabbing a mouse.  [Via]

The timing is kind of spooky: for nearly a year I've been meaning to upload a copy of the John Warnock-hosted VHS tape that shipped in the Illustrator 1.0 box, and just last week I got serious about doing so.  Of the work Dr. Warnock says, "That video demo tape was shot live, with no editing. We didn't have video production tools at that time, and we didn’t want to pay for a professional to do it, so I did the demonstration."  Pretty cool that the company co-founder and CEO was not only one of four names on the product splash screen, but also the main demo man.  ("Everyone sweeps the floor around here," said Chuck Geschke of that time.)

This posting lights a fire under me, so look for the Warnock video soon. [Interim bonus retro fun: the 1987 Apple Knowledge Navigator video. Everything old is new again, and self-serious yuppies will always be with us.]

January 23, 2008

Logos a Go-Go & mo'

• "Che Guevara meets Jesus": Proving that the corporate world can cheapen any coin, the ad campaign for the new Rambo movie features spray-painted graffiti. [Via]
• Logos:
  • On the revolutionary tip, I love the RVLTN logo.
  • Soothing tasteless clients everywhere, it's Make My Logo Bigger Cream. [Via]
  • Rock Band Logos is an entire blog devoted to the iconography of Black Flag, Bad Religion, and hundreds of others. [Via]
  • Corey Holms has constructed a cool visual taxonomy of animals and plants used as corporate logos. [Via]
  • The NYT covers the new Xerox logo.  On the same topic, Armin at Brand New discusses the logo & its history. [Via]
  • Bibliodyssey features Anton van Dalen's funky logo mashups.
• Wham-O co-founder Richard Knerr recently passed away, prompting Boing Boing to post some cool old Superball packaging.  Also cool and barely related: Aimee Mann's rockin' Superball.
• Guerrilla artist James Clar's efforts to draw a smiley face on a Dubai tower have been ground down by The Man.
• Jesse Kaczmarek's portfolio is loaded with strong work, and the refreshingly clean, simple, and understated Flash UI doesn't get in the way.
  

January 20, 2008

Sunday Illustrations: From snowboards to Wonderbras

• Kottke proclaims Minority Kart "possibly the GAGOAT (greatest animated GIF of all time)."
• I love the beautiful simplicity of this snowboarding poster.
• It's not often that a Web design strikes me as particularly fresh, but the punchy, hand-illustrated intro for Fray.com makes a good go of it.
• From the vaults:
  • Irony & good cheer come together in this set of Old Soviet Christmas cards. [Via]
  • Flickr hosts a set of classic posters. [Via]
  • Yes, it's always illegal to kill a woman: the Daily Mail hosts a collection of outrageously politically incorrect advertisements from years past.  As might be said on Conan, "Not cool, Zeus--not cool." [Via]
• Wacom's new 12" Cintiq tablet/monitor gets some serious love from Gizmodo (a four-minute video demo followed by detailed text). [Via]  Adobe evangelist Terry White loves it, too.
• Life imitates art:
  • Wooster Collective has made a thought balloon for the real world. [Via]
  • xkcd covers the phenomenon of "Insisting that real-life objects are Photoshopped." [Via Rob Corell]
• Speaking of real-life objects, Saatchi & Saatchi makes excellent use of "The Wonderbra Hills."
• Mosaics:
  • Dig these icon mosaics for Teknograd Mac Support.  (They just wouldn't be the same using the blah-looking folder icons from Leopard.)
  • Michael Sporn talks about those in the New York subway.  For more on that subject, see the book Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit.  I always really dug the Irresistible Romance of Travel at Grand Army Plaza.  [Via]
    

January 11, 2008

It's not the size of your brush...

Cue "It's In The Way That You Use It" (and good luck getting that out of your head):  Illustrator Bob Stakke uses Photoshop 3.0 (no, not CS3--the one from '94) to create some great-looking characters.  In a tech-saturated, next-next-next-oriented world, it's nice to be reminded that creativity comes from people, not from machines and other tools.

Shakespeare could have rocked out in WordStar, and heck, you can draw Scarlett Johansson using MS Paint if you'd like.  That's not to say that new tools don't enable tons of new things, of course, and hopefully let creativity flow more freely.  It's just a reminder that a car is nothing without its driver.  [Via Doug Nelson]

Speaking of Photoshop demos, "You Suck At Photoshop" returns with volume 2 of its depresso-funny PS stylings.  No "shaggin' wagon" this time, but there is some territory-marking. [Via Clare McLean]

January 7, 2008

War and rebirth, in photos & illustration

• When not driving between continents & documenting the experience, German-born, Brooklyn-dwelling photographer Christoph Bangert produces gripping photojournalism in Iraq, Darfur, and elsewhere.  You can find his Iraq effort reviewed here, and on the NYT site Christoph narrates over a selection of his photos.
• Offering a different take on Iraq, Shooting War is a graphic novel written by Anthony Lappe & illustrated by Dan Goldman.  You can find background & a review on MotherJones.com.  According to that site, "To layer drawings and shading on top of photos, Goldman drew everything directly onto a 21-inch touch screen using an electronic, wireless pen, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop. Everything combined, this is a slick-looking book."
• On a rather brighter note, the NYT features a slideshow on kite flying in Kabul--a colorful pastime banned under the Taliban.  See related article, with video.
  

December 27, 2007

Zeppelin inspires art

Given all the iconic images that Led Zeppelin has inspired over the years, a chance to add to that legacy sounds like a dream commission:

• A few weeks back I saw Led Zeppelin's complete works being advertised on iTunes, and the graphic up top struck me as in the vein of Obey Giant auteur Shepard Fairey.  Sure enough--he was asked to do the work.
• UK-based illustrator/animator Steve Scott got the nod to create an animation that would accompany the band's recent reunion concert.  "So after four weeks of hard work there I was watching Led Zeppelin play Kashmir live in front of the world's largest monitor--a 28 x 12 meter giant--and 20,000 screaming fans."  Here's the result (B.Y.O. contact high); screenshots are on the main page of his site.  See also The Society of Victorian Mutants & other solid illustrations on his site. [Via]
  

December 21, 2007

I got yer brains, *right here*...

The ol' noggin provides endless inspiration for artists:

• Russian site Advertka features a neat photo composite featuring a brain made of arms.
• Cycling Australia depicts fragility via brains as vegetables.
• Artist Jun Takita has sculpted bioluminescent algae into the shape of a brain.

In other skullduggery:

• Brawndo "will make you wonder why you haven't ever crushed a human skull with your bare hands!!"  Delicious!!  (I need to order a case of this stuff for the Photoshop team.)
• The Skull-a-Day blog provides just that. [Via]
• For next Halloween (or, just to be weird, maybe Valentine's, or Arbor Day), you might hang onto these pumpkin skull templates. [Via]  I still think they'd have a time beating my wife's Dia De Los Muertos-inspired doppel-pumpkin.
• If this stuff is up your alley, see previous for lots more.

December 20, 2007

Old-school Star Wars, Lego graffiti, & more

Mo' betta illustration:

• Star Wars goes old old school Euro in Baroque Wars. (Dig that crazy Death Star.)  [Via]  Coincidentally I just stumbled across this Wikipedia-hosted rendering of similar-looking Landsknechte mercenaries.
• If, like me, you're a no-good, non-gift-buying slacker, you can try to compensate by banging out festive imagery for loved ones.  These Photoshop brushes could help. [Via]   (I'm doing a mid-day mall sprint after publishing this; hopefully my boss isn't keeping up on the blog. ;-P)
• Street art :
  • A graffiti artist has found Jesus in the urban landscape. [Via]
  • Legos visit the Summer of Sam era with some stop-motion train-tagging.  (In light of recent world history, I wouldn't be tossing around the phrase "train bombing" myself.)
• Tyskie Beer commissioned some crafty flag renderings using its packaging as raw materials.
• Kavel Rafferty offers "A reference for vinyl geeks and graphic artists" in Record Envelope--a whole blog devoted to record sleeve art.  I like the big-mouthed Knäppupp in particular. [Via]
• The opening of Mark Ovenden's Transit Maps of the World features a groovy subway map of the world.  (I take a weird pleasure in San José appearing (with accent!) on the map, but SF getting shut out.) [Via]
• Hire An Illustrator will help you... um... bury people in Grant's Tomb?  (Maybe it'll just help you hire an illustrator.)
• Edward Hann's Internally Displaced People '06 attempts "to demonstrate the scale of humanitarian crisis in Western Darfur and Eastern Chad," and a quarter of the profits from its sale go to Amnesty International. [Via]  It's too bad that the Web presentation makes it hard to see the work in detail, as I can't really assess how it's tackling the problem.
  

