To explain the name used for this secondary yet extremely important character in the Tron: Legacy movie, presented here is a mister Jonathan Rinzler, or J.T.Rinzler, aka Lucasfilm Executive Editor and author of books you’ve almost certainly seen or otherwise own: The Making of Star Wars, The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, and the more recent Making of The Empire Strikes Back. Marvel at this lovely story and giggle with joy at the subsequent joy felt by the kids of JTR:

“Friends told me about the fact that there’s this character Rinzler in the new Tron movie,” says Rinzler. “So I went online to see if I could figure out where they got the name. But I couldn’t find anything. There aren’t many Rinzlers in the States and it’s not a name that means anything, as far as I know… Then when Joe Kosinski came as a guest speaker I was actually on my way to the event before I realized this might be a chance to ask him. So I waited till after the q-and-a, went down to the front, and said I had a strange question but had to ask where he got the name, or where the writers got the name. And he said that he was sitting with the two writers working, and there was a book on the table ‘a Making of’ he said… ‘Oh yeah, it was Making of Star Wars by someone named Rinzler.’ So I said ‘that’s me’, thanked him, shook his hand and said I had to go out and buy a few action figures — needless to say, my kids are thrilled.”

Hooray! Now go see that freaking movie and make sure your eyes and ears are cleaned out because it’s a trip!

[Via Official Star Wars Blog]

Behold the power of Zynga, that company that whipped up a couple of games a few years back and has one whole hell of a lot of money now. They’re responsible for Mafia Wars, a game that started doing big business on Facebook and is on the fast track to taking a top spot in mobile entertainment through apps. Now they’re working with none other than Dr Dre to promote his LONG awaited third album: Detox. The promotion will come in the form of a “Hustlin’ Wit Dre” portion of the game where players will collect Dre-related items, see the music video for the single “Kush,” and get an “exclusive” video message from Dre.

This isn’t the first time Zynga’s worked with those in the extended family of Dre: earlier this year (2010) they celebrated 10 million visitors in two weeks by having Snoop Dogg blow of a four-ton armored truck in Nevada. Of course they did.

See here both the video for Kush and the destruction of the armored truck. The first video is probably NSFW.

[Via Reuters]

When I was 10, I had no internets. Now I’ve got unlimited internets. Sort of. No matter where I go in the few locations I travel in my day-to-day, I’m no more than a half-hour away from some free and unlimited internet signal. When my immediate family survived on internets through AOL disks which offered 50, then 100, then 500 minutes free internet usage, the times between install disks I remember feeling cut off. When I was 17 years old, my grandma gave me a dictionary to use when I went to college – I was baffled.

Now I’m 25 and I’m employed by 2 exclusively online publications, both of them technology and design based. I also run a design and art blog where I collect and spew old collections of fabulous works and new news about the people and their works that make me get all pumped up. The works I publish there I attempt to gather and distribute as part of a greater narrative, a story about what this blog’s legacy will be and how, if my life ever becomes something someone wants to investigate, my interests developed.

I have another website that’s currently defunct for a reason I cannot remember – A Tiny City – a place where I found a first glimmer of a thought (or hope?) that I might be able to write for a living. This place was born of a post I’d done for a professor whose class I was in at the time over at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In this post I described the shrinking of our world via the artist Takashi Murakami’s ability to have a billboard taken down on one side of the world and delivered to his studio on the other. It was through the breaking of this, the first of my design news and collection publishing sites that I experienced the notion that even though a work has physically disintegrated, it still holds value, if only insomuch as the communication that happened through the site is forever reverberating in a now much greater social structure.

At the moment, we’re facing an accessibility loss of the accomplishments we’ve made on the most current self-innitiated project I’ve worked on, World Famous Design Junkies. I say WE because so many more people this time compared to ATC have come forward to express, in one way or another, their concern for the loss of the site. For you, I let you know here that the site’s been victimized by people or bots planting code in the site malicious enough to alert the Google watchmen, people who jam out warnings to all the main web browsers and the host of the site, making it shut down completely. At the moment I’m attempting to work with both the host site and Google to rid WFDJ of infection and bring it back online. It seems like it might happen, and it appears at the moment that no data will be lost.

But now we’re at that crossroads again, the same one that hit A Tiny City when it basically expired: does it make sense to make the effort to keep the data compiled over the past several years active? There is a certain point at which the work to keep the data alive meets the need to continue forging forward without it. I believe at the moment that the data will be restored before that point is reached.

