The Draplin Design Company is embarking on the World's Longest Yard Sale. Also: The Draplin Project, by Jess Gibson, and Why America Is Fucked. Alternate YouTube link.
posted on Jul 31, 2008 - View this thread

The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has an extensive, searchable online collection. It focuse on material art and household items and has objects from all over the world. The website can be browsed either by geographic orgin: Africa, Asia, North and Central America, Pacific, South America, or through its two exhibits, Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and Fowler in Focus. Some of my favorite objects (but really, everything is entrancing) are The Blind Scholar (a Taiwanese handpuppet), Chikunga (a Zambian mask) and a stirrup spout bottle which looks like a puma eating a piglet (Peruvian). All items have accompanying descriptions and some have short texts or audioguides with further information.
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

Art Deco was the dominant style of the interwar era, coming out of Paris in the 1920's and ruling the roost until World War II broke out. Randy Juster's Decopix - The Art Deco Resource has enough pictures of Art Deco architecture to send one hurtling into The Gernsback Continuum. If that's not enough then there's always the 11000+ images of the Flickr Art Deco Pool. But Art Deco wasn't just about architecture. On the Victoria and Albert Musem's Art Deco site one can view Art Deco objects in great detail, rotating them and listening to audio lectures on each object. But before Art Deco was a design aesthetic it was an art-style. Illustrations for the Art Deco Book in France has more than 170 images from the proponents of that then-new style (some images are not safe for work, especially in the George Barbier section).
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

Rumplo will help you waste even more of your hard-earned cash on artist and designer created T-Shirts. You can submit shirts you've found anywhere online, as well as comment on and favorite other people's findings. Thanks to user-submitted tags, you can browse by color, type ('boys', 'girls', 'kids'), and many other attributes. If you get bored of browsing aimlessly, you can always check out what's popular.
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - View this thread

Inspired by such diverse influences as Pee-Wee's Playhouse to Frank Gehry and Warner Brothers Cartoons to Philippe Starck, Vancouver, BC based woodworker Judson Beaumont's furniture is whimsical yet fully functional and is suited for children and adults alike.
posted on Jul 9, 2008 - View this thread

Web Designer Wall is the personal weblog of Nick La who is N.Design Studio. He talks about design ideas he has, design tutorials from Photoshop to CSS, etc., and trends in modern web design. (see previous)
posted on Jul 3, 2008 - View this thread

Designers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer, so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors. At their best, desktop wallpapers bring animation to often lifeless computer screens, reflecting the personality of the user and acting as a calling card for creative talent. The Desktopography Project first arrived in 2005 as a place to download nature / topological themed wallpapers with edits from selected designers. They have just released their 2008 library.
posted on Jun 7, 2008 - View this thread

Come, take a ride and look at some of the Islamic Art of the past. Or, you could call it Art of the Islamic World if you're so inclined. If not, then how about taking into account some of the major milestones of Islam throughout the centuries, from past till present (more examples here), including the art of Calligraphy and Architecture. Not to mention the Arab world's contribution to music, both old and new. [Previously mentioned, here, here, here, and here, with a wonderful comment from nickyskye as usual]
posted on May 29, 2008 - View this thread

The incredible landscapes of game designer Daniel Dociu.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Viktor Schreckengost who died last year at the grand age of 101, was regarded by some as the father of industrial design. Every adult in America has ridden in, ridden on, drunk out of, stored their things in, eaten off of, been costumed in, etc… and there is no going past his gorgeous pedal cars. Some of his work can also be seen online at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Ubuntu 8.04's Hardy Heron has recently perched on millions of desktops worldwide, but what does the future look like for the darling of the open source world? Now entering a new 2-year art developent cycle, Ubuntu's continuing quest for "pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty" has begun again in earnest. Bleeding edge desktop effects [youtube, music] are already creeping into the official distribution and the community is eagerly awaiting the new graphical look, promised as a ground-up re-imagination in the next release, Intrepid Ibex. Watch this space.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Soviet Lemonade Labels
posted on Apr 17, 2008 - View this thread

