David Levine has an extraordinarily large collection of international travel ephemera from the 20’s and 30’s. There are some extremely inspiring graphics featured on some of these brochures, and it is quite humbling to imagine that more than 80 years ago someone thought of these great ideas and executed them without the use of a computer. Be sure to check out the brochures from Switzerland.
McFaul Studio creates the kind of client work that a lot of designer/illustrators aspire to produce. The studio does a lot of work for large, corporate clients, but their fun, youthful style is always present.
Letman (Job Wouters) has some great illustrative and hand-lettered work in his portfolio. It’s refreshing to see that many of his projects do not contain any digitally-rendered typefaces. I also really like the video project, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, in which Wouters has a lettering session with his nephew. It’s really interesting to see how children interpret the letters that they see.
James Provost, a technical illustrator, recently completed a poster featuring his renderings of iconic mid-century modern furniture. The style is inherently minimal, and the textured shadows add a vintage feel to the illustrations. You can buy a giclee print, featuring all of the pieces, from imagekind.
Check out James Provost’s Flickr Feed.
The first time I saw a diagram of a ship with dazzle camouflage, I thought that the diagram was a recent, purely conceptual illustration. However, I just learned that these camouflage patterns were actually used in both World Wars. The purpose of dazzle camouflage is not to conceal, but to disorient. The patterns make it difficult for onlookers to determine which direction the ship is heading. The Rhode Island School of Design has an online exhibit dedicated to these incredible camouflage patterns.
The Smithsonian Institution Libraries site has a beautiful collection of Czech Book covers from the 20’s and 30’s. Many of the books feature hand-drawn type and those books which utilize set type retain a human quality about them.
If you haven’t heard about Aaron Noble yet, he’s got some incredible work that’s definitely worth viewing. His style has been described as “comics in a blender”, and once you see it, you’ll see why. Beautiful/Decay recently posted some artist profile footage featuring Aaron Noble and revealing some of the processes involved in the production of his works. Click through the link below to watch the video and view more of the artist’s work.
Andrew Holder has great body of work, and these trophy deer heads are an incredible concept. The heads address two opposing perspectives on the outdoors, with beautiful results.
Borja Bonaque’s work is a marriage between contemporary vector illustration and the textures created through antiquated printing processes. Make sure to look in the design section of the site, I especially like how type has been integrated with the illustrations.
Toca Me is a design studio that also organizes design events. They’ve got an impressive title sequence, which is the result of a collaborative effort by DVEIN and Alex Trochut. The sequence is a combination of CGI and actual footage of melting material. The DVEIN site has some great process photographs of the monograms being sculpted from what appears to be styrofoam.
Via Design Is Kinky.
Sites worth viewing
For your ears.
Found Footage
The History of The Amen Break
Objectified Trailer
The Dot And The Line
The American Look - 1958
Cold War Modern - Dieter Rams
If Mos Def Were President
The Archive
Children of The Clone - by superbrothers
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLUFound images
Josef Müller Brockmann Flickr Set by Blanka
Dusty Summers
Gebrauchsgraphik via Flickr
Evan B. Harris poster for Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
James Joyce
Planet Propaganda via Street Anatomy
Valero Doval
1950's-70's Flickr Set
Si Scott Studio
Overnewsed But Uninformed via Lightgreen