So hooray! Until then, forge on yourselves, backpackers. The main WFDJ site isn’t the only place you can access amazing works by our close network. Let me share with you a list of places run by people in closeness to us, so that you might think globally and click locally. Oh god our society is collapsing!

http://worldfamousdesignjunkies.tumblr.com/
http://geotypografika.com/
http://mykidssaid.blogspot.com/
http://peoplecollective.tumblr.com/
http://desk.unequal-design.com/
http://catz4dayz.com/
http://jjjjustin.tumblr.com/
http://fuckyeahkiss.tumblr.com/
http://www.good.is/
http://www.slashgear.com/author/chrisburns/
http://www.yankodesign.com
http://androidcommunity.com/author/chrisburns/

– Originally posted on http://wfdjshadow.com/

This is a brand new set of colored squares with precious objects inside them by artist Susana Blasco. She’s made it a quest for herself to enlarge single moments of brilliance into squares of truth, if you will, by photographing (and sometimes manipulating) objects, putting them then onto a single color background – or putting them on a single color background and photographing them. Whichever comes first. This newest set goes by the name “Ceci n’est pas un hommage à Magritte,” which in English means, “This is not an homage to Magritte,” which is of course speaking about the famous artist René Magritte, who is of course famous for doing paintings of single subject matter such as a pipe (see: “The Tune and Also the Words, 1964″) which can also be seen below.

In the pipe painting you’ll see the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” which means “this is not a pipe.” This painting was replicated in 2007 by the fabulous modern artist Dave Kinsey in his screenprint poster “Not a Gun” (also pictured in the gallery below)

Not A Gun, 2007
18 x 24″ 2c screenprint
on acid-free archival paper
Signed & numbered
edition of 300

Of course “The Tune…” is also a different version of the more well known René Magritte, “The treachery of images (This is not a pipe),” 1929, which is a more stripped-down image of the pipe. Then there’s the 1966 painting by Margritte again, this one showing two pipes, one on a wall and one in a frame: “The Two Mysteries,” 1966. So many replications of replications (pictured in gallery below.)

Of course that was Margritte’s point, and thusly so too must it be at least part of the point Susana Blasco makes in titling her newest collection of images “Ceci n’est pas un hommage à Magritte.” Blasco explains each of these images in her own words here:

Each year the DPZ calls the “Awards and Grants for Arts and Culture.” The publication of this year to promote them is a homage to Magritte. So in each picture is mixed classic icons of the painter (the pipe, the clouds, hat ,…) with other elements to refer to each of the awards in different ways. Here in this order: cover (hat), sculpture and installations (clouds), visual creation (pipa), travelogues (egg), translation projects (apple), audiovisual (key), literature (umbrella) and expansion of art studies (siren).

We’ve also got images of the book Blasco constructed for DPZ plus this description:

Booklet

DPZ awards Young and creative people in several areas such as: arts, literature works, essay, travel stories, expansion of artistic studies, audiovisual works and plastic arts. The booklet of this year is a tribute to Magritte. For this reason, each illustration puts together Magritte’s classic icons (pipe, hat, the clouds,…) with other creativity & art elements.

DIPUTACION PROVINCIAL DE ZARAGOZA (London) 2010

Take a look at the Margrittes, the Kinsey, and the Blascos below, then head on over to Blasco’s portfolio or blog for more insight into her world or more super amazing pictures to dip your eyeballs in for pure pleasure.

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

BONUS here’s some additional insight into the “Gun” piece by Kinsey, courtesy of everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Admonkey:

What makes Kinsey’s riff so special is the incorporation of Virginia Tech-orange iconography so close on the heels of the Virginia Tech massacre (massacre on April 16, print released on May 4) and our politicians’ refusal to allow the idea of gun control to enter the debate in its immediate aftermath. (“To those who want to make this into some sort of [gun control] crusade, I say take this elsewhere.” –Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in comments shortly after the massacre.)

For that, Kinsey can certainly be forgiven for the co-opting of Rosenquist’s idea. In art, context is as big a player as idea and image.

For more magical Admonkey moments, head on over to thegiant.org

Look at this wicked set of drawings! These are illustrations from the desk of Markus Raffelsberger & Michael Zagorski, who together form Valence graphic design studio. This set of magical collages, paintings, and drawings was made for a weekly design exercise as initiated by three studios: Mustard, RadioMetric, and Valence! This exercise goes by the name Hard From The Heart and is totally active as this post is written. Check it out! But first look at the gallery in this post, for it is magnificent.

The subject these contributions cover is “Holidays.” Hang loose.