Tokyo By Night - Just one of the posts on ArkiBlog, a blog about architecture and design. {via}
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Speaking of speeches, David Eggers delivers one at TED on grassroots community tutoring for kids who need help with their English homework: "There's something about the kids finishing their homework in a given day, working one on one, getting all this attention. They finish their homework, they go home -- they're finished. They don't stall. They don't do their homework in front of the TV. They're allowed to go home 5:30, enjoy their family, enjoy other hobbies, get outside, play and that makes a happy family. A bunch of happy families in a neighborhood is a happy community. A bunch of happy communities tied together is a happy city and a happy world, right? So, the key to it all is homework." Love him or hate him (mefi consensus) it's a great example of nervous energy microphilanthropy, social entrepreneurship and, if I may make the connection, machines of loving grace. [previously]
posted on Mar 23, 2008 - View this thread

Most well known for his "Obey Giant" street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey’s art is problematic for another, more troubling reason - that of plagiarism.
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

Book nerds everywhere will enjoy these scans of cover art from the works of Beat Generation authors William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and John Clellon Holmes.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

Visual Arts: No Revolution in Hyperspace "A former insider laments the dumbing down of art museum websites." Nice, short overview of art museums and the web with good links.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

Anglo-Finnish artist Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.

She mentioned The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.

Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with three albums.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Moving houses but don't want to buy bulky furniture? Get a Casulo.
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

Doodles, Drafts and Designs: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian. Including crayon tests, the original telescoping shopping cart and more. [via the horse's neck]
posted on Feb 11, 2008 - View this thread

TOKYO International Great Quilt Festival 2008, a photo collection of beautiful Japanese art quilts. From Moonstitches via CRAFT.
posted on Jan 30, 2008 - View this thread

Superuse: Reusing can be beautiful, unusual, functional, and even illustrative of our culture of excess. (all links lead to the same site).
posted on Jan 19, 2008 - View this thread

MATSYS Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation.

B_Complex, N_Table, Endless Ocean, Endless Sky (more), P_Wall. more.
posted on Jan 18, 2008 - View this thread

Letman : Job Wouters is a Dutch designer known for his two-color flyers, which emphasize manic color and hand-lettering. His sketchbooks (White, Gray, and Black) are full of fun letter design.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

Gun for the whole family. A Scanning Around With Gene article about historic gun ads. More fun with Gene Gable: Cigarettes, diving, winter fonts, red white and blue, and so much more.
posted on Jan 10, 2008 - View this thread

Israeli designer Oded Ezer produces stunning works of experimental typography. He has been lauded for creating [PDF link]"...Hebrew characters that melt," but it is his more unconventional work that is truly breathtaking - made up of letters with vivacity and personality. He calls his gorgeously abstracted work "typo art," existing wholly neither in the space of art or typography, with hope that it might transcend language altogether. See his flickr stream for more sketches, works, and arresting typescapes.
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

Pomme Chan makes rococo nouveau illustrations, with a felt-tip/vector art feel. Roughly 60 images to explore through navigation on the left.
posted on Jan 8, 2008 - View this thread

VADS is a resource for visual art, a huge range of things from students' work to collections of historical art and design.
posted on Jan 4, 2008 - View this thread

The livejournal group ru_graphic has been showcasing great artists for years, such as soamo, desmonych, floksystar, malli-ly, olliwander, omie-yomie, zuza1, ya-ya, varka, solntsev-gleb, adul and names.
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

…you are brilliant and subtle if you come from Iowa and really strange and you live as you live and you are always well taken care of if you come from Iowa.
posted on Dec 18, 2007 - View this thread

Carl Rankin builds awesome RC planes out of straws, plastic wrap, tape, and foam take-out boxes. (via)
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

Mouneer Al-Shaarani's beautiful Syrian calligraphy.
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - View this thread

Interview with United Visual Artists: Anyone who saw Massive Attack's 100th Window tour will remember the amazing 'stream of data' graphics they used on stage, these guys did that and other work for the likes of U2 and Basement Jaxx
posted on Oct 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Lollipops are a collection of stylized cartoon drawings by Craig Robinson of famous rock stars (mouseover text will reveal the artist). 26 of them in alphabetical order appear in this ad for The Observer, entitled "From Abba To Zappa."
posted on Oct 2, 2007 - View this thread

COLOURlovers blog - science, design, art, culture, travel - you name it, they can relate it back to color.
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

