An epic story for a simple skateboard crash! Truly a strange sort of deal going on here in this box-o-shirt we were sent to review by LTD Tee! Inside a nondescript white plastic bag came a lovely cardboard box decorated with a hand-printed silkscreen in brown ink. The design uses both the illustration seen on the shirt inside as well as an epic tale of the artist/designer. Inside the box is a tiny stash of high-quality stickers as well as another bag, transparent with instructions, containing the shirt. The shirt itself is branded exclusively with the “LTD Tee” logo, printed inside the shirt above, again, the story of the artist Porous Walker.

The shirt itself contains a lovingly applied giant illustration of a helluva crash of skateboards as illustrated by Walker. It’s printed in a bright yellow and a medium brown. Reminds me of a hotdog covered in mustard.

NOTE: This is an official Concrete Stairs Review. Here at World Famous Design Junkies we strive to bring you not only the most awesome reviews because of totally detailed descriptions, but also because of strange locations. For another example, check out this Eyepatch Post which of course takes place on a cat’s scratching post.

Solid colors, cool illustration, screen-print application inside and out. Evenly applied, no mis-steps. No tags, just ink. Very excellent. Also there’s a print! a rather simple box-sized digital print you could totally put up on yer wall.

Now for that epic description! Here’s the text that’s printed inside the shirt and outside the box, a wild tale of the life and times of the artist Porous Walker:

Porous Walker was a man. Not just a man, but a man’s man. He had drawings all across the land, bright ones, with rainbows, penises, and very crooked teeth. The pieces made people smile, even laugh, and sometimes, they even made a man cry.

He showed with other artists, and sometimes solo, in places like Switzerland and the Lower Haight. He was written about in Juxtapoz’, Fecal Faces, and other pieces of papers. He drew his Facebook page on a 20 foot long piece of paper, based on a dream and the language of the French.

Then one day, Porous Walker wanted to be the second oldest married man to sail solo around the Cape of Good Hope. It was an ambitious trip, one he planned and trained six days for. He set sail from Seattle, Washington on July 11, and in his first, and last blog post from his boat, The Alan Bamberger, Porous told the people of world that he was happy to have known thee. And that was the last we heard of Porous Jimmy Walker.

LTD Tee is the rather self-explanitory brand name of an awesome group of people that print and ship artist-and-designer-designed t-shirts, all originating from here: http://ltdtee.net/. They’ve got an easy-to-use system for purchase, coupons for their products rather regularly, and YES!- A COUNTDOWN METER to show you when the next item gets released! I lub it!

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

Let me tell you about the best little giant toy company in the world. Medicom. They’ve got contracts with some of the greatest toy designers in the world and they do not-hold-back! They make the greatest stuff ever! Lemme give you a rundown of their latest achievements. First, let’s talk about that KAWS Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket set you see above. They were first blasted all over the internets by Arrested Motion who, when walking about a museum exhibition, spotted the little cuties. This was (is) The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum‘s first KAWS exhibit, as well as Brian Donnelly (KAWS)’s first solo museum show. Then there’s all sort of other toys like EAMES, Ren and Stimpy, The Clash Mickey Mouse…

Oh my god the excellent things that are about to be released unto the world.

Arrested motion claims to have confirmation that these Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket toys will be coming to life via Medicom. It seems totally reasonable so there’s probably no reason to doubt it. Feel free to send me a set!

Then let’s keep going down the list. All of these are pictured in the gallery below, right after photos taken by Arrested Motion of the KAWS figure as pictured at the museum show. TOYS: There’s the EAMES yellow and black furniture pattern Bea@rbrick (which, if you don’t know what is, it’s a bear-shaped canvas-sort of toy onto which hundreds of designs have been placed), super flat black and white Mickey Mouse brick, Star Wars original packaging Kubrick set of 6 (Kubrick is very similar to Be@rbrick, only they’re more open to interpretation, not just bearish) -series 3 with C-3PO, Han Solo in Carbonite block, AT-AT driver, Lando Calrissian, Wicket W Warrick the ewok, and a jawa!

Next there’s a black and white version of the iconic London Calling pose (The Clash) Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob and Patrick Star Kubrick, Star Wars Kubrick series 1 (I don’t know what happened to 2) including Luke Skywalker in Jedi Knight uniform, C-3PO with Salacious Crumb, R2-D2 with drink serving tray as he had on Jabba’s Barge, Chewbacca (Bouschh’s Prisoner), the seen-once-maybe-twice in Return of the Jedi tall yellow and green alien Amanaman, and Jabba’s right hand man Bib Fortuna.

Then there’s REN AND STIMPY BE@RBRICKS what in the world?! There’s a plain set of them then there’s SPACE MADNESS. Then, since we’re in space already, there’s a Kirk and Uhura Star Trek pack of Be@rbricks – these have a very interesting style to them that makes me wonder who did the artwork.