To see the rest of the contributions from the other two studios in the Hard From The Heart situation, head on over to http://hardfromtheheart.com/category/25-holidays/, where you’ll see quite soon that Holidays is the 25th subject out of 25 (by the time you read this, they might even be to 26 – a fantastic expanded collection awaits your clicks!

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

Let me say a quote from the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” : “Look at this. [holds up a silver pocket watch] It’s worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless! Like the Ark. Men will kill for it; men like you and me.” Truly that is a wise quote. There is another reality to that situation too, that being the sand-beaten and abandoned houses and buildings left alone by people, left to rot, left to fall. They’re both worth nothing to some people and are, again, priceless to others. Designer / photographer Kenneth Sabbar of PLUSGOOD Media is this sort of person, and constantly on the hunt.

Above and below you’ll see the extent of the PLUSGOOD Ghost Town photo collection to the date this post was originally posted. If it’s much later than that, go on over to PLUSGOOD Media to see if there’s lots more. All of these photos are collected in the deserts of Nevada.

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

Since we’ve never done a roundup post or a top 10 post or anything like that on World Famous Design Junkies before, this is going to act as sort of a long-range list. This right here is the first ever 2 year top ten posts OF ALL TIME World Famous Design Junkies post. What you’re about to view is the strangeness of these internets. Some of this list makes perfect sense, some of it you might never have guessed. Behold!

10. All The Little Figgies a project by illustrator Joep Gerrits including two posters filled to the brim with super-simplified characterizations of characters from famous movies.

9. Under Water Photographer James Cooper presents a set of photos that include many dunks under the blue, many of which took off on their own, like the spraypaint blasting into the water photo you see above. Everyone loves a moment of brilliance.

8. Ghost in the Photo Machine A collection of photos taken of photos on modern versions of reality. That’s people holding up OLD photos right on top of the real world, lining them up pretty darn close to the same place you’d have seen the objects in the first place. Lots of contributors, lots of amazing things to be seen.

7. Doryu 2-16 Pistol Camera It’s an intense investigation into the strange and wonderful world of the 16mm DORYU 2-16 pistol camera. Used at one point, for a very short period in history, by the Japanese police. For real.

6. Lost and Found The longest lasting and most updated post on WFDJ by FAR, this is a post full of the weirdest, funniest, and most viral images from everywhere around these internets. It’s basically one giant gallery full of firecrackers. The reason the internet is fun, all of it right here in one post. But NOTE: some of these images are amazing and designtastic, while others are just terrible. But shareable!

5. Star Wars Portraits – Victorian Style A project by illustrator / animator Greg Peltz that includes several Star Wars characters painted to look like they didn’t exist so very long long ago, instead existing in Victorian times – with a super bonus couple of illustrations of ol’ D.V. and his kids in American Civil War times.

4. Anybody Mario A full-fledged game by the name of “Super Mario Brothers Crossover” designed by Exploding Rabbit. This game’s amazing not just because you can play the entirety of Mario Brothers on your laptop, but you can play it as any of the following characters: original Mario, Mega Man from Mega Man, Samus from Metroid, Link from Zelda, Bill R. from Contra, or Simon from Castlevania!

3. Batgirl is Now Prince A limited edition concept project by cartoonist / illustrator Cliff Chiang, these record-cover sized prints (12″ x 12″) are part of a set of four 80′s record covers pulled into comicdom by popular Marvel and DC characters.

2. The Big Golden Farting Bull Sculpture artist Chen Wenling’s political sculpture features a devil-man Bernie Madoff being smashed by the economy he helped to depress (represented here by a giant golden bull.) Interestingly enough, this post became popular right around the time Madoff was thrown in jail for a very, very long time.

1. Rare Star Wars Photos You had to have seen this coming. Of COURSE Star Wars is the most popular subject on any blog, especially when its dug up and analyzed by addicts of both fine design and wackiness. This post contains a trove of little-seen Star Wars photos collected from limited edition books and the people who were on the set when the original trilogy was being made and filmed. Lots of fun in here.

So what does this tell us? What can we LEARN from this? Things like “never underestimate the power of pop” or “with Star Wars you’re good to go.” But overall, what is it? Good writing? A little bit. Amazing pics? Yes. Fantastic design? You bet. The total package of all these things presented in a friendly environment? Indeed.