Bar Code Revolution! With more than just lines and rectangles, Japanese company Design Barcode works around the basic elements of a barcode and infuses real, functional barcodes with creative designs and silhouettes. See barcodes as tomatoes, stomachs, rain, pianos, guns, train tracks, waterfalls, cliffsides, and yes, even combovers.
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

Noah Scalin explores different media and techniques to come up with a Skull a Day. Yes, there are pancakes. via Neatorama
posted on Jul 10, 2007 - View this thread

A few cool shelves: a skull shelf and another, made of books by Jim Rosenau, invisible shelf, secret stash shelf, accordion shelf by Thut Möbel, maze shelf and broken shelves.
posted on Jun 29, 2007 - View this thread

Bugaboo Daytrips is a gorgeous site featuring 22 strollable daytrips in major cities worldwide (not just US Only), all laid out on beautiful artistic (yet still helpful) maps with downloadable PDFs for taking with you on your wanderings. For those terrified of being marketed to, it should be noted that Bugaboo is a baby stroller company, although the site is by no means of restricted interest to parents only, and bugbaoo's presence on the site seems confined to the URL. Also note that unfortunately for those alergic to it, the site is designed entirely in Flash. On the other hand, the maps & art are really awesome, so you should do yourself a favor & get over it this time. Via.
posted on Jun 26, 2007 - View this thread

Mefite Fans of rock concert posters are probably familiar with gigposters.com, but here's an interesting list of over 20 other individual designers concert posters sites with tons of designy goodness.
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

Grass rings, lace rings, rock rings, bunny rings...The Carrotbox has month after month of posts about odd and unusual rings. Alice is allergic to metal so focuses in her own collection on "glass, lucite, resin, plastic, jade, wood, bakelite and even stone — anything, as long as it's not metal!" She even provides a timeline of plastic history. [via FunForever]
posted on Jun 18, 2007 - View this thread

Yesterday, Design*Sponge added a city guide for Toronto to their small but growing list of Guides. The list also includes a Letter Press Guide, an Affordable Art Guide, a Gift Guide (2006), and guides for Brooklyn and LA.
posted on May 12, 2007 - View this thread

Lettermade This ongoing project, started in 1998, is aimed at documenting, appreciating, and recontextualizing vernacular letterforms and typography. (Design dorks rejoice!)
posted on May 7, 2007 - View this thread

Metafilter's own Fake, Dan Reetz, recently spent several months in the former Soviet Union; while there he managed to round up this great selection of Soviet Movie posters from 1921-1973, as well as this interesting 1952 set of food drawings from the government produced book "Tasty & Healthy Eating." Finally, bonus content for anyone jonesing for more soviet content, this Russian Winnie the Pooh cartoon from the 1970s is fantastic. (via)
posted on May 2, 2007 - View this thread

Gary Stasiuk's beautiful Digital Creatures pulls the curtains on the kinematics of geometric objects, after which he plays with the mathematics and user interactivity of generative art and shows how to build the appearance of AI behaviors into Flash objects.
posted on Apr 11, 2007 - View this thread

Everyone needs more Kuler. There a lot of color pickers out there...and I generally like all of them...but Kuler takes things a step further by making a community of color and color themes. Of course it's tied with their products but that doesn't distract from the usefulness of this free online application. It is also a beautifully designed website both in form and function.
posted on Apr 9, 2007 - View this thread

The Rollling Bridge is one of many interesting public art projects produced by Heatherwick studio.
posted on Apr 3, 2007 - View this thread

PDF-Mags.com. "Free PDF mag's from all over the world with main focus on art, design, illustration and life."
posted on Mar 26, 2007 - View this thread

Gems of Penmanship, Penman's Leisure Hour, Ninety-five Lessons in Ornamental Penmanship, The Champion Method of Practical Business Writing and other Rare Books on Calligraphy and Penmanship from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lots of neat tidbits. [via mlarson.org]
posted on Feb 24, 2007 - View this thread

Luigi Colani, Biomorphic Designer — This prolific master of plastic has been creating organically streamlined planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, ships, cities, homes, computers, cameras, televisions, furniture, pianos, ceramics, shoes, eyewear^PDF, pens, airbrushes, and other wonderful stuff (including the kitchen sink) for some 60 years. Wherever you need to go, you can reach your final destination in Colani style. More designs here, here, here, and here. [Brits and touristas take note: London's Design Museum will host a Colani exhibition, Translating Nature, from March 3 to June 17, 2007. Bibliophiles can check out the book Colani: The Art of Shaping the Future.]
posted on Feb 18, 2007 - View this thread

