It puts the lotion on the skin? No. Put shoe on head? Yes. The following is a set of selections from graphic design group Akatre‘s photo project “Mains d’Œuvres” – Series pictures for annual communication. They take these photos, yes, then they print them up and mail them out as “mailers” – communication papers to their former and current clients, friends, and maybe even family. This is not only a perfect example of taking the basics of one’s life to an extraordinary level, it’s also just the sort of pie anyone could make to fly over the pages of the entire internet overnight.

What pie, what? I’m talking about modern internet skateboarding. Getting around, getting up, getting to the eyeballs of people for your own personal purposes. Get up and get noticed so you can get a job, get up and get noticed so you can have a popular blog.

Here’s the formula:

1. Base, understandable canvas.

2. Slight tweak of color OR mix with another canvas.

3. Repeat, repeat.

4. Collect into one set.

5. Proliferate.

Now this canvas thing could be anything from a set of photos to a wildly popular film series to an actual canvas. Sometimes all you’ve got to do is the collecting. In the project you’re looking at right now here in this post, it’s two canvases mixed together. You’ve got the portrait and you’ve got the coverup. Smashed together, simply, they get hot, so hot.

It’s a set to be admired and shucks about. Modern art, as I’ve read about a billion times is: “I could do that” “yeah, but you didn’t.” Ain’t that the truth?

To contact Akatre, email them at akatre@akatre.com or visit their portfolio site: http://akatre.com/. They’re really quite brilliant. Lots of projects. Lots of brilliance. Lots of professional amazingness.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies advertisements category.

BONUSSS experience our new GALLERY VIEW by clicking any thumbnail here!

So. The internets hath provided the world with some nicely-produced movie footage of a Mortal Kombat story in short-film format. It’s meant to be spread virally, which I’m sure it’ll do, and is doing, and it’s meant to create EXCITEMENT – which it IS doing. The clip you’re about to see is made by a … dance video director?! Kevin Tancharoen, who, because he was tentatively signed on to do a “caught in pre-pre-production limbo” Mortal Kombat, decided to make his own short, teaser version of what the film might look like. This is that. Many/most of the people in the short donated their time (maybe to get the chance to be in the final version), and the entire thing cost $7,500. And it’s gruesome. Totally gruesome.

It’s gonna be like a police movie!

Or maybe like a kung fu… gore… MORTAL KOMBAT.

Now the MOST and MOST FACTUAL information on this situation you’re going to get, you’re going to get from an interview done the day after this clip was released between the entertainment news source Collider and mister Tancharoen.

In that interview, Tancharoen begins:

KT: No. They [the studio, or anybody involved with the video game] did not [know about the mini-movie]. (Laughs) This was something I did completely on my own. However, there is a little bit of a tie-in, because I happen to be friends with Oren Uziel. And since we’re friends, I just called him up and said “Listen, I want to do this. This is what I have in mind. I want it to be contained, because I am not a studio with endless amounts of cash.” Then we started storyboarding from there, and started calling my friends, and started pulling as many favors as I possibly could. And I was thrilled that they all said yes. (Laughs)

Collider notes that Oren Uziel wrote the short. He’s currently listed on IMDb to write the next Mortal Kombat movie at Warner Bros. Tancharoen continues:

Now like I said, because I am such a fan of the Mortal Kombat series, I know there’s a lot of concern about the mysticism and the special powers and all that kind of stuff. Well, like I said, this is really designed — the short so far is really designed like a prologue to the movie. Now, in a movie version, I am going to have that mysticism there, but it has to be done in a very tasteful way. I wouldn’t like it too campy or too cheesy. I know this is a weird analogy, but it’s the best one I can think of right now. It’s kind of like when in Harry Potter, there’s two universes that coexist with each other. There’s the real world, and then you get on the train and then you go to Hogwart’s, and that’s where all the magic is.

That’s all I needed to hear. Make it AVP quality (low) or better, and I’d even go so far as to see it in the theater! All I need is a tiny bag of popcorn and one of those GIANT GULPS of soda they have at the theater now, one free refill!

