Illustrator Naresh Ch Das, straight outta Hyderabad (India), presents his fantastic skills with the swiftness. Each of the works you see here took Das a very very small amount of time to do, in MOST cases somewhere around 20 minutes. Holy crap you’re saying, and will continue to say throughout this post. The gallery is full of magnificence, a bounty of natural, human habitat, and science fiction horizontals are spread over digital canvases in a world I’m sure heaven isn’t too far apart from.

SPEED PAINTING is what this is. Let me repeat, these paintings were all done in under an hour, in most cases under a half hour. Frajabulous!

Das tells us his work is the painting and coloring of dreams. He paints what he feels and what he enjoys, hoping to touch hearts of the viewer through the sensual nature of the brushstrokes. Heavy stuff! Really noble stuff too, in a very unique way, reaching out to the world through digitally based landscape illustrations.

There’s some heavy robots in there too, sometimes with flamethrowers, and they sneak up on you, so watch out for that. If you’d like to get in contact with Naresh Ch Das, email him at dasnaresh @ gmail.com, or visit him at his blogspot blog type http://lostinarc.blogspot.com/ online portfolio – updates on the often!

UPDATE – more info sent in from Das:

I use all the mediums – oil, acrylics, charcoal, watercolor, and also digital..but most of the work on my blog [including these Speed Paintings] are created in digital…

I am currently working for a game development studio as lead concept art/visual development artist… my strong points lie in the pre-production part, i.e. concept art, character design and development, story boarding, matte painting, 2d traditional animation, layout and background painting (both manual and digitally.)

Keep on rockin!

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

Mister James Marshall, aka DALEK, is a master of lines, color, and little green space men. He’s been perfecting his sharpness and colortastic explosigazms since he first spewed forth this Space Monkey in 1995. In 2007, he began using his real name and had a flabjabulous show at Jonathan Levine gallery. From there, the Monkey only appeared here and there, if at all. In these 5 new paintings we’ve got here in the gallery below, there’s no monkeys in the least bit! The power remains. Perhaps they’re just hiding.

Since I began studying this modern art segment about 6 years ago or so, Dalek’s always, ALWAYS been in the list of the “cool guys” to keep up on news with. Always he’d be in the hypercolor limelight.

And he’s not done, no, no way!

Below and above you’ll find 5 new works as blasted from Dalek himself. For more updates as they happen, visit Dalek’s official http://dalekart.com/ website and online portfolio.

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

This fella right here, Thomas B, aka Bergie81, created a lovely masterwork here, a Star Wars scene done in heavy pop fashion. Specifically in the Sunday Funnies style of Roy Lichtenstein. This particular work “Battle” is done in direct tribute to the painting “Whaam!”, done by Lichtenstein in 1963. The style is hot.

Magnetic, that’s what these two entities are. Star Wars and Pop Art, together forever and never to part, together forever we two. That’s their song for each other.

Now here’s a couple words from Bergie:

I do admire the art of Roy Lichtenstein and I tried to convey his PopArt to the Star Wars theme.
Source of inspiration was his masterpiece “Whaam” from 1963 which is one of my favourites. Due to the fact that I am not George Lukas, I cant use it for commercial purpose. And again I say while pointing the finger:

DONT USE IT FOR ANY COMMERCIAL STUFF!

May the fairness be with you!

Yay free! You can hang out over at Bergie’s site for the PDFs of these works, or you can go in the gallery below for some rather-large jpg versions. Also included are Bergie’s Lightsaber Pop works. Cute!

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

If you’ll remember a few weeks ago, we posted some pics of a painting in process by a certain mister painter Isaac Arvold. At the time of the painting of the painting, Arvold was unsure of the final fate of the painting. Well look at this! This is one of the several new bike parking places for the city’s new biking initiative. On the endcap here we see the same painting we’re talking about sitting behind a biker on one of these green bikes!

Additionally interesting is the street that this is on – Hennepin – only a couple blocks away from the bridge that the painting depicts. How super!

For more info on the original work, head on over to [Isaac Arvold Big Fat Painting]

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

I’ve got some healthy amount of rage in my heart today. That’s why when I happened upon these “Animal Gangs” images illustrated by Mostrico!, I was totally pumped up. Mostrico is a very talented illustrator that hails from Medellín, Colombia, and also goes by the name Alejo Giraldo. These animal heads are part of a set, as many fantastic projects are – a set that includes a Cat, a Zebra, a Panda Bear, and a Fox, each of these with their own animal pack to run with them. Stay hard!