Theme Magazine I'm not even going to try and flesh this out with my favorite sub-links. Just dive in.
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

Clip/Stamp/Fold. The current show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City explores an era when architecture was actually interesting. We go from "an elephant attacking the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan to a skyscraper made of Swiss cheese." On the way, we visit astronauts, bunkers, walking cities, and robots fucking – and it's all waiting for you inside these little magazines.
posted on Feb 7, 2007 - View this thread

How's the weather? Is it polluted? Do you have plenty of rainforests? Send someone a Geography Information Postcard and tell them about where you live by filling out infographics. (via)
posted on Jan 31, 2007 - View this thread

The art of Rangoli:
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread

Grandma's Kitchen (youtube), the Roller Toaster, the water-less washing machine, the sculptures of Gwon Osong, a crucifix-shaped mp3 player... some of the people and things found on CubeMe, a blog about "wonderful stuff".
posted on Dec 20, 2006 - View this thread

Architecture and the Velvet Fist of Happiness - click 'view the book" in the top left. {Flash, slight sound, NSFW}
posted on Dec 11, 2006 - View this thread

Penguin Books is an all too brief Flickr Photoset of Penguin Book cover designs from decades past. For those interested, this book is highly recommended.
posted on Oct 24, 2006 - View this thread

Arty hotel rooms. Some art slightly NSFW. Previously.
posted on Sep 26, 2006 - View this thread

Stains on paper.
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

Design Times Square: The Urban Forest Project "brings 185 banners created by the world’s most celebrated designers, artists, photographers and illustrators to New York’s Times Square. Each banner uses the form of the tree, or a metaphor for the tree, to make a powerful visual statement. Together they create a forest of thought-provoking images at one of the world’s busiest, most energetic, and emphatically urban intersections." Including work by Milton Glaser, the Walker Art Center, and many, many others. Via Speak Up.
posted on Aug 29, 2006 - View this thread

BOARDPUSHER is basically Cafepress, but for skateboard decks. If you've always wanted to design your own deck, now is your chance.
posted on Jul 14, 2006 - View this thread

"Covers is dedicated to the appreciation of book cover design."
posted on May 24, 2006 - View this thread

Atypyk seems to be two guys from France who change everyday things into stuff you want. From soap and Pez dispensers to art on dollar bills and interesting ideas.
posted on Apr 17, 2006 - View this thread

Some badass eggs for this easter done in the Ukranian style called pysanky. More from last year and the year before. [via mefi projects]
posted on Apr 16, 2006 - View this thread

The Lifelong Friendship Society produces some comfortably disjointed art/video/music/writing that is sometimes incredibly cheesy. (quicktime is pretty much required for all these links)
posted on Apr 14, 2006 - View this thread

The Vinyl Enthusiast. The Poet. The Dinner Guest. The Bass Player. The Showman. The Search Party. The Grandfather. The Tourist. ... The Regulars.
posted on Mar 14, 2006 - View this thread

Teddy: A sketching interface for 3D freeform design (in Java). Noodle around with the online applet (see the tutorial for instructions; there's also a demo in .avi format), or download the program so you can save your creations. An even niftier upgrade is available, SmoothTeddy (.avi demo), but SmoothTeddy doesn't have an online version to play with.
posted on Feb 22, 2006 - View this thread

Good Web Design
posted on Feb 10, 2006 - View this thread

Carlo Mollino [Polaroids section NSFW] A student of the occult, he was an Architect, Designer, race car enthusiast and photographer [NSFW]
posted on Feb 1, 2006 - View this thread

Interactive lighting design from James Clar. Play 3-D Pong with an LED cube, or turn the cube into an audio-synced 3-D screensaver (color upgrade here). Other favorites include the Audio interactive light meters and Square Eclipses 1 and 2k5. [Warning: Individual design links may include Flash movies, techno music]
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Alvin Lustig Archive - "Alvin Lustig's contributions to the design of books and book jackets, magazines, interiors, and textiles as well as his teachings would have made him a credible candidate for the AIGA Lifetime Achievement award when he was alive...Lustig created monuments of ingenuity and objects of aesthetic pleasure." The archive collects over 400 examples of his book, architectural, and ad-design work (see also AIGA's list of Lustig's Top-10 designs). Via HOW magazine...
posted on Dec 20, 2005 - View this thread