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

Remember that one time when DC and DT got together for tea? Here’s the extended look at the meeting between find artist / graffiti artist David Choe and actor / superhero Danny Trejo. Above and below you’ll see some photos and some looks at the new artwork made when they met, painted by David Choe, and a video of Choe speaking about how they met (at “comic con” which I’m sure means SDCC) and what they’re doing, and how he’s painted a couple different portraits now of the scariest most menacing face in the history of the world and star of the new Mexploitation film Machete, Danny Trejo.

You’ve gotta watch this video. Trejo “reveals” the titles of the next Machete movies: Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again, then Machete in Outer Space! Then I wont give it away but Choe reveals the final movie title in the series… or is it?! Who can tell. SA Studios Global presents this video:

Then below you’ll see a gallery of pics from their meeting. In this gallery you’ll note one image of Trejo face-to-face with a painting of a face that looks rather like him. It’s not – instead it’s the other most wheathered-faced person in the world, Charles Bukowski. Choe says these are the first two males he’s painted since he was in grade school. He’s lying, but it’s fun to think so, yes?

AND the part you’ve all been waiting for, even though I haven’t said anything about it yet: prints for sale. Holy crap it’s a David Choe print sale, and you know what that means! Email orders, lots and lots of email orders, and heartbreak:

this friday september 10th (2010) at 6pm westcoast time, we will be releasing an exremely limited amount of the david choe MACHETE prints, they wil be made in a edition of 66. they are 18 x 24inches (With Borders) they are printed on the finest quality paper, and will be signed by both danny trejo and david choe, and are $300. All sales on this print will be donated to the charity “CANINE COMPASSION”. all orders and emails before 6pm will be disregarded, non-stop harrassing emails will be taken off the list, email prince bobby at 6pm friday at bnamba@live.com…bobby is filling orders in the exact order the emails come in, first come first serve. expect at least 3 weeks for delivery. the first 23 orders will come with an extra special surprise mini print.

This print is the black one with the knife mane around the head of Trejo. Scary!

BONUS we’ve got both posters in GIGANTIC format right here, all zipped up for your pleasure and hers and his: mposters.zip

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

What do Sushi, Whistles, Cheese, and Marshmellows have to do with one another? That they’re all here, illustrated by Rey Misterio AKA Juan Molinet, in a wild, classic style. Like many projects of this level of frajabulousness, this project is done for the pure love of the game. In the case of an artist, you can just call it artwork. In the case of a designer or illustrator, you’ve got to say that you’ve made it to promote yourself to the world so they can hire you for jobs. Same thing! Lookie at these cuties.

Below and above you’ll see these lovely little characters illustrated with love:
Hokaido Industrial Sushi co. (Fake Japanese Ad Characters Set)
Satoyama Whistle Co. (Fake Japanese Ad Character Project)
Cheesus Good Cheese (Fake Japanese Ad Characters Set)
Osaka´s Marshmellow Kid (Fake Japanese Ad Characters Set)

Love love love them. For more works by Juan Molinet, take a peek at his flickr account or head on over to Peppermelon, the studio where Molinet works.

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

Czech yourself before you… set yourself on fire with these amazing uncut matchbox labels from a master design collector, none other than MCAD design professor Kindra Murphy. She’s just started a flicker feed as this post is written. This is her first set of images, and they’ll only get better from here. That’s not to say that these aren’t the best thing ever though, as they certainly must be, but Kindra’s the sort of person who kinda sorta outdoes herself each time she sets loose a new set of super cute, tastefully arranged items.

If you take a look at the limited selection of Kindra Murphy related items we’ve got here, you’ll note that they’ve all got to do with the hunt. The addiction, the healthy addiction to design collecting. It is one of the most base goals of World Famous Design Junkies to share the exploits of just such a person as Kindra Murphy, one who in turn makes healthy the world of design at large. A healthy appreciation and an eye for loveliness in color, arrangement, and form.

NOW take a look at this collection she’s collected. It consists of Czechoslovakian uncut matchbox labels, and Czechoslovakian uncut matchbox labels only. Devour them, and continue to wait in tingly-fingered anticipation for new sets from her at her Kindra is Here! flicker page.

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

Dear world, it is my pleasure to announce the continued modern-day miracle working of Aesthetic Apparatus. Today’s magic: the 2010 label for Minneapolis’ own Surly Brewing Company’s Russian Imperial Stout: DARKNESS. This tasty opportunity was offered in past years to the likes of Adam Turman in 2007, Nic Skrade (misspelled on the label?) in 2008, and Dave Witt in 2009. Each of these artists and designers was (and is) based in the Twin Cities, and to continue that tradition in a highly proper manner, Aesthetic Apparatus has been asked next. Beer plus AA. How else could the world of beer and the beer filled world move on into the future? There is no other way available.

