The fascinating world of book cover design

premieredecouv
Thomas was born in Winnipeg and he actually is a bookseller in an intellectual indie store in Montreal, French Canada. His love of books and cultures led him to create "premiere de couverture", an interesting blog about book covers.

Moodstream, the brainstorm tool

moodstream
A couple of days ago, Getty Images launched their concepting tool called Moodstream. Showcasing all of the Getty Images offering (photo, video, music…) in order to inspire interactive creatives. There is a control panel where you can adjust mood and tone of the media and then save your moodboards… Moodstream allows you to cut sound if necessary…

allnews by greyisgood

allnews
"I Wanted to See All of the News From Today" Martin John Callanan (UK) is aggregating - daily - the front pages of all printed national newspapers from around the world into one place. (Currently includes 618 titles). Impressive. Via la cuisine du graphiste.

Collecting Cuban poster art

cubanposterart
Somwhere in Great Britain Charlie is collecting Cuban film and political posters since about 10 years now. Buying it from collectors, dealers, or directly from Cuban poster designer and from the backstreets of Havana. The Cuban Poster Art site is archiving a knowledge about this badly preserved medium. Charlie works in Communications and is an ex-feature writer and magazine editor, he says that a Cuban poster exhibition might be possible one day.

Filmmakers Shilo makes it good

shilo
Wemakeitgood is the passionate filmmakers Shilo's gallery. Both presenting their work and things they like. For your listening pleasure, Shilo is very proud to present the first in a series of mixes curated by DOTP featuring artist (DJ) Pretty Titty. You can listen or download this quite experimental and good mix. Enjoy it !

Mastercom, advertising selection

mastercom
Adrien de Malherbe is an young advertising specialist, producing Mastercom, a nice blog about advertising with already a good international audience. From viral to commercial videos, discover a pretty good selection of works… And check here one of Mastercom's last film.

Harmonie-Interieur: custom wall-stickers

harmonie
Harmonie-Interieur creates decorative vinyl wall decals, limited edition mounted prints and posters. All made in their own workshop and available to purchase on this website. Harmonie-Interieur offers possibility of custom orders for your own designs, non-standard sizes.... almost anything possible. Via Omami.

Formavision art and design collaborations

formavision
Formavision was founded by curator Sebastien Agneessens based in NYC. Featuring over fifty art and design collaborations with brands such as Diesel, Sharp, Marithé+Francois Girbaud, Lexus, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Docomo, Formavision has launched an updated WWW.FORMAVISION.INFO. On the site, key projects are presented by guest speakers such as Robert Klanten (Die Gestalten Verlag), Monica Khemsurov (I.D. Magazine), Francois Girbaud (Marithé+Francois Girbaud) and Paul Laster (Artkrush & Art Asia Pacific). FORMAVISION has been successfully integrating the work of leading artists and designers (Friends With You, Miranda Litchenstien, Dror Benshetrit and WK Interact - to name a few) with commercial culture since 2003.

Polaroid Closing Factories: no more films

Polaroid company stopped making instant cameras over the past two years and is now closing its last factories. Polaroid instant film will be available in stores through next year, the company said, after which Japan's Fujifilm will be the only major maker of instant film. Read more on the Washington Globe (February 8, 2008).

Getty Images for Sale, $1.5 Billion

Threatened by new "low-cost" rivals on the internet the world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media, has put itself on the auction block… Read more on the New-York Times (January 21, 2008).

Design and design: a new inspiration site

designanddesign
Design and design is a new inspiration site whose goal is to promote the worldwide community of designers (graphic design and product design) by simply showing every day "the best you can get" design wise. Design and design is online since December 13th and so far beneficiates of great response from a large number of International designers.

Shin Tanaka Japanese paper toys

shintanaka
Shin Tanaka makes fantastic paper toys, highly detailed (and available for download and customize). Young Shin Tanaka (born 1980) quickly met success creating paper sneakers, then as an international recognition he has worked for several brands and did lots of exhibitions. The T-BOY, one of his paper toy model, is quite popular around the Art Toys. Via Emilie Fumaz.

Masquerade : knitting street art

masquerade
Masquerade is the very nice Swedish blog of a young girl known as Knitta. She travels a lot and brings colors and wool in the cities creating a new street art. More photos on Flickr. Via b-r-m.

No one loves cover magazines like Joe Kral

magazine
Joe Kral is a graphic designer mad about magazines. He says he must have them all… so let's watch it. 479 cover photographies…

Irène has a great team of directors

irene
Irène is a French production company making films, music videos and short films. International team of directors, with lots of recent works to watch.