3quarksdaily. Just another blog, sure, but a good one. 3quarksdaily is a filter blog much like our very own, but with only 15 users (and an editor). As they say on their about page "On this website, my guest authors and editors and I hope to present interesting items from around the web on a daily basis, in the areas of science, design, literature, current affairs, art, and anything else we deem inherently fascinating." The do an admirable job.
posted on Dec 6, 2005 - View this thread

Tryangle cannot be defined, but it's way fun. Use it to easily create angular art pieces, then share your creation with the teeming masses on the Tryangle Flickr pool.
posted on Dec 1, 2005 - View this thread

Design Online - a team from the London College of Communication have scanned and indexed all the issues of Design from 1965 - 1974 (via the Design Weblog, which says: "I believe you really need to see and understand the past in order to blaze a new trail").
posted on Nov 17, 2005 - View this thread

Soft Cinema is a software+video project by media-theorist Lev Manovich, which 'mines the creative possibilities at the intersection of software culture, cinema, and architecture.' While perhaps more intriguing in prospect than in practice, it seems at least a noteworthy attempt at making something new. A DVD version of the project was released earlier this year.
posted on Nov 17, 2005 - View this thread

Some are stark. Some are funny. Some are blunt. All are beautiful; all are raising money for the Red Cross's relief efforts in New Orleans; all are part of the Hurricane Poster Project, "a collaborative effort of the design community."
posted on Nov 15, 2005 - View this thread

Canstruction is a very cool exhibit at the New York Design Center. Take a look at some of these very well done sculptures made using just cans.
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

Bad Design Kills The world is steeped in bad design. As designers we see something every day that makes us cringe or shake our head in disgust. But bad design does more than offend the eye of the designer. It facilitates a poor public perception for what our industry does and at the same time it lowers the perceived value of our services.
posted on Oct 25, 2005 - View this thread

ArtsConversations , the archives of the C/IAF's Netropolitan Museum.
Browse works of art, sculpture, photography (some NSFW) , and more. [via->via->via chunky bacon]
posted on Oct 13, 2005 - View this thread

A beautiful collection of Robots built out of junk. Imagine if all those things you see everyday that make you think "that sort of looks like a face, right?" stood up on two (or three) feet. ------- [note: I promise, this is in no way a self-link. I only discovered this website last night while egotisticallly googling my own name. No relation!]
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - View this thread

Because everybody needs a beautiful mouse.
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

Why does the iPod look so clean?
posted on Sep 13, 2005 - View this thread

PingMag is the name of a new art and design-focused online magazine from Japan. They have many interesting articles on art and design in Japan including an interview with ELM Design (on their work for Yamaha), Monolake talking about their network music projects, Eto Koichiro talking about some of his art/programming projects, a profile of Japanese production house Little More, and a lot more in both English and 日本語。
posted on Aug 5, 2005 - View this thread

The 2005 Adobe Design Achievement Awards , which "celebrate student achievement that reflects the powerful convergence of technology and creative arts." You can also browse past winners from 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001 [via]...
posted on Jul 26, 2005 - View this thread

making room art and design mag
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted on Jun 28, 2005 - View this thread

Baron Mango:
Functional Art Lover
[via]
posted on May 30, 2005 - View this thread

Design Observer and the New York Times (reg. req'd) on modernism.
posted on May 16, 2005 - View this thread

bigempty: Beautiful photos, beautifully presented.
posted on May 13, 2005 - View this thread

Rashomon ... I thought about posting a link to the distinctive art style of Sam Weber, or the 25 greatest comic book covers ever made, or avante-garde Hungarian photographer László Moholy-Nagy, or this collection of Russian and Ukrainian posters--but instead, I decided to tell you all about the site where I found every one of these links: Rashomon, a new and (thus-far) consistently interesting collection of interesting visual arts links.
posted on Apr 26, 2005 - View this thread

myData=myMondrian is an interactive art interface in which the personal data provided by viewers is translated into a Piet Mondrian-like composition. Here's an example image.

