Wallpaper Chase

The grass is always greener, I suppose. First, we lived in an apartment, and I coveted a house desperately. Now we rent a house, and whereas I should be happy as a clam, I am not. Because now I want to OWN a house, so I can fill it with wonderful, permanent things that I will never have to worry about moving again, like wallpaper. Sweet, sweet, wallpaper...

Not helping my house-lust is the fact that I am absolutely, positvely smitten with the wallpaper of Grow House Grow!, an independent wallpaper company owned and operated by Brooklyn resident Katie Deedy. Between balancing two bartending jobs, Deedy hand prints these magnificent wallpapers, based on such whimsical inspirations as historical figures and stories.









A picture of the artist, in studio:



To see more of Deedy's fantastic creations, visit Grow House Grow! by clicking here.

Sanna Annukka

Sanna Annukka is one of my favorite illustrators. Her iconographic imagery is beautiful and creative, with sky-high design sensibility. Tapping into elements of folklore and fairy tales, Sanna Annukka has really carved out a unique, patented style that is all her own, and each new piece as stunning and marvelous as the last.















To see more of Sanna's work, click here.

Interview with Sanna here.

Face Off

Face Your Pockets offers a simple challenge to its readers: empty your pockets on your scanner, throw down your face, scan the whole beautiful mess and upload it their website. Sounds kinda silly, right?

The results are anything but...














Click here to see the entire gallery, and submit your own scanned mug.

October Creeps...Seven Deadly

My favorite month has arrived! I love October, mostly because I love spooky things. October is the month I indulge in all things creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky. In honor of this most haunted of months, I will be posting heavily on things I find appropriately creeptastic.

I am starting off the month with these 7 Deadly Sins glasses by designer Kacper Hamilton. Each glass is based off of one of the seven deadly sins. Not only are the glasses designed to look like the sins, but upon using them the sin is revealed in the act of drinking (for example, the Envy glass steals the drink before it can reach your lips).

Wrath:


Lust:


Greed:


Pride:


Not only are the glasses brilliantly designed in their functionality, but they are gorgeous pieces of art in their own right, each glass superbly looking their part. I can imagine what a delightful conversation piece these would be at any swank Halloween party.

To see all seven of the sins, visit Hamilton Designs website, here.

(Snatched from Uncrate)

Birdie Time

Admit it, you love birds. Everyone does - ok, except for that one person we all know who had that terrible incident with a pigeon when they were 12. Is there any species so bright, so lyrical, so winged? Whether a robin red-breast or a cockatiel, birds make us happy. Here are some fine ways to adorn your life with our fine feathered friends - that won't leave you with clipped wings and a dirty birdcage to clean when it's all said and done.


Chirping Bird Magnet

These magnets are not only utterly adorable, but they chirp when you touch them. Available in plethora of appealing colors and patterns, these fine fellows are a simply delightful way to cheer up even the stodgiest office.


Birds of a Feather Mobile

The closest thing to an angel on your shoulder is a birdy over your head. This lovely wooden mobile will keep the creative vibes moving through the room whilst you work, without all the trouble actual birds over your head may cause to your coif.


Golden Egg Savings Bank

What better way to remind yourself to save up for that nest egg, than keeping your spare change in an ACTUAL nest egg. Also, anything that makes your house feel like a fairytale I believe is a GOOD thing.


Sarah Mcneil Bird Pins

These bird pins by Sarah McNeil are utterly adorable. Perfect all year round, they would be an utter joy come December. I can picture no better way to spruce up that drab winter coat than with these bright little touches of spring. (Snatched from myloveforyou)

Know any awesome bird products? Let me know!

There Be Hair, Both Here and There, In the Shape of...A Bear?

Let me tell you a little bit about Nagi Noda. Nagi is a Japanese designer, and dominating nominee for "Person I Would Most Care to be When I Grow Up." An art director who became known for her cutting-edge work in print design, Noda was soon drafted by the big boys, specifically, Nike and the famed Laforet. More recently, Noda has moved into video, where she has proceeded to sweep awards with her music videos and commercials.

Nagi Noda's work is simply stunning: based deeply in surrealism, she makes whimsical works that are as beautiful as they are mind-bending; whether it's costume bags or poodle aerobics or carnivorous flower bunnies. She is also so prolific with these new ideas it is liable to make ones head spin. I could fill this blog for a month with her awesome projects and achievements. But I'm here to talk about my favorite project of hers, HAIR, and the wondrous things Nagi Noda has done with it...




These hair styles are so amazing. I long for a world where we all sculpt our hair into the animal we feel most inclined to that day. Feeling freaky? French braid a ferret. A bit bland? Bouffant a toucan. Full of pity? Plait a kitty.




















See the rest of the ferocious styles here.

Jared Nickerson

Jared Nickerson has some of the hottest vector work I've seen in a long time.











More here.

