I don’t know about you, but when I see something beautiful, I want to know everything there is to know about it. Read More | Comment »

These 10 chefs, specifically: Read More | Comment »

We're not going to leave well enough alone, here.
Read More | Comment »

1. Because Avery 7 is a sharp new anthology of short fiction
that'll provide a solid morning, afternoon, or evening
of reading whenever you desire. Read More | Comment »

Here’s Ax, a mixed bag of goodness to dispel any notions you might’ve accrued about how manga ~ that’s Japanese comics, friend ~ is all big-eyed kiddie-genre hijinks. Top Shelf Productions (a company that publishes excellent American comics, too) is where this gorgeously produced volume comes from. Why else is it worth your time and money? Read More | Comment »

"It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead you're made for life." Jimi Hendrix We've covered Converse's attempts to honor dead rock stars both in this space and in Ad Nauseam, the key word being "dead" in those pieces. The image of Kurt Cobain and Leonardo puking in their graves comes to mind. Read More | Comment »

Video time! We thought we'd share the experience of watching Chronicle Creative Director Jason Stout unveil the cover he produced for the September 10, 2010, Chronicle issue, to go with Jordan Smith's remarkable news feature, Sex Offenders Exposed. Read More | Comment »

The only remotely fun thing to come out of the LeBron James signing tsunami? This, via CNN: "Cavs owner's letter mocked for Comic Sans font." Watch out, Hobo, you're next. Read More | Comment »

Sure, it looks like a purse. About right for the five things you won't leave the house without, right? It has a sassy little size, leather trim, and the color is a sure second-take. Perfect for Sunday services. But you'd best hold up, there, sister, before getting all batty-lash with the preacher. The logo is Veuve Clicquot, maker of the popular champagne. Read More | Comment »

We promised you more Papercut in this space weeks ago, and apparently what we covered is just the tip of the blade. A reader sent in a link to Cuban multi-media artist Elsa Mora's papercut blog. Inspired largely by her childhood in Cuba, Mora uses an X-Acto knife to painstakingly fashion folkloric images such as birds, girls in pinafores, plant life, insects, and the human heart. There is an innocence and longing in her figures that speaks volumes about the silent seiges of family relationships, uncertainty, and passion. Check out her Etsy store here. Challenging borders, both literal and figurative, is the obsession of Dutch artist Hannah Biemold. First inspired as a child by the mesh paper lanterns she saw at a flea market with her parents, Biemold has explored myriad paper artforms like cut "barcode" portraits, which make use of clever slits over contrasting backgrounds. She also makes shoes (not out of paper). An artist friend emailed me about UK artist Su Blackwell. Primarily using old books, she creates intricate sculptures using a scalpel to cut and glue the pages of books to create miniature dioramas glowing with lights in wood and glass boxes. Blackwell's artist's statement says it best, "It is the delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, the landscape have been trapped inside the book all this time and are now suddenly released. A number of the compositions have an urgency about them, the choices made for the cut-out people from the illustrations seem to lean towards people on their way somewhere, about to discover something, or perhaps escaping from something." In addition to a recent show of her work as part of "The 8th East Wing Collection" at The Courtauld Institute in London, Blackwell has also done many commercial works such as this 2007 spot for Beringer: Stay tuned, our next stop is Origamic Architecture. Read More | Comment »

Thing I've Neglected to Notice #432: The tiny worlds created by the random dents and other indignities that befall a piece of good paper. The ones pictured here may be precisely deliberate, but I'll see dowager paper with more love now thanks to the forgotten spaces of German artist Simon Schubert. My new obsession with paper art started with an image of a pleated and sliced card-stock architectural model for an industrial campus. You could almost smell freshly-sliced paper through the Plexiglass protecting the severity of this hopelessly fragile, unblemished thing. Then someone showed me Peter Callesen's Down the River (2005) and I find myself falling hard for the art of Papercut. Like Kara Walker's famous stenciled silhouettes, the "shadow" created by cut-outs is often a comment on its owner, and in Papercut, subversive use of negative space suddenly becomes three-dimensional. The gentleman in Callesen's Looking Back (2006) looks like a Magritte-worthy, human-shaped grave the more I look at it. The task-obsessed will appreciate the irony of Jill Sylvia's "empty" ledgers. One aches for a blade. My friend Brenner posted a link on Facebook to the typographic mobiles of artist Ebon Heath. These sculptures in thin air are irrepressible works of graphic art that refuse to be two-dimensional. They grew from dismembered poetry and remnants of song lyrics that want to be heard though lost to their stanzas. For some, they represent still-floating wisps of ideas not written down in the middle of the night. Stay tuned, I'm having a paper fetish. Read More | Comment »

