A tiny documentary in four photos of the insides of the photographer. It’s Ibai Acevedo’s strangest moment in four frames. Acevedo is a multitalented photographer whose filled herself with some colorful liquids and… let it all come out… upwards?

Devour such a lovely situation en large.

This project, “Lo que tengo yo dentro,” is listed under the “Personal” section of Acevedo’s online portfolio. Personal, side, “random”, these are the projects I just cannot leave a portfolio without looking through. And more often than not, there’s something in there that ends up being fantastic and perfect for World Famous Design Junkies. Lo que tengo yo dentro means “What Do I Have Inside,” basically.

To get in contact with Ibai Acevedo with the emailings, use this one: hello @ ibaiacevedo.com, or, if you want to see lots more work updates and such, head on over to http://ibaiacevedo.com/ and click click click and see see.

ALSO right after the four liquid inside photos there’s some other fabulous selections from Acevedo’s portfolio. It’s impossible to post them all though, they’re too epic for one post.

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

Lots and lots of skeletons and the occasional panda bear. That’s what you get when you thumb through your collection of prints made by the most amazing Jose Pulido aka Mis Nopales Art. You shall see so many skeletons that you will celebrate. Celebrate with all your death with Joke Pulido and dance, yes dance the night away! You will meet a serenading skeleton, a butterfly catching skeleton, Darth Vader skeleton, skeleton aboard an armadillo… wait! Darth Vader skeleton! Yes, the pop is in there for real.

But not only pop! This collection of skeletons, henceforth known as Calaveras (aka skulls), do all the fun stuff, all the thangs a skullhead might want to do, including impersonate the living.

Each of these, or at least most of these, is a print or a template for a print printed by Mis Nopales Art. Jose Pulido is a heavily prolific printmaker and he loves to skull them out! A whole bit ton of tiny prints for the whole world! Yes indeedy.

PLUS there’s some oddballs in there. Aka non-skully items also drawn by Pulido that show he’s not just a one-trick skelehorse. He’s got skills. Skeleskills, pandaskilla, luchidoreskills.

If you’d like to get yourself one of these skullys for your very own, take a ride on over to the Nopales Etsy shop, or contact Pulido by emailing him through his Etsy contact page. You’ll have to be logged in if I’m not mistaken.

AND AND AND if you’re in the southern California area, you could take a peek at his works up close at TWO count them TWO upcoming shows — Renegade Craft Fair Los Angeles, July 24+25 AND Renegade Craft Fair San Francisco, July 31-Aug 1. Get there!

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

Isn’t it amazing how some movies can be a bit hit in the theaters, then once they’ve been on people’s home movie shelves for a few years they peter out- while some movies are crap in the theater, then get watched forevermore? This is the cult classic, of course, and someone’s got their fingers right in the bloody pulse of this situation as it pertains to design, that being Toronto based designer Ibraheem Youssef. He’s rolling right beside these internet-famous designers who turn their eyeballs toward self-promotional work in the form of cult classic illustration. Here he’s done several that I might have passed over except for one thing…

INCEPTION. Yes, he’s got a couple of the classics here with Lebowski and Scarface, but then he tells us that when he went, just a few days ago, to this new film Inception, that he couldn’t resist! This is newness. This is in the vein of Tyler Stout, a dude who, once the theaters got wind of him making such fantastic illustrations for older films, began hiring him to create posters for limited releases of newer ones.

In so many words and a few dollars and pennies, you can purchase cult-classic status now, if only for a little while. Of course the true cult classic attains its status only through time and circumstance. But the situation is there! And it’s here, too, in some really super neat illustrative posters. Peek em out.

And take note — the mazes in the Inception poster work!

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

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.

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.

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

Ten years tight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay spry!

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

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

This project reminds me of one of the first things I ever posted under the World Famous Design Junkies name, another cross with cash in mind, the Ticker Cross. This one’s sort of the analog version of that one, a severely simple message in a piggy bank the shape of a cross. Put your coins in there and remind yourself of the bad parts of the Catholic faith! It even has a little piggy tail on the butt.