December 14, 2007

Friday Illustrations: Japanese cuteness, Grand Theft Auto, and more

• Illustrator Justin Gerard offers what looks like a nice set of Photoshop tools.  Here you can see him putting them into action.
• Michal Tatarkiewicz creates cool life-sized subway drawings. [Via]
• Rockstar Games commissioned four mural artists to create a large version of the new Grand Theft Auto box art, hosted in a Brooklyn warehouse.  Here's a timelapse video of the 31-hour creation process. [Via]
• Logos:
  • PingMag surveys cute Japanese logos for transportation companies.
  • On CreativePro, Malcolm Grear reveals how to create memorable logos (featuring some cool examples).
  • The Comcast logotype has undergone some rework.  Blink and you'll miss the changes, but what do you want to bet they paid a million bucks for the privilege?
• Historic bits:
  • The Getty features a long, folding photomontage from master El Lissitzky. [Via]
  • Cornell is hosting a gallery of some crazy historic illustrations. [Via]
  • Somewhat similarly, the Trade Card Place features galleries of Victorian trade cards. [Via]
  • Word to the wise: Don't send your kids onto railroad tracks.  Limb-shedding badness will ensue. [Via]
  • Here's a nice collection of Roman funerary portrait art. [Via]
    

December 9, 2007

Gandhi as potato, Spam as art, and more

• George Carlin points out that when considering life via license plate slogans, "Somewhere between 'Live Free Or Die' and 'Famous Potatoes,' the truth lies... I'm guessing it's closer to 'Famous Potatoes.'"  The Pfanni company might agree, and they cheerfully offer "Only good potatoes."
• Guilherme Marconi's illustrations explode with color and detail. [Via]
• Christopher Lee makes super fun, retro-fab creations.  Roll over the little hearts under the pieces in his illustration setup to see details & concept sketches.
• Linzie Hunter beautifully subverts junk mail with her Spam one-liners illustrations.  [Via]
• "My line paintings are painted using one continuous line with a beginning, and an ending," says Geoff Slater of his line paintings.  "Although it changes colour, the line never touches, or crosses itself. [Via]
• MIT's John Maeda talks about his process for creating an illustration for the NYT.
• Creator & creation: There's something in the water reminds me of Animator vs. Animation.
• Veer offers a rad collection of vintage sci-fi imagery.  (I think I once had this guy as a gym teacher.)
  

December 1, 2007

Best Vector Graphics Ever, and more

• Linkinn.com amasses a collection of the "Best Vector Graphics Ever."  I'd call it more of a mixed bag, and some of the images sometimes don't load; even so, it's worth a visit.
• Mailer for Mayor: Michael Frumin posts the poster.  Hey, let's hear it for that West Side Monorail!  (See also the Capitol-shaped airplane flying in Federal cash.) [Via]
• If political posters are your bag (tube?), see also this collection of posters from the Spanish Civil War, as well as Gene Gable's collection of Labor Day imagery. [Via]
• On another politically-themed note, The New Republic sticks it to the new US passport design. "The cover may say United States, but the design taste is pure red states."
• I love this vintage US Navy instructional artwork. [Via]
• GelaSkins offers cool stick-on designs for laptops, phones, and more.  [Via Zorana Gee, who's rocking Nanami Cowdroy's Kintoto Blot on her MacBook.]
• Wake up to whimsy: Susie Ghahremani makes "tiny matchbox-size paintings of little forest creatures."
  

November 2, 2007

Illustrations with bite

I've been running across examples of illustration designed to shake things up & reflect on the world, for better & for worse:

• [Note: Not for those offended by profanity]  Paul Krassner's 1963 "F Communism" bumper sticker is a an incredibly efficient little satire of politics and obscenity.  Check out Kurt Vonnegut's commentary on the work for historical context.
• On war & walls:
  • The NYT features a piece on Baghdad muralists hired to beautify, or at least adorn, the city's grim anti-suicide-bomber blast walls. "With few opportunities for work, [the artists] are delighted with the money, but are also uncomfortably aware that all they can do is paint the symptoms of a conflict that has mired their city in death squads..."
  • Elsewhere in the region, elusive British street artist Banksy has decorated Israeli's security wall.
  • Back in this part of the world, online company Brickfish kicked off a contest to "Design your own border fence" for the US-Mexico frontier.
• The San José Museum of Quilts & Textiles (we have a museum of quilts & textiles?) just concluded a show cataloging the ways war is represented in traditional folk art. I was struck by the Afghan war rugs, featuring enormous craftsmanship: "Weaponry images are rendered in extreme, accurate detail, so much so that one can distinguish between a Hind Mi-24 attack helicopter and a Hip Mi-8 troop-carrying helicopter."
• Worth1000 members have fun subverting propaganda posters.  Yes, giant bloody kaiser space gorillas scare the hell out of me, too.
• In response to the Boston PD flipping out earlier this year about Lite-Brite depictions of cartoon characters, deviantART member Kalapusa has worked in the same medium with an eye towards really getting their goats. [Via]
• Ethan Persoff has dug up a creepy segregationist comic from 1962. [Via]
• Jessica Hagy offers concise political commentary by way of a Venn diagram. [Via]
  

October 29, 2007

Hipsters, gangstas, & unacceptable haircuts

Chart! And! Graphs!

• Maps
  • "As a resident of Manhattan and an owner of a complete set of bodily organs, [Jack Anderson] knows a thing or two about subway maps and anatomy. Now you do, too."  Check out his Illustrator-designed digestive-system-as-subway-map t-shirt. [Update: See also the Metropolitan Cardiac Authority.] [Via]
  • Online comic xkcd offers a map of online communities.  (It somehow makes me think of a Hobbit map that spent years stuck to my childhood bedroom ceiling.)
  • This Virgin Atlantic map drives home the vast number of movies available for viewing in flight.
  • I love the incredible intricacy of Christa Dichgans's maps. [Via]
• Graphs
  • Artist Andrew Kuo spent the summer hitting as many NY concerts as possible, and he "obsessively charted the entire experience, from reviewing the bands to counting the number of porta-potties." Check out the results.  See also the brief accompanying article.  Many more infographics live on his blog.
  • Protec' ya neck: Chris Sims lets us peer into the rigorous science of gangsta rap. [Via]
  • This Australian dating ad uses infographics to make its pitch.  (Only 11% of suitors have "unacceptable haircuts"?  They must not be counting the vast number of Aussie dudes with fauxhawks.)
    

October 22, 2007

Using Illustrator to print money; more

Illustrator mensch Mordy Golding reports an interesting interaction at a recent show:

After my tutorial this week, one of the attendees approached me, telling me how much he enjoyed the session. Then he told me he'd like to present me with a gift -- a quarter. No, he wasn't trying to bribe me to lobby the Illustrator team for multiple pages. But it was a special quarter indeed, because he designed it.

Check out Mordy's post for more info & images.