If you’re blind, you might not notice that above, you can see the label for the beer we’re talking about here. If you click the thumbnail in the gallery below, you can see it bigger. If you buy the beer on “Darkness Day” Saturday, October 23rd, you’ll see it even bigger-er.

Read the label in text here, courtesy of, who else, Beer News:

“The inception of Darkness was rather humble. In 2006, Todd Haug, Surly Head Brewer, told me he was going to brew twelve barrels of this Russian Imperial Stout. I wondered how we would ever sell 24 kegs of this giant brew to Twin Cities’ bars and restaurants. Given my faith in Todd, I did not stop him. Thank God. We soon heard of people pouring their beers into 12-ounce bottles, capping them and taking them home. Well, if bottles were what Surly Nation wanted, then bottles were what they would get! That year, two whole kegs -60 growlers- were sold.

In 2007, we ramped up production to 30 barrels, and Minneapolis-based artist, Adam Turman, designed the first label for a 750ml bottle. December 15th was the earliest we could label, fill and dip all 5,000 bottles: so we celebrated with bands, beer and donuts. We sold out quickly to the brave souls who weathered the cold to stand in line, and Darkness Day was born. In 2008, tattoo artist, Nik Skrade, designed the label and the event exploded ten-fold to 5,000 bottles. In 2009, local artist, Dave Witt was commissioned for the Darkness artwork, and the City of Brooklyn Center joined the party.

This year, Aesthetic Apparatus has designed the label and is beginning the new tradition of a yearlong series of original artwork for our beer. So, that’s how this humble little/big beer became the unexpected juggernaut you now hold in your hands. Let’s raise a glass to all the artists and beer geeks that have made it possible!”

Limited edition for sure. And ALSO in the gallery you’ll see past years’ beers. Credit for these photos go to: Friday Night Beer, The Perfectly Happy Man, and PeterHDK. See if you can match the beer to the artist. It’ll be fun for everyone.

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

We live in a state of flux. This year, 2010, there are people doing all sorts of work. Whatever they can get, in basically every facet of trade and service. While only a few years ago I was informed by a professor at my college that there was no way a designer in my generation would be able to work exclusively off-line, with no internets, now it’s apparent to me that there’s a shit-ton of people doing just that, and not only in trades like carpentry. Let me show you a guy who, although he doesn’t appear to work exclusively non-computer, definitely has a heavy handle on working without the mouse clicker. This is the hand-made lettering work of designer Jordan Jelev, aka The Labelmaker.

Above and below you’ll see a large portion of the hand-lettered wine (and other food) labels that Jelev has made over the past few years. Magnificent, excellent, and each one of them unique. Jelev is creating some first-level-creation here, that being design that’s not at all or to a very small degree derived from other works. I read a quote the other day that compared using type to using Lego blocks and creating lettering to using clay. Both create magnificent structures. Keep both in mind for your future!

Some words on the presentation of his labels from Jelev:

I think that in the Digital Era of XXI century where evrything is synthetic, machine made, electronic etc it is really interesting and inspiring not only for the creatives to do something entirely hand crafted like Calligraphy and Lettering. I know this is not the fastest way to make a wine label and I know it is somehow out of time, but I am sure that my effords in calligraphy, lettering and custom type design are makeing my work more recognizable and distinguished.
… and it is a great plesure to do this!

Thank you very much for making such excellent works of letter, Labelmaker. Continue your works into the future for ever and ever. I demand it!

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

What a perfect day, a wondrous day, for today a baby is born. My friends Erik Brandt and Elisabeth Workman have tied their lives together and shot out a whole ‘nother life into existence. This child you see before you has three glorious names, one more excellent than the last, all in a circle: Beatrix Lulu Sakile!!! She was born at 6:45AM this morning (CST) and is already dancing on the dance floor with the whole world. As per request by the parents, I issue you the demand that you get down and boogie in celebration too!

Musical selections below!

It’s a funky day, get out on the dance floor for Beatrix!

Dance all day!

The title of this post comes from Erik Brandt’s original announcement to the wider world through the internet, a passage which also included “Liebe Freunde! Beatrix Lulu Sakile was born at 6:45AM this morning (CST) … Mother and child are so beautiful and strong, it is just amazingly amazing and amazingly amazing.

So, all peace loving people must now GET ON THE FLOOR AND DANCE WITH US…”

Hooray forever!