Each of these images is a pencil/pen and ink drawing turned to digital illustration and coloring image. Also they are each of them completely bad ass. Gangs are as follows:

The Lower East Side Bandana Foxes

The Downtown Roller Bears

The East Village Zebra Punks

The Upper East Side Dagger Cats

Which one would you choose to affiliate with? You know good and well which one I’d have to run alongside.

This whole project reminds me of the classic gang-battle action film The Warriors. In that movie, it’s not long into the future and all the gangs of the 5 boroughs of New York are called in for a meeting by the leader of one of the baddest of all the gangs. This leader’s name is Cyrus and he rocks a speech about how if the gangs, diverse as they are, as disparate as they are, rolled together, well then they’d run the city. All of them so strange.

All of them so wild.

These gangs reflect that. Each of these animal gangs is super fabulous for their own unique qualities and skills. Each one of these illustrations is amazing on its own, but without the power of the rest of the animals, they’ve just got so much to work with. Together, in this set of colors and lines, in this new collection, the powers each of them creates is more powerful than the sum of their parts — synergy!

To find more info on the designer / illustrator / artist Mostrico!, just head on over to his flicker account and do a little dance. To send him a message, head on over to his Behance message center.

ALSO, BONUS – included below the animal gangs images is a set of other images from the portfolio of Mostrico! I’m sure you’ll grow to love them as I have. They are all cute and have faces prettier than a mother could love.

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

Agh! Claws! Oh no, also robots! Wait, these robots have fantastic beats and French bits. They are Les Robots! Or, as I call them in my head, Daft Bear. They are one of a collection of bear-related background images from the extended collection of bears called “KING PANPAN,” a 365 day-a-year, image every single day, project by Julius Santiago. It’s 365 days starting at the beginning of 2010, so that’s a whole bunch of months already, with a whole bunch more to go! Check out more of the collection in the gallery below, then head over to Santiago’s twitter account to send him some suggestions for more bears!

This excellent trend of attaching yourself to a 365 day schedule, one a day, is extremely difficult. Don’t fool yourself into thinking “oh only one a day – that’ll be simple, one is easy!” It is easy to do one. But the next day, that’s when it starts getting harder. Each day wears on you a little bit more, and in the end you hate it! Unless you’re amazing and involve other people like Santiago has done here. No artist is an island, remember that. Designers, the same thing goes for you. You’ve got to stay inspired.

Inspired to work.

Inspired to play.

My name is Julius Santiago. I’m a graphic designer and Illustrator.

King Panpan is my little project to create as much art as possible. I’ll be creating one bear illustration a day for all of 2010. Drawing them is the easy part. The hard part is coming up with 365 ideas. Hopefully this is where you can help. Leave me a reply via twitter and I’ll add it to my list.

The images below are all from Santiago’s wallpaper collection, so once you click them, they’re gonna show up HUGE! Feel free to download and share, but remember to always attach links to Santiago when you do it. He’s gonna keep on bear-ing in the free world for the whole rest of the year!

Check filenames for inspiration on each bear situation -Robocop to Pokemon.

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

OR! Onomatopoeics!

At the heart of every great piece of pop is a simple combination. A combination of words, a catchphrase, a combination of colors, an iconic image, and sometimes a combination of it all, so perfectly distilled that it sends shockwaves through our collective systems that never stop! Behold, Bat-viewers! It’s the action cards! Those everloving combinations of color and exclamation the likes of which have never been used as effectively before or since! Gotta catch em all, someday, you never know – a good shot is below!

This is a collection of bat-cards used at the point of contact in the Batman live-action television series and bigtime bomb movie! You’ll see combos of 2 and 3 colors as well as singular splashes over the still-moving screen. These kinds of cards of course come from the colorful creations drawn into comics since the dawn of coolness. Keep reading, bat-lovers, because the story doesn’t end there. Nay!

One must attest to the greatness of those who took and take the time to scour the great bat-archive for these images. Those fine folks with the time, effort, and great and holy task of watching every single episode of the Batman show and movie to find these indubitable images, look them up, they’s amazing! These are them: John (A.Pennyworth), Scott Sebring, Shadenfreude!, Bat Mania!, TV Squad!, Batman 66!, M-Rumors!, Cynical-C!, TV Acres!, Graphics Hunt!, Bat Blog!, Museum.TV!, and a bunch o’ random folks on Photobucket!