There’s some KAWS “teeth” shoestrings that I’d like to have a whole case of because they’re so awesome I’d put them in all my shoes forever, “Deep Sweet Easy” and “Kuredosukopu” Be@rbricks with strap that are super gorgeous and will have profits donated to JCV polio vaccines, and surprise(!) a Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket Kubrick set. How much you wanna bet they got a deal on licensing for these two characters and came to KAWS with the idea of rocking out on a version of his own?

And that’s my conclusion. See how the world all connects.

For more info on the KAWS artshow at The Aldrich: http://aldrichart.org/exhibitions/kaws.php
For more MEDICOM news: http://medicomtoy.tv/blog/
For amazing hotdogs: http://unclefrankys.com/

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

Well, the day has finally come. June 29, 2010. This marks ten full years since the release of one of the most addictive keyboard-and-click video games ever created. It was there, in that game, online with thousands of other players fighting, leveling up, collecting treasures, that I realized my obsessive personality. I believe every modern person has this sort of “disorder” to some degree, they call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder if I’m not mistaken, OCD for short. Diablo II (aka Diablo 2) took hold of that piece of each of us, the people finding themselves part of this new internet community, and held on tight.

Ten years tight.

And then there was the Social Media. And the clicking.

Now you might notice the “DIGG” logo mark stuck to the Diablo II image above. Why? Because it’s the same. Over the past few days I’ve attached myself to the community of DIGG like it was a game. Because it is a game. When you’ve got a brain like me and the rest of us young gentlemen and ladies who can’t keep their hands still, all you’ve got to do is provide a ranking system and you’ve got them occupied.

If you want to survive in today’s capitalizing network, you’ve got to keep your head. You consider your obsessive nature a disorder and you’re stuck feeling bad about it. You tell yourself you’re strong and that being obsessed allows you to do mass amounts of work, well, you’ll burn out, buddy. So what’s to be done? How many roads must a man walk down? Do girls just want to have fun?

Let’s talk about what we do on WFDJ to stay occupied in a healthy manner, or at least a progressively social manner. Sound good? How about we number this list, too.

1. DIGG – On this share and read site, I’ve found it beneficial to be yourself: ca77 is the name I go by. We had a WFDJ DIGG and it petered out. It had a little bit to do with that I lost interested back when I started it, and a lot to do with the fact that people on DIGG like to feel like they’re working with people as opposed to organizations. Now we’re making friends, connections, and cross-links. Up-voting per friendly suggestions, rooting out false prophets aka spammers, and submitting our own material here and there to capitalize on the work it does take to be a helpful member in this squad of workers.

2. FACEBOOK – Here we’re in a few places. There’s my personal page, something everybody’d probably enjoy having if they had one, then there’s both the WFDJ website page and personality. These both have their own unique abilities, both of them important to how we round out our facebook presence. The website page is the place where people basically thumb-up our page and suggest it to others. Real simple. The personality page is the same thing you get when you sign yourself up for facebook. If you’ll take a look you’ll see the name on it is “WorldFamous DesignJunkies” because we’ve got to fool fb into believing the presence is a person. People see this, find it unique, and friend it right away. 946 friends end up being much more valuable than 2,000 thumbs-ups. For real.

3. TUMBLR – A super-simple and lovely genius setup for bloggers from the start to the super-used-to. The WFDJ tumblr account acts as a subsidary of WFDJ’s main news page, allowing for more attention to be payed to individual images and quotes from pages. People today on these internets are interested not only in the content they’re peeking at, but in the way they’re peeking at it too. Tumblr is unique in it’s…well… twitter-list sort of friends feed, showing updates from everyone they love at once, with simple buttons for liking and re-posting. That, and if you’ve got the personality we’re talking about, tumblr’s a place where you can post thoughts and sub-images that come to your knowledgeable mind throughout the day not big enough for a whole post.

4. TWITTER – Have one. Love it. Don’t hold back. Unless you’re the kind of person who posts every 5 minutes, because that’s a cause to hold back. People de-friend people who post too much. I’d wager to say that posting too frequently is the number one reason people de-friend on Twitter. An awesome service to use to post to twitter is http://su.pr/, a site made by StumbleUpon for people to have instant url-shortening complete with a handy SU head-board. Always with the head-boards. Always with the grasp of the fingers.

5. STUMBLEUPON – This community is perhaps the most difficult to be a part of because of it’s dis-jointed nature. There are message boards and there are ways to send messages back and forth, but there’s so much sharing that it’s basically impossible to work with other people. Your best bet for becoming successful at SU is to follow the rules you’d work with for Reddit or Digg. Be sensible, work on helping other people first, yourself in the back of your mind most of the time, in front every once in a while. We’ve been at it so long that our method is to post different singular images from WFDJ, using SU as an image-sharing program rather than as a news aggregator.