This lovely bank is made by Wyatt Little aka Heck yes Design. It goes by the name of one of my favorite Slayer songs: “Jesus Saves.” I bet he would have saved if he weren’t chosen to be the son of God. That’s a big responsibility and demands a life without coins. Sandals only. No plastic.

This cross isn’t in production yet, but when it is, you can bet I’ll be gripping it with my slimy claw fingers, filling it with my gold coins from the gray market.

Contact Little through his http://www.behance.net/WyattLittle Behance contact form or visit his excellent portfolio at http://wyattlittle.com/. Updates!

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

So were were up there in the North-West part of Minnesota, just driving around looking for a good time and all and what do we find? A gosh-darned flea market! This is a brief account of this lovely place, a market by the name of Shady Hollow. Complete with painted signs, flags and strange people, and pile after pile of fabulously preserved pieces of consumer culture.

These photos were taken June 27th, 2010 up at Shady Hollow flea market. This little market has its own dot com, but don’t let that fool you. There’s plenty of stuff sitting around in these stalls you’d never be able to locate in the infinite halls of the internets, and more than a couple of strange vendors too.

Visit this one. It’s a good one.

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

We’ve been submitted some anonymously-photographed photos from the empty BUNGE tower over in Dinkytown, Minneapolis. These photos are full of lots of fabulous (and some terrible) graffiti and other silly drawings. All on the walls, all on the trains. From the looks of it, the train photos were taken right next to the tower, and the dark photos were taken inside the tower, probably all on the first level. You’ll notice a couple pics of some writing up at the top of the tower – this paint was up for about a week or two in early June, 2010, and’s now painted over. This happens up there from time to time.

Pretty sassy. Pretty dangerous.

BONUS: since we got our BIGTIME gallery going, we re-uploaded the photos from this project as full-sized. Take a peek through the gallery below for some hotness.

Now like when we get any set of anonymously submitted photos, you’ve gotta note that we DO NOT know who took them. I’m certain that it’s trespassing being inside this building, so the photographer more than likely does not want to be tied directly to these photos. That doesn’t mean you can go around taking credit for them, but it does mean you’ve got free reign over using them. Feel free to print them out, for example, if that’s your bag, but be respectful. Even illegal work is still someone’s work.

NOTE that we do not advocate the taking of any photos where you’ve got to be somewhere where it’s illegal for you to stand, and will not post anything of the sort (unless, of course, they’re submitted anonymously.) Stay safe! And don’t go out at dark. Be smart.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies dirty 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!

Hello everyone, it’s me, your humble narrator in this epic story called World Famous Design Junkies. In this post I present a project of my own. In addition to being a writer on the topic of design futures and pasts, I like to make my own things from time to time. Projects I do generally end up being flat, but today I’ve got a 3D item for you: some customized sneakers. This is the first pair I’ve ever worked on, painting them using leather paints and working off an iconic car model by the name “General Lee.”

They burn so much rubber.

These sneakers are size US MAN size 10 and use the original sneakers, sole pads, and are painted with Angelus brand leather paints. Angelus paints are the hot stuff. Super sexy.

Above and below you’ll see detail shots from every essential angle, plus a few inessential angles also.

Ideally, eventually, the tongues will play this tune upon pressing:

Enjoi.

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

Over at one of the most wonderful places on Earth, the Happy Seamstress Pattern Company, they are having a fabulous little contest for whose best at crafting. The subject matter? Mario. Or everything in the Nintendo universe. And even that rule is broken sometimes. But it’s all in excellent fun, and in most cases, thread and needle bliss! So take a peek, all ye crafty peoples, for below we’ve got not just the future winners, but the entire contest entry bin! Everything, including the terrible ones!

JK there are no terrible ones. Just some that… just can’t win.

The Happy Seamstress holds contests every once in a while, and they’re not the crappy kind where the company basically rips you off by paying you squat for what you could get lots more cash for, no! The H.S. holds contests for fun fantastic items you’ve made for yourself, or in many cases, for your kids, and congratulates you on a job well done, no more, no less! That’s how design contests SHOULD be run.