Bravo Bar Codes

Design is all about reinventing, and thinking about things in a unique way. Which is why I am head-over-heels for these bar codes from Japan - why just slap a bar code on something, when you could create a unique graphic object. Bravo!



See more here.

Ian Flemming Gets Some New Skin

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of that guy with the license to kill, Penguin UK is updating their newest edition of James Bond novels with some sweet new cover art. The new covers, featuring the art of San Francisco-based artist, Michael Gillette, are decked out with beautifully-rendered, colorful femmes, possessing a "sensual in a way they might decide to kill you any minute" kind of appeal.















The entire collection must be stunning in the flesh. Now us stateside just need to figure out how to get them over the pond.

(snatched from The Publics)

Political Design

I generally avoid blogging about anything political, but this article by the New York Times was simply too interesting to pass up:

"Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?" by Noam Cohen
Picture by the New York times

This article looks at the candidates from purely a design perspective, having several designers critique the websites of the two democratic primary candidates. Considering that this may become the first political race ever to be won over the internet, I find this a fascinating and pertinent dialog. One day, we may look at these factors with the same importance as the television was for Kennedy against Nixon.

The consensus of opinion is, of course, that Obama's site is gorgeous.

Barackobama.com

I have been a long admirer of this site. It is diaphanous and stylish. It gives the effect that the entire thing holds a kind of aura. It is incredibly 2.0. This was a great direction to go into for OBama, considering that the majority of his supporters are young and web saavy. It was a bold move on the side of his campaign to create a site like this, though several designers in the article wonder if this site may create the "Mac" effect - essentially, that it could deter a section of the population that finds such high design almost offensive (in a way, like the way many consider the Mac guy annoying rather than a protagonist). I personally don't believe this to be the case, as the Mac guy is annoying because he's a smartass, not because he represents an aesthetic. Of course, I also want to be Mac's baby mama, so I am a bit biased.

Clinton's site is much more typical of a political website. Which in terms of her supporter base, also makes sense:

Hillaryclinton.com

I feel the site is a good one in that is well laid out and can handle a lot of content. But the design is not very interesting, and really it's a lot of the same old thing in terms of site design. However, this may be an entirely conscious choice on the part of the Clinton campaign, as they are trying to brand Hillary as the "blue-collar candidate." Boyfriend Kaboom, even went so far as to describe it as "folksy," which I thought was an interesting insight.

There is one thing that bothers me greatly about this site - the contribution buttons. With so much information on the page, the design of the buttons give the effect that they are screaming for importance, much more so than any other candidates' in the primaries. The fact that there are three (THREE!) on the immediate page is already surprising, but that someone chose to style them all differently is not only poor consistency, but creates a rather garish effect. And I think it was a terribly tacky move to put a dollar sign on the large one. Other than that though, I feel generally lukewarm about this site. It takes no risks, and there really isn't much I can say about it.

After reading this article, I decided to take a peek at the McCain site. And I have to say, out of all three, I find his the most surprising:

Johnmccain.com

Black... Conceptually, I would immediately reject this choice. If someone were to say to me, "I am going to design a political site where black is the main color, and I depict the American flag in the top banner in greyscale," my first reaction would be to balk. But I have to say that the results are much better than I would ever would have imagined. In fact, I find McCain's the sleekest of all three sites. Like the website equivalent of a Porshe. I do wonder however, if the all together effect isn't a bit too somber, perhaps even funerary. I feel the design might profit from some altering to brighten the page, and make it feel a bit more hopeful.

Next week, I'll give my review of the Christopher Walken in '08 campaign site. Creepiest. Candidate. Ever.

Jorine Oosterhoff's Mad Tea Party

I adore whimsy. It's the one pervasive thing in everything I do and like. And you can't get much more whimsical than the work of Jorine Oosterhoff, a graduate of the Academy of Arts and Design Arnhem in The Netherlands. Extremely playful, yet consistently mindful of its design aesthetic, Jorine's work is a cross between MOMA and a trip through the looking-glass:


TeaTime3 by Jorine Oosterhoff



ThreeMadHatters by Jorine Oosterhoff



DearDeer coat hooks by Jorine Oosterhoff



T(r)eacup by Jorine Oosterhoff


Now, I just need to find myself some talking mice, and I'll be set.

(Snatched from Design Milk)

Advice Posters Get Some Style

We're all familiar with those advice posters that they hang in banks or at that corny corporate job you worked in 1997. You know, the one with a boat on it, cutting through choppy seas, with some bold serif font that says something like, "DETERMINATION: Bring the Team a Sandwich," or some nonsense like that. They're terrible. The person that designed them should be dragged out and shot. Just thinking about them with their dumb black borders makes me want to start beating something.

However, the idea has been saved. Salvaged. Reborn like a beautiful butterfly so stunning that we can forgive and forget that time they were a big, swollen, squirmy pile of gross insect. And the ones initiating this change are none other than a bunch of university design graduates.