6. REDDIT – Find your favorite sub-Reddit and thrive in it. I’ve had some little success working with the people who run the Star Wars list. Each subreddit has its own moderators and family, so it’s possible to be cool with these healthy “medium groups.”

With all of these plus finding the content plus preparing and publishing the content, one has the opportunity to have this OCD nature without messing a single one up by too much participation. Always keep in mind that everyone on these internets is a person, and that many people go to multiples of these sites. That means if you post the same thing to each of them, these people will find you and they will slap you in the face, digitally. So be new and unique with each little thing you post. In fact, just to be safe, never post the same thing twice. Not only is that healthy, it keeps you spry.

Stay spry!

And if you want to eat your life alive, play D2… or depending on when you read this post, play D3. And good luck, you’ll be alone there. It’s going to be TOO good.

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

Each of the works above and below are, as the title suggests, made with permanent marker on paper. Each of them shows a bunch of video tapes or other cartridge game or video. What kind of realism is this? Some sort of modernism. When I first happened upon this project, I saw one of the tapes pictures and assumed it was a photograph. This was interesting, as collections of anything that involves packaging AND a dying or dead format of media, well, that’s gold to me and the WFDJ community! But lo! It was an illustrated image! And what’s more, it was permanent marker, which of course you know is heavy kitsch.

And kitsch is the magic word for 2010 modernism! Isn’t it? I think so. Each of these, marker on paper, (except for one, the vertical tapes with Kodak in the middle, which is just acrylic on canvas,) makes for a masterpiece of translated reality into artwork. Design artwork if I do dareso say myself.

Details (not in gallery order):

VHS (vertical tapes)
acrylic on canvas
01-31-10
10 x 13 inches
hbt10-001

Atari & Flower Wallpaper (wallpaper and tiny tower of atari)
permanent marker on paper
03-17-10
22 1/2 x 30 inches
hbt10-p018
Private Collection

VHS (massive array)
permanent marker on paper
04-10-10
22 1/2 x 30 inches
hbt10-p020

VHS (three stacks)
permanent marker on paper
01-15-10
22 1/2 x 30 inches
hbt10-p002

VHS (small stack)
permanet marker on paper
12-21-09
8 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches
hbt09-p087

Atari & Jellyfish Wallpaper (aqua wallpaper, three stacks of atari)
permanent marker on paper
06-07-10
8 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches
hbt10-p027

To contact the artist, Hollis Brown Thorton, email at info@hollisbrownthornton.com or visit the portfolio site at http://www.hollisbrownthornton.com/ — you’ll be interested to know that there’s a range of these tapes drawings and paintings going back years. The drawings and paintings you see here are all from the year 2010.

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

A Bathing Ape, aka BAPE has a new shoe, Spring 2010, or some new colors, a style, whatever coming out this spring. It’s done in the same style as the Chuck Taylor All Star shoe, except the difference is it’s got a Bape logo. The logo is attached with velcro, too! What do you think about that? I think it’d be kind of inconvenient, like I’d be pretty prone to be losing it just walking my day-to-day. It’d get caught on a flower and get pulled right off!

I could ask you what you thought of the direct… tribute… to the Chucka but I wont. I wont even ask you about that! Not even at all. Look there’s more colors too!

Where can I buy bootleg Bape patches like this? I want to sew them onto my other stuff.

I’m not joking on that one.

ALSO I think this is a great opportunity for a sort of interchangeable creator situation. Any brand name can sell their own version of the brand patch and people can buy, attach, and be cool! What a weird place branding really is. I also think the big ® would be appropriate. I’m Lovin It.

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

Holy crap welcome back to Graphic Design 1. Today’s assignment: How You’re Never Going to be Able to Design a Nice Book Cover. Designer Elsa Chiao scoffed at this assignment, and indeed threw it to the ground, smiting it as she did so. For Elsa Chiao excels at just that, the covers of books. She is so good, SO good, that this post is basically a shot-for-shot re-creation of her portfolio. You must see these books!

From Locke to China you are going to be spoiled! For this sort of thing is not easy. Expressing in some way in a moment the contents of an entire book, or an idea of the contents of a book to the degree that a person would want to devour it, this is not a skill that everyone has. Some of the greatest graphic designers cannot do it, some of the worst random Joes off the street CAN do it. It’s a strange thing. But it requires a skillset that Chiao certainly has! Glance upon these and enjoi!

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

Let me tell you about pizza in Minneapolis. We get our pizza in these spaceships. That’s all you need to know, right? Well heck then, look at all these pictures of them! If you need more, like need more information, I suggest you take a peek at the search results of Galactic Pizza in our extensive archives. If you just wanna see their delivery vehicle as photographed by yours truly, again, peek through the gallery below!