Oh and… and…

This clip features the following actors and actresses: Michael Jai White who I knew played “Gambol” in the Dark Knight, remembered played SPAWN in that one movie called SPAWN, but had no idea was in The Toxic Avenger Part II – wowie!, Jeri Ryan whom you MUST know as “7 of 9″ from the Star Trek series Voyager, plus about a million TV shows, martial artists Lateef Crowder who is going to be in a 2010 movie about the other hugely popular fighting game TEKKEN, Ian Anthony Dale also in TEKKEN, and Matt Mullins who has done lots of great stuff, but whose proudest moment should be, I think, having been an actor in the 1996 video game AREA 51.

So peek at the clip and peek at this gallery clipped out of the clip and clip your clip with a clip and GET OVER HERE and clip clop clip. Yay Mortal Kombat!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies ARCADE category.

British Petroleum’s oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, now called the “Deepwater Horizon” oil spill is currently the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In response, the fine folks at Draplin Design Co., North America have whipped up some alternative identity marks for the gas company. You can see three above, and several more below. I think they’re wonderful. Of course any company that uses fossil fuels that will some day be completely run dry of our world would like to remain the color green in the eyes of that empty jar of a planet, but here they are just in case they change their minds.

Since these marks were released, I did a little bit of reading about Draplin, and it’s a lovely, hilarious read of a history that’s gone on in their history. It begins with

Bred from the loins of the proud Midwest, this little fucker was squeezed out in Detroit, in the year 1973 to the proud parents of Jim and Lauren Draplin. Growing up on a steady stream of Legos, Star Wars, family trips, little sisters, summer beach fun, stitches, fall foliage, drawing, skateboarding and snowboarding, at 19 he moved west to Bend, Oregon to hit jumps “Out West.”

And rams into a fact that made my day: he went to the same school as me, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (aka MCAD). Below you’ll find an image of an OBEY-esque poster project he printed and pasted all over campus in the year 2000.

Also below you’ll find a selection of works done by Draplin over the past howevermany years. Enjoy them all thoroughly and contact the fellow Draplin at draplin(at)draplin(dot)com or just visit him at his fabulous webpagespace: http://www.draplin.com/.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies environment category.

Holy carp. I would eat anything off this menu just to say I did. Look at the starkness! Designed by design duo “The Empty Page” aka Ross Teperek and Paul Robinson, this menu is made for a Leeds-based bar by the name of Nation Of Shopkeepers. Seems like an alright place to eat, yes? I do love being surrounded by artworks when I’m chowing down, that’s for sure. Design works are even better when they’re not overbearing. And if this menu is any indication, they’re not. They’re friggin fantastic and perfect all at the same time. Red. White. Bright. Lovin it.

Also included below are a couple more pages out of this menu the boys’ve designed, plus a small set of posters and etcetera they’ve got under their belt as well. They’ve got a nice sense to them, ay? I think they certainly do. They are based in Leeds in the UK, just incase you’re the type of person who likes to work in person with their designers and live right on over there amongst the gorillaz and sheep for shearing.

If you want to get in contact with team, email them at paul@theemptypage.co.uk or ross@theemptypage.co.uk and tell them you’ve got a wad of money just sitting around that you’d love to give them in exchange for their priceless design skills. I think they’ll be apt to keep some contact going, yes?

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies food category.

Fingers collect to make the hand, and the hand draws the type. It is my pleasure to be telling you about the fantabulous works of none other than illustrator / designer Camila Drozd. In this post you will see several examples of Drozd hand-drawn-type. This is not some silly-biller work, this is craftwork. This is something that no Joe-Shmo can do, this is the work of a professional. A professional whose worked for hours and hours, days and days, years and years to get to an excellent place. An excellent place where even the personal doodles show shining spirits from Design Heaven blinking their eyes in amazement.

That’s what’s here.