Wonderful country of Cape Arcona !

capearcona
> One day two German multi-millionaires called Thomas Schostok and Stefan Claudius bought the small state of Cape Arcona. They created a small type foundry making that small country a busy international font industry. A site you should visit if you're very interested by fame, type design and water-skiing.

Ecopera : art and ecology

I recently met illustrator Fiodor Sumkin in Paris (formerly interviewed by partfaliaz), he told me a lot about his interesting project "Ecopera". As an introduction to it, here is a text written by Victor Melamed and nicely translated by Katia Ermilova.
ecopera
On 25th of October an exhibition called “Ecopera” opened in the Moscow club DOM (meaning "the House" in English). It was thought up by Fiodor Sumkin, an illustrator based in Amsterdam. After the comprehensive research of the illustrators’ influence on human minds, he suggested to the participants about two dozens of simple phrases about how to improve our world, but gave them complete control over the rest (and of course they took this advantage).
This is a very big question, if an illustrator has to get involved into to the barest problems of the humanity. Although the word “illustrator” means, to a certain extent, a sympathetic addressing of somebody else’s history, the illustrator has to remain an Artist (with the capital A), and he shouldn’t waste his higher mission on the transient (who knows how long this global warming will be actual).
Additionally, some of the potential audience, independently from their attitude to the subject, when hear about one more illustrators’ project on the ecology theme (by the way we didn’t have any ecological projects here before), will try to move away to avoid one more fanatic protector of tropical forests, as far as worse, carrying out the party’s instructions.
Fortunately, “Ecopera” is different from other similar projects, since it doesn’t put any pressure on the civil conscience and moreover, it purposely avoids the traditional “art-school-jokes” such as (with all due respect for it) “Polish placard”. On the contrary, it operates gradually, unobtrusively, via the “visual nerve”. Somebody will say that this approach doesn’t work – we do not care. If the beauty doesn’t manage to save the world again, the world will be a little bit more beautiful.
The project gets together several dozens of artists from different countries. By the most part the artists’ names will be new of us, that is an additional reason to come.
Dear audience, don’t be afraid and come.
Ecopera.net

Photoshop's new logo: good or bad design ?

photoshop
> Photoshop new logo is a "P" knowing severe critiques among graphic communities. This P is quite common, especially because it seems familiar, and of course, this familiarity destine it to a wide audience. Yet this "P" come out of a vanguard identity work by some aspect. When you see the arsenal of images (3D motion design, package, print, etc.) and multiple and very sophisticated declinations of this logo, you understand the concept covering it all: "see what's possible." Watch it to Tolleson design's site.
Of course, first watching it I was surprised and disappointed by this "small" logo, but we need to review our points of view in a few weeks (when the logo will be seen "live", deployed, fully representing a set of products) and it is possible that the work of Tolleson then will seem much more powerful. There is a promise of possibilities, discoveries and this promise is ambitious.
Internet is probably the main media where this logo is expected to evolve in strength (in motion). Wait and see.
Have any idea about it ?

Fountain, a nice Swedish type foundry

fountain
> Fountain is an independent one-man foundry, owned and operated by Peter Bruhn. The company is located in the heart of Malmö, a beautiful cityport in southwestern Sweden, known as the Scandinavian Ibiza. The history of Fountain began in 1993. Peter Bruhn formed his own company with the intention of making a lot of jolly good fonts that people might enjoy looking at even in their spare time. Since then, many other uses for fonts have been discovered, such as magazines, advertising, corporate identities, etc. It seems that the possibilities are boundless! Several other designers have since then added their credibility to Fountain.

Mike Mills : a video + an interview

mikemills
> I discovered this interview of Mike Mills on youworkforthem. Plus you can watch this very nice video he did for the song "top ranking" of minimalist pop band Blonde Redhead. A very simple idea, beautiful and expressive.

Pantone Goe system, what's new ?

pantone
> A few weeks ago, Pantone announced their new spot-color-matching system, that will not replace the current PMS products, they say. However it may render the current system obsolete in a relatively short time…
In fact this Goe system comes with several improvement (even if the use of Pantone colors will probably not change). The actual PMS consists of 1,114 colors (not counting special products) produced by mixing 13 base colors of ink plus black and transparent white. Due to environmental liability of certain coloring agents and their price volatility, the Goe system now uses only 10 base colors, 4 of these colors being new and 6 from the PMS. The new mix possibilities offers more blues and greens. And the number of unique colors grows from 1,114 to 2,058, most of them being new. Some improvements : more colors / a better hierarchy / organised in a chromatic way / easy to use for printers. More infos with Gene Gable on
creativepro.

Fontsmith : a creative type result for brands

fontsmith
> Fontsmith is a leading type design studio in London. Creating bespoke fonts for corporate identity, working with design groups or direct with the end user. The library of fonts are unique to them and individual typefaces can be customised for you.