Galactic Pizza is a recurring subject right here on World Famous Design Junkies because of its looks, its styles, and its Paul Bunyan combination style pizza. What this post is about is its delivery vehicles. Also, as you can see above, its delivery men. I’d love to have a post dedicated to the delivery men, or space men, but they are also ninjas, and aren’t often caught on camera.

The car you see above and below is delivering to Galaxy Pizza’s nearby neighbor and my alma mater, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The car and its compatriots are 100% electric powered, one man vehicles.

A bit of the mission statement of Galactic Pizza is as thus:

Here are a few of the values led activities we are currently engaging in:
When conditions allow, our food is delivered to your door using 100% electric vehicles.
All of the power purchased to run our restaurant is renewable wind energy.
All of our mozzarella cheeses come from cows not treated with rBGH.
We have incorporated a number of organic items into the menu.
We have the Second Harvest Heartland pizza, where $1 is donated to this hunger relief organization every time the pizza is ordered.
We strive to use packaging that is either made from recycled materials, or is 100% biodegradable.
We incorporate hemp products into each menu category, and print our menu on hemp paper. Hemp is not only good for you, it is also very good for the Earth.
In season, we try to purchase all of our produce from farms here in Minnesota or in nearby Wisconsin.
We have an in depth waste reduction program utilizing composting for food waste and recycling whenever possible.
5% of our pre-tax profits are donated to charity.

Electric eeyyyyyee!

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

Crayon art. These are the works of Diem Chau. These are sculptures of real people, cut into crayons. Not just any coloring sticks, but Crayola crayons. Anyone that’s experienced grade school in the USA (and the rest of the world?) knows that if you’re not using Crayola crayons, you’re a total loser! But some families can’t afford those nice sticks. Or couldn’t. That is, until Crayola got smart and started selling packs of 24 at Target for a dollar. Now they’re the biggest crayon brand in the world, bar none.

So what have we got here? Fantastic works of art cut into 4 cents worth of crayon. What a lovely gesture! And they’re relevant, they’re part of today’s art scene and our pop culture because of the brand of the material.

What a fabulous situation. Try your own crayon sculptures for a fun, cheap activity or moneymaking art adventure. But be sure to use Crayola. OR YOU WILL BE A TOTAL LOSER. Know what I’m saying?

Photos by Howard House.

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

A hundred and eighty, that’s 180, animal logos are being ENSLAVED! What’s going on right here is designer Karl Grandin is SETTING THEM FREE! Hooray! Into a sweater. Freed right into a sweater. The fabric in the sweater’s made using computerized knitting technology at the Nederlands Textielmuseum in Tilburg, then cut and sewn by seamstress Dima Stefanova. As of now, they’re a limited edition and not set for production. Sad!

Here’s a bunch more words about the project written by Karl Grandin himself! It’s very poetic and you should read it word for word! Also you can head on down to gallery and peek a the other versions of the sweater.

Nature used to be an unpredictable place of mystery. Fascinated with nature’s untamed wildness, artists created animal and floral patterns as a celebration of this phenomenon of the physical world.

Today this wilderness has disappeared and nature has lost its unique position. There
is nothing that has not yet been altered by human intervention. Man has conquered nature and is repackaging it neatly. Zoos, parks, artificial beaches and genetic engineering. We have cultivated nature for our own convenience. Now, it is instead man-made cultural constructions that are becoming increasingly autonomous and slipping out of our control. Wild systems like brands, stock markets and traffic is the wilderness of today. Nature has become culture and culture is turning into our new nature.

As we are surrounded by logos, we are systematically invited, encouraged and directed in what we do. Brands want to be personal and engage in a relationship with you. They want to become a central part of your life. But there is no dialogue, only targeted one-way communication. The symbols are constantly in your field of vision but they are still not part of the public domain. Ownership is of the corporations and the destiny of the logos is in their hands.

Did you hear that? Destiny.

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

You always wanted to see Doctor House doing a little dance for Vicodin, right? How about seeing an ad for the 1970 mint Mach 5 motorcar from Speed Racer? Here it is. The international smartman Chef Guevara? Check. Of course, what collection of oddities would be complete without a comic-strip-style poster of Batman and Superman enjoying a quick yet sensual kiss? All this and more in the new collection of images by design funnyman…

Scuzzo!

This man Scuzzo really does make dreams a slightly more real reality, I am telling you! Another example below there in the gallery is the poster from NOFX, made by Scuzzo, so it’s unofficial, saying “Don’t Drink and Drive! You might spill your drink!” In reality, it’s inspired by the NOFX song “You Drink, You Drive, You Spill.” Fun!

P.S. don’t actually do that.

Another fun thing about Scuzzo is his departure from DeviantArt. If you’ll check out the gray “do not enter” sign below, you’ll see his statement about the evils of the censorship that happens per-normal on DeviantArt, and how he did not dig such a thing! The original ban bar is horizontal, he turned it upright.