Remember folks, work for full pay or work for free, NEVER work for cheap. Discounts are for the people who sell the items, not for the transaction between designer and corp. Happy Seamstress seems to understand this well, and I congratulate them!

Also they’re getting prepared to have a pattern store to run alongside their very excellent blog, and I bet it’s going to be just chock full of wonderful products so everyone go buy!

Also I should mention that not only is there cross-stitching and knitting going on in this contest, it’s limited only to the word “craft” basically so it’s everything. Clay to iron-together beads. There’s a Tri-Force earring and Space Invader magnets.

Love it all. All of it love.

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

I don’t mean to call designer Mike Lemanski an alien from an Orson Scott Wells novel, but he IS a bugger! He’s got so much good stuff! So much stuff that is good! In this post you’ll see but a fraction of it in the form of posters. Poster gallery yay! Everyone loves a good poster gallery. The image you see above is the least “posterish” item in the set in that it’s not any bigger than a standard size handheld piece of paper, but because I would LOVE to have it screenprinted gigantic and hung on my wall, it’s up there at the top.

The way I found this particular genius shape and letter arranger was over at It’s Nice That, the image from which was posted over at Buamai. There, now you know a couple of my secrets you didn’t know before. Digg it?

Now Lemanski is an excellent dude. He’s got senses for excellence that some folk only bubbles in bong dream of. Puff high, you sons of sam, you’ll never be able to quite click the colors in the right columns like Mike. You all want to be like Mike.

But lo! You can be actually. It’s just that Mike Lemanski’s got his portfolio locked down. He knows, or maybe doesn’t know he knows but DOES know, exactly, what, he’s got to present in order to get noticed. His best stuff, his most amazing works, and they all work together in an excellent way.

Hey all you design students out there! Stop digging through the trash! Put down your crappy new-age iCrappers and put up a simple portfolio as fast as now! Get published and find yourself in a whole new world of opportunity!

Look at these posters. Mike Lemanski is excellent.

NOTE: some of these posters are for work, some of them are for play. All of them are important in their very own way.

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

The image you see above of a rather epic looking Neil Young with guitar is the latest in a series of famous persons portraits by modern artist Shepard Fairey. These images were all had their debut at the May Day show that took place on May 5, 2010. There’s been a wild cross section, boy howdy. This is the first landscape style to be released. Neil Young. Musician and political activist and one classy looking mother.

Some words from Shepard Fairey on his Neil Young image reference’s original photographer, rock and roll photo taker Henry Diltz, the magic man:

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL PHOTOGRAPHER – HENRY DILTZ

Henry Diltz has been one of the most important photographers in rock ‘n’ roll for almost half a century, shooting rock icons from Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain. I met him through Henry Rollins when he was working as a still photographer on The Henry Rollins Show, and have been a fan ever since I first saw his work.

Diltz started out as a folk musician, playing with the Modern Folk Quartet, and bought his first camera while on tour with them. He started hanging out with The Monkees and taking photos of them, and shot an album cover—the first of over eighty he would go on to shoot—for The Lovin’ Spoonful. He immersed himself in the rock scene and became the go-to photographer for bands like The Doors and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and was the official photographer for Woodstock and the Monterey Music Festival. He transcended the hippie generation and continued to shoot an extremely impressive roster of artists too long to list here. The reference photo of Neil Young for this piece was taken in 1969 and my all time favorite photo of Neil.

Thanks for collaborating Henry.

-Shepard Fairey

Also included below is a collection of other fabulous faces from the May Day set, each of them having been released to the internets world over the past few weeks, continuing through when this post is posted. Peek at them.