In other illustration news (no real thematic connection here, but that's what I get for more airport blogging; the audio system has a real Harrison Bergeron effect):

• Move over, Bad Spock; it's time for Jamar Nicholas's Fat Wonder Woman Blog. [Via]
• Drawn.ca has uncovered a great 1981 interview with vocal legend Mel Blanc on David Letterman.
• Oh, the childhood memories: Punking the Land O' Lakes box. [Via]  It's right up there with typing "55378008" into a calculator & looking at it upside down.  (Go ahead, I'll wait.)
• Cinematic bits:
  • Something Awful pulps the hell out of flicks with the help of a little Photoshop love. [Via]
  • If that's your bag, it's time for a healthy, Photoshop-powered Grindhouse breakfast.
  • Photojojo's got 11 Super Awesome Photoshop Movie Effects
  • The Washington Post (of all places) hosts anamatics from Shoot 'Em Up.
• Mutating Pictures uses artificial selection to create faces.  "[It's] striving to generate human likenesses out of random blobs -- 1000 random pictures have been uploaded to the site... The most human-like are used to spawn 1000 new offspring, mutated from their genome, and so on, until the perfect human face emerges."  [Via]
• Dig these little sign language matchbooks. [Via]
• Mary Robinette Kowal has modified her laptop to look like a typewriter. [Via]
• Adam O'Hern has found some ridiculously cute little gymnasts on a paddle.
  

July 28, 2007

Tracking graffiti with help from Flash, Google

The Graffiti Archaelogy project uses a Flash interface to let visitors navigate to different heavily tagged spots (links at left), then see the work at various stages (links at bottom).  Using the M & N keys to cruise back and forth in time, I'm reminded of watching time lapses of plant life exploding on a surface, dying, and being reborn.  Yesterday Adobe hosted a visit from project founder Cassidy Curtis, but I had to bail in order to avoid guys driving by the building at 180mph.  Fortunately Archaeology.org has the whole backstory on the crew & project. [Via]

Elsewhere you can find a Google-powered map that tracks Seattle-area graffiti tagging.  The NYT talks about the way that mapping services are enabling people to plot all kinds of info, from hydrofoils around the world to yarn stores in Illinois.  (No progress yet in getting yarn graffiti pioneers Knitta Please to my hometown, I see.)

July 27, 2007

Grade-A Illustration

Linework in the key of A:

Animation

• Celebrating the family's big screen premiere, Harper's Bazaar feautres a great spread of Simpsons Couture.  "Marge lets down her hair for Versace. Lisa gives up her pearls for Alber Elbaz. Homer dresses as Karl Lagerfeld. Selma & Patty in Viktor & Rolf." [Via]
• Illustrator Techniques demonstrates how to use the app to imitate A Scanner Darkly.  They also interview lead animator Sterling Allen. [Via Thorsten Wulff]

Avian

• Famed for his Modernist bird illustrations, Charley Harper passed away on June 10th.  Like many people, I suspect, I'd seen and enjoyed his work without knowing his name.  Drawn features a set of links celebrating his life and work.
• Calgary-based Joy Ang has crafted some lovely lovebirds.  I also dig her umbrellas, and her Zodiac cubes would go well with Amanda Visell's blocky Ephunt toy. [Via]
• I've mentioned it previously, but Mario Cavalli's Compaq bird animation always makes me smile.

Automotive

• For the Audi A5, UK-based designers GT have created A Rhythm of Lines--a site that lets you create abstract car-related artwork (kinda; I find it a little obscure). [Via]
• Car Design News is hosting a series of tutorials on car rendering, heavily using Photoshop. [Via]

Assorted

• "I can't tell if you're hot from those MySpace photos..."  Get postcards for the modern age from SomeECards.
• Famous artists sketch their creations while blindfolded.  I enjoy the crazy faux-Cubist results. [Via]
• Amy Dresser's got a neat little illustration portfolio.
• I find these suicide prevention posters totally brilliant.
• Vecteezy is a sharing site for free vector artwork. Fa sheezy. [Via]

Amazing

• Yukio Miyamoto is a master Illustrator artist, producing insanely detailed, photorealistic artwork.  Fellow artist Kevin Hulsey (himself a total badass) hosts a number of Yukio's pieces.
• Elsewhere in Japan, farmers make huge rice paddy renderings of famous artwork.  Arigato! [Via]
  

July 21, 2007

Cool new infographics

• The Internets, it's well known, are a series of tubes. That reality is now depicted in this info graphic from Information Architects Japan, mashing up online players with a map of the Tokyo subway system.  Nice to see Adobe occupying what seems to be some sunny downtown space ("They continue to move towards the center of gravity without being too loud about it").  More info on the project is here. [Via]
• Edward Tufte celebrates the NYT infographics of Megan Jagerman in a detailed profile on his site. [Via]  Speaking of work done in the paper, this week they posted a cool Flash-based map of The Wealthiest Americans Ever, efficiently plotting net worth, rank, and life span.
• CraigStatsSF combines data from Craigslist with Google Maps in order to produce heat maps that depict housing cost and density by region.  (Disclaimer: "We only identify with hotpockets which are tasty and lethal.") [Via]
• I don't know whether it's an infographic per se, and it's hardly new, but Henrich Bunting's 16th-century depiction of the world as a cloverleaf (joined at Jerusalem) is interesting enough to deserve mention. [Via]
  
• Free Press features a visual representation of how AT&T has been reconstituted, T2-style, after being broken up in 1984. Somehow I keep hearing Johnny Rotten saying, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" [Via]
• Update: Greg Dizzia has posted a chart that graphically depicts the details of every relationship he's ever had. (Note: The chart is work-safe, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea.) [Via]

July 18, 2007

Pagans, Spinners, and Mentos, oh my

• "HWJR": How Would Jesus Roll? One man's sacrilege is another's act of devotion, as displayed through these illustrated Jesus rims. [Via]
• File under "How [Not] to Win Friends and Influence Pagans": folks in England are displeased by the giant chalk Homer illustration. [Via]
• The I Am Bored blog has amassed a great collection of CD hole art.  (I wonder whether CD art will someday be a collector's item, as album art has become.) [Via] On a related note, a certain pharmaceutical has gotten a similar notion. (I suppose the pagans would approve.)
• Mentos pioneers gumvertising, creating images out of the iconic little freshmakers. They have a site for creating your own images by drawing with gum, but it seems to be down at the moment.
• The "Zebra memorial crossing" is meant to memorialize pedestrians who've been struck by cars, thereby making the streets safer.  Seemingly obvious irony: it appears to distract pedestrians at exactly the moment they're in harm's way.
• I enjoy the work of Russian illustrator Gordei.  Not speaking Russian makes things that much more mysterious & intriguing. [Via]
• Washroom iconography: Useful. Washroom iconography + wiseass labels: way better. [Via]
  

July 16, 2007

Great Star Wars-related art

Something about the Star Wars franchise continues to inspire all kinds of creativity:

• Ryan Church has created amazing concept art for Star Wars Episodes II & III.  Corel profiles Ryan on their Painter site, and on his site he discusses some details of how he uses Painter and Photoshop together.
• On Wicked Crispy Jeff Vector creates ridiculously cute versions of famous characters (among other things).  Dig that Jabba! [Via]
• If those are up your alley, check out Matt Dawson's simian droids.
• ILM artist Matt Busch has created a print & video series of Star Wars drawing tips for kids. [Via]
• CNET features a collection of pimped Darth helmets.  (How about this face welcoming newcomers to the NY harbor?) On a related note, how about a Vader-head hot air balloon? [Via Ellis Vener]
• Okay, I'm cheating a little with this inclusion, but I marvel that someone can make an entire blog devoted to bad Spock drawings (which should be “Sloppy, as if a chimp with metal hooks for hands dipped them in ink”). [Via]  I wonder whether laser-etched Spock matzoh qualifies.

July 4, 2007

Blowin' up real good

While getting frozen yogurt the other night, I observed a posse* of little boys--maybe 5 or 6 years old--swarming around a small pink "Little Mermaid"-themed chair.  They were goading one of their little buddies to body slam himself into the chair, chanting "Dooo it, dooo it... Destroy IT, destroy IT!!"  Ah, the complete purity of that human impulse to see some stuff smashed all to hell.