BONUS check out the photo of Scuzzo and his daughter at Disneyland! They are wearing matching Scuzz-Mickey shirts that say “Will Draw for Food.” Love!

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

From the PITS of punk rock HELL comes this devilish tea brand, designed by the nightmare Matthew Alexander Manos! Experience that which cannot be contained by any governmental law. The irony runs deep in this evil taste, black font branded tea. So not nice, it’s made completely of deteriorating materials. Not for the pack rats!

“Black Tea” is a fictitious tea brand for the anarchistic demographic. I created a packaging and brand identity system that takes tea out of its natural and expected setting (floral, feminine, prissy, sophisticated), and presents it with the design methods used within the Punk/Anarchist ideologies. All of the packaging is made from materials that (with repeated use) will deteriorate over time. The logo and printing on the packaging was hand carved from a linoleum block and stamped to create a consistently spontaneous presentation. This project is examining the fact that, with a powerful brand identity, a product can be completely removed from its original context and naturally placed into one it has never existed in before.

This fabulous project comes packed neat with a lovely “zine” style look-book and research guide. All hand made and pretty for your elegant taste and refined style.

The brand book for “Black Tea” is designed in the style of a punk zine. The brand book consists all of my research, design elements, educational information on tea, among other things. The book was hand sewn (32 pages) and the cover is stamped with a hand-carved linoleum block.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies brand 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.

Here’s how you carve out your little piece of the money. You find your nitch FIRST. Then you think about what they do. Crazies. Hippies. Weirdos. They need to feed their cats. Then need to make their cats into crazy cats. So what should you do? You should make a catnip brand called Cosmic Catnip. And put a crazy cat on the bag. Crazy cat!

This bag of catnip is real, and it’s at the reptile store. It’s at the Twin Cities Reptiles store in Saint Paul. If you can stand smelling a bunch of snakes for a short period of time, take a walk through there! They’ve got a ton of lizards and turtles and grasshoppers and such, plus a few hairy animal supplies.

Mail, mail, slow, wonderful mail. Every once in a while you’ve got to utilize our socialized mailbox and delivery person system. And when that happens, you’ve got to go crazy! It’s important to bring the heat with heck-a creative energy. The one you see before you’s made by architect Nick Doermann and it’s got amazing folds and letters and symbols.

Yes, architect, yes. Even you benefit from the magic of typography. Witness as it unfolds into different compositions and composes itself into different additional fabulousnesses. It’s a card, its a banner, it’s a poster!

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

I am not even kidding you. That is the name of the solo show happening right now by artist / designer / wildman WK Interact. His name might be just “WK” now cause that’s what it says on the ads, but still, “How to Blow Yourself Up!” That’s what’s up. In this post is a basic rundown of everything that’s in the show. I recommend definitely GOING to the show though also because everything is so sculptural and needs to be seen IRL.*

*IRL = in real life. Reals.

WK
How to Blow Yourself Up
Opening Reception
November 7th / 8-11PM
November 7th – December 5th

SUBLIMINAL PROJECTS GALLERY
1331 W. SUNSET BLVD
LOS ANGELES 90026
t.213.213.0078
INFO@SUBLIMINALPROJECTS.COM
TUES — FRI: 1-6 PM
SAT: NOON – 5PM

Keep your eyes open especially for ingredients such as Madness and Intensity

99 Crosby Street
Mixed Media Assemblage
(Salvaged Door, Caution Barracade, Electrical Socket, Wires, Acrylic,
Enamel and Mayhem)
82” h x 68” w

“Emergency”
Mixed Media Assemblage
(Former Studio Door, Chainsaw, Boxing Mask, Air Pump, Alarm, Mischief,
Readiness, and Revolution)
89”H x 38” W

“Trap”
Mixed Media Panel Assemblage
24”H x 72” W

“Double Attack”
Mixed Media Panel Assemblage
24”H x 72” W

“Lock Yourself”
Mixed Media Panel Assemblage
24”H x 60” W

“Jump Out”
Mixed Media Panel Assemblage
24”H x 72” W

“Caution”
Mixed Media Panel Assemblage
36”H x 72” W

“Blow Yourself Up 4”
Modfied Skate Deck
Circuit, Synthetic Dynamite, Severity
36”H x 16” W

“Blow Yourself Up 1”
Modfied Skate Deck
Pipe Bomb, Battery, Resistance
36”H x 17” W

“Blow Yourself Up 3”
Modified Skate Deck
(Pipe Bomb, Trigger, Madness)
36”H x 18” W

“Blow Yourself Up 2”
Modified Skate Deck
(Dynamite, Alarm, Trigger, Circuit, Danger and Invasion)
36”H x 16” W

“Blow Yourself Up 5”
Modified Skate Deck
(2-Way Radio, serigraph, intensity)
36”H x 14” W

“Ex Cop”
Mixed Media Assemblage and supplemental panels
107”H x 76” W

WK
“Ex Cop”
Acrylic, Enamel, and Ink on Natural Canvas
72”H x 72” W
(this last one is the canvas face, I have a feeling maybe that it’s not titled Ex Cop – might be a mistake)

I will take the blue “Ex Cop” (shown below) if you want to buy me one. That would be fine with me. Everything else you’ll have to match up yourself or go to the show. I am encouraging you to go to the show!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies DESTRUCTION category!