Neil Young 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed by Shepard Fairey and Henry Diltz. Numbered Edition of 450 Nico 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed and Numbered Edition of 450 Joe Strummer 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed by Shepard Fairey and Kate Simon. Numbered Edition of 450 Jean-Michel Basquiat 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed and Numbered Edition of 450 Keith Haring 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed and Numbered Edition of 450 (also a separate “green” edition of 450) Muhammad Ali 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed and Numbered Edition of 450 Debbie Harry 18 x 24″ Screen Print, Signed and Numbered Edition of 450

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

The loveliness of crayon packaging is something many folks only experience and appreciate if they have a child born unto them. Or if they get a kid, have a kid, live near a kid, any of that fun stuff. But I say to you, this much is true: designing the packaging of a crayon box should be high on the list of dreams for any fun-loving graphic magician, especially if they don’t have to work for the god group Crayola. Everyone knows that if you wanna be cool as a kid, you need Crayola crayons. This is of course due to their ultra-godly power in branding mostly, then just a bit because of their product quality.

Take a peek at these other… what you might call… “losers.”

Here’s were worlds collide. One wants to create a strong brand as a designer, but then if you’ve got mercy on the world, you don’t want that brand to annihilate the entirety of the competition. Many of the brand crayons you’ll see in this gallery were wiped off the earth not BY Crayola but certainly BECAUSE of it.

Take a peekie at the cool colors and smart/cute boxes and tins they sit in.

This gallery is part of an ever-growing collection of boxes and tins collected by the fabulous documentarian photographer Christian Montone, whose name I thought at first was Monotone, and now think he should consider changing his name to better suit my wishes for a more AWESOME world. Check his galleries out for fabulous collections galore! All the photos below are done by him, and he more than likely owns all the crayons. Neat!

+there’s a couple paints in there. Sneak’d ya!

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

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

It’s gonna be like a police movie!

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

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

In that interview, Tancharoen begins:

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

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

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

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

Oh and… and…

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

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

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

All good things must fade away. Or rot. That’s why you’ve got to get out there and photograph them. So everyone can hoard them! In this case, it’s about food. How could a person possibly wear a helmet made of cauliflower? This is a question that everyone should be asking themselves, especially if they’re in the fashion industry, as true fruits, vegetables, and dead animals, are really pretty! And should, by all means, be worn as jewelry. That’s what designer / photographer Fulvio Bonavia thought, and thinks, and thusly made happen. This set of photos is called “A Matter of Taste.”

These sorts of fashionable bits have existed, often executed poorly by those with more imagination than craftsmanship. However, they HAVE been translated quite well into such things as dresses and shoes. An excellent, albeit strange example of this is the watermelon knitted sweater by Sirena con Jersey. Another really fabulous example is the popcorn bucket dress by Nicole Linder. Of course neither of these are made out of any REAL fruits or popped vegetables, but they’re cute, right?

The next step I think is absurdly designed sneakers. Maybe just painted up a bit.

But until then…

What you’re about to view in the gallery below is only a small sampling of the cornucopia of foods translated as clothing as photographed by Bonavia. When one thinks of it, one wonders why things such as this have not been executed with as much skill in the past. It must just take the right combination of brain power and availability of action. Also it’s gotta be the right season for the farmers to grow these things.

NOTE: These items are now part of a published book by the same name “A Matter of Taste.” Fulvio Bonavia was inundated with requests so often that he collected all the images together in a fabulous presentation book, available wherever in the world you might find it for sale, you lucky dog you.

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

Wayyy too many commas in this post. Lulz.

Behold the world of people taking photos of Star Wars Stormtroopers as if they’d found themselves in a giant world where nothing made sense! This idea sprung up in the minds of folks at Flicker probably a bunch of years ago, since then there’ve been hundreds of these photos taken by more than likely hundreds of different aspiring photographers. So what do you do if you want to stand out in that particular group? You get a radical concept, like taking these sorts of photos once a day for an entire year. That’s exactly what mister Stéfan Le Dû did, and not only did he keep it up the entire year, he held on to some excellent craftsmanship through the whole process as well.

