Sherlock Holmes credit sequence by Prologue (via graphic exchange).

Self-portraits by Marc Weaver (2 illustrations).

Fifi Lapin’s clothes (an illustrated set on flickr).

Below: “Talking Heads Series” by Austin-based artist Christa Palazzolo. Oil and acrylic on panel. From christapalazzolo.com.

January 24th, 2010 by Sarah | Tags: links

1. The Birth of the Giant Turtle, 2. Madriz, 3. kung fu fighting, 4. caramelo / candy, 5. Untitled, 6. Marc Boutavant, 7. Untitled, 8. detail1, 9. seamonkeys, 10. Only one can survive, 11. Untitled, 12. 1, 13. Migros Magazine editorial Illustration, 14. Untitled, 15. In Which an English Gentleman Set off on a Journey Across the Sea, 16. freckles / SOLD, 17. A flower in his hair, 18. gingerlumpy, 19. Untitled, 20. Drink the sun, 21. Untitled, 22. 9780811869669_large, 23. You Had Best Slow Down, 24. Self Portrait, 25. Planet 4570 (1961), 26. Horse, 27. she 020, 28. semilla de carbón / coalseed, 29. COINCIDENCE, 30. chicago, 31. Click! Click!, 32. Untitled, 33. drip pattern print, 34. Jen Renninger, 35. prints, 36. night sky

January 22nd, 2010 by Sarah | Tags: art, design, flickr, Flickr love, flickr mosaic, illustration, mosaic

First weekend links for October! May your days be filled with cups of tea, apple crisp, and cozy layers. (Meanwhile, it is still 80 degrees and sunny in Los Angeles. I’ll get used to this, eventually.)

For the nerdy, the literary, the cartophiles: strange maps, a blog of curious cartographers, and source of the illustration (a literary map of San Francisco) above.

That’s all for now. Coffee maker is broken. Need to remedy situation.

October 3rd, 2009 by Sarah |

Marek Haiduk turned spam mail into design works (personal project):

Illustrations for Mad Atoms/Fox Atomic:

Marek Haiduk (Vienna, Austria). Website.

September 24th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: art, design, illustration, marek haiduk, spam

Restarchitektur – photographing the imprints left by buildings:

Marcus Buck (Munich, Germany). Website – to view full set, navigate “Freie Arbeiten” > “Restarchitektur.”

September 20th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: architecture, marcus buck

“Good design is not only about beautiful shapes. It always has to be clever in the solution of functional questions.” – Jesús Gasca

My Ink Blog documents the rising popularity of letterpress business cards, with samples.

idsgn is a new NYC-based design blog on the verge of taking over the internet as a leading source of design news… or at least as a the leading source of stuff designers like.

People need our help, not another piece of starchitecture. Amen.

Do you know what’s amazing? Nature. Nature is amazing: 10 incredible subterranean lakes and rivers. Also amazing: subterranean photography.

September 12th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: design, letterpress, links, nature photography, news, starchitecture

Visage (Face). Directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Starring Laetitia Casta, Kang-sheng Lee. Trailer. On set footage. IMDb.

Cinematography by Pen-jung Liao; production design by Patrick Dechesne and Alain-Pascal Housiaux. The film’s stunning wardrobe was designed by Christian Lacroix. His work on Visage marks his first costume designer credit in 10 years.

More from Tsai Ming-liang: trailer for Fragmento de Dong (The Hole) and a beautifully lit, filmed, and performed dance sequence from the same.

September 9th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: cinematography, face, film, tsai ming-liang, visage

The alphabet series (illustrations):

Misc. illustration:

Package design for Marina and the Diamonds’ The Crown Jewels EP (illustration and artwork for Neon Gold Records):

Illustration for Stella Artois:

Cristiana Couceiro (Lisbon, Portugal). Website – setedeasete.blogspot.com.

September 6th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: advertising, cristiana couceiro, illustration, package design, portugal, stella artois

Mia had a blog and named it movewithease.wordpress.com. She posted about postcards of which you should take note.

Beijing loves IKEA. Somehow not shocking.

Airborne cats, photographed by Junku: the flickr, the blog, the book.

I love retro visions of the space age – check out 45 vintage space age illustrations over at wellmedicated, where design is the best medicine.

Here’s a list of Japan’s top 32 iPhone apps (in English) from techcrunch.

Are you excited for Where the Wild Things Are? Me, too. So is the New York Times. Here is their article chronicling the book’s adaption to screen.

Another one to get excited about: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland starring Anne Hathaway, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Mia Wasikowska as Alice. Vanity Fair has portraits of the cast.

The Beatles: Rock Band hits shelves this week (09/09/09), as well as re-mastered editions of the Beatles’ whole library. Here is the commercial spot that brings the famous Abbey Road photograph to life, here is the trailer for the game, and here is an article from Rolling Stone magazine titled “Why the Beatles broke up.” All good stuff.

September 6th, 2009 by Sarah |

Reporting live from Hollywood – It is one hot, clear blue day in Los Angeles.

I am having a difficult time rustling up some coherent thoughts to tie together the few things I have to share with you, dear reader. I am rusty and feeling self-conscious. The backs of my knees are sunburnt and an uppity little man told me that “people like me deserve to be shot” while I sat in my car at a stoplight this morning. Me and my people would like to see him hit by a bus. No hard feelings!

That’s LA, though… traffic, lots of people, lots of sunshine, lots of clean new buildings, lots of celebrities. Amy Poehler was in my elevator last night, and I saw Anne Hathaway on set a few weeks ago.