The works you see above and below are executed by Camila Drozd for fun. These are “Personal Type Work” works made just for promotion and enjoyment. Can you even imagine the things done by Drozd for pro work? No way! It’d be so good, how could anyone imagine it! That’s why there’s some examples of that shown below as well.

Please immerse yourself in these undeniably lovely hand-made letterings and if you do feel so lucky as to have a project that Drozd could work on, contact through email at info@camiladrozd.com. Drozd is available for freelance work at the time this post is made, so get to it!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies hand writing category.

A crew who want to be known as “Department of D.I.Y.” have posted some street signs designed to do nothing but inspire some courtesy. Bike accidents in Los Angeles are rampant. Not that they aren’t in quite a few places, (shout out to my homie who just got hit-and-run in Albany NY,) but in Los Angeles the people with the printers and wheatpaste and brushes are up on it. This is love for the greater good.

Also tied on to this movement (and submitted to us) is this question and answer manifesto from the crew, telling of why and what is going on:

Who? The Department of D.I.Y. is a vast group of concerned cyclists and commuters living in Los Angeles some of whom are victims of road rage, hit and runs and / or harassment, many of whom feel that motorists do not fully respect their rights to use our common streets, all of whom wish for a safer more amicable relationship with motor vehicle traffic.

Why? Because this beloved city of Los Angeles can’t, won’t or doesn’t care about the safety of vulnerable road users, the Department of D.I.Y. aims to make a broad appeal to drivers via the campaign. The message “Please Pass With Care” is not intended to be political, nor is it intended to criticize the driver’s choice of transportation mode, it is a simple message of empathy. It is an honest straight forward appeal to drivers to give bicycle riders a brake, some room on the road, and some common human respect. The lives of cyclists are literally in their hands.

Where? Everywhere people drive cars.

When? The sooner that the message gets out the better. A lot of blood has been spilled in the streets. Every week that goes by, another hit and run, or another close call, or another chilling case of harassment occurs. This can not be tolerated.

How? This public appeal is to be spread in a respectful manner in the public space with maximum visibility to drivers.

So these are being put up right now in Los Angeles first, then it would be awesome if they spread across the USA, because god knows the message needs to be shot out of a cannon. I love that they’re both in English and Spanish, that’s healthy growth. You know that people who don’t speak English can drive cars? Wow! And everyone has the ability to hit people on bikes. Please heed the call! Share the road with everyone!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies black and white category. That’s because this issue is nothing less and nothing more than black and white.

In the year 2006, photographer E. Brady Robinson visited a theme park unlike any other, purchasing there a “Jerusalem Gold Card” allowing the artist access to the park on a yearly basis. Once there, the artist began taking photos. Wonderful photos. The park’s name? “The Holy Land Experience” – an experience that will bring you closer than you’ve ever been before to the entertainment experience of being part of the life of Jesus Christ himself.

Yay! Ancient Israel!

Without a doubt, this must be the best Jesus live experience ever!

This series examines the crossroads of religion with tourism and commodity culture. – E.B.R.

Robinson takes photos that are just lovely, and in this case holy crap they are excellent. Look at the pieces of set. Experience for yourself the majesty of Christ! This theme park is located in Orlando Florida, and operates fully to this day! Take a peek at http://holylandexperience.com/ if you’re weird and want to see Jesus nailed to the cross right before your eyes.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies ancient category.

A day or so ago from now, I and half a million other people from the internet saw a moving image, a gif, of the dog you see above this text right now. He was on reddit. It was wild. He is basically stepping forward with his hands and feet, in a very awkward, direct set of motions. The image got about a billion hits. Millions of people have seen that image and keekled at it. Little giggles for a small element, so direct, so wild, that it was not only seen by millions, it was also shared by them. This is the essence of the modern internets.

Below you will see the source material for that dog.