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

Drodding about the internet helped me happen upon the image you see above this sentence. It is a high-quality patch made in the real world reflecting the alternate-reality depicted in the 1986 story “Watchmen.*” This patch is presented by The New Frontiersman Watchmen fangroup, made by the people who were in charge of promoting the 2009 Watchmen movie, I’m pretty sure. Inspired heavily by this excellent manifestation of what was and what wasn’t, I went on a hunt for other, more “real” patches from the Vietnam war, as worn by the real soldiers on either side of the conflict.

*Watchmen was originally created as a 12-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins in 1986 and 1987. In 2009, a film was made of the series, directed by Zack Snyder and overly-promoted by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures with books and action figures and all that fun stuff.

But this post is all about the patches! And not the Watchmen patch so much as the inspiration for that patch, the patches of Vietnam. Ten examples of Vietnam War patches are shown and described below, followed by a gallery of all kinds of patches from all along the timeline of the war, from all kinds of companies.

Such lovely stitchings.

Several of the patches below are from the same galleries of photos. The following list shows every gallery these images are from along a description of one of the patches: Flying Death (heart) USM forum, Grim Reaper ace of spaces Dive Patch, Nurses Haven Flying Tigers Surplus, 1st Cav Grunts, 1st Cav Deck Landscaper, Hatchet Team Worthpoint, PRU Strike Force 7 (ebay seller), Screaming Eagles Colin MacGregor, and USS Kitty Hawk NavySite.

1. One of the few non-American patches in this collection is this district militia patch from South Vietnam. Look at that lovely blue! Look at those soldiers with their hats!

2. Recon Wyoming has such a harsh message that you’d almost think it was done in jest: “KILL FOR PEACE” it says on one side, “NEVER RETREAT” on the other.

3. An excellent example of an insane skull. This sort of rudimentary skull… with fangs… struck FEAR into the nightmare hearts of not only the enemy, but the bunny rabbits, the fish, the locals, the air, the water, everything. Holy crap look at those fangs.

4. Bravo Bears! Such a distorted vision from the MeKong Delta!

5. The completely bad-ass 101st Division’s First Brigade were deployed to Vietnam in 1965. They wore a huge assortment of these “chicken patches,” assorted because they were made by such a variety of producers, “pro” and totally amateur. Four examples are here, 1968-72. Check out an extended story on the chicken patch at 101A.

6. The 7th Infantry Division Scout Dog Platoon is orange and black. Reddish orange. Like it’s on fire, dangerous and toxic. Simple. Triangular.

7. West Virginia CCC Ace of Spades Reaper Skull reminds a fellow of the scene in Apocalypse Now where Colonel Bill Kilgore tosses death cards on the bodies of his dead and defeated opponents. This happened in the real war as far as I know too, this being companies of soldiers having their own brand of playing cards which they’d toss on bodies, showing the enemy who killed their comrades. Terrifying. Here’s a patch along those lines.

8. Da Nang 282nd AHC Alleycats. Look at that cat. It has a large, powerful gun that it’s going to use to kill the hell out of everything, everywhere. Also, he MIGHT be on a rocket which will propel him straight on to victory.

9. Photo Recon RRU – FAC Mosquito. Photo spy time! According to the auction listing for this patch, it’s unfinished, so this design might never have ended up being used in the war, but you can see the style similarities in the weirdo animal illustration.

10. The 584 Engineer Company, Cam Tanh Bay Vietnam, WOOLY BULLIES. That’s what’s to be scared of. These triangle warriors, holy crap. I doubt they were ever defeated, even a one of them. Look at them! Wooly Bullies! They danced to Sam the Sham. Clearly.

Now look at this collection of patches. There’s so many of them. This is only a small sampling of the whole worldly batch because of the awesome nature of the situation.

End war.

Patches forever.

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

Although I’m sure there are many… pieces… missing from MST3K – pieces of brain matter, sensicality, other bits of film and metal, this is the piece we’ve got. What’s going on right here is the collected POSTERS from the movies watched and spoken on by the MST3K robots and dude. The films this crew watched ranged many years, through the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, etcetera, through graphic design terror and genius. Turns out the posters for the movies they featured on this show have QUITE a range and, now that the internet is around, are totally sitting around all over the place. And now they’re all here.

A big fat gallery of posters from the MST3K movies. Here. Now. Instantly.

