Hoootah! Our hero and friend super-designer Erik Brandt is in Bolivia! And you know what that means – lots of typographically amazing photos! Typography is a specialty of the eyes for Herr Brandt, and his camera helps him help us to understand the lovliness of his environment. Explore with me, and him, if you will, a collection of 120+ photographs of graphic design and lettering lovliness from the city of La Paz, Bolivia!

Point of special interest: while you’re browsing, take special care to see the manhole covers, sewer covers that are spread throughout the set. They’re all just splendid. Then of course let your eyeballs taste the broken and perfect sets of letters from all around the city.

From the fantastic blog of mister Brandt:

This coming week, I am delighted to be traveling to La Paz, Bolivia to attend the BICeBé 2009, Bienal Internacional del Cartel Bolivia. Organized by Susana Machiado and David Criado, it promises and amazing array of international speakers, workshops, and exhibitions.

And so here we are, the main set of lovely photos. I cannot express enough how much of an influence Erik Brandt has had on everything you see here. Everything as in World Famous Design Junkies and your everloving-publisher, me, Chris Burns. Erik Brandt is a professor at my Alma Mater the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. There he spreads the knowledge that only a world-traveled typography collector can teach.

Indulge in the following set, and do not forget to visit Brandt’s news feed http://geotypografika.com/ often as possible. Click the heck out of it and learn yourself some typographic mathematics!

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

All the noodity of lovely bare-legged type. That’s what nakedtype.com was gonna be all about. Juan Carlos Pagan had an idea for a type foundry exploring the perceived humanistic qualities of letters. If you take a look now by clicking http://nakedtype.com/ you’ll see it’s parked by godaddy. We talkin future baybay! For now, while you wait, there’s several really pretty posters for you to peek at. Each of these in the set is 24″ x 32″ printed on medium-weight bright-white paper.

Oh fashionable! The sleek look of the just-picked letterforms from your favorite font. That’s what I’m talkin about. I can’t wait for this site! The Humanistic Qualities of Letters – that’s something you could make a single post about on a blog, but shoot if it isn’t a subject that could be expanded up into a full bigtime educational website. A must do.

This post is a page out of the World Famous Design Junkies book of typography. And then if you’re feeling extra saucy, salt and peppery, you can head over to the official World Famous Design Junkies House of Burlesque.

addl!

Thanks everyone for all the love. But i cannot take total credit for all these posters. The lovely “K” poster was created by the extraordinary talent of Gaius Benbow. Check out his link here http://www.gaiusbenbow.com/.

-Juan Carlos Pagan

Thanks man!

Oh CRIPES what were they thinking? They were absolute geniuses! That’s what you’re about to say like 50 times in this thread. This is World Famous Design Junkies first big retro thread of kitsch, inside is a collection of items that are not big enough to have their own thread, but much too big 2 b 4gotten. Most or ALL of them were made before the internet age, and are therefor just as good as new. That’s the rules of the internet. Discover for yourselves the wonders of the kitsch design universe.

To understand kitsch you must first understand the nature of the kitsch designer. This kitsch designer that’s being spoken about takes things to the next level of literal translation. They put puppies in human outfits, they bring a boom box when a tiny radio would be perfectly fine, and they wear an eyepatch. They’ve got everything in full color and they never let ink go to waste. They say, “man, the paint is here, and it’s gonna have to go somewhere, so if anyone is going to waste it, it’s going to be me.”

Then the kitsch designer splatters the paint all over the chia-pet canvas.

Please join me now on a limited journey through the insides of the kitsch design universe. The following designs are captured from a small but wonderful group of collectors who you should all meet. All of dis junk (or a lot of it) is from the following sources: RetroZone, Histoire Del Oeil, Graphik Addict, Arbito, Roadside Pictures, REBIRTH, probably Christian Montone, and illvisual, plus a couple other ones I might have lost.

Fear naught!