As you can see by watching the video above, the dog is in fact a dog, yes, one that walks around and promotes a sort of snack for Japanese children. In the video, even though it is short, is a collection of wild incidents that is just. too. much. If this commercial were shown in the United States, it would only be at home during one several-hour-long segment of television: The Superbowl. And even then it would be laid to rest amongst the other “what did I just see” segments that promoted… whatever it was… Because of the inability of the viewer to connect to the actions.

HOWEVER! As you can surmise given the evidence of the dog walking on its own, without the rest of the commercial, the bits themselves are gold. So! If you’ve filmed a commercial with a dog in it, take just a 5 second segment and use that as the commercial, placing a photo of the object you want to sell before and after the clip.

It’ll work, I’m telling you!

Popvertising!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies deconstruction category.

You know that terrible feeling you get when spring comes and everyone is all happy but you’re kinda bummed out because you can’t wear your big ugly boots anymore? That’s like kinda sorta the opposite feeling people who garage sale get. The garage sale people (and me, I’m one of them) get really pumped up. They go get their cup of quarters, their fanny packs, their walking shoes, visors, and maybe even their water bottle ready. They have all this stuff ready, and they get out there, and they buy stuff. They buy stuff they might never have ever thought about needing, and they pay 10 cents for it. The photo set you’re about to lay your eyeballs on is called “!GARAGE SALE!”, taken by Caroline Palla.

Photographer Caroline Palla had a hankering. A hankering for a journey of weird proportions. So where did she go? To AMERICA. Yes! Perhaps you’ve heard of the epic 127 Corridor Sale, the one that runs through the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama? Yes, she went there.

*I realize that “To AMERICA” doesn’t make much sense to the majority of WFDJ readers, so I think mentioning that artist Caroline Palla comes straight outta Zurich, Switzerland.

Read this mission statement, it’s excellent!

Garage sales are part of a do-it-yourself-culture, where people help themselves and create a parallel economy. My work traces this otherwise unmapped trade and reflects on the ever-changing value of objects under given circumstances. I create a document of every item before letting it re-enter the commodity circuit through my own garage sales/exhibitions, using a scanner or a camera. As the project progresses, other materials such as sales receipts, invitation cards, polaroids, texts and more documents are added to create a snowball effect. Each garage sale generates new material for an ever-growing image database.

The photos you’re delighting yourself in looking at here are only a small portion of the 120 photos in the !GARAGE SALE! extended set. Will we ever see all of them all? Please miss Carolina Palla please, oh yes, that would be amazing. Some gallery! I am looking in your direction.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies rummage sale category.

Oh joy! This skateboard company you may have heard of called “Real Skateboards” has a new set of boards and an entire experience ready to go set up around old classic video games. Real Gaming. They’ve even got their own interactive webpage set up around it. Play all the games! What we’ve got though is a close up look at all of the board graphics. Each of these is illustrated by the ultra-talented Alex Turan, graphic artist and designer.

Turan presents these utterly spectacular amalgamations of color, lines, and eyeballs, set up nice for perfect board cover. These are the kind of boards you stick up on your wall, that’s my word. Each of these seven boards corresponds to both a pro skateboarder and a game you can play on the internets. Most or all of these games is sort of a tribute to an older game, for instance “Border Jumper” is a direct parody of the game Frogger.

Cheque em all out, Dompierre Top Gear, Romndetta’s House of Death, Aultz Invaders, Hillbomber Dennis Busenitz, Motor Psycho Shaaf, Huf Ollie Challenge, The Official Border Jumper Ernie Torres. And if you can’t find them in stores now you probably can tomorrow or the next day or the next day.

AND as a special treat or bonus, also included below this project in the gallery below is an extended collection of works by Alex Turan, whose works are just splendid, full of color, full of brightness! Full of fantasy and no holding back! Full of it all!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies brightness category.