I live about a block away from Space15Twenty, which some of you design bloggers love. Have you ever visited? It smells kind of bad near the parking lot, but it houses the best Urban Outfitters I’ve ever been to in my life. UO carries these little trick camera lenses that might make me trade my Blackberry for iPhone -

They are $8 a pop and would make amazing little gifts or stocking stuffers. BECAUSE IT’S SO CLOSE TO CHRISTMAS. I told you, I’m rusty. Bear with me, or I might not come back! Ha! Tempid threats will surely make you love me. Anyway, here’s the link to the camera lenses on UO’s website.

Chelsea Maika helped design this lovely little diptych camera, also avail. at UO (link, please):

When you snap a photo, the image is rotated vertically, leaving half the frame for your next shot – would be fun to randomly snap pics or to plan compositions, whichever trips your trigger. Also, this camera is adorable. AND, twice the bang for your buck.

Well. Wasn’t this fun?

August 25th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: camera, los angeles, space15twenty, urban outfitters

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Originally uploaded by dailypoetics

I love the internet. I really, really do.

July 23rd, 2009 by Mia |

Please accept our sincerest apologies for the expressionless pages over the last 6 weeks. We’re back!

In the meantime, Dawn started her own blog (dawnsays) so you can pick up some eyecandy there.

Image credit: i can read

July 12th, 2009 by Sarah | Tags: announcement, note

Japanese-born artist Noriko Ambe strategically cuts into books, creating masterpieces such as the ones below.

My mother always told me to never deface a book, but I think even she, would appreciate these.

Artist Statement taken from her website:

“After getting aware of the viewpoint of an “empty self,” I started in 1999 a series of works using paper, titled “Linear-Actions Projects by Drawing and Cutting.” It looks like annual rings of a tree or topographical map or waive, but it isn’t. It is absolutely the traces of actions of a person, which is me.

So to speak, I have been mapping the mysterious land between physical and emotional geography. I want to attain something sublime. The entrance of the way is detail. The detail is the key point of nature, and we are part of nature. Even though the actions are simple, I do not try to draw / cut mechanical or perfect lines in my work, for subtle natural distortions convey the nuances of human emotions, habits, or biorhythm. For this reason, I take care to make all works by hand.

When I am drawing or cutting lines, I am interested in observing the power of the changing growing shape. This dynamic shape becomes an entity in itself, “Another geography.” In a sense, the empty space is myself, and the materials represent the present world. Cutting book work is like collaboration for me. And it is important to choose the materials carefully because printed matter conveys a message automatically. The relationship between the linear actions and the materials is like the relationship between human beings and their restricted environment, a connection that is interested in me, too.

For the new type of Yupo paper sculpture project, using metal cabinets with drawers, called “Flat file globe” series has started since the last solo show 2006. The work is a metaphor of human body and also the cross section of consecutive time stream and present. That is collaborating with minimal industrial materials and my organic cutting lines. I also came to use negative forms deriving from cutouts also. I entitle them “Sculpaper.” The works multiply day by day.

Using the five senses, perceiving the natural qualities of the materials, I found that I am concerned less about the end, and more about “doing”. The process of creating is equally as important as the finished work.”

March 2nd, 2009 by Dawn | Tags: art, inspiration, paper

Saturdays can be full of randomness right? I hope so.

Good design in ten commandments. from Dieter Rams himself

Optimize your Gmail! I probably should not say this aloud, but if you still use hotmail, for business reasons anyhow, I probably will have a harder time taking you seriously. I might be a bad person.

Everyone needs a cupcake kit.

Start your very own apiary with a sculptural beehive.

On this date in 1883, the first Vaudeville Theater opens up in Boston.

February 28th, 2009 by Dawn | Tags: design, found, illustrations, interior design, round-up, weekend

See, even in days past, unicorns ruled the universe.

Alex Steinweiss is credited as inventing album covers and cover art, when hired by Columbia as its first art director in 1938. Maybe it took  longer than one would think to go beyond a plain cardboard (sometimes leather) album cover to a cover that may have only included a single picture at the time.

I feel that it wasn’t until the late 40’s and 50’s that record sleeves(at the time) became more appealing visually. Then obviously in the 60’s Bob Dylan and the Beatles,among others, were able to shine light on the topic by exposing themselves to more people than just the “inner circle”.

Above are some lovely vintage record envelopes. This is when the music AND the artwork were both exquisite.

I may be in the minority, but I like visual stimulation to accompany audio stimulation, or any other stimulation for that matter. I’m talking about more than a pretty picture here folks. Very seldom do I get that type of experience anymore. However, I think (hope rather) that it is making a comeback, and I couldn’t be any more pleased. I tend to think that in the day of the digital download, it is probably a bit more difficult to create urgency about having the actual record in hand,taking a bit more effort to encourage the consumer to purchase more than songs in an mp3 format. I am a sucker for good packaging…of all kind, even when it comes to music. I’m willing to pay a few extra dollars to be visually stimulated as well, plus I’m stimulating the economy right? Right. Case in point, the (fairly) new release of the P.O.S. album, Never Better. I almost made a video of myself enjoying it, but no one wants to see that. Instead, I provided you with a much better experience from the artist himself.

Sadly, mine did not come with the heart-shaped insert, but I will continue to love it (for almost 20 minutes at a time) anyhow.

If you want to try your hand at making an album cover of Never Better, Rhymesayers Entertainment have arranged for you to be able to do so here. So many variations. So much fun. So little time.

February 23rd, 2009 by Dawn | Tags: art, design, music, packaging, vintage