MST3K is also called, by those long-winded folks in the audience, Mystery Science Theater 3000. It’s a show made by some people living in our home-town state Minnesota, the first episodes recorded at the now defunct Paragon Cable studios and customer service center in Hopkins, Minnesota. It went on to collect an intense cult fan base and rock for almost 200 episodes, plus live shows, plus mini specials. The entire experience consists of a dude and several robots sitting in a movie theater watching old, weird, and often terrible movies, commenting out loud about them as they’re shown. You may recognize the shadows of these fellows and the movie theater seats at the bottom of the screen, it’s the most iconic bit of the entire show. For example, here during Radar Men from the Moon:

Each episode of MST3K a movie is introduced, watched, skewered, and giggled about and that’s it. But those movies had lives of their own before this show. They had time in the theater, time in schools (if they’re informational “growing up movies”), sometimes even time in people’s homes, and for that they needed posters for promotion! We’ve got the big list of those movies, and using our long, tendrilly fingers and amazing archiving sites such as the most fabulous Wrong Side of the Art and MST3K Temple, we’ve collected the major bulk of the MST3K series – in poster form.

Curation of this collection often produced one single poster, more than likely the most fabulous one, but in some cases the whole lot was necessary. For example, Godzilla vs. Megalon – that movie was loath to create a poster that wasn’t basically perfect. But then there’s also films whose posters were just terrible, just as bad – or sometimes worse! than the films themselves were, but are now amazing because of it. A giant hand!

Below you’re going to find this gallery of posters in alphabetical order. The big list of MST3K’d films can be found here: mst3k.wikia. If you see or know of a movie on this list that doesn’t have a poster in the gallery below, AND you know where to find one, speak up! We’ve got 150+ out of the nearly 200. Note that the alphabetical order of this list is based on the “official” film title as it comes from that wikia list, not as much from the posters, as lots of them are in the situation where they’ve got several releases and several titles.

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

Every once in a while, and by every once in a while I mean every time a chance happens upon you, you’ve gotta make a Star Wars photo post. You must especially do this when you’ve been collecting rare Star Wars photos in your pocket and have an overabundance of them and just gotta unload them all unto the world. This is one of those times.

You may remember one of our other Star Wars Rare posts, the most popular of which of course has been “Rare Star Wars Photos”, no fancy titles or nothin. That’s not what this sassy planet dance is all about.

It’s about collecting, rounding up, foldering together, and spacing out. Star Wars is such a thick thing, such a dense object, that this sort of thing will never end. There’ll always be another dude or lady who’d been on or around the sets of the movies taking quick pics. Thustly, here’s another medium sized bunch o’ them. Peek’t'em!

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

This bike right here sat, the day I saw it, in the parking garage next to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Childrens Museum, and MCAD. It sat down on the bottom level, lookin all good, all covered in stickers from face to rear. What you’re about to see is a sneak-snap documentation of this parked bike including each and I hope every sticker on it.

It’s got things you might recognize too, including a lovely Burlesque Design sticker right under it’s toothy grin.

If you’re out there looking at this and you’ve got more details than I or we do, and you’d like to share, please do. Comment below or email any details about the bike or any of the stickers if you know and want to share in goodheartedness.

Then, if you’ve got a bike or other sort of automotive covered in stickers like this and you just so happen to have documentation of it, or if you know of someone else who has, send it in! I and we and everyone love reduplications of culture from around the planet.

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

I hope you remember Mighty Max. The adrenaline pumped up equivalent of Polly Pocket. All you fun loving compact-hands holding and playing around people who were kids when it was 1992. That’s me! That might be you. So what’ve we got here? A bit of artwork. This is a set of hands that graced the fronts of the packages that held the Mighty Max blister packed playsets. A couple examples of those are included below, plus the rest of the whole set of hands. They’re creepy and they’re cooky.

UPDATE 2: RE-POSTED FOR SIZE – this post was originally posted before we had a site layout that allowed images larger than 500px wide. Now we do, so now this is!

Now there’s a guy out there, one heavy collecting dude. He loves to get toys, images of toys, everything that’s got to do with toys. One’s that had big effects on our brains as kids, especially when the toys were small. This guy’s name is Spectrum is Green and he’s got it all. He’s also on the lookout for new playset-related toys all the time so drop him a line if you’re into getting rid of all of yours, or just want them to go to a good home.

UPDATE: After an extended conversation with the collector behind the “Spectrum is Green” collection, (his name is Guy Himber,) we now know that these pictures are scans of the original artwork, aka the painted images as they existed before being applied to the packaging. Hot! Sexy! Amazing!