This post from the World Famous Design Junkies collection category.

Spring is officially rung in with this year’s “Art Crank” show. It’s a bunch of “affordable artwork” from bike-enthusiast artists from across the city (and the state.) Taking the form of posters, prints, and at least one photo, each work is available in a limited run for a price right around $25 each. See inside for some exhibition photos and full details, including a full participating artist list with webpage links.

This year’s show took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on Saturday, April 4. The Denver version will take place on the 11th of April, and will, I assume, be filled with posters from artists in Denver.

This Minneapolis version continues until May 2nd, and is located at 117 Washington Ave N, Minneapolis MN 55401. After that, join the crew during Art-A-Whirl at the Northrup King Building, also in Minneapolis, May 15th: 5 p.m.- 10 p.m, May 16th: Noon – 8 p.m, and May 17th: Noon – 5 p.m.

Follow some updates at http://twitter.com/artcrank and join the facebook crew at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minneapolis-MN/ARTCRANK/123607845270?ref=ts

Finally, here’s a list of artists and designers involved in the Minneapolis edition: Aaron Purmort of fivespaces.com, Adam Turman of adamturman.com, Aesthetic Apparatus of aestheticapparatus.com, Aleks Stancevic of entropydesignlab.com, Amy Jo of missamyjo.com, Angel Bomb of angelbombdesign.com, Brent Gale of twinsix.com, Brian Hartley Sago of hartleysago.com, Briana Auel of brianaauel.com, Carly Schoen of holyherring.blogspot.com, Celeste Prevost of designisfine.com, Chad Hancock of zeusjones.com, Chris Verbick of budgeover.org, Clark Patrick of clarkpatrick.com, Igor Dukic of behance.net/igordukic, Jamie Paul of lovelympls.com, Jason Strong of supraformusa.com, Jeff Johnson of spunknation.com, Jesse Lalonde of jesselalonde.com, Jim Bozicevich, Joanne Grobe of velvetpeel.com, Jordan Hadler of jordanhadler.com, Joseph Duffy of duffy.com, Katherine Lamm, Kelly MacWilliams of kellymacwilliams.com, Kelly Munson of kellymunson.com, Kevin Hayes of lovelympls.com, LOCUS of locusarchitecture.com, Lure Design of luredesign.net, Mike Caguin of collemcvoy.com, Natalie Schaefer of natalieschaefer.com, Paul Gardner of florafaunaworld.com, Ryan Carlson of twinsix.com, Sean Tubridy of seantubridy.com, Sevnthsin of sevnthsin.com, Steve Smith of drunkingham.com, Steve Tenebrini of squad19.com, and TOOTH.

For any posters I missed, check out the Art Crank flickr.

Visit them or I will punch you in the nose! This is a conversation had by two fellows that had an amazing idea. Tom & Shaun sittin in yer window, doin all kinds of stuff. For a full week(?) they’ll be sitting in this window display, doing all sorts of stuff via internet users all over the world – telling them what to do! And they aren’t half bad at typography and the like, are they? They’re totally awesome.

From a collection of photos showing genius bits of industrial design from folks with little or no money, from [Dark Roasted Blend].

For more rethought thoughts, check out Kevin Kelly’s [Street Use], for more pre-thought thoughts, go for [Yanko Design]

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America. Look for this man to continue to be the most well-designed President in history. Not necessarily in the way he does business, but look for his surrounding graphics to be excellent.

UPDATE: Check out http://whitehouse.gov/ and see just what I mean.

Look for [aesthetic/typografic change] sooner than later.

edit: originally titled “YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH WOO!”

This post is constantly updated, as if it were a blog in and of itself. It’s a place for weird design-related stuff that doesn’t really relate to any sort of portfolio or anything like that. It’s called the lost and found because that’s one of the aims. If you’ve got an idea of where any of these images originally comes from, have a heart and leave a hollar.

Get on up an’ take a peek!