Colorease : nice type design

colorease
> Florian Sabatier is graphic designer and teacher whose personal site and portfolio is called Colorease. Nice works about logotype, web design and type creation.
Partfaliaz archives more than 40 type foundries and type designers from different countries, various styles and trends, find it here.

ainsifont : great types

ainsifont
> A great type site for a change. This bilingual site offers nice prices and lovely fonts for the best creations. You can preview some text and enjoy many different styles.
Remember that to discover more than 40 type foundries from different countries, various styles and trends, you can search it in Partfaliaz.

Nodiktat should be print

nodiktat
> Nodiktat is a design collective of creative people willing to share their graphic culture. Their designs would be printed on different supports such as limited edition tshirts, badges, wallstickers and posters. The designer’s pool is, for now, spread out from French rivieira to Belgium and is willing to expand itself with new contributors through project submissions on Nodiktat’s blog. Go for it !

Monsticle breakout poster and walldrawing

stinger
> Stinger from Zeptonn studio just created a terrific poster in 200 limited edition print. He also did a nice wall drawing with a short movie showing the timelapse of the creation you can watch here.

Logolog, the logo blog

38one
> three.eight.one is a small design studio run by Denis Radenkovic and based in Madison, WI, US. In this site, you access to logolog, that is Denis personal blog. It’s mostly about logo design, but occasionally you will see some other interesting content as well. It provides readers with topics on Web design and development, Art and Photography, other bloggers, tutorials on various topics, site reviews, internet prodigies and much more.

The String Republic increase your sex appeal

tsr
> Stéphane Bucco AKA Sockho, has created THE STRING REPUBLIC in 2004. After renowned exhibitions and collaborations, Stéphane wants to find new Material supports of creation. He likes to quote Raymond Loewy who said that “ugly things sell badly”. Nowadays... useful things sell badly. The amazing revival of the flip flops and the clogs remind him of the espadrilles his grand-father used to offer him every summer when he was a kid. The concept is born; see an old product like the espadrille differently! The espadrille is given as an anachronistic material support to about thirty of the greatest international grafic artists, who evolve in very different aesthetic universes.

Lichtfaktor's awesome lightwriting

lichtfaktor
> This guy from Köln, Germany, makes great light graffitis. No personnal site available yet but its flickr and youtube are terrific. The lightwriting has been explored by photographers and designers since a long time, here you'll find fresh art.

Scott Berkun shows the creative way

scottberkun
> Scott Berkun is an author, public speaker and consultant. He worked as a manager at Microsoft from 1994 to 2003, on projects including (v1-5) of Internet Explorer, Windows and MSN. He started his own consulting practice in 2003, wrote the best seller “The art of project management” (O’Reilly 2005) and teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington. He just wrote "The Myths of Innovation". Discover many great essays about innovation, design and management on his site.

A new promise in French comics

hypertext
> Three periods… Three heroes… All gathered in one space and time by a devil book ! Here is a new trilogy where mystery and cleverness mix in harmony. Surely one of the most promising story of 2007. Written in French, by two young authors : Villesange and Viaud, colored by Delf. An awesome drawing work close to Moebius school.

Ads of the world is a famous blog

adsoftheworld
> Ads of the World is an advertising archive and community site founded in 2005 by Ivan Raszl. Now it has more than twelve thousand registered members and approximately 12 million page loads a month. These large pictures available on the blog for every ad are a must for claim workers.
Ads of the World: Advertising Archive & Community

Will 3D boost the web creation ?

papervision3d
> On May 26th during Web Flash Festival 2007, Spanish programmer Carlos Ulloa presented Papervision3D, a 3D engine for Flash that he created. Making a bomb effect in Flash community, Papervision3D is an ActionScript3 that offers new possibilities. Extreme speed of execution, easy to use, the first demos are making big noise on the net !

Fluid is what a motion work should be

fluid
> The design portfolio of Dutch Remon Tijssen as been noticed worldwide because of its brillant and balanced know-how both as a designer and a developer. An impressive site and… very fluid.

Dress-codes : standards of individualism

exactitude
> Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek are inspired by the striking dress codes of various social groups and they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 13 years. They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.

Tee-shirt is not a medium like others

funkrush
> Funkrush is a British trademark of Tee-shirts created by Pete Harrison. The contributors are famous graphic designers and the deliveries have good reputation. Great quality of achievement leading to a growing success.

Trends: Materio is all you need

materio
> Materio is an original concept: an independant information centre on materials and innovative products. Intended for architects, designers or engineers, this space in Paris gather samples of amazing stuff made with: wood bars, metal film, glass foam, liquid light, memory metal, controlled opacification glass, electronic ink, three-dimensional textile…