In honor of today's American holiday devoted, in some part, to that impulse:

• Gene Gable features some cool vintage Fourth of July artwork on CreativePro.com.
• Similar goodness comes from American U.  Go heavy or go home, right?
• The NYT hosts a slideshow from explosives summer camp in Missouri. Adios, watermelon. (Here's the accompanying article).
• In the spirit of fire-breathing, wheel-popping patriotism, check out these shots from a Wisconsin tractor pull (recalling a little slice of my youth).  Not pictured: Sierra Club reps.
• Not tied to the Fourth, but in the vein of vintage artwork, check out these fruit crate designs. [Via]  (See also previous.)
• Update: For more bombs bursting in air, see Firework-Art.com. Man, all this really makes me miss summer car trips as a kid, where we could buy legally questionable goodies from web-footed Southerners by the roadside. [Via]

Happy (and grudgingly safe) Fourth,
J.

*What would the correct term (a la "pride of lions") be? Gaggle of boys? Hootenany? Fisticuff?

July 1, 2007

Of Dilbert, Hipsters, & Samurai Hamsters

• Dilbert creator Scott Adams has posted descriptions & photos of how he draws Dilbert in Photoshop via a Cintiq monitor. [Via]
• Oogmerk Opticians show how overconceptualized eye furniture can make anyone look like a hipster.  (Too bad one of the "after" images isn't labeled "Adobe UI Designer." ;-))
• Through Christopher Koelle's blog I found Justin Gerard, who has created a heck of a portfolio featuring Samurai Hamsters and more.
• In Holland a coke-addled driver created some impromptu land art (illustration of a sort) while trying to evade police. [Via Reen Bodo]  Elsewhere fruit flies make their own weird illustrations when exposed to cocaine. [Via]
• I love the illustrations on these White Stripes limited-edition USB thumb drives, featuring Jack, Meg, or both. [Via]
• The Strange Maps blog features and interesting map of the US, with states labeled according to countries with similar gross domestic products. [Via]  And on a related note--and back on the Lego tip--kids are creating a massive Lego map of the US.
• Iconfactory offers a beautiful set of Dia de lost Muertos icons. [Via]
  

June 28, 2007

War, illustrated

• "Machine gunner turned author" Colby Buzzell has recorded his Iraq war experiences on his blog and elsewhere.  He's now teamed up with illustrator Christopher Koelle and animators The Law of the Few to produce Men in Black--four and a half gripping minutes of storytelling. [Via]
• Christopher shares his thoughts & the Photoshop techniques behind the work on his blog.
• In a related vein, Canadian trooper Richard Johnson's Kandahar Journal offers an illustrated, soldier's-eye-view from Afghanistan. [Via]

Side note: I type this from the Denver airport, where I find myself holed up (thanks, lightning).  After showing a CNN ad saying "Get the Facts. Not Fear," CNN Headline News just featured a segment titled--I kid you not--"Watch for underwater terrorists."  I shall, uh, get right on that.  (Apparently Atlanta is where irony goes to die.)

June 15, 2007

Friday Design: Booze, kids, and cutlery

• Urging responsible driving, Saab illustrates the effects of alcohol on one's attentiveness.  Working towards the same objective, Guiness tries blurred beverages & scrambled type.
• Check out Jamie Wieck's "Decisions, Decisions" flowchart, derived from his hatred of restaurant rules. [Via]  Jamie has also made a super-cool business card that blooms.  Jung von Matt has created something similar, a b-card for a landscape architecture firm that blooms into a little garden. [Via]
• Chronically short on utensils?  Consider carrying punch-out cutlery as a business card. [Via]  See also lockpicks as business card.
• Speaking of business cards, Creative Bits hosts very cool examples; see also this collection on Flickr.  I dig Scott Ott's creation, and I'm glad to see the Chopping Block get a nod.  (Their collateral includes "Chop Sticks," stickers useful for adding a nicely chopped notch to just about any surface.) [Via]
• Cookiemag features options for commissioning interesting portraits of kids. [Via]
• Photoshop user researcher Julie Baher spoke in an AIGA conference in Nashville a couple of weeks ago & says a highlight of the trip was Hatch Show Prints gallery.  These guys have been kicking out the letterpress jams since 1879.

May 21, 2007

Tasty Flash bits: Milk, missives, and grins

I've encountered some savory Flash business around the Web recently:

• Get the Glass features gorgeous illustration & great game play--all in the name of milk. [Via Veronique Brossier]
• I'm not sure whether Blank Missives has a point, or whether having a point is the point, or... anyway, it sure does look nice.  Dig that typography, too. [Via]
• The reflective "wet floor effect" comes to the excellent SlideShowPro.  More info is at developer Todd Dominey's site. [Via]
• Neave.com features what Bridge engineer Rob Corell calls a "grin-inducing Flash effect."  This kind of thing makes me really want to capture the life and imagination of Flash apps & infuse it into desktop tools.
• Buzzword is a terrific name for what promises to be a cool product: Flash-based online word processing. Here's more press on it.

And finally, on a note near and dear to my heart, ZDNet's Ryan Stewart lists his Top Five Features in Flash CS3.  #1?  Photoshop integration!  [Via]

May 18, 2007

Friday Illustration

From the Dept. of the Brilliantly Simple:

• Viva dry erase: Slate shows a great new set UPS ads and talks about how they came to be.
• Comedy Central's new illustrated campaign is a model of efficiency--and it's more than a little edgy in spots. [Via]
• Can you make an ad campaign from clip art?  Yes, if you're making dirty little stories for 42 Below Vodka.

And elsewhere:

• Speaking of stock illustrations, Gene Gable features the great clip art (oxymoron? not this time) of Lew Hymers.
• Alberto Seveso has a really fresh take on the genre of vector-illustrated women.  More images are on Flickr, and you can buy prints on his site. [Via]
• Tech Vector offers a clean design, good choons, great A2Detail. [Via]
• Pablo Bernasconi makes cool collage portraits.  The site navigation is a little wonky, but I think it's worth the effort. [Via]
• Fiodor Sumkin is back with more letter-rich goodness.  His site's frameset design makes it hard to link to specific bits, but I especially like the "Moscow-80" work.
• Here's a collection of Photoshop-powered fantastical houses [Via]. Reminds me of this defiant dude--no Photoshop involved.

Finally, it's a little tangential, but I spotted a nice shout-out for CS3 on illustration blog Drawn: "You’ve probably already heard all the buzz about it being the biggest upgrade ever, bla bla bla. Well, this time the buzz is true... I predict our industry (I mean anything graphically creative) is about to undergo a huge jump in look, feel, efficiency, and impact because of this." Thanks, guys! [Via Joe Ault]

May 16, 2007

FreeHand no longer updated; moving to Illustrator

After a long and storied career, Adobe (neé Altsys, Aldus, and Macromedia) FreeHand has reached the end of its development road. The application has not been revised since Macromedia released MX nearly four years ago, after which the company removed FreeHand from the Studio product line.  Adobe has created an FAQ (PDF) that explains the details of the decision not to rev FreeHand, talks about Illustrator CS3 features added to make FreeHand users more comfortable, and more.  [Note: The official product pages aren't all updated yet; hence my posting this info on the blog.] Here are the highlights:

Adobe and FreeHand
Adobe does not plan to develop and deliver any new feature-based releases of FreeHand, or to deliver patches or updates for new operating systems or hardware. Adobe will, however, continue to sell FreeHand MX, and will offer technical and customer support according to our support policies.

FreeHand Upgrade Path
A special upgrade to Illustrator CS3 is available to all registered owners of FreeHand for $199 U.S. This upgrade is available worldwide through the Adobe Store and through the Channel. There is no direct FreeHand to Creative Suite 3 upgrade, but FreeHand owners who also own Adobe or Macromedia products that are eligible for upgrade to the Suite can use that path to move to the Suite.

Support for Customers Making the Move
A number of materials are available at no cost to help customers make the move from FreeHand to Illustrator. All of these materials can be found on the Switch to Illustrator pages on Adobe.com and on the Illustrator Design Center.

FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guide—available as a PDF and in printed form.
Targeted to designers and illustrators, this four-color manual provides a graphical comparison of the FreeHand and Illustrator workspaces, along with differences in terminology, features, and functions between the two applications.

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator: A technical resource—PDF format
Designed for production managers, IT managers and designers, this technical resource provides the best ways to move legacy FreeHand content into Illustrator, handle different file formats, outputting files, and other information.

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator with Mordy Golding—(video training)
Video training produced by lynda.com. The CS3 update to this series is completed and will be available shortly.

May 14, 2007

Scoble, the Phillustrator, & me

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Scoble (former Microsoft blogfatha) visited the Adobe San Jose office.  We spent just under an hour talking about Photoshop, and you can catch the broadcast here (also available fullscreen).  Our chat touches on engineer/pilot Thomas Knoll's frugal Midwestern ways; HDR imaging; Eyes Wide Shut incantations; raw Smart Objects; the redemption of Brightness/Contrast; and more*.

Robert also spoke recently with lots of other Adobe folks, including Phil "the Phillustrator" Guindi**, talking about what's new in AICS3.  Here's a full rundown of recent sessions:

Adobe Premiere CS3 49 minutes.
Adobe Flash/Flex architecture overview 30 minutes.
Adobe Flex goes open source 25 minutes.
Adobe Flash CS3 overview 55 minutes.
Adobe Apollo overview 43 minutes.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 34 minutes.
Adobe Connect overview 29 minutes.
Adobe Acrobat 8.0 19 minutes.

*And it includes, of course, my weird lip-smacking mannerisms; yeesh.  Yeah, and you thought it was hard just to listen to oneself recorded...
**Naming credit goes to our friend Bryan Hughes. I persist in calling Phil's new little son "Phillustrator Elements."

April 27, 2007

Adventures in Infographics

I'm intrigued by work that strives to make sense of large, complicated sets of data (see previous).  Along those lines:

• This London-style NYC subway map is generating a lot of conversation, both online & inside Adobe.  Weird, I remember discussing this exact topic when I first started at an NY Web shop--nine years ago!  Bridge engineering manager Arno Gourdol points out Mr. Beck's Underground Map, a thorough account of the Tube map design.  And from there I found this page, brimming with more resources on the subject. [Via]
• PingMag chats with Andrew Vande Moere, creator of the Infosthetics blog, about the beauty of data visualization.  Both links are chock full of loveliness.  (Bonus: No Edward Tufte w/young white-gloved flunkies.)
• The Strange Maps blog depicts right- vs. left-hand driving around the globe, while providing the interesting back story of how these conventions came to be. [Via]
• Covering 5000 years in 90 seconds, Maps of War shows the tides of conquest that have swept through the Middle East. [Via]
• The US government gets into the game, using census data to drive home the aging of the populace.
• I dig illustrator Christoph Niemann's witty little visual comparison of some pieces of music.  (I'm a Jaws-level pianist at best.)
• Pentagram designer Paula Scher created this anatomy of a blog conversation for the NYT. Ahh, the descent into ennui... [Via]
• At FITC last weekend I really enjoyed meeting Evan Roth, the dude behind the SkyMall demographic visualization, laser graffiti, and much more. Though I'm coming up short on links to it, he's created a method of visualizing one's daily clicks: wiring up two USB cables from a single mouse, plugging one into a main work computer, and plugging the other into a machine running Photoshop or other graphics app.  As you click around email, the Web, etc., you produce a drawing (of sorts) on the other machine, with paint blobs mapped to the same coordinates as your clicks.  (It sounds like AttenTV might be doing vaguely similar, for profit.)  Oh, and bringing this post full circle, Evan's crew at Eyebeam has created an interactive NYC subway map.

April 18, 2007

Illustration bits: Dust My Ride, Creep My Clown, & more

• It's tax time in the US, and illustrator Christoph Niemann created an elegant commentary for the cover of the New Yorker.  Elsewhere, his "Empires of Evil" flags (lighter-hearted than the name would suggest) are inspired, and he certainly has a new take on, er, dental hygiene. [Via]
• Dust artist (yes, dust) Scott Wade has produced some amazing images for Mitsubishi's new ad campaign. (For more dustiness, see previous.)
• I can dig illustrator Tara McPherson's muted palettes. [Via Geoff Scott]
• On the other end of the chromatic spectrum, Nathan Fox punches up retro-fueled imagery.
• Our pals at the Chopping Block have launched Chop Shop, a spot to sell all manner of groovy swag (gotta love the 10-Year Plan).  I delight in the great spit and polish (try rolling over the little characters in the header, for instance)--excellent A2Detail.
• Everyone's favorite alcoholic raven/alt newspaper survivor, Drinky Crow, is getting his own show. [Via]
• And lastly, Digital Newsflash offers an interesting moniker for a certain CS3 branding image: "Creep-o the Clown." Heh--yeah, that does induce a little coulrophobia, no?
  

April 9, 2007

Poster art, giant chickens, & more

//na// Illustrated bits worth sharing:

• Alberto+Cerriteño makes all kinds of great little characters. [Via]
• Dan Stiles creates super-cool poster art,  He's got a real Saul Bass thing going on for the Scissor Sisters. Love this little Sigur Ros piece, too. [Via GQ]
• The hugely talented Todd Slater works in the same vein.   Check out the Design & Framings tabs of his site for more good stuff, including some righteousnss for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [Via GQ]
• Andrew Lin passes along the Photoshop-crafted posters of Tychomusic.
• Mary Sprague draws 6-foot chickens.  (Wasn't "MC Six Ft. Chicken" a band or something...?) [Via]  Makes me think a bit of those Cowscapes mentioned previously.
  

April 8, 2007

A great video tour of Illustrator CS3

"Oh my--it's like Illustrator and Flash have run off and gotten married," says Mordy Golding in the latest episode of his Real World Illustrator video podcast.  Mordy, formerly a PM on the Illustrator team, hits not only the big-ticket items, but also the little things that sometimes matter most.  I only wish Mordy had spent more time on the rad Live Color feature in AICS3--but he promises to delve deeper into it in a future episode.  (It's one of those features that makes Photoshop and the other apps jealous, so we'll have to try to steal it in the future. ;-))

From the podcast I learned a little detail that I think is quite cool: the new Flash Text panel (screenshot) lets you designate text to be used in Flash as static or dynamic.  You can even designate the URL from which the text is fed.  And, as I've mentioned previously, Illustrator now lets you name & edit symbols just as you do in Flash, and symbols, instance names, gradients, etc. are preserved when you copy and paste from Illustrator to Flash.  Niiice.

January 5, 2007

Photorealistic painting; Make your own "Cars"; more

• Artist Cali Rezo creates some beautiful, photorealistic paintings in Photoshop, as well as more stylized pieces.  She shares some behind-the-scenes snapshots, as well as a step-by-step animation of a piece coming together. [Via]
• I Met The Walrus is an Jerry Levitan's story of how, as a 14-year-old in 1969, he snuck into John Lennon's hotel room & recorded an interview.  The trailer (or is it the whole film?) features some great illustrated animation.  (More on the story is here.) [Via]
• Make your car resemble those in "Cars" by following this tutorial.  Appropriately, a Pontiac Aztek gets a goofy, gap-toothed grin & actually looks better as a result. [Via]
• Weirdly, I encountered the same topic on Autoblog just the next day.  They've posted some great examples, and now their collection of images is growing.

For more automotive rendering bits, see previous.

December 18, 2006

Terrific whiteboard stop-motion video

Created by Kristofer Strom of Ljudbilden & Piloten, the video for Swedish band Minilogue's "Hitchhiker's Choice" is the antithesis of high-tech, CGI-laden graphics we're accustomed to seeing--and I love it. [Via].  The work reminds me of Mario Cavalli's marvellous Compaq "Bird" ad from several years back.  (Working on the Compaq site at the time, I always scratched my head that the company's UK office could be so adventurous while the folks in Texas always sought to play it safe.)  Kristofer has also created Pen on Paper, a free-flowing montage drawn on one long, continuous strip of paper (as seen in this video).