Related: Rhizome.org: myData=myMondrian
posted on Apr 8, 2005 - View this thread

neurobion [note: flash]
posted on Apr 4, 2005 - View this thread

Project Fox (Flash Inside) brings together young artists, designers, cooks, hotel industry professionals and managers to develop and implement their own ideas.
These will be presented to the public in 3 sites (hotel, factory, warehouse) in Copenhagen for three weeks in April.
"21 Artists. 61 Rooms. 13 Countries" via
posted on Mar 12, 2005 - View this thread

Hand bookbindings.
web design by Mihai Parparita, via Evan Martin's LJ
posted on Mar 10, 2005 - View this thread

We all seem to know about Gary Panter: set designer for Pee-Wee's play house and author of the JIMBO comics. His site archives an increasing radius: see his comics, for instance, some Jimbo covers: 1, 2, 3. Or his custom drawings, which are done based on one to three words you supply. The ink drawings: 1, 2, 3 and the sketchbooks are nice, too: 1, 2, 3, 4. Seems like he's everywhere: writing on his blog or that oft remembered manifesto, sometimes being taught or written about. And, as connective tissue, his Screamers design is one of the more well regarded punk images out there. When I think of Panter, I also think of Raymond Pettibon, brother of Greg Ginn (Black Flag/SST). Featured in PBS ART 21 (check out the multi-media), his work graced numerous Black Flag and Minutemen album covers and flyers. Zines also played an early role in his development. Mike Watt's own Hootpage documents some of Ray's art from the summer of 2003. Known for his interplay of image and word, some pieces seem to be in process, but all are still striking. More pieces can be seen at tractor.com. When I think of Pettibon, I sometimes think of Art Chantry. His posters (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) are inspirational and his logos ain't too shabby either. Mr. Chantry has been known to debate the rise and fall of rock and roll graphic design, speak up on issues of the state of graphic design today (as well as Seattle). Some people can't surf, indeed.
posted on Feb 18, 2005 - View this thread

We Make Money Not Art :: art meets science and technology in the near near future and begets some cool and scary toys.
posted on Jan 27, 2005 - View this thread

One man's real and imagined lives, in pixel art.
posted on Jan 19, 2005 - View this thread

Fabulous images of the Moscow Metro underground, also known as "the people's palaces". Click "M"s on the entry map to view gorgeous (often architecturally surreal) panoramic images, and visit the picture gallery for sweet details. Via Jorgen at Viewropa.
posted on Jan 14, 2005 - View this thread

Charles Eames (1907-78) and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America's twentieth century. Their lives and work represented the nation's defining social movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the economy's shift from making goods to the producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. This Library of Congress exhibit outlines major themes of the Eames' life and voluminous works, including architecture, furniture, and the film Powers of Ten. It is wonderfully illustrated with artifacts, photos of their life and work, and examples from the Eames' collection of 350,000 slides.
posted on Jan 12, 2005 - View this thread

Too many books? Not enough furniture? Problem solved.
posted on Nov 27, 2004 - View this thread

New! Fast! Automatic! Now! Archigram!
posted on Sep 30, 2004 - View this thread

Some of the results from the city of Vancouver's Art Underfoot contest. "The competition invited anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Vancouver to submit design ideas for new manhole covers..."
posted on Sep 16, 2004 - View this thread

Human Beans Fictional Products. The Karmaphone, the Live Cigarettes and more
posted on Aug 12, 2004 - View this thread

Flash guru Yugo Nakamura relaunches his site.
posted on Aug 6, 2004 - View this thread

(pod) Art, Music, Photography. Visit the gallery, listen to the radio, enjoy.
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread

Gen Art.
posted on Jul 2, 2004 - View this thread

Design exhibits, design guru, and designologue.
Flash required.
posted on Apr 29, 2004 - View this thread

Designs on the White House -- an online design contest, judged by designers, celebrities, and activists. Winning designs will be available for resale on T-shirts and other products, and all proceeds after expenses will benefit the John Kerry Presidential campaign. Impressive list of judges, including (so far) Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd, Ed Schlossberg, Atrios, and Tom Tomorrow. Designs will be online throughout May, with your votes determining the finalists. (Kerry's official shirts are lacking, imho) Maybe campaign memorabilia always has been?
posted on Apr 22, 2004 - View this thread

New York City Lights Design Competition (via Gothamist). What are the existing examples of urban illumination that impress? Are there unused designs or interesting ideas from art and movies floating around?
posted on Jan 6, 2004 - View this thread