Behold! From on high comes the clicker of a god. Or of GOD! Designer of unconventional things Michael Wong brings you this single campaign for international shipping company DHL. Can you guess what it’s promoting? It’s 24 hours a day tracking of course! As a direct result of this campaign which was centralized around Beijing’s business district, concerned calls about package location went down, and online click counters to the tracking webpage surged. How much exactly is a secret, but the true loveliness of this project is, of course, the giant mouse arrows traveling about the city on DHL yellow delivery vans.

Watch this video direct from Wong! (This video is hosted on WFDJ, please contact Michael Wong directly if you’d like a copy to show on your own site, or classroom.)

And Wong! If you have any of those arrows left over, send one to me!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies custom culture category.

BONUS! The project then continued with clickers on couriers!

The original title of this post was Unstoppable Rabbit Poster, but I mistyped it in a very correct way. I tell you about this exhibition event not only because Erik Brandt is a close friend of mine, but because his work is wild and the poster you see above is absolutely out of control, in a very controlled, calculated way. The exhibition is to take place at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a circle completion for Brandt, who there was once a candidate for his MFA. Look, listen, and read please, he is a good teacher.

Rabbits for everyone.

The poster above is designed by Erik Brandt, the rabbit portrait below IS a version of Erik Brandt named El Conejo, and that poster is designed by John Malinoski.

The exhibition will open Friday, March 5 at 6PM (1509 West Main St., Richmond, VA),
and the lecture will be on Monday, March 8 at 4:30PM at the Grace Street Theater.
Servus, Freunde!

To find out more information, even though I totally gave you more than enough already, cripes! You can go to Geotypografika, one of the home bases of Brandt.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies brightness category.

Welcome yourself back to the ATARI 2600, one of the definitive moments in both home entertainment and interactive communication in our modern world. In these early years (1970′s, 80′s) of video game distribution, there was a bit of a learning curve. What should be done about advertising and branding these games we’ve got to sell, said the interactive masters of the day, the games are fun, but there’s no way we can use these little pixels as the covers of their packages! ZAP! There was a split. In this age came the strange world of describing not what was actually in the game,* but what you were supposed to imagine while you were playing it. *In most cases, that is.

Lets be straight up about this right now.

This gallery post is packed up full of ATARI game manual covers from the 2600, 5200 and nothing else. In this one product you will find the first voice of the game producer as spoken directly to the interactive-home-entertainment user.

This is inside the box.

Now take a look around in this gallery, and see many models. Along with the magnificent paintings and illustrations came several setups that lots of different games used. What you see above is an ever-so-slightly modified version of one of the more common layouts used by lots and lots of ATARI 2600 games. These black cover manuals have the title above, a picture in the middle, and copyright information below. Same font, same everything. It was embellishments that made the manual.

Notice then, will you, some of the impact and staying power lots of these books had. Take Donkey Kong for example. Look at that! It’s stayed basically the same graphics for hundreds of years! Then peel your eyeballskins back and experience the majesty of space travel with Space Shuttle – A Journey Into Space. And then there was Gas Hog, whose battlefield can only be entered one player at a time. Don’t worry, no Pitfalls here, only quality connections.

And for you Kevins in the audience, there’s Bounty Bob Strikes Back, which instead of being a book-type manual, folds out into a poster.

Also this sort of collection relies heavily on contributions from those with much more invested in the game. I’d like first to thank Atari Age, without a doubt the most complete and astoundingly devoted ATARI website this side of the internet. Go there for ANYTHING you might need concerning the ATARI phenomenon. Then let’s get into this list of other contributors: IHateMyScreenName, Retro Dude, Joe Kral, ewitch, SpaceInvaders, nickstone333, amster girl, Metal Misfit, djdac, DJ Romarcade, Amster, Meringues, Dionisio, PaperGhost, ZawTowers, Dimic, Hustler, John Mundy, Old Man Winter, Semper Novus, JBCurio, Willceau, Kuilman, Mr Phillip, and Old Man Musings.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

Oh yipee! That one company that’s got some good graphics and all that all over their tea, “Damn Fine Tea”, has collaborated again with the Minneapolis graphics superteam Aesthetic Apparatus for this fabulous tin. This tin is made for the Chinese New Year, and has adorned upon it a big fat happy tiger in celebration! Each of these 50 tins (50 tins ONLY) was printed in MPLS by Aesthetic Apparatus and with each tin comes a super kawaii cute prettyfaced sticker. Scoopy! Oh and inside the tin is the extra-strong Yunnan tea, one of the original teas known for it’s super powers.