December 4, 2006

Excellent Worth1000 Photoshoppery

• As kid I loved Wacky Packages, the little 70's-era goofs on popular brands of the times.  Now the crew at Worth1000.com grabs that baton, mashing up classics with commerce in these Fine Art Ads. [Via]
• Along somewhat similar lines, Kasper Hauser's Sky Maul is a pretty darn funny compendium of "Happy Crap You Can Buy from a Plane." [Via]
• I love this take on Escher as a child--hilarious and kind of heartbreaking all at once.  ("Don't let the bastards grind you down...")
• Elsewhere the site features good critter-hacking: Evolution Gone Wild, and some rather excellent Cybernetic Animals.
• It's deeply, deeply nasty--to the point where I didn't scroll too far--but the "That's Not Turkey!" gallery may make you grateful for what you didn't eat on Thanksgiving.
• Oh, and if that's not quite disturbing enough, how about a meat chess board, or meat body suit? Rare is the new black, I'm told.
  

November 30, 2006

Kicking the Tires: Photoshop rendering tutorials

My fellow Photoshop PM Ashley Still interacts with customers using Photoshop in vertical markets (engineering, healthcare, etc.) and has turned up some good resources on using the app in automotive, industrial, and clothing design:

• CarBody.com pulls together a wealth of tutorials covering automotive design in Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Along those lines, here's a concept rendering tutorial on deviantART.
• AECbytes talks about how to enhance CAD files by using Photoshop layer styles.
• Scott Onstott covers some similar territory in his video training series.
• Footwear designer Michael DiTullo has posted a detailed tutorial on rendering footwear designs in Illustrator and Photoshop--from rough sketch to realistic visualization. [Via]
• See also previous related posts.

On a slightly related note, Michael Halbert is one talented motherscratcher, offering a wealth of tutorials (including good videos) on achieving a traditional scratchboard look. [Via].  He's also featured in the Adobe.com Print Gallery.

Zombies, Communism, & other illustrated goodness

• I'm a fan of both Constructivism & retro-ironic propaganda (think Chinese military ballet), so I dig seeing this collection of Soviet Photomontages 1917-1953.  See also Soviet carpet propaganda. (Doesn't it seem a little weird to encourage walking all over your icons?). [Via]
• Think your colleagues are zombies?  ZombiePortraits.com will illustrate your point for just $85. [Via]
• Talk about mudflaps, my rickshaw's got 'em...  Okay, I have no truck, much less a rickshaw, but if I did I'd be tempted to pimp it with beautifully illustrated Bollywood mudflaps. [Via]
• Flags of our Clients shows what happens when you're too attentive to feedback on your illustrations--in this case, flags of the world.
• Computer Arts discusses the digital illustration revolution. Memorable quote (from 1992): "John Warwicker, Creative Director of design collective Tomato, said without even a trace of irony: 'I can envisage a time when we’ll all need our own individual Macs.'" [Via]
• Illustration Friday has an interview with illustrator Anita Kunz, showing some of her great images.
• Alberto Cerriteño does straight-up gorgeous work. [Via]
• Creating optical illusions in a room is one thing, but can you make your room look like a cartoon? [Via]
• I haven't tried Akvis Sketch, but the new version of this Photoshop plug-in promises to convert your images to sketches quickly and easily. [Via]
• Gene Gable has posted a collection of lovely vintage map art in his CreativePro.com column.  (Sadly, nowhere be monsters.)
  
  

November 24, 2006

Animals photographed in the womb, & more

• Using a combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and tiny cameras, a team of filmmakers has been able to show the entire process of animal gestation from conception to birth.  Here's the article and amazing photo gallery.  [Via]
• Created in After Effects & Lightwave by XVIVO for Harvard biology students, The Inner Life of a Cell depicts mighty mitochondria and the like doing their thing; check it out in high- or low-res Flash video. [Via]
• Among the more unusual images I've seen, here's the sun shot through the Earth, displaying neutrinos that pass through the planet's mass.
• Speaking of celestial imagery, this month's National Geographic features stupendously gorgeous images of Saturn--just a hint of which can be found on their site.  [See also previous]
• Rick Lieder must have the patience of Job, and it pays off in his insect macrophotography at BeeDreams.com [Via]
• BibliOdyssey has posted The Concept of Mammals, a collection of antique critter renderings. "As was the fashion of the time," they write, "the animals were placed in contrived settings and often given human facial qualities, which only serves to heighten the sense of bizarre. And thankful we are too." [Via]  The site is jammed with other good bits, including claws, shells, whales, and more. (And if stuff trips your trigger, check out Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.)
  

November 15, 2006

Of skulls & skaters

Okay, I know that 11-year-old mallrats & their feckless Hot Topic enablers have all but stomped the life out of skull imagery, but dammit, there are some good bits left:

• I Want Your Skull pulls together "Art, design, toys. All things skeletal." [Via]
• The site turned me on to Brian Morris's excellent skull-heavy artwork.  He shares more work through his blog.
• Marc Ecko's Better Off Dead watch = fun, morbid bling.  My wife is all over it. I'm sure it would go well with this skull disco ball.
• "You call yourself a Misfits fan?"  Mr. Facial Skull-Tat does, and no one will question him.  The first commenter captures my sentiments exactly. [Via]
• A woman gets sketched from the bones up here. [Via Reen Bodo]
• I stumbled across a gallery of Cameron Stewart's incredible--and intense--artwork from The Other Side, the Vietnam war story he created with Jason Aaron.
• Charles Anderson's Mysterio Collection offers stock art done in the style of Mexican horror pulp.  Viva pelo peligroso. [Via]
• [Update: These handsome skull cufflinks will set you back a cool $225.]
• Growing up, I delighted my parents for several years by covering my bedroom door with skateboarding stickers--always heavy on the skull imagery.  Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade and Jim Phillips's Santa Cruz art were among my faves.  Along those lines, I got a kick out of this tribute to Jim's iconic screaming hand.
• Speaking of skating, DX Interactive has posted The A-Z of Skateboard Tricks, a Flash-based gallery of 3D-rendered moves. [Via]

[See also previous skullduggery]

November 12, 2006

Pantone tats, Evil timesheets, & more

A fistful of illustration goodness:

• Who says people today are noncommittal?  Make your graphic design geekery permanent with a Pantone tattoo.  It's part of Reset Design's invitation to designers to rethink the function of body art.  Here's the gallery of submissions to date. [Via]
• Maira Kalman (creator of the much-loved "New Yorkistan" New Yorker cover, among many other things) now has her own illustration blog on the NYT.  Dig that crazy Nietzsche action.
• The iconography of the classic Photoshop toolbar now decorates this Insanely Great Pixel Tools t-shirt.
• Moleskinerie is a Flickr pool of art sketched in Moleskine notebooks [Via]
• Paper is evil.  Timesheets are especially abhorrent. These images prove it.

October 21, 2006

Hidden Illustrator<->Photoshop integration

Illustrator and Photoshop have been quietly growing tighter, and you may have discovered that it's possible to export a very editable PSD file from Illustrator (preserving nested layers, masks, editable text along a path, etc.).  But what about going the other way--turning a layered PSD into a layered Illustrator composition?  It's easy to do, though not at first glance.

Background: The compositing model (i.e. the layer blending modes & options) used by Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat is different than the one used by Photoshop. Therefore some blending options in Photoshop (for example, complex "Blend If" settings) can't be replicated in Illustrator. As a result, when you place a PSD file into Illustrator, the blending is isolated.  That is, the PSD is treated as things a little world unto itself, and the blending modes within it don't interact with anything else in the Illustrator document.  Objects like drop shadows (set to Multiply mode) only multiply against other things inside the PSD.