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

Today (I wrote this a few days ago) I hear the sad news that one of the ultimate original players in the Graffiti and Hip-hop world has kicked the bucket. “RAMM::ELL::ZEE” or Rammellzee as he was called died today [June 27, 2010] whilst, if the rumors are true, he was doing math equations in none other than his home town and city, Far Rockaway, Queens, New York. How unbelievably appropriate for one of the most mathematically sound wild-style artists of many generations. The first I ever heard of him, he was being described in the Graffiti documentary film “Style Wars,” his paintings of weapon-clad letters being shown by his pal Dondi, another king.

In humble celebration of the passing of Ram, I and we present to you a gallery of armored letters, operators that blow the lids off all that they encounter. Rest in peace, Zee.

“The letter is armed to stop all the phony formations, lies, and tricknowlegies placed upon its structure.” – RAM EL ZEE

Rammel is an enigma. An eternally complicated graffiti man who, according to wikipedia, revealed in an interview that his name meant heavy, heavy stuff – derived from “RAM” plus “‘M’ for ‘Magnitude’, ‘Sigma’ (Σ) the first summation operator, first ‘L’ – ‘longitude’, second ‘L’ – ‘latitude’, ‘Z’ – ‘z-bar’, Σ, Σ – ‘summation’.”

Dondi speaking about a work with Ram in a Style Wars “scene extra”:

And that’s just the tip of this metal, mental iceberg. Look for some videos of this crazy brilliant man if you dare. He’s wild. Above begins and below continues the gallery including a couple of works by Ram himself (above being a “B” by Ram owned by a private party), plus a bunch of paintings by adventurers that were inspired without a doubt by Ram’s life in one way or another. Have a feast on these giant masterpieces in his honor.

Where appropriate, the filenames of the letters in the gallery below will lead you to their sources. Due to the super-futuristic nature of Ramm Ell Zee, I expect you to know how to access that information. Internets, graffiti, letters with weapons. Activate!

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

It’s that time again, that time when the whole world (surprisingly, even the USA,) is embroiled in the heat of futball madness. It is the World Cup of soccer right now, and we’re getting down there in teams already. USA is out, Britain just got beat by Germany by about a billion points, and Ghana’s advancing toward the goal. Then there’s the losers. The people who totally got destroyed, and only one person’s to blame. The goalie. Always with the goalie. Of course, it’s them who saves the game as well. It’s never easy being the highest commanding officer in front of the net, and photographer Bill Cramer knows this. In this recent set, Cramer sets eyes on the prize, depicting the the world of füssball with a female goaltender with a fabulous jersey in orange, white, and red.

Bill Cramer is known for his intensely intimate portraits, having taken photos of such people as Barack Obama, Fat Joe, and lots and lots and lots of magazine covers. It’s an intimacy that turns any face he captures into a tapestryesque work of art.

This set consists of seven photos taken on a nearly-rainy evening some time in the past 12 months. Probably even in 2010 if I do dareso take a guess.

Behold the power of perfect lighting on the game of the gods.

Held still.

If you’d like to contact Bill Cramer, get ahold of him by emailing bill@billcramer.com, if you’d like more examples of his work, take a peek at his http://billcramer.com/ online portfolio website. His work is unstoppable, and I feel like he’s just begun. I love finding people like that, don’t you?

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

Perhaps you know that Japan is a wild and crazy place. Perhaps you know that. Something you also maybe know is that generally their autos, because of the congestion in their small world, are also small. What you may NOT know is that sometimes they get big. Really big. I mean like semi-truck big. And when they do, (not always, but I WISH always,) they go wild. Mister Roger Snider has a camera. Mister Roger Snider went to take some photos. Mister Roger Snider got some bright lights.

Mister Roger Snider goes more often by the name Roger Snider, and works with his fantastical set of photos he calls “Ultra Rigs of the World” or UROTW. This set of photos spans back to the late 1990s, with these seriously fantastically amazing ones still popping up today. In fact, the set you see above and below is his latest set, taken on a journey to Japan in May 2010.

A few words from Snider:

My 1st trip out of the country this year led me back to Japan. Capitalizing on my shoots from back in 2008, I really dove deeper into the culture this time. I also brought my Profoto strobe with me to shoot portraits and interiors. I think you can see the upgrade in production value.

What these trucks are called, or what the act of making these trucks is called is Dekotora. According to this wiki article, it’s believed that the first “Truck Guys (トラック野郎 Torakku Shōnen)” (1976) movie was the source of this modern Dekotora lifestyle, or at least the first boom of it. This “Truck Guys” movie (and its 7 sequels) was put out by the Toei company, a favorite of mine because they’re responsible for the ultra-gory cult-classic “Battle Royale” (2000). Each of these trucks of course has their own individual aesthetic, the opportunity for customization super-high now compared to when this fabulous hobby / lifestyle began in the 70′s. Back then it was hardcore, find the pipes and lights from wherever you could find them. Now there’s manufacturers and custom shops that’ve got the skills to do the deals.