Buy these tins at the shop itself. Although, when I write this post they’re down to five tins left out of 50, so good luck on that. While you’re crying, look at the rest of this Aesthetic Apparatus work. UPDATE: all gone, too bad!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies food category.

I’ll tell you why. About a billion little cute toys and a bunch of free posters. Holy crap free stuff and cute stuff. Robot Love is the future store for Minneapolis. The only one for about one billion miles in any direction, if memory serves me right, and stopping in today was just about the best thing I’ve done all day. I walk in and the head dude, Kris, is sitting behind the counter. “Hi Chris,” he says, because that’s my name also. “Oh hi,” I say. And he’s all “do you want some posters for free?” and I’m all “WTF yes I do.” And bam!

The posters K-money layed on me are what you see in the gallery below. Each of them is designed by Michael Cina, formerly of YouWorkForThem, currently of http://michaelcinaassociates.com/. Look at these wild posters. They’re all very nicely printed on heavy stock. Weirdly shaped to fill that odd bit of wallspace you’ve got open that you’ve been having a hecka’a'time filling up.

Nice and pretty, and Kris told me to tell you that they’re free for everyone. Just go ahead and say we sent ya on in. Free Michael Cina posters for all your wall-covering needs. Also, needless to say, Robot Love is currently, as always, packed to the brim with beautiful toys and collectables and books and clothing and amazingly friendly shopkeeps that you’d have to be entirely cold-hearted to resist. And a cute pink “open” sign!

PLUS! Plus, this is just a bonus on top of a bonus, they’ve got a few FRANK magazines by the door. FRANK is a really neat little mag that’s packed to the brim with neat stuff, and it’s also such a weird little size that you just cant resist. Nicely designed too!

Bunny approved!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies toys category.

Hello, my name is Chris Burns, and this is why I deserve grant money. Let me begin by telling you the story of a man named Sean Harkridge. He is an installation artist by trade, and has been doing art for many years. In the year 2005, Sean Harkridge was commissioned by an undisclosed party to make an image that would be put on a billboard in central Liverpool, payed for in full by the party. The following is what he did.

Having this fully commissioned task of finding a fitting image for a billboard at hand, Sean Harkridge first decided to seek out the billboard in question. Once at this Liverpool billboard, Sean Harkridge looked around for ideas.

Sean Harkridge found his muse in a car nearby that had been given a parking ticket. In the envelope that comes with the parking ticket, Sean Harkridge kindly placed the amount of cash that would cover the cost incurred by the ticket. Sean Harkridge took a photo of this event happening, and that image was placed on the billboard in that location in Liverpool.

And that is why I, Chris Burns, deserve grant money.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies weird category.

Hey so you know about new combinations, right? Taking one thing you love, putting it with something that it doesn’t usually go with, in a creative way, and it’s interesting. That’s what seems to be up, right? Yes and no! No matter how much the design and art world is trending, you’ve gotta be good at what you’re doing. As for Laut Rosenbaum, the ink from the pen doth naught ever run out. Rosenbaum takes the pen to the beer coaster and flips out an assortment of lovely portraits. How pretty!

Laut Rosenbaum is known for the drawings and the doodlings, but these are in the intriguing spectrum of the whole sharing world. Not only because they are nice drawings, but because people’s attention turns almost instantly to what they can do with it, and how amazing it would be to draw only people from a single bar with that bar’s coasters. What a fab idea! I gotta go do that! Copywrite’d!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies food category.