You have been disciplined all your life   ::::   Nothing Changed - Nothing Will

---

Words of encouragement from Piotr Szyhalski's Electric Poster Series (Animated gif images). Artist's web site here.
posted on Dec 4, 2003 - View this thread

"pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in paris. some of us are 3d artists, some others are musicians or graphic designers. this website is the perfect place to share our latest creations." [note: quicktime]
posted on Oct 17, 2003 - View this thread

The Mandala Project by artist Genevieve Gauckler will make you happy. I promise. (For more happiness, also see The Emperors, L'Arbre Généalogique, and everything else.)
posted on Oct 11, 2003 - View this thread

Retrolounge is a compendium of the next new thing in design, art, architecture and fashion. I kid! Truly, go-go boots make me swoon.
posted on Aug 12, 2003 - View this thread

Walking Things is an environment that generates small, walking computational organisms. "Each walking thing is built up from totally random conditions. Appearance, behavior, and walking characteristics are all assigned from a range enabling effective, functional mobility. Click on a walking thing to permutate its characteristics".

Just one of the very many wonderful (open source) creations at levitated.net (more bugs with bling here). Kick off your shoes, fill your coffee cup or wine glass, and dip in.
posted on Jul 2, 2003 - View this thread

Cyberlicious: the Art and Culture Network. In a lo-brow search for "bubblicious", I happened upon the hi-brow and highly browse-friendly, ACN. Why? Because "bubblicious" is one of its in-site "keyword" searches, describing that quality "shared by champagne, soap foam, hot air balloons, and gum... lighter than air, ephemeral, in a state of creative tension, colorful, beautiful, and amusing", and returning results for movements such as "Pop/Surrealism/Anti-Design", "Miniskirts", "The Digital Era", "Smarty Arty Pop" and "Glam Rock", along with artists such as Mary Quant, The Ramones, Mariko Mori, Gene Kelly, and Mouse on Mars. (more...)
posted on May 19, 2003 - View this thread

Clocks
posted on May 7, 2003 - View this thread

Graphic Design from the 1920s and 1930s in Travel Ephemera . Amazing collection of posters, road maps, steamship and airline timetables, (more timetables here), post cards, luggage labels (more labels here and here), brochures and more. Seeing this stuff makes me wish I had been born seventy-five years earlier (and with an obscene amount of money.) (Warning: the site is seriously painful to look at, but the content's good. Link via Coudal.)
posted on Mar 19, 2003 - View this thread

Pictoplasma. A collection of over 4750 contemporary character designs from a whole wide load of artists, designers and companies world wide. It's making my day. There's a book too.
posted on Mar 5, 2003 - View this thread

The Index of American Design The National Gallery of Art is showing some amazing watercolors commissioned by the Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1942 to document a uniquely American cultural heritage of primarily traditional folk art (and employ out-of-work artists). I thought the textile reproductions were particularly stunning in their detailed exactitude (rendering the thread count!) and really put to shame the so-called trompe l'oeil paintings in the east gallery :D
posted on Dec 4, 2002 - View this thread

A Gallery of Bookplates. I always think it's a wonderful surprise when I'm antique bookshopping and I happen across some beautiful ex-libris. Many more links found via Joy Olivia on the Graphic Design blog Speak Up.
posted on Nov 6, 2002 - View this thread

The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted on Oct 8, 2002 - View this thread

Evil Pupil. A game? A work of art? Something entirely different? Welcome to the weirdly beautiful world of Quebecois Interweb designer Yohan Gingras. You can click and drag various elements on nearly all of his pages (I recommend "Evil Pupil / V.2" as a starting point) to discover, well, new things to click and drag. Just don't ask him what you are supposed to do or he will call you a dumbass.
posted on Sep 9, 2002 - View this thread

Forget the world for a minute, darlings. It's suppertime. Let's use our fabulously round and colorful dishware from America's premier champion of casual living, the handsome Russel Wright. An artist, industrial designer and marketing genius, Wright was a pioneer in spun aluminum before his innovative American Modern dinnerware (designed for the masses, not the classes) made him a star. Housewives would line up for blocks when a new shipment arrived. Some of his pieces are truly museum-quality. Cooper-Hewitt Museum quality, to be exact. Only 3 weeks left in the exhibition. And if you see Carmen, one of the world's top Russel Wright collectors, do tell her hello.
posted on Aug 22, 2002 - View this thread