Now what you’ve got here is monster playsets and their monster hand equivalent. Sometimes it’s a wolf with a wolf, sometimes it’s a shark head with a mass of octopus tentacles for a hand. And they’re nice. They’re really simply painted, really precisely executed. Looking really pretty all the way through.

Now check it out – we’re on the lookout for the artist of these masterpieces. They were on the boxes, so maybe the boxes have a little signature on them? Anyone whose got one of these in the package still should take a peek!

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

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.

There comes a time in space every once in a while where none other than GOD himself grants us thustly a favor of time and need for intricacy. It is during these times that we’re allowed to take that time and create that intricacy for the greater good of fine art and design. This is one of those times, pre 1861 United States of America, in a time when money design was needed and the only defense against counterfeiting was high amazing detail, as done by engravers with the most fantastic of skill.

What we’ve got here is a small collection of pre-1861 engravings done for money around the USA, all of these part of the British Museum Archive. Strange, yes? Take a look in their archive site there for a mastertastic collection of the finest treasures from the entire globe and throughout history.

But do that AFTER you take a peek through these images, all of them so fine. And if you’re an illustrator, designer, or artist, hope and pray for the opportunity to take such an amount of time as these folks certainly did use to make such timeless works. What a gift.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies 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.

When you’re insane about design, as all of us here at World Famous Design Junkies are, you bet your biffy, you carry around a tiny camera in your pocket and photograph everything in your wake, most especially those things that blow your mind for one reason or another. Design moments, wild moments in everyday strange life in writings or color or shape or form, anything that inspires the eyeballs. Here is a collection of these photos of which I speak. From a flea market in North West Minnesota to a Target store in Minneapolis.

John Travolta, Professional Pilot

The ever-epic photo of Chewbacca feeling up Princess Leia (also to be seen in our ULTRA AMAZING collection of rare Star Wars photos) put to good use on a gig poster

The wording “A Most Liveable Community” in a community that would never, in a million years, word it as such (Saint Cloud, Minnesota)

Toilets in a basement bar being re-done

A folder of collectable Desert Storm cards at the flea market in Wright County

Bucky O’Hare action figures in their original bubble packaging

A custom-painted toilet seat cover

A personal message of pride to the world made in order to sell postcards in frames

Wolverine channels Rambo

Pogs, lots of pogs

Hand-painted corn dogs sign, with bonus “FREESYS” note

Record cover peeking out of backpack

ESPECIALLY no U turn

Fabulous choices in the jukebox at Psycho Suzi’s biker bar and restaurant

Re-painted facade at the 400 bar (where a friend and I once saw YTCracker!)

Clean broken sign

Sign covering a sign

A sweet ramp

21st Century Bank with futuristic font

Faced spraypaint cans

DESPITE license plate

That rock at the Subway in Osage

Cowlicks to Curls

Vandalized OBEY sticker

Drink fountain with both Pepsi and Coke (as far away from eachother as possible)

August Schell cap from New Ulm, Minnesota

Disco ball at Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown

UFFDA8 uff-da license plate (Norwegian slang)

Pile of weapons made of duct-tape

Dangerous cat warning written in chalk

Frattalone heavy machinery brand name

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

Ever have a day when you felt quite spacey? I’ll show you a guy right here who felt that way for a while. This is illustrator and colorist Angus McKie. He’s done a bunch of covers for paperback science fiction novels including some fabulous works in Stewart Cowley’s “Terran Trade Authority” illustrated books. Along with a group of other lovingly talented draw artists of his generation, he developed a whole spaceships in heavily detailed backgrounds. Then, most importantly of all I think, he illustrated the entire “So Beautiful, So Dangerous” segment of the 1981 animated epic Heavy Metal.

Take a peekie peek at a slightly edited (for boobage, if I’m not mistaken) version of “So Beautiful, So Dangerous” from Heavy Metal, then head on down to the gallery below for a bunch of pics made by the man we be speakin of right now, Angus McKie. And give him a high five for excellence.

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

First Avenue is being repainted, just incase you didn’t know, all of it. First it was blackened out completely, then re-starred in a regular grid (the stars were wacky before), then the title added. All’s we’ve got pics of here is the title over a few days time, but peek if you can at those stars too. Inside each of them is the name of a superstar musical artist or group that at least once performed in the main room on the First Avenue main stage. It’s all very slick now, very sassy, very clean.

Also there’s a new restaurant in there and I think they’re building a spaceship in the garage and Michael Jackson is going to do a reunion concert on top!

EDIT 7/16/2010: star painting pics added via First Ave on facebook.

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