Let me introduce to you a dude by the name of Jonas Bergstrand. You’ll recognize the stylistic choices, if not some of the exact images instantly. He seems to have studied the same books (metaphorically) as my main man John K (of Ren and Stimpy fame.) Classical techniques with a friggin beautiful modern manner. Check out the Che Guevara and Castro illustrations in the gallery below for a real treat.

See things clearly, make things clear.
In an entertaining way.
That’s what I always set out to do.

Please hop to the gallery and see the result of my ambitions. And don’t hesitate to make use of the contact details afterwards.

-Jonas Bergstrand

If you’re aiming to contact this wonderful penmaster, just shoot an email on over to jonas@jonasbergstrand.com – take note – he lives in Sweden! But we live in the future, 2010! So feel free to hire him from any corner of the earth!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies ink category.

The superman designer Kyle Bean has taken a whole lot of time to cover up a bunch of instruments with paper. Each little bit of every instrument covered collage/wallpaper style with sheet music. Along with that, a few suitcases covered with maps. All this and color accents made for UK high fashion and luxury store Hermès. In the windows through the beginning of 2010. After that I think he should send that guitar to me!

Craftsmanship. Super music covered instruments! I wonder if they still work? This sort of work reminds me of designer/artist Shepard Fairey and his collage background fine art pieces (a couple of which are also included in the gallery below.) It’s a fabulous practice, reusing printed material for new art projects, especially all of theses items in this particular post, all of which will far outlive the usefulness that any of the paper scraps they employ would have. –Keep those trash heaps low!

Hermes (UK) 2009

Music manuscript covered instruments and map covered suitcases to complete window displays across the country.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies deconstruction category.

This right here is a celebration of SAMHAIN! I know the festival, the gaelic festival of the ending of the lighter time and the beginning of the darker time is over, heck, it was over at the beginning of November! But that’s no reason to be glum, I mean Glenn! It’s time to Danzig! Everybody get your posters out and graveyard boogie!

This is a collection of SAMHAIN posters specifically. They’re collected from all over the place from all sorts of weirdos. A list of those weirdos can be found right at the end of this sentence. Posterscene, Bounds Dungeon, rsw195757, rockart1, MattMurdock1, Misfits Central, the7thHouse, and Rank My Tattoo.

NOTE: finding posters for Samhain is really freaking hard, mostly because the band only existed for a few years before it transformed into DANZIG. If you’ve got any sort of poster or evil photo to add to the collection here, feel free to drop a deadly line!

Fun fact about the demon skull: it’s stolen and modified from the cover of comic book “Crystar: Crystal Warrior” issue #8. Thanks JimSmash!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies black category.

Attack of the 6 foot human! In this terrifying post you’ll find wonder!, fantasticism!, the death of all animals! These right here are advertisements for animal rights put out by the UNEP and CMS, designed by Serviceplan! Each of these epic posters depicts the tables being turned on so-called monsters of nature, having now the upper hand: humans! They come with fire, they come with axes… gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning.

Destroyers and usurpers, curse them!

UNEP stands for United Nations Environment Programme, while CMS is the Convention on Migratory Species, aka Convention sur les Espèces. They be fightin for the little furry and winged creatures! Even the fishes!

And here they got super fishy making it clear who the real predator is.

Release: December 2009
Advertising Agency: Serviceplan, Germany
Creative Directors: Alex Schill, Christoph Everke
Copywriter: Cosimo Moeller
Art Director: Alexander Nagel
Account Supervisors: Christiane Broch, Nadine Wintrich

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies fragile environment.

Inside of this post you’re about to behold a set of nicely constructed Japanese magazine advertisements from the late 60′s and early 70′s in a lovely amount (50+). Simplicity abound. Although there really was a smaller amount of “Futura terror” in the years before Helvetica in Japan, the times certainly did change by the end of the 1960s. Modern minimalism permeated the whole world, even super crazy time Japanese magazines.

That’s what we’ve got here!