But here's the trick: if you place the PSD and embed it in your Illustrator file (by unchecking the Link option in the import dialog), you can tell Illustrator to convert each layer into a separate Illustrator object. In that case the blending options should come through largely intact. Even things like text & vector layers (including text on a path & text in a shape) will be converted to the native Illustrator versions.

This is quite powerful but, ah, shall we say, non-obvious.  I don't have a perfect solution in mind for making this capability more discoverable, but we'll give it some thought.

October 2, 2006

Bert Monroy video talks FX painting in Photoshop

Master digital painter Bert Monroy (he of 15,000-layer PSD fame) is featured in the inaugural episode of Pixel Perfect, a new show on Revision3. Bert shows how to create "lightning, sparkles, and a mystical vortex the same way professional effects and movie matte artists do." [Via]

September 30, 2006

I {Heart} Pixel Art

David Pogue in the NY Times recently posted links to a number of great examples of pixel art:

• I Love Pixel has created an enormous seafront community.
• Supertotto says "Make Pixels Not War" and blows up some Photoshop 1.0 icons to (mini-)museum size.
• Pixel Joint is a community site for pixel artists & hosts a wealth of links to tutorials, artists, and more.
• And, as always, there's the excellent crew at eboy, who've recently created portraits of the Google guys.

Elsewhere, DSicons.com is devoted to pimping Mario Karts on Nintendo DS's & will design artwork on commission. [Via] And meanwhile citizens of Taiwan are protesting their government through this virtual sit-in.

Slightly related: I love the line art in Röyksopp's "Remind Me" video, and though it's not pixel art, I like Adam Simpson's bleak little isometric city. And posted previously, here's how to draw a pixel portrait tutorial.

September 21, 2006

Iconfactory talks, Illustrator listens

In case you don't know 'em, the guys at Iconfactory have been making some top-notch pixel art for more than 10 years. (I seem to remember using their stuff back in the System 7 days to get that ultra-mod "Copland" look.) Anyway, they've been migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator & posted their Top 5 Adobe Illustrator CS Pet Peeves, plus the provocatively titled follow-on "Et tu, Adobe?". It's all good feedback, if a little frustrating (only because we're always needling one another about these things already).

So, a bit of good news: Illustrator PM Phil Guindi dropped these guys a note to let them know of some welcome changes coming down the pike, prompting Gedeon Maheux to write, "Phil, all we can say is...wow! We had our finger's crossed that someone at Adobe would see our post so your email has made our day, and probably our year. :-)" Nice! It sounds like we've kicked off what should be a very fruitful dialog with these talented artists.

The other key point here, I think, is that what Gedeon & co. want isn't more features per se; it's functionality that simply works better. This is true across the board: no one says, "Oh, Photoshop? Yeah, I'd buy that, but there just isn't enough stuff in there..." Rather, people mainly want things to work more smoothly, to just flow. I'm happy to report that the Illustrator team has a whole bunch of spit & polish tasks on their list, and I'm keeping a list of "Brain-dead things we fixed in Photoshop CS3"--now somewhere around 20 items. And that's the goal: saving the world, one non-slapped forehead at a time. ;-)

September 10, 2006

Illustrator Techniques newsletter launches

The folks behind Photoshop World & Layers magazine have just launched Illustrator Techniques, a newsletter & Web site aimed at Illustrator users of all stripes. The site is sharing some sample tutorials (here's one on 3D in Illustrator) and hosts a user forum as well as a gallery of user work (nice 'Vettes). The team, which includes editor/author of Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips Dave Cross & his co-author Matt Kloskowski, plans to publish 8 times annually. Much success, guys!

August 29, 2006

Mojizu: Social networking through character design

Like Japanese-style character design? You'll be among kindred spirits at Mojizu, a site devoted to creating, sharing, and discussing little creations ("Mojis"). Members send their Mojis into battle, and the most popular ones make their way into merchandise & are up for various prizes. (Oh, and Illustrator being involved, there are of course more pinups involved.) [Via Phil "The Phillustrator" Guindi, Illustrator PM]

Pimp My Wildlife, Photoshop-style

Heh--no real attributions to the artist(s) are provided, but these animal mash-ups are quite well done. Sadly enough, no one created a liger (which apparently does exist) or a manticore. Gosh!

[Update: Jeff Tranberry points out the weirdo "carcass art" of MART: the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. Much unwholesome madness is in their gallery. If someday I want to get my beloved cat posthumously placed onto a hang glider, or into a Kung Fu pose, etc. I'll know where to turn.

MART in turn links to Beast Blender, a Flash-based tool for banging out custom critters. (Hey, I think I did a portrait of one of my high school teachers.)]

August 26, 2006

Vector Vixens, Belgian Béziers

• What is it with Illustrator artists and scantily clad pinups? Paul Bush creates amazingly realistic portraits of women. To give others guidance, he goes into some depth in his gradient mesh tutorial. Pretty cool to see that the work really is all vector. Wayne Forrest works a similar vein, as does Halim Ghodbane. And at Deviant Art you can see Ussa Methawittayakul's portrait come together step by step. [Via]

  Of course, maybe all these vector women in Illustrator shouldn't come as a surprise: as this history of Illustrator demonstrates, Venus is the OVB: Original Vector Babe. [Via]
  

• Belgian illustrator Geert De Clercq does terrific technical renderings in vectors, as well as organic images using more traditional materials. Veerle Pieters offers a brief interview and samples of Geert's work on her site.

August 24, 2006

Photochoppin' (cars, not broc-co-lee)

Auto enthusiast/Photoshop hoss Peter Smith has gone photochopping-crazy, pimping more than 200 cars on his Digimods site. In addition to the creations (e.g. a lowrider ice cream truck), he offers a a wealth of simple, effective tutorials (complete with charming Brit-speak about modding your car's boot, bonnet, windscreen, etc.). [Via]

[Note: No broccoli was chopped in the posting of this entry.]

August 15, 2006

Destroy your property value, the Photoshop way!

Now, here's the flipside to the relentless pursuit of aesthetic perfection: take one pristine Victorian home, apply generous dodging & burning, and you'll get something fit for Norman Bates' mom. Sébastien Gaucher offers a nice little set of tutorials on his site, along with other examples of his work. (The sad thing for Bay Area residents is to realize that even the mauled "after" versions of each house would still set you back a few million bucks around here...)

August 11, 2006

Groovy Photoshop brushes & rendering techniques

August 8, 2006

My New Clip Art Technique Is Unstoppable

HDR, 3D, plenoptic cameras... who needs all that high-fi chaos when there's the simplicity of le cinema de clip art? [Via] Of course, I still think it's got nothing on the (incredibly) profane genius of My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable^* (speaking of giant pixels...).

See? Clip art is your pal! Now, fire up some fatty drop shadows & bevels, and get busy mixing 384 typefaces per page; you'll be a pro in no time! Related: Woman Has Perfect Clip Art For Party Invitation.

^* [Note: Chock full of bad words. Really. Just in case that's not your bag.]

July 19, 2006

Etchin' & Scratchin'

If pimping your ride is passé, how about pimping your PowerBook? Cognitive scientist Dan Kurtz laser-etched a Magritte painting onto his machine. Wicked. (Here's another image of it, plus the original Magritte.) If you're feeling adventurous (and laser-equipped), see the how-to overview. (You could also go after your machine with a metal drill bit.)

Bringing this a tad closer to home, Adobe's resident creative whirlwind Russell Brown had a ball laser-etching wood at the recent ADIM Conference (check out these examples). In fact, he'll be doing an etching class here on Monday and will have his laser in tow. Hmm, I've got 17" of aluminum just itching for etching, and I'm partial to flames...

On a similar etch-stuff-on-weird-surfaces, CBS is promoting its fall lineup by scrawling ads on millions of eggs [Via NPR]. Evidently Chicago-area company EggFusion ("Promoting freshness with every impression!!") is doing the honors. Every bite a delight, no doubt.