And not only did he take some fantabulous photos, he basically kept up a loose storyline of these two stormtroopers, TK479 and TK455, as they travel through this bigger world, reporting to Darth Vader, staying clear of wookies, writing hate mail to Luke Skywalker, having some adventures with ewoks, beating up on Playmobil characters.

Everything you could want!

This photo set started way back in mid-2009 and just got finished recently last month in 2010! Congratulations to Le Dû for making it the whole year ’round, that’s a challenge in itself, then further contgrats are in order for Le Dû making some bank off this project! You can now buy some prints of this series for astronomical prices over at RedBubble. Generally I don’t comment on the prices of things, especially if they’re sold overseas from where I am, but $90 for a photograph might be a little bit on the high side. Those are Imperial prices if ever have I seen such a thing.

Below you’ll find the entire set of 365 days of stormtrooper photos. Revel in their indecency and hilarity and lovliness. All photos ©2009-2010 Stéfan Le Dû.

If you’re additionally interested in photos such as these and for some reason JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH, head on over to more sets by people such as Zed The Dragon, The Guy with The Hat, ChikaD58, Doctor Beef, Sam Spam, and Sad Old Biker, amongst many others, you can be sure. So many stormtroopers.

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

Australia born, Tokyo based, doodle livin’. That’s what’s going on with illustrator / motion graphics designer Ant Hayes. And here’s a project: “Portrait Series.” This is where normally someone would take photos of all their subjects or draw them from real life, making them look either real nice or real silly, etcetera. In the case of the ANT, there’s something really wild going on. Tubes. Tentacles, patterns, pyramids, stripes, circles, squirmy bits. Something’s coming out of these people.

EeeeEEEwww is what I said when I first looked at these creepers. Then I remembered how long it takes to draw something like this. The patience and the skill, the radical planning it takes, or the sense to work in a way that allows for excellent growth. You’ll see seven people in this slermy crew, then more of the way of the sword of ANT below that.

ANT is in to drawing, doodling, inking. He’s one of those fabulous ones who’s got a fun sort of sensibility that attaches itself easily to lots of different kinds of media, especially those that can travel far on the streets like clothing, stickers, posters, all that.

To contact ANT for a commission, drawing, night on the town, email him at or visit his excellent portfolio sort of site at http://www.antisant.com/ – dig it!

NOTE: When you look down below I’m sure you’ll recognize several images, marks, pictures, that are other artist’s works covered in ANT’s doodles. This is another series called “Other People’s Things” and it includes several artists and brands you may have heard of such as James Jarvis, Bape, Obey, and KAWS. This series was done in time to be exhibited at Design Festa Vol.29! A very very fun exhibition where all the cool designers and artists go to high five!

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

Although the title of this post suggests that you’d be crusing down the interstate in what’s about to be presented here, I wouldn’t recommend it. Right here we’ve got one frajabulous vehicle that’ been around for overy 60 years. In that time, this most excellent zoomer, the Piaggio “Ape”, has taken on only a few different shapes, and many many different colors. Popular to paint because of their small size and relative inexpensiveness compared to other smaller vehicles, these Apes don’t only come in black and white. Pronounced “ah-peh.” The name in Italian means the same and the flying insect bee. Fun. Lovely. Excellent.

These remind one very much of the Kei vans we did a post on a bunch of months ago. Both very small, very cute, and very versatile when it comes to the possibilities for their unique size and shape. The first thought that comes to mind when you see one of these Ape cars is that they must be delivering pizza.

If you agree OR don’t agree with that, just take a look at the pizza delivery pods that the folks from my home city drive to deliver their “Galactic Pizza.” Small, speedy, cute, and best of all electric powered. The Apes in this gallery could use a bit more electrics and a few fewer gasolines, but that’s not the point at the moment.

The point at the moment IS the color, the variety of shape and use, and the overall super neatness!