For some of you, this is your second time hearing about the confederate flag Obama situation. For the rest of you, hello there! Get ready for a strange journey! Right here we’ve got one real-as-can-be, genuine as the day is long Obama stars n’ bars flag. For most of you, the instant reaction is going to be of disgust: the flag of the confederate states of america has and will always mean slavery and racism. But for the rest, you’re looking at another thing: why is Shepard Fairey’s HOPE image sitting next to that symbol. This can’t be real!

Oh it’s real, mama, it’s really real.

Personally I think it’s really just a social abnormality, sort of a “what if these two things were together” sort of thing. OR another thing I think it could be, which I enjoy more: the stars n’ bars flag there is both a symbol of rebellion and strength as well as a sign of racism – what if it means that Obama is so great, so amazing, that even the KKK can get on board? Or maybe The South approves of Obama because of his policies regarding The South?

Yes that’s it.

Anyways I bought it. And here’s the unboxing.

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

So lemme tell you this. These signs I have right here are from an old liquor store. You can tell because they’ve got alcohol all over them. I mean logos. Also I know because I got them from a liquor store. Take a look at the genius cleverness included in every card. And the type’s pretty pretty too!

These come from what was once Westside Liquor in Saint Cloud Minnesota. They’re some of a fad that continues to today, that being mutually beneficial ad cards, posters, standups, installations, made by the beer and hard liquor companies that advertise for them, but also add credibility and a professional look to the stores that carry them.

Seek ye the silliness and ye shall have the beer sales.

These are part of the World Famous Design Junkies collection of photographed signs that one of our most famous posts comes from: Sexist Vintage – photographed in an old garage, this time in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This post is from the World Famous Design Junkies ephemera category.

Get your foot pullin up the pitch! Runnin so fast! Flipping around kickin the ball all over the place! When you’re sponsored by someone like Umbro football shoes, that’s what they like to see you do: go nuts! Go wild! They have you wear their football super-shoe, the “Speciali,” too, for ultimate football ballin power. And then they get smart. Real smart. They have a contest where you design the bottom of the shoe.

And then they stay smart. Real smart. They have D-brained specialists, aka the people I love to chum with, design addicts, set up real nice with a judges chair so that the most lovely shoes get gotten for the winners spot. And here they are!

Take a gaze through the gallery and feel free to leave a vote in whichever way you want for which one(s) YOU think are the best. We’ll make sure Umbro sees your opinionations and informed decisions before the very end.

After thousands of entries, here at Umbro we can unveil the finalists in our competition to customise the sole on a pair of Specialis. The response we had was amazing, with a fantastic range of designs from different ages and different countries around the world. These are the final 14, chosen from the thousands of different designs by a team of judges which included Umbro designers Stuart Semple and Stewart Scott-Curran, and Esquire’s art director David McKendrick. Initially we planned to have 11 winners, but the points system used by the judges to pick their favourites meant that we ended up with four designs tied in 11th place!

The very end is the best: not only do the winners winners get their own shoes made to keep, for their very own, (this goes for all the winners seen in this post,) they get their shoes worn by de big time football soccer champeens! Eternal glory!

Each of the winners will have a pair of Specialis with their design on the sole made up for them, but that’s not all. Michael Owen, Gael Clichy and John Terry will each pick their favourites from the final 15 and wear them on the pitch later this year in a Premiership match. – Nov / 2 / 2009

Let’s hope the winners winners designs don’t blind the competition (or let’s hope they do?) This post is been kicked right straight through the right and left wing defense of the World Famous Design Junkies sports category.

Ow gross that’s some snot there, isn’t it? Vannen Artist Watches is basically a super fabulously new watch making group. They’re tiny and basically totally all about making watches. And this grotesque bit of arm filth, this arm watch for your arm, it’s the super special edition limited edition Halloween watch designed by painter, poster artist, fine artist, and gearhead “Dirty” Donny Gillies. Uh and what’s that, there’s a special edition?

And what’s that, it’s TOXIC?

It’s so very Toxic. Also way way below in the gallery you’ll be glad to view a tiny collection of other works by Dirty Donny. Its such dirty stuff. Posters.