And lastly, illustrator George Vlosich is a terror on the Etch-a-Sketch, lavishing dozens of hours on each creation. [Via]

July 17, 2006

Great lettering & happy accidents, inside Illustrator & out

Not long ago I came across the excellent hand lettering of Fiodor Sumkin. I love the intricacy with which he fits characters and shading to various shapes. [Via]

In particular, his drawing of these hands got me thinking about the enveloping functions in Illustrator. Click this image for a quick overview of how to fit type to shapes:

Using these techniques, I set out to emulate Sumkin's work. First I traced the outline of one of his hands in Illustrator, then blocked out a number of regions. The Pencil tool works well for this, as does a Wacom tablet. The result was a skeleton for the next steps:

Then, needing to turn each region into a solid object, I copied and pasted all the paths into Flash, broke things apart, and then used the paint bucket to block them in. I probably could have used the Illustrator Pathfinder tools and/or the new Live Paint features, but old habits die hard, and I knew I could get what I needed from Flash:

At that point I copied and pasted everything back into Illustrator, then picked a font that seemed likely to fill the shapes nicely--in this case Adobe's 60's-style Mojo. Using the text "Word Hypnotize" and the enveloping technique described above, I got... this (click for a larger version):

Hmmph--it's nothing like Sumkin's lettering, and were I to try harder to emulate it, I think I'd fit each chunk of text to an envelope mesh, then use the various mesh, path, and warp tools to deform it as necessary. But you know, I kind of like the sinuous, abstract quality that resulted--a bit as if Slim Goodbody dipped his hand in an inkwell.

So, there's my little happy accident o' the day. Software generally makes it pretty easy to repeat the same steps over and over, so I'm glad to experience a little serendipity & creative destruction now and then.

By the way, Sumkin's lettering reminds me a touch of Marta Monteiro's, and for more cool lettering, you might check out Rodney White (overview/gallery). Oh, and tangentially related (at best): the look of the hand I made slightly reminds me of WWI-era Cubist ship camouflage. [Via]

July 1, 2006

Illustration sensations, vol. II

• TechVector.com shows off the work of Reggie Gilbert. "All vector work is created 100% in Adobe Illustrator," he writes. "No Photoshop 'touch-ups,' no 3D rendering software." Outstanding. [Via]

• Veerle Pieters highlights the work of Paul Rogers, whose illustrations nail the look of classic poster art. Love, love, love the Incredibles and Dos Equis pieces, to name just two. (His Strange Cargo design could have worked well for Photoshop 5.0--a.k.a. Strange Cargo.)

• Chris Rhoadhouse points out Real Trace, the work of Takashi Morisaki. What Takashi pulls off with the gradient mesh is completely out of hand. (The actual cat on my lap looks comparatively crude.)

June 29, 2006

In Dust we Trust

Sometimes you just know you're among your people. A few years ago, when I was new to Adobe San Jose, someone parked & more or less abandoned a car in the West Tower parking garage. After a few months the car's windows had grown almost totally opaque, coated by the unending flow of construction-related dust. And so, in classic Photoshop style, someone had drawn in the dust a little tabbed palette with a slider marked, "Opacity: 80%." Yeeeah, thass' my geeks...

I thought of this when seeing the work of "dust artist" Scott Wade. Scott makes his filthy Mini into a canvas for reproducing everything from da Vinci to dogs playing poker; check out a gallery of his work. [Via] Maybe now I can convince my wife that I've been prepping my once-blue Jetta to be an artistic medium, not just letting it go to seed...

[For more on impermanent works, see previous entries on artists working in packing tape and chalk.]

June 19, 2006

Illustration sensations

June 14, 2006

Photoshop Illustrators Gone Wild: Frodo & Mo'

• On The Photoshop Experiment, illustrator Cory Godbey walks step by step through his creations in Photoshop. (More of Cory's work is here.) I love seeing the pieces move from the simplest of sketches to richly toned paintings. [Via]
• Vishal Pawar checks in from India with a terrifically detailed portrait of Frodo Baggins. [Via Mike Downey]
• Fantasy vehicles & creatures come to life in the work of German artist Daniel Simon. Daniel starts traditionally with pen and marker, then applies digital airbrushing. [Via]
• My old Agency.com colleague PJ Loughran brings a great sense of color and texture to his illustrations, combining brush and ink with Photoshop composites. His work appears in print, on the Web, and even on Burton snowboards.

May 4, 2006

Manga Zoomlines for Illustrator

Plug-in maker GraphicXtras has released Zoomlines, an Illustrator utility for making the focus/zoom lines often seen in manga and other comics. The interface is a bit inscrutable, but for $12 a lot can be forgiven. Just don't stare too long a the vibrating centers of your creations, lest they induce a seizure. [Via]

I dig this kind of little single-purpose tool: quick, affordable, and built to solve a particular problem. We do need to make it easier to modify Adobe authoring tools to encourage this kind of development, and we're working on that.

The images created by Zoomlines reminds me of some fun I've been having in Illustrator lately, trying out ideas for this blog. I was kind of taken with the album art for Volante, so I experimented with techniques to make something similar. In case it's useful, I've illustrated the steps taken to create the basic artwork that became the background for this page. I think it's got kind of a Soundgarden/Rollins Band thing going on.

April 3, 2006

15,000-layer Photoshop file

'Tis the season of gigantic PSDs: Digital painter Bert Monroy sees Kevin Hulsey's work and raises him a couple of gigs. Bert, a former matte painter at ILM and elsewhere, has been pushing Photoshop since v1.0, and at Photoshop World he unveiled his latest creation: a monster painting that's 1.7GB (when flat!), comprised of some 15,000 layers, 500 alpha channels, and 250,000 paths. Man... what a testament to Bert's artistry & commitment to his craft. [Via]

Photoshop handles tasks from creating sub-1KB Web graphics to wrangling files of basically unlimited size, and that makes it tricky for us to ship the app with settings that address all scenarios optimally. The Support team publishes some tips on optimizing performance (Mac/Win), and we're looking at ways to make it easier to tune the app.

[Update: Tobias Hollerich points out that the site has been "dugg," making it slow to load. The Digg.com entry lists some mirror sites & links to videos of Bert in action.]

March 24, 2006

720 hours in Illustrator; Painting with light

February 26, 2006

Mind-blowing design portfolio

Oh my God... Who is this Dave Werner guy and what kind of government lab built him? Simply put, this is the most effective portfolio site I have seen in years. Dave makes outstanding use of Flash video to tell the story behind each of his featured projects, ranging from print to Web to furniture design, filmmaking, writing, and game creation--sometimes all at once. As I browsed from the scrolling treasure map (see Illustrations) to "Ninja birds with Katana blades" (in "Cadence"), I felt my eyes re-open to the possibilities of technology & storytelling, much like they did when encountering From Alice To Ocean back in '93. Damn. I just hope he doesn't take a shine to product management... [Via Core77]

December 21, 2005

Math rock in Illustrator, Josh Davis-style

Adobe.com features a new profile on Joshua Davis and his work that brings together Illustrator with scripting to create generative art. The work combines known building blocks (sketches scanned & vectorized in Illustrator) with algorithms that introduce chance and chaos. Josh presented a great lecture on this work at the Adobe Ideas Conference earlier this year--a bracing, whirling blur of charisma, tats, code, and f-bombs that lit up an otherwise sedate gathering.

I've been thinking for quite a while about ways to make our tools freer, to tap into what my friend Matthew calls the "math rock kids"--the sort who make and use experimental apps like Auto-Illustrator (no relation). People can build beautiful, freeform interactive drawing pieces in Flash, so why can't we use them in Photoshop or Illustrator? Why not make it easier to create offbeat interfaces that leverage these deep imaging engines in new ways? And could we combine that power with the linear animation chops of After Effects? Let's be less predictable, more playful, more absurd.

[Adobe.com link via Branden Hall]
[More from Joshua here and here.
He's also contributed a chapter to John Maeda's Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation.]