From cartoons to half-naked women, this period in advertising represents a rather nice calming-down of things. Stark, simple, toooo the point. You’ll find a few of the more bang-up jobs above and below already expanded, then feel free to take a peek through the gallery.

This collection has been harvested and curated from That’s Euro Beat! aka “Western Journal of Showa nostalgia ads,” a vast, vast collection of Japanese advertisements from the start of the 1950s through the end of the 1980s.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies advertisements category.

Enlarge your mind with these vague old testament references. You Noah’s Ark wannabe. These are brand new, made for a meat market / deli in Toronto. A bunch of people worked together to bring this together, including a designer, a creative director, an art director, an illustrator, and to the most important degree(?), the client. Maybe the Bible had a little bit to do with it.

If you’re looking for a source, or some direction in the world, you’d me smart to peek at some of the most gorgeous religious illustrations in history: the Lindisfarne Gospels of northern England. I’ve included a couple down there in the gallery, take a peek at the full pages and a little bit of detail. Of course nothing is compared to seeing them irl.

The illustrations done for this Caplansky’s triad are by Toronto resident illustrator Geoff Donovan. He’s currently got a twitter account but no portfolio site. What a crime!

Design: Bensimon Byrne, Toronto
Creative Director: David Rosenberg
Art Director: Glen D’souza
Illustrator: Geoff Donovan
Client: Caplansky’s
Date: 2009

The tip for these illustrations came from none other than that best resource for Canadian design, the Canadian Design Resource. This post you’re looking at is part of the World Famous Design Junkies food category.

This post is a collection of hundreds of Star Wars photos from the set, of the movies, and from the promotional shots of the 70′s and 80′s. Doesn’t matter how you feel about Star Wars, it’s affected the way you work. The world you live in today is the world you live in today because of Star Wars. You’d better believe that. Its basically like this: Luke Skywalker: New York, Princess Leia: Los Angeles, Han Solo and Darth Vader: Minneapolis.

These have been scrounged from all over the internets. If you are one of the photographers of these phantastic photos, shoot me an email or a comment here. If you’d like to take credit for bringing an image here to the internet, I give you a hearty thank you and internet hand shake. If you’ve got photos you’d like to add to the collection, feel free to also contact!

This post is composed of photos from the movies, (the original trilogy,) making-of photos, a few posters, products, and advertisements. MOSTLY it’s photos from cut scenes and promotional photos. Everything is super amazing and very wild.

Star Wars: one of, if not the greatest non-Jesus brands in history.

UPDATE: There is now another Rare Star Wars Photos post by the name of More Star Wars Rarities. More on-set, behind the scenes, during shots, and good time havin by the crew.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies outer space category.

Let me tell you what’s in. Dead, hilarious things. Zombies are hilarious. Not always, but most of the time. Monster mash – thats the dance you should be doing if you want to be totally hot right now. That’s what the one called Kristian Hammerstad is up on. Dead things. Eyeballs falling out and skin burning off. Frightening wildness. All illustrated, color, nice lines.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Zombies are terrifying. Everyone knows that it’s important to either face your fears or find a way to avoid them entirely your entire life. I’d wager that most of the people who deal with zombies in their line of work don’t fit the mold of an ambulothanatophobic.* But the people who deal with zombies allow the people who have to face their fear face it in comfort. With a smile on their face!

*The irrational fear of the walking dead. [term coined by Rob Friesel]

Kristian Hammerstad

Sagene
Oslo
Norway
Europe
Earth
Sol system
Milkyway
Universe

info@kristianhammerstad.com
(+47) 97686002

Copyright 2009 Kristian Hammerstad. All rights reserved.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies illustration category.

This is a bunch of photos from inside the airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They’re snapped by me, author designer Chris Burns, as the first mission on this amazing fact-finding mission in Albany, NY, and the surrounding areas. These photos are taken with the most extremely specific mission in mind: photograph a photo every 5 seconds or less.

It almost worked. Results below!

These photos taken Friday, November 6th in the afternoon, 2009.

Minneapolis International Airport. Inside.