When all of the good vinyl albums have been bought from the cardboard box at the local church bazaar, Nick DiFonzio buys the rest and scans the jackets. The result? Bizarre Record Covers. And because beauty, or the apparent lack thereof, is not only jacket deep, check out this trippy collection of 45 rpm labels from No Relevance, and this detailed record label discography, where you can see how record companies from the 1950s thru the 1990s kept trying to update and redefine their image by redesigning their labels.
posted on Jun 23, 2002 - View this thread

The Art of M. Wartella. His work has been featured on magazine covers and other indie zines. Follow the adventures of Dinky Dog (QT recommended) created by "November Jones, the poor Hungarian surplus lard salesman who invented the "Dinky Dog" character in 1914." Or "Make a hacker out of a slacker".
posted on Jun 21, 2002 - View this thread

2002 British Design and Art Direction Awards dunno when they came out, but there's some pretty cool stuff on there! definately check out the music videos :)
posted on Jun 10, 2002 - View this thread

Thinking Around the Corners , a new but very different creative magazine, launched this morning. The purpose of TAtC to to inspire designers, painters, etc. from the examples of other creatives like writers and poets -- following Duchamp's thought, "I felt that as a painter I was much better off to be influenced by a writer than by another painter." This issue features an interview with Jeffrey Zeldman on what inspires him and how he gets through the creative process.
posted on Jun 5, 2002 - View this thread

16thandmission: Urban Data Stories is "an investigation into the interplay of data, interactivity and narrative in an urban environment. It takes as its focus the corner of 16th and Mission Streets in San Francisco.... Depending on the state of the bus system at any given moment, the narratives interrelate to a variety of degrees with the map framework." [For you non-san-franciscans, 16th and Mission is a well-known intersection - lively, multicultural, gritty]
posted on May 8, 2002 - View this thread

A new temple for new technology (NY Times). The digital arts organization Eyebeam have chosen a design by the web-savvy firm of Diller+Scofidio to build their new Museum of Art and Technology, from a shortlist of thirteen. Any thoughts on architecture for new media? And iMac-colored buildings?
posted on Mar 21, 2002 - View this thread

More design through the ages....
posted on Mar 4, 2002 - View this thread

And speaking of unnecessary design groups, the Queer Design Alliance proposes to educate the masses and show that "gay art" does not equate to erotic art, and that "we are your neighbors, babysitters..." etc. So?
[more inside]
posted on Jan 26, 2002 - View this thread

What do you want?
We keep hearing about this "who owes what to whom" now that Assembler has closed, and Kaliber and Dreamless are closing.

But what of it? What does it mean? Are we so closed minded to think our Web world is the only one and that somehow the rest of the universe revolves around those of us privileged enough to be able to embark on it as a daily journey?

All of us feel one way or another towards this debate. Either we hate it, or love it, and what of that too? What *do* each of us want from this virtual world? Is there something here worth redeeming and at least arriving at a point to agree to disagree? Discuss?
posted on Jul 14, 2001 - View this thread

the SPLEEN , one of the first sites about art & design, is still up and running. I remember linking to Piotr's site six years ago; at the time I had seen nothing like it.
posted on Feb 2, 2001 - View this thread

Born Magazine : Design, Literature, Together.

Found through The Magnificent Melting Object.
posted on Jan 31, 2001 - View this thread

Did anyone see this? Very interesting indeed.
posted on May 20, 2000 - View this thread

Speaking of re-designs. Doc Ozone has a new "front end." Or, it's new to me, as I haven't been there in a few months. This guy is nuts... he's a U.I. maniac. Not sure where he's concentrating his efforts these days. He was working in Europe for a bit. One can pick up a lot of inspiration from this complex site. Look's like he's added a discussion forum too.
posted on Apr 16, 2000 - View this thread

The long awaited re-design of K10K is go!
posted on Feb 21, 2000 - View this thread

As Jim Carrey would say.....yummmaaayyy! :-) Needs Flash.
posted on Jan 23, 2000 - View this thread

Here's something interesting, some real-world user interface guidelines for the web, without the pompousness of that other guy
posted on Dec 21, 1999 - View this thread