This is the way to publish sketchbooks. More, please. You publish the sketchbooks. Actually reproduce, as closely as possible, the same scale, paper, binding, and well, heft of these precious archives. Many artists carry a sketchbook wherever they go, each page, clean and bright with the promise of a new idea, a chance to capture a unique face, a juvenile cartoon, and, maybe most importantly, private failures of experimentation. With his new sketchbook Be a Nose! (McSweeney's, $29), pioneering comics artist Art Spiegelman utilizes the same ace-in-the-hole design sense that made RAW Magazine the most important comic work of the 1980s. Read More | Comment »

How is it that Raoul Hernandez is not all over THIS????? Read More | Comment »

Production Design company, Superfad is to blame/laud for this new Durex condom commercial. It's what would happen if Pixar's animators were forced to stay at a flop house. So here's my question: what gender is the yellow balloon supposed to be? Read More | Comment »

While neither Perla Cavazos, Rick Cofer, or Chris Riley has formally announced which City Council seat they're running for (Lee, you're killing us!), the candidates are already trying to drawing distinctions from one another on the important issues of the day. But really, who cares about all that? Not when we can discuss the candidates' logos! Cavazos site seems like a work in progress, and as the following only appears once there, at a low-res, we're making a leap in assuming this to be the official logo. But we like what we see. The pink, aside from instantly transmitting Cavazos gender to voters, also subtly speaks to her Hispanic heritage through the southwestern color selection, while the star and type toughen things up a notch … Read More | Comment »

You want something when you're in a foreign country: Eventually this is true. You want to go somewhere, you want to find someone, you want to purchase something. Hell, maybe you just want to use a toilet, even if it might be a toilet unlike any other you've seen in your life thus far. But, ah, damn, you can't make yourself understood. You don't speak the local language; the locals don't speak your language. What's a monoglot to do?

ICOON, which sounds like some provocative cyber-project from William Pope L., is a perfectbound booklet packed with precise line illustrations and full-color photos of people and things and situations. The idea is, you carry this mini-tome (written and gorgeously designed by Gosia Warrink) with you on your travels, and when language is a barrier, you simply locate an illo of what you're trying to communicate and then point it out to the person you're trying to talk to.

Brilliant? We think it might be called that, sure, especially as its precise and pleasing images are arranged in handy categories like "clothing," "hygiene," "health," "money," "food," "emotions," and so on. And, even if you're not planning on traveling beyond the borders of your own lingo's comfort zone anytime soon? It's quite a sweet little volume to peruse and share with others, and at $10 would make an excellent stocking stuffer for that holiday [points to image of Santa Claus] coming up. Read More | Comment »

Those new Wilco logos disturb the crap outta me. Did they look familiar to you when you first saw them? Well, if you were sentient in the Seventies, you know damn well what is so creeptastic. They are riffs on an old Richard Nixon campaign logo. WTF? I remember what life under Nixon felt like. Not unlike life under Reagan. Not unlike life under both Bushes. Ick. Is it a good design? Sure. It is simple and effective. Is it a smart design? Ehhhhh… Cultural signifiers still carry weight, don't they? Symbols convey meaning. Or not. Whatever. These stickers make me queasy. I never really liked those wimpy alt-kunt guys anyway. Now I really dislike them. But I should get over it. It's just a design. It's just a sticker. Plus, it will prepare me for the upcoming Uncle Tupelo reunion ad blitz featuring the fellas in front of the Reichstag. Holding a lit match. Read More | Comment »

Prada. PRADA! PRA! DAH!
Prada releases an animated short? SAY WHAT?!
Click on the Prada link and then click on the Trembled Blossoms tab.

Directed by James Lima, concept art by James Jean and music by CocoRosie.

Still processing. What do you think? Read More | 1 Comment »

Well, duh: Barack Obama, seemingly the Democrats' (and most other Thinking People's, we suggest) choice for the better future of this country, has plenty of posses. But now he's also got the graphic endorsement of the design wizard who first championed the followers of Andre the Giant: Shepherd Fairey of Obey Giant Industries has released a duo of Obama posters in his, Fairey's, signature style, released them with the statement "I believe with great conviction that Barack Obama should be the next President."

We believe with great conviction that the gorgeousitude of these posters will be instrumental in achieving that goal. Read More | Comment »

If you can wait until the panting days of summer, you will be able to hold in your sweaty little design-whoring hands a number of two-dimensional Charles and Ray Eames replicas, for only 41 cents each.

You may also lick them.

From the USPS press release:

In recognition of their groundbreaking contributions to architecture,
furniture design, manufacturing and photographic arts, designers Charles and Ray Eames will be honored next summer with a pane of 16 stamps designed by Derry Noyes of Washington, DC. If you’ve ever sat in a stackable molded chair, you’ve experienced their creativity. Perhaps best known for their furniture, the Eameses were husband and wife as well as design partners. Their extraordinary body of creative work — which reflected the nation’s youthful and inventive outlook after World War II — also included architecture, films and exhibits. Without abandoning tradition, Charles and Ray Eames used new materials and technology to create high-quality products that addressed everyday problems and made modern design available to the American public.

Oh, there's more. Read More | Comment »