This set is made up of contributions from the following photographers: Alexie Ballyhoo (above), J Helland, Unique View, Homer, Blubrando, Maurizio Boi, Bayernernst, Classic Copenhagen, Joost ijmuiden, Jovike, JensKramer, Trigger Retro Road Test, Turtle 50, Stephan Schmatz, Schockwellenreiter, Ciccio Pizzettaro, Jörg Kantel, RayNYC, Nathalierokx, Brr1940, Jelltex, Loungerie, Filigiake, Gebiblu, ApeLover81, Spidey 1978, Lu81 (this is the same APE as the one pictured above, photographed by Lu81 instead, Dr LopTop, CamilleouZoé, Alberto DF, JHelland, Gerald Smythe, Mrs Moloko, LuisaLuisa, RayNYC, Stijn, ApeLover81, and DEFINITELY be sure to check out the flicker group Planet of the APEs, as it is an ever-expanding collection of these funky runners, and the folks in that group love love love it.

AND additionally, there’s been a tip-off to this fabulous APE flying around London serving fresh and fabulous hotness to unsuspecting, then satisfied customers: Brewed Boy! — check this blog and/or head down to the bottom of the gallery for a pic of BB’s custom-painted green APE.

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

Let me begin this post be suggesting that perhaps you were a child once. Let’s just go on that assumption. When you were a child, did you read books? I’ll go ahead and say yes. When you were a child, did you happen upon Golden Books? Probably you did. I’ll tell you someone else who had some Golden Books, illustrator designer Josh Cooley. He is a nerd, a movie fanatic, and a fantastic draw-er. He’s taken the time to mash up two utterly disparate items for the enjoyment of all: Golden Books for kids, and a collection of movie stills that couldn’t possibly be more inappropriate for that same group of kids. Check it out!

In a fabulous act of brilliance, Cooley, Story Artist at Pixar Animation Studios, has taken the Golden Books aesthetic and applied it to his favorite scenes from action, science fiction, and horror films. As many super ideas go, this one began as a joke, something to spend some time on, something to get a few chuckles outta, something even to post on these internets.

But lo!

People yelled at Cooley, HEY! These are really rad! If I saw these all bound up in a book at a comic convention, I’d throw my money at it faster than I’d buy an original chunk of fossilized Alien goo! And you can take that to the bank! And so he did. Cooley took that idea to the bank, pulled out a few bucks, and made a book.

The book, having just been announced yesterday, goes by the name “Movies R Fun!”, with, as you can see, the word MOVIES being in kiddie play blocks, and the R being the same R as in R-Rated films. Clevah.

This book, as Cooley says, this book, will be available soon, at Comic-Con California this year, probably at the Alternative Press Expo (APE), and on Cooley’s lovely blogspot blog if you’re lucky. Inside you’ll find probably, more than likely, everything you see above and below, PLUS MORE.

Joy!

Take a peek and don’t hesitate to flip out over the radical nature of the images.

BONUS: Also included are a couple of the golden patterns used for framing of the single-page versions of these fabulous prints. Can you say CPU background time? Yessir.

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

Hooray for Miau! This is a tattoo and fashion shop in the heart of San Jose, Costa Rica. There doesn’t seem to be an online presence for it, but here we’ve got the fantastically cute branding set as designed by the excellent Eduardo Chang! Experience the glowing warmth of the surf, fashionable tattoos on the cuff of kitty cartoonery. Face, bones, pirate banner and waveriding power logo.

Described by Chang as a project that brought him and the business much satisfaction and joy, this is kittyriffic. Chang professes to having used his own cat Mateo as inspiration for the mark. Also I must mention © Todos los derechos reservados. Miau Tattoo y Fashion Parlor.

Also included below are a couple other similar works by Chang. Perhaps you see a skillful trend? The trend is frajabulous amalgamating of text and shape, shape and color! Illustrating skills and the skills of typography and graphic design. Particularly fabulous is at the bottom: map of Costa Rica. One amazing mind it takes to successfully whip up a healthy map.

EC’s got one.

To get in contact and hire mister Eduardo Chang, use any of the following:

mail: yo@eduardochang.com
skype: eduardochang
tel: (+506) 8911·4652

And remember that he resides in San José, Costa Rica.

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