Below you’ll see Snider’s May 2010 Japan set. It’s hot. It’s amazing. It’s trucks with so many lights on them that you wont know what to do with yourself when you see them.

It takes a special kind of person in an amazing sort of financial situation to create one of these rigs. The style and grace you can very obviously see in every one of these trucks is, thought it’d seem the opposite here, not easy to come by. It takes not only vision and skill, but craftsmanship and a LOT of dedication as well. Any project that’s had this amount of time put into it deserves a big hard look, handshake, and even a hug. The same goes for Snider, whom without, I and you might never have seen such magnificence. Thank you Snider, and please PLEASE continue to do this.

You can contact Roger Snider at roger@ultrarigsoftheworld.com, find him at his WordPress blog and leave him a nice comment, or take a peek at his fabulous portfolio site at http://ultrarigsoftheworld.com/ for real.

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

Look through these images using our sassy new gallery mode!

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!

In promotion of his graphic design and illustration business, FENiks has whipped up this excellent rendition of everyone’s favorite boy king of Egypt. Tutankhamun is represented here as being the world’s first fashion victim. I would argue that it was Adam or Eve, though, with those terrible leaf coverups. Those were the worst. This graphic is meant to promote the skills of FENiks as well as spread the word that FENiks is rad at character design, and can represent even the eldest posse.

Below you’ll get a closer look at the Tut illustration as well as a sweeping glance at the other works of FENiks. It’s hot stuff. It’s that modern razor-sharp mathematical illustration that’s basically undeniable. It’s math, man. Math. Your eyes can’t get enough of it. Math.

To contact FENiks, email him using http://www.feniksgrafix.com/index.php?/mail/ his contact form or, once you’re there in his portfolio, take a peek around and look at any new works he’s posted. He’s located in Paris, France if you’d like to meet him or buy him a coffee or something nice like that.

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

This one’s for you, world. Here’s the first 38 items in an ever-expanding list of magnificence via designer Ian Collins. He calls this project “The Big Caption” and calls it a complement to Boston Dot Com’s Big Picture. He’s got more than one element in play here, and the type type is good. This tha kind of meme I love the best.

Now, take a look at how easy this was to do, and is to do. How healthy is it? I say very healthy. Cultivating wit at the same time as practicing graphic design is tops, especially when you’re so amazing at typography like Collins is. Also it seems to me that he’s got his fair share of amazing fonts up his sleeve. That’s sometimes important too.

Keep on describin’.

Keep on city vibin’.

I’ve seen lots and lots of these all by their lonely selves around these internets, especially on share sites like tumblr, dropular, ffffound, piccsy, buamai, and the like. They get separated. They get sad. But now they can be happy in more than one place. Be sure to hang out and subscribe to “The Big Caption” for more of this magnificent mayhem, and if you ever meet Collins in real life, give him a high five from me.

Normally I’d tell you how to contact Collins here, but I already did that. So suck it.

Look at these images.

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

So I’m sure you’re aware that once an appliance sort of… runs its course, and you’re not really using it much anymore because it doesn’t work so well, or it doesn’t keep the ice cream as cold as it used to, it swallows the energy. It swallows a BUNCH of energy, and you’re paying for it. And you don’t like that, right? Well check it out. There’s a place that can take care of that for you, and they’re affiliated with puppets. Puppets, you say? Yes. Big furry ones. Terrifying puppets from HELL.

They’re more insane than they are hellbound, but they’re definitely creepy. These are the creatures created by Furry Puppet Studio for commercials that’ll be made for PECO electric company. PECO is the group that I just spoke about, the ones who’ll take your electricity hungry giants away for you. You’ll wish they were real. You’re already wishing they were real. Perhaps they could grab a soda for you when you didn’t want to get up.

EDIT: The commercials themselves are filmed by Tierny ad agency.

You know what they remind me of? Chairy the Chair. Or any of the other hundred wild animate pieces of furniture that Pee Wee Herman keeps at his Playhouse. But these are heavy. By that I mean they’re totally amazingly well made, researched and executed.

Take a peek at the images in the gallery below and if you’re in a place where you can listen to sound, watch the making-of video they just uploaded too. Neat stuff! And what an odd subject, yes? When’s the last time you discussed puppet design and creation with your cohorts? Interesting subject.