Specs
Wrist: Medium Size – 7.75 Inches Max.
Movement: 3 Hand Japanese Quartz.
Dial: 28mm, Screen Printed, Multicolor.
Case: 34mm, Plastic, Glossy Black
Crystal: Plastic w/ Protective Film.
Buckle: Plastic, Glossy Black.
Loop: Plastic, Glossy Black.
Straps: 16mm Wide, Sandwhich Strap.

Oh my goodness look at all those statistics.

There’s 150 of these bad boys. Then, like all good limited editions, there’s 50 of the toxic flavoring. This is only the latest in a line of strange collaborations between Vannen Artist Watches and oddball lowbrow artists including Damon Soule, Chris Ryniak, Brian Morris, and the squishy one, Buff Monster. Slap one on. Slap THREE on.

Brand flippin new works from the design / art collective FAILE. The works contained in this post are dubbed (by Faile) to be the Wood Paintings set and will be formally introduced next week at FIAC art fair in Paris with Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Faile’s going to be represented by Perry Rubenstein in the United States from now on, their first show to be some time mid-2010. This set of fine art pieces is the first bunch to be produced and shown in corroboration with PRG. And they’re HUGE.

As you can see, these pieces are made out of blocks. The insane amount of work that’s gone into each little tiny big of these constructions is staggering from a craftsman’s point of view, then there’s the lovely look of it all. Absolutely museum-grade. These are so giant and so fantastic I’d feel terrible owning them outside of a gallery situation. These amalgamations need to be seen by as many eyes as there are type-loving minds in the world.

First things first, we are proud to announce Perry Rubenstein Gallery will be representing Faile here in the US. We have plans to do a solo show with the gallery in mid-2010. We will be debuting new works with Perry Rubenstein at FIAC in Paris next week. The fair opens on the 22nd of October and runs through the 25th of October. They can be found at booth D01 in the Cour Carree.

Size and medium of each piece is as follows – Match the name of the piece up with the title of the image in the gallery. If you don’t know, ask! One of our friendly associates will help you out if you have any questions!

Giant Jackpot Dreams
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
48.25in x 42.25in (122cm x 107cm)

Fantasy Within Me
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
20in x 24in (50cm x 70cm)

Choose Your Pleasure
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
20in x 24in (50cm x 70cm)

The Supreme Ultimate Fantasy
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
48.25in x 42.25in (122cm x 107cm)

Genuine Gold Caps
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
40.5in x 24.5in (102cm x 62cm)

Burning Brave
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
40.5in x 24.5in (102cm x 62cm)

Wicked Faile
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
64.5in x 40.5in (163cm x 102cm)

Beyond the World of Faile
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
24in x 36in (70cm x 91cm)

Sacred Fantasy
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
24in x 36in (70cm x 91cm)

Select Hardcore Faile
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
24in x 36in (70cm x 91cm)

Forever Brooklyn
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
48.25in x 42.25in (122cm x 107cm)

Faile Wonderland
Acrylic & Silkscreen Ink on Wood, Steel Frame
64.5in x 40.5in (163cm x 102cm)

Or you could probably contact Sean Anderson for more information.

Hot dogs! Oh my goodness hotdogs! Coney Island Dogs. That’s what’s up. We’ve got a place around here (Minneapolis, Minnesota) called Uncle Frankey’s. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. They make amazing Coney Island Dogs. Supposedly they’re better on the REAL island, but who knows! These people do. And when I say these people, I mean all the people who took the photos included in the super insanely huge World Famous Design Junkies Coney Island Sign Explorer Collection. Oh wow the signs. Look at them all!

Ah yes, the island. All of these photos are straight off the island. Coney Island was the biggest park in the USA between 1880 and World War II, but now it’s sorta… fading… but that’s alright! It’s still insane! It’s a fast collection of fantastically clean painted signs and erratic, calculated oddities. And of course, the lights at night, or as we love to call signs of just this nature: Night Type.

BEHOLD, and be held… by the excellence.

Ironically, “Coney Island hot dog” describes a product that is unknown in its namesake, Coney Island, New York, where hot dogs (usually called “franks” from frankfurter) are traditionally made only from beef and served plain or with sauerkraut on a bun without other adornment except the availability of mustard, which at Nathan’s was applied by the customer. The only reason for the name is the generic hot dog’s origins in Coney Island, where it said to have been invented by Charles Feltman in 1867, who put a Vienna sausage in a roll and called it “Coney Island Red Hots.” Some people, unsure of its ingredients, called it a hot dog. Different references claim that the locals thought the sandwiches reminded them of Feltman’s ever-present companion, a dachshund, called a wiener dog even back then,and the term hot dog became a popular term. – WEEKII

The photos you see in this post are from the following contributors: I Follow, Brooklyn Bridge Baby, Maisa NYC, hut234, Mattron, Whiskey Gone Bad, Matt Daniels, Megga Llucci, Brunocerous, NB Photo Flash, Charles le Brigand, Andy Brannan, Nauga Style, PSLove1982, Me-Myself-I, Tucker Photography, Lost in Brooklyn, Coney Island History Project, Gordon Gattsek, and a couple others I cannot yet identify. Thanks to yew all!