Each year, the graduates of University College Falmouth design advice posters for the purpose of passing on advice and inspiration to new first year students. Since 2006, an "Advice to Sink in Slowly" poster is given as a welcoming gift to every student enrolling on a BA course at UCF. The result, advice posters that you would be proud, nay, EXCITED, to hang on your wall:


Poster design by Jane Laurie



Poster design by Daryl Waller



Poster byTemujin Doran



Poster design by Farion



Poster design byDave Bain



Poster by Mark Agnew

To see all the posters, click here.

Because of the great response to the project, they've also set up a poster shop, so one of these beauts can adorn your wall. If you can bear to take down that kitten hanging from a rope that says "Hang in there!" Man, gets me everytime.

My Daily Covet: Pixel Sofa by Cristian Zuzunaga

There are two things I love: color and pixels. Therefore, it's practically mandatory for me to love this piece of furniture :

Pixel Couch by Cristian Zuzunaga

I want to point out how clever Cristian Zuzunaga was in the design of this sofa. Notice how the two seat cushions are not symmetrical. Had they been I think this couch would lose a lot of its charm. Through this, and by creating a gap between the cushions for the eye to rest, he manages to successfully break out of the grid he creates through using such a boxy fabric. It makes me love it all the more.

Amazing Example of System Typography

My friend John Hutch showed me this link to the invite to the SEED Conference. It's simply brilliant, and by far the best example of system font design I have ever seen:



That's not an image - it's all coded. I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to get this to look right, but it was worth it. It's simply gorgeous. I want to shake the hand of the designer that made it, then promptly cut off their head and steal their powers. Link
Link to This

I have seen the future: and it is a creepy Japanese girl

Motion Portrait says about their services: "MotionPortrait is the technology that automatically creates 3D face model from one single picture, which can be animated in a variety of facial expressions."

What that translates to is "HOLY FUCKING GOD MAKE IT STOP"
Link





If you'll excuse me, I need to go cower under my desk.
Link to This

New York City Finally Gets Some Direction

Once upon a time, I lived in a land called Philadelphia. Philadelphia had a lot of nice features: one could ride a bicycle through the whole thing in 45 minutes; there was this magical thing called a “Citywide Special” that almost every bar offered, which consisted of a Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jim Bean for $3. But by far my favorite and most utilized feature of the city was something I took it for granted the entirety of my time there: the cardinal destinations printed on the corners of every single street sign in the entire city.

Fast-forward several years: I am in New York; I have been here almost two years. However, I STILL cannot find my way around this dang town, and every time I try to glean directions from my computer, it feeds me the entirely useless instruction to “Head East.”

I have not now, nor ever been a member of the Girl Scouts of America (my mother was worried I would be eaten by a bear, but that’s another story). East means as much to me as “Head Blue.”

At first, I thought that this problem was surely a discrepancy on my part. There HAD to be some secret sigil I was missing to direct the pedestrian to head in the correct direction. I asked my boyfriend, a resident here for half a decade, and he simply shook his head, and with the same tone one would address a child trying to tie a bow said, “Just look for the Empire State Building.” Which is fine, sound advice, but for some reason, no matter how politely I asked them, the rest of the buildings refused to bend down so I could see this building that is apparently so important to my navigation.

Undaunted, I started to ask other New Yorkers, and I discovered something: I was not alone. Almost everybody I spoke to knew where places were based solely on landmarks – including directions. If you wanted to find East, you had to have some idea where you were in terms of a landmark. And if you didn’t have that, well, you were fucked. Or at the very least, walking a pot-shot block to get yourself some context.

Fortunately, it seems the bigwigs of New York have noticed this little problem as well. And while it may not be AS convenient as marked street signs, it sure is pretty:

I love the style of the decals – the elegant compass feels quite classy and well made, particularly after the taxi cab logo fiasco (to be discussed later).

However, I do have some real concerns about this solution. Firstly, the decals are great, but the GROUND? I can see it now, meandering through a swarm of people, asking businessmen to please move their leg so I can find out which way north is. These will become absolutely useless in any high volume area, say, in front of Grand Central Terminal: the very place they launched the signs.

Also, I am very hesitant about the fact they are decals. I am not privy to what they are made of, but it better be some pretty strong stuff to withstand thousands of thousands of footsteps, day-in and day-out. Alas, I suppose time will tell, but at least it’s a start in the right direction.

A Monochromatic Life

I feel my design style is defined by lots of color (ie, this site). It’s just the way my mind works – I can keenly put lots of colors together successfully. Contrarily, I feel the knack of subtle hue changes is a style I’ve had to put much more love into learning, and to this day I am often enamored by designs I see that can implement so much detail in only one color, as it's something so out of my realm.

Suffice to say, the idea of monochromatic personal style simply mystifies me.

The idea of living your life in one color palette is one I find fascinating and amazing, mostly because it is the furthest direction from my own style. The amount of dedication and care it takes is awe-inspiring, and the results breathtaking.

If you could live your life in one color, what would it be? Why?

(snatched from Bits & Bobbins)