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

In honor of Portugal beating North Korea in their latest world cup game 7-0, oh my god, here is an image of Kim Jong-il as illustrated by Sakkan (サッカン). I want Jong-il to see this and change his mind about his more than likely plausible decision to murder the entire N.Korean football team. I joke, but also seriously hope they don’t end up missing. The image above, by that wild illustrator Sakkan, depicts Kim as a Pokemon hunter, the characters around him referring to North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens. Weird! But look, the idea that Kim is a Pokemon master makes it all make sense. Gotta Catch Em All!

The following information comes from the crowd at BoingBoing from when they discovered the Kim image a few days ago:

The red text in the lower left hand corner seems to read
“Rocket Monster Kim (Gold)” And the Pikachu rockets are labeled “pika-don” which I think means “Boom!” The blue text looks like “Let’s go kidnapping!”, a reference to the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens over the years. – gmoke

More specifically, pika-don is a reference to the bright flash (pika) and explosive noise (don) of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. – oepn

Fabulous. Now let’s also look at the extended works of Sakkan. He’s a humorist in his illustrations, basically all of them, a wild and crazy sensibility that generally comes standard with the anime-style way of executing stories and people and situations. Look at how cute! Also take another peek at how excellent Sakkan is at portraiture. That’s definitely Kim up there, and down in the gallery you won’t be mistaking Bruce, Sam, and a couple other sassy fellas and ladies. And don’t forget his take on the Twitter Overload image.

To contact Sakkan, visit him at his Sakkan webpage, a page full of Sakkan illustrations and lists and lists of his accomplishments. If you happen to find out more about him in the way of screenprinted posters, let me know, must have!

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

You’ve got a photo, but that’s just step one. Next you’ve got to make it fly. And how do you make it fly? You slice it up! Then of course, you glue it all back together in an aerodynamic way and push it really fast down one of those really big slides that ends in a jump, but we’ve not got one of those. We’ve got Marco Oliva. This guy is a designer who loves his shapes. Olivia loves his colors, his splashes, and his explosions of connections. Take a peek at this selection of his works, all of them photographed and accouterment’ed by him.

I have you tell you because I want to encourage you that this post is the direct result of the submission bar you see above this post. It sits presently in the center of the page, right next to the main WFDJ mark. In that bar, you should submit your portfolio or project website. When you do, it shoots an email straight to me, your humble narrator, so I can execute a post toot-sweet! That means quick, nice, happily!

But only if it’s good. And Marco Oliva is good.

Marco Oliva is a designer, a photographer, and an illustrator. Based in Tucson, Arizona, with the fingers pointing in all directions. To contact Olivia to give him a bunch of money, click an email to marco@marcoso.com or visit his portfolio.

Hot stuff.

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

Imunna tell you about a guy named Peter Elson. He’s an illustrator and a big-brain-having imagination exploder. He’s passed on to the next world in 1998 but his works live on ever to today. You might not have ever seen a thing of his before because he worked for science fiction magazines which are really radical because they tell tales that eventually turn to reality, but they’ve got a generally underground following if you know what I mean. Let’s talk about how a person find himself drawing for such a publication.

One finds their self in whatever line of work they can find their self in. Now there’s all sorts of factors at work, the ones that work hardest at directing the person being family members, kids and elders especially. So how does Peter Elson end up working for a bunch of magazines that publish stories about science fiction? Well, I have no idea. But let’s talk about what else he might have become.

He could have worked as a conceptual artist for films, an industrial designer or a person who works WITH an industrial designer as a visionary, a comic artist, an album cover designer, a poster artist, basically any number of utterly fabulous NEW jobs that have just come into creation in the past, what, 20 years?

But I tell you what, he did science fiction illustrations, and he did them well.

Take a peek at a small sampling of his works below.

You can find more works of Peter Elson on his portfolio / gallery collected site, as run and operated by the folks who hold sway over his works. Sometimes I like these sorts of people, sometimes I hate em, but in this case, I’m pretty sure the owners are family members of Elson, so it’s positive for sure. Keeping the future alive’s what they’re doing!

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

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. The Greatest Show on Earth. Al G. Kelly and Miller Bros. 2nd Largest Circus. These are the dirt and mud spawning beds of some of the most fantastic poster design in the history of the world. I’m drawing a line in the sand here, a circus line. One that clowns honk their lives on. Lions and tigers, trapeze artists, acrobats, and everything else they could fit inside three rings and a whole mess of tent. This is a poster collection consisting of the Princeton University collection of American Circus posters PLUS a whole mess of additional posters as wrangled up from collections across the internet, including of course the US Library of Congress – our friends!