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

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

ALSO ALSO SAVE CONEY ISLAND!

This duo of images is officially part of the “Hero” craze, they being the cover of a “collectable” case for DJ Hero’s Renegade Edition. Eminem and Jay-Z have tracks on this edition of the game, and they hired Studio Number One to whip up a lovely image of these two legendary music making faces. No word on if the images will be produced anywhere else but on the DJ Hero ephemera, but DO expect them to maybe make an appearance in some fine art in the future, as Shepard Fairey like to explore all options with images once he’s done the illustration work. Colors, mediums, rubyliths, everything and anything.

Below you’ll find an extended collection of the portraits Shepard Fairey’s done inside and outside the Obey Giant street art campaign. The portrait making of Shepard Fairey started all the way back in 1989 and continues till today. Some portraits have the person as the subject matter (like Jay and Eminem above, Joey Ramone and the Notorious B.I.G. below), while some others have the portrait “hidden” in the poster (the Pretty Vacant poster below has a portrait of musician Marc Bolan (source being a record album with him on the cover: T. Rex’s 1972 “Solid Gold Action.”)

Check em all out!

This post from the World Famous Design Junkies Celebritarianism category.

Marc Bolan and others on Pretty Vacant Posters

Joey Ramone and the Notorious BIG

Subcomandante Marcos and Tupac Shakur

Michael Jordan and Barack Obama

Huey Lewis and Jimi Hendrix

Oh man I HATE IT when people are passive aggressive supreme. So much. So much do I hate such a thing. But I’ll tell you what I like. Green White and Black. As together as they should be, all day and night. Up in this project. It’s a ton of materials, like stickers, sticky-notes, and badges that allow YOU to make the most of your passive aggressive nature in just the most fantastic sticky-designish way possible!

Blame designer Ben Bours.

Complaint Department is a kit of materials that facilitate passive aggressive complaining. Instead of confronting someone, why not just use a witty sticker to let everyone know your grievances?

Completed at MICA

I would love to have any number of these things. This is some amazing ephemera. I’ve seen things SORT OF like this before, but a lot more chincy. This is high class P.A. punishment, straight from the hand of a typographer I’ll tell ya what.

This post is posted out of the World Famous Design Junkies experimental category.

So I went forward into the year 2000. Forward into the FUTURE. And I found this amazing bit of jewelry made only for the future. You will never see this kind of fashion again! Or you might see it again if we ever get to the year 2000. Maybe then. I’ll tell you how much I bought it for, too. I bought it for one Future dollar. From the future. Believe it.

When I was in the future, I found this particular bug pin in the greatest future store in the world. That store is Ax Man Surplus and Future Supplies. You should check that out too if you’re in to amazing things and whatnot.

Meanwhile, let’s discuss this amazing object! It could change the world. It was made in China. That means it’s quality product (from the future). It’s © Weingeroff Enterprises. You know what that means. Quality. And what kind of bug is that, exactly? It’s a beetle. I don’t know much about beetles, but I know this one is gold, and was probably worshiped in ancient Egypt. But now it’s the future, so it’s got a computer chip on it.

AND THAT IS FASHION.

This post is picked by hand from the World Famous Design Junkies Accessories category! You know you need accessories if you are going to be part of the fashion scene…

OF TOMORROW!

When you first see an album, note: SEE an album, what do you notice first? The artwork. Even when it’s a CD, or a tape (omfg what’s that?), you notice the artwork. The first version I saw of Jay-Z’s newest work The Blueprint 3? Vinyl. Glorious, 12″ by 12″ of pure amazing fantastic artwork. And The Blueprint III does not disappoint. It has a scrumtrilescent arrangement of instruments that Z says “reminds the the audience that it all comes down to the basics of music, the instruments, which have very recently been forgotten.”

I looked for the artist of this work for weeks, and I found him. Here he is.

Dan

Tobin

Smith

That’s the man. Look below for the unbelievable set of white and red tools of the trade he constructed to make a new classic album cover. A legend in an instant. (Did you know that Jay-Z now has more platinum records than Elvis? Awesome! Elvis was racist and didn’t write his own songs, I’ll tell him where he can stick that blue suede shoe.) So. One time construction. Not sure if it’s still standing now, used for the album cover. Excitement.

Jay Z Blueprint 3.
Constructed July 2009, released September 2009 via Blueprint 3.
Set Design: Nicola Yeoman
Art Direction: Greg Burke
Retouching: Martin Pryor
Photography: Dan Tobin Smith

A bunch more of Smith’s works have been hand-picked and placed below also, so that you might have an excellent view of his fantasticism. Hire him, too! I want him to stay in business for a long time.

BONUS here’s a new video of the construction!

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!