NOTE: On the copyright of these items: for the most part, anything from Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey are from the 1940′s and 50′s and are probably still within someone’s legal right to claim ownership over. MANY of the other items you’ll find here are from around the 1900′s, making them so old that they’re legally entered into the public domain. If you do not know what this mumbo jumbo is about, please take the time to read up on USA copyright before you start your own tshirt and poster business with these images.

With fabulousness such as this, it’s tempting, isn’t it? Hella tempting.

Now the following collection is hella diverse. You’re going to find posters from the previously mentioned Ringling Bros and Barnum & Baileys all the way down to Al G. Kelly and Miller Bros. 2nd Largest Circus and Circus Krone. That one, Krone, for example, is German, but for the most part, this collection stays in America.

What we’re searching for here is excellence. Pre-cursors to the maximus minimalist design of today, here’s the extravagance without getting the jumblance. True masters are at work here, truly masters in their fields. And what’s ironic about that? Many of these posters were probably designed in a field. All grassy and inky. Covered in elephant dung.

Super awesome!

To access details about many of these posters, please move your brain on over to a collective page here that’s got each poster listed with the information Princeton uncovered about date, accession, size, and even the drawer they’ve got it held in if you ever plan on going over to see these posters in real life. I bet they get even doozier.

Another excellent resource for more information on these images is Wikimedia Commons, where searching for Circus Posters is as simple as doing a double backflip, catching a lion along the way! — Now let’s take a look down here. In some cases I left the whole poster (most cases, I should say,) but then in a bunch of pictures I cut down posters for you to see some magnificent close-ups.

ALSO: Check out these sources for more magical poster power – V. Poster Works, Circus Museum, Vintage Rock and Roll, and the NYPL Gallery Library. Note that this gallery is considerably large in the “American Circus” category, but some other languages and attractions were allowed to slip in due to awesomeness. Example: Solomon the Man Monkey – this missing link goes to church on Sunday!

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

Below you’ll find the rest of the gallery. Feel free to click any tiny image here to bring up a larger version, then move back and forth through the gallery using the “Next Image” and “Previous Image” links. Then, if you’d like the entire set in their largest format, don’t hesitate to download a big fat .zip file of all the pictures: wfdj_circusposters.zip courtesy of the hardcore design collector family here at WFDJ.

Hey, who loves show previews? I do! Here’s one! Our pals over at Joshua Liner gallery have a show coming up that features the fabulous Greg “CRAOLA” Simkins. He’s a sometimes graffiti artist, all the time artist, detail intensive magician, and all around cool fellow. What we’ve got here is a full preview of this show that goes by the name “Inside the Outside”: paintings, drawings, magnificent works from 48 inches square paintings to tiny 10 inch high fabuloso graphite pieces.

Check out more shows we’ve preview’d in collaboration with [Joshua Liner]

This show “Inside the Outside” takes place June 5 to July 1, 2010. You can check it out for yourself at the opening on June 5th from 6-9pm.

Gallery Hours
Tuesday — Saturday
11 — 6PM

Address
548 West 28th Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001

Phone (212) 244-7415
Fax (212) 244-7416
Email info@joshualinergallery.com

AND There’s a limited edition print being released just for the show:

The Welcoming Party [PRINT]
Giclee print on paper
2010
24 x 18 in.
Edition of 50
$150

It’s a small version of the painting that’s also available for ownership at a much more gigantic price. Of course, the much larger price has a lot to do with that the original painting is both larger and much more original.

Welcoming Party
Acrylic on canvas
2010
36 x 30 in.
$14,000

NOW, feel free to take a peek through the whole gallery here, and be sure to stop by the show or contact the gallery if you’re interested in purchasing any of the pieces.

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

Since the dawn of highschool there’ve been attempts by people enflamed by the art that affects them to show their love for it. Often this sort of thing disappears. It’s written on a desk, or now blogged and re-blogged, and it fades out. Of course the source, the music, that stays strong. Even the weakest song is still a song, a recording of that song or an orally passed down tradition, songs are rare to be fading. But then there’s the rarity: the strong second step. Designer Mico Toledo has taken that step, and done it in a way that sticks. For that extra amount of time sticking that makes it into a lovely design masterpiece, or set of masterpieces that will ring true into the future.

This project is called “Music Philosophy” and it is a rather excellent clash of brilliantly written lyrics and typography. Design of this caliber is often reserved for paying customers, but Toledo does this project as a hobby. The closest this project has come to the physical plane is some printed versions of the posters and a painting project on the wall of a friend’s apartment. Fab!

OH also there’s a t-shirt store.

To see more works by Mico Toledo, check out micotoledo flickr or email at micotoledo@gmail.com for requests for work. All designers like to feel loved!

BONUS: there’s another Cargo-Collective-esque collection site for these that I believe was made by Toledo too!

Lookin good chile!

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

Just don’t get in the way of his digital drawing pad. He’ll kiss you so much! With his art. Bobby Chiu is a digital artist and designer. He’s worked on everything from teaching digital painting to designing Star Wars toys. And today, well! I’m going to show you some of the concept work he did for the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, just in time for… is the DVD out now? Probably it is.

Above you’ll see a couple of lovely flowers. The yellow one was done by Chiu exclusively, the red one for some reason is a collaboration between Chiu and fellow digital artist Peter Chan. They both work at the same place, Imaginism Studios, where you can see an extended look at all of their works.

So Imaginism Studios was hired to work on concept art for Alice in Wonderland. Below you’ll get a glimpse of some of the most fantastic lovelies you’ll ever put your AIW lovin eyeballs on. All of them down there done by Chiu. Then, after that set, there’s about a billion other images by Chiu, all done with his hands and heart. Very fabulous digital workings.

What you’re about to look at here comes from all over the place. When you get to be such a total badass in artworks that you teach, your works get spread out all over these internets like cool creamy butter. Sometimes you don’t even release them yourself! How dare! Some of the places the particular gallery you’re about to look at comes from are: Imaginism (of course), CGSociety, IStudios Blog, It’sArt Magazine, bobbychiu twitter, DeviantArt, and more I’m sure.

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

Here we are with four of the most fantastic headphones to ever peep the light of music. They’re made by the CandyLab Limited group, known in the advertising world for their top-class 3D rendering, animation, and illustration. Each of the phones you see in this post is for a campaign working for Nokia telephones, but the earpieces themselves work wonders for your eyeballs on their own. The set you see above is based on Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Utterly fantastic realities created by hands in the real.

Each of these headsets is modeled in Maya and rendered in Mental Ray. The cell-phones are modelled by Michael Strathearn and rendered by Fabrizio Fioretti, and all of the headphones are created by James Bowron. Included in these four are: Jukebox (pink), Reggae (rugged, boxes and cantops), Organ (pipes and fire), and Jules (horns and padding.) All of this is CandyLab.

These headphones remind a fellow of the positively undeniable benchmarks set by gigantic blockbuster films such as Return of the King or Speed Racer. Every time I take a peek at these headphones or those films I get all pumped up. If you watch the “making of” Star Wars that comes with the slightly-recent Silver-box DVD set, you’ll see an older gentleman who describes his first viewing of A New Hope in the theater. He says he sat down with his family for dinner and told them that his whole life had been changed. Believe that.

When people take the time to make something as magnificent as these headphones, even when its for something so trival as a cellphone advertisement, it matters to everyone, even the people who never get to see it exist. The bar is set, and it inspires everyone. Shockwaves are sent through the industry, advertising to graphic design to the people who aren’t even working for cash money profit.

Above and below we’ve got a gallery of the four sets of 3D-rendered headphones created by CandyLab for the Nokia phone campaign, plus a few extras from the CandyLab archives for some extra excitement. To get in contact with CandyLab for hiring purposes, choot an email over to jobs@candylab.co.uk, find them on http://twitter.com/candylab_uk/, or peek at them on their utterly lovely candylab.co.uk for shiny moving images.

NOTE: the last image in this gallery is called “Anti-Venom” and it was created by Candy Lab’s Creative Director Fabrizio Fioretti to promote the organic abilities of the studio. Modelled in Maya. Detailed in zBrush. Rendered in Mental Ray. Extremely hot’n'heavy.

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

I was thinking about bowling. Thinking about it, thinking about how awesome bowling alleys are, how the environment is quite the uniqueness in our society. Thinking about lanes. Thinking about the carpeting. Thinking about balls. And then I came to it. The screens! Look at them! They’re designed to work, to be understood, and to facilitate you having fun while you’re playing about the most thunderous rolling sport of our times. But by god, I’ve never seen two the same. Where we’re in a world where so many things come standard: pop machines, cars, newspaper dispensers, this program run by thousands of alleys is different in each of them. And the container on each has it’s own charm as well.

This situation reminds me of a cardinal lesson in economics: if two grocery stores have bread, but one has the bread priced 25¢ higher, you’ll still go to the other store because it’s closer by. While there might be a brand-name bowling system out there that would be universally easier to understand, it doesn’t matter because there’s no big demand for that kind of system from the bowlers. One bowler does not go to all sorts of different alleys asking for the same system enough for any alley to switch from the one that was originally most convenient for them.

Thus, this! Hundreds if not thousands of different setups and systems.

Now there might be some bowling systems out there trying to dominate the market, and good luck to them! But bowling is and always has been a sport that’s basically just for the love of it – there is no gigantic market or popular sporting event for it, thus happy mediocrity.

And thus the uniqueness of each alley.

Now behold these screens.

The following images are from the following contributors: nertzy, Jos, Abs44, Karen D, V&N, 2H Design, Adele, Razif H, Drew Makepeace, notMargaret, Lergik, Xiaming, Lucaskt, Miahz, Kevin H, Philipreid, Kirkala, Rick Spine, Mrs. Chardonnay, Real Blades, Ivan Tortuga, B Mune, Arksiel, Project BS, Orac808, Hupthur, Davers, Light Star Angel, Danny Huff, Alan Rappa, Optimum Inline, Primamag, Quiet Dangst, Moon Cowboy, Heather & Tom, Kenoir, Mika, Espelina, Elizabeth PS, Eats Dirt, buck82, idolector, Mr. Wright, Ben Sutherland, Joshua Mauldin, Jima, RonyyG, Kus Kus, nonKompliant, Jared Zimmerman, SGT Fun, Scuddr, Scotticus, Ryan W, Series Premiere, eatdog888, funnyliberal, Abby T, Love it Madly, TheNotQuiteFool, Carolina P, KingBeej, Cash and Carrie, Ariel Waldman, Geeky Artist Librarian, Kooop, Brian Bruchman, DarrenXYZ, Jannygirl, Andrastia, Little Dynamite, AbbyLadybug, Espelina, Dan 4th, Ario, PocketDora, Vicious Bits, Jaybert, Mixed Feelings, Skonen Blades, Girl of Bats, Lia, Sarah and Jason, and CindyLi.

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

Here’s a guy. He goes by the title Numskull and he does some graffiti. He also does canvas paintings, paint on wood slabs, and mixed media sculptures. He’s a picker. He’s the kind of guy I’d expect to be found at the flea market finding odds and ends that he could chop up into their graphical bits and redistribute them in his own idiom. He does that sort of thing for sure. He’s got a slew of mashup collages going on, all with perfect color and pitch.

I could not believe I’d never seen this man before when I first laid eyeballs upon him. His work is totally lovely! And would/does fit in this modern share share culture we’re living in on these internets. Not only that, these paintings are so sharp, I’d be apt to say they’ll be in a gallery near you quite soon. Habeeb it.

NOTE: There’s Simpsons eyeballs in this guy’s artworks. You know what this means, don’t you? It means enough peeps have re-used those Matt Groening features that they’re officially unofficially in the same category as Mickey Mouse gloves! Hoy!

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

Oh LA, what a city you are. How the people (including me) call everywhere in Southern California you. How you’re covered in smog and cannot actually be seen. Yes indeed. How polluted you are. But you didn’t used to be! You used to look nice! Way back in time, over fifffffty yeeeears agoooo, you looked pretty spiffy! Kinda swanky, didn’t you? Yes you did. Let’s have a short look at some of your longer structures, the tall ones and the short ones, the really nice ones and the weird ones. Photos in a collection as collected by Actionlog, a hero for collectors.

This man named Actionlog has a vast collection on flickr of items that fall under the category “vintage.” Now he’s got one amazingly simple and lovely manifesto which I’ve included here below this paragraph, and I think everyone who has the ability to should follow his lead suite. That means get your scanners out, Johnny, it’s time to compute.

I collect vintage postcards, slides and magazines which I scan and put online for everyone to enjoy. I feel it is very important to put this kind of stuff on the internet as to make sure it does not disappear into obscurity.

The photos you see below all come from the Los Angeles California area, if not right in the heart of the city. If you place your mouse over any photo, you’ll see a little bit more detail in the filename of each jpeg. These photos come from a span of time around 20 years, but they’re all from single dates in these years: 1941, 1954, 1962, 1964, 1965. Fantastic colors from a bright moment in time!

BONUS: for an extended conversation on these images and the thought of living in modern-day Los Angeles, head on over to A Continuous Lean.

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