With each new age, especially ones that come with technological or social changes, aka all of them, there comes some artwork that defines the age. Not so much defines the age as epitomizes the craft. Here it is. The computer age spewed pixels, and in its horrible terror of colors in perfect squares made a thing that was unique. Still is. Here’s a set of illustrations as made by Alex Peverett, all out of pixels in such strange arrangements. All of them have fabulous titles too, like “CtadLSCrambl (2010)” (pictured above.)

In here you’ll see some things that, statistically, you’ll probably think look super horrible and ugly. But let me tell you! It isn’t. Stop yourself from seeing what’s there and see what it all means. What does it all mean? It’s swooshes of waves, even though it looks to be squared off.

To see new works, supposing this post is old as dirt, take a peek over at http://main.softoceanhotel.net/, or if you’re super excited and need to communicate more directly with Peverett, email right up to alex(((AT)))softoceanhotel.net. And good luck! He might be a total wild animal!

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

Let me introduce you to the magical, mystical world of the Gopher Bargain Center. This is a place located on the South Side of my birth city, Saint Cloud Minnesota, USA. Gopher is a store where you can buy old food, lightly used or second furniture, bolts and screws, and yes, swords! Everything your heart might somehow in a strange alternate universe desire, that’s all here. The photos you see below and above were taken by yours truly, on location, live and in person. And, if you’ll peek below the sign you’ll see- in the snow.

Now it might be important for some to note that these photos were taken in the year 2008. The post you’re reading right now was written in 2010, in the month of July, while the photos were taken 2 years ago in April. Two points make this irrelevant though – first, these images have never been posted publicly before, and second, the Gopher Bargain Center is slow to change. Certainly if you were to take a journey through the Gopher Bargain center today, it would look very similar to the images you are about to devour.

If you’d like to visit the Gopher Bargain Center, just go to Saint Cloud Minnesota and ask anyone, basically anybody around the whole city, “where is Gopher from here?” and they’ll know. They’ll show ya. While you’re there, you might as well head on over to Val’s, too. You’ll never find another one of those, either.

Have fun!

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

Illustrator Andrew Archer has a rather specific look going on. His lines live within one another, swooping and dipping next to and on top of one another, like liquid moving with such fluid motion, yet like oil and water they must never mix! The colors are mute, the eyes are deadly serious. He’s a master at the age of 24, which, when you live in New Zealand, makes sense because what else are you going to do, go fishing? There is always the danger of being lost in perfect weather and sunshine freeness. But that’s not what Archer did! He’s right here ready to go, and he’s up onit!

EDIT: NOTE also his placement of some rather-sharply shaped 3D letters and numbers in several of these illustrations. That rocks. Often illustration-heavy designers will either fall back on or just exclusively use typography added in post. It’s a completely amazing skill to be able to draw those characters in there in such a perfect way. Truly

Here’s a couple words from Archer on his birth and living place, New Zealand:

I’ll admit, it’s been a hard time becoming a full time illustrator on a tiny island at the bottom of the world but since NZ is actually ahead of nearly everyone in the world timezones, i have used this to my advantage to read the future and beat deadlines like no-other.

Indeed! And you know what that means – he’s for hire! That’s right, you can commission the fantastical works of this superman of inks, and I bet he’d be happy to help you! Contact Archer at andrew@andrewarcher.com or on Skype [andrewcalme]. Be sure to check his http://andrewarcher.com/ portfolio for updates on work, too.

Now! Let’s take a look at some new and selected works. Below and above you’ll see works done by Archer mostly within the past year, but also spanning back to his “start” in illustration in 2006. I say “start” because everyone is an illustrator in some form or another, they’re just good or terrible, that’s all. Archer just happens to be very very amazing. Peep it out!

ALSO note that a few of the illustrations have information attached that’s pretty important to the image it’s connected to. If you’re going to spread the Archer love, it’d be awesome if you kept that info attached.

Thaaanks.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

OR! Onomatopoeics!

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

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

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

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

A hundred and twenty-three years before 1995, there was railroad built in Costa Rica that connected San Jose to Limon in the Caribbean coast. A hundred and twenty-three years later, the Costa Rican government shut it down. Some years after that, in 2003, photographer Guillermo A. Durán and his pal (unnamed) took a two day hike along the length of the lost railway. This is that journey nutshelled inside a collection of some fabulous black and white photographs. Be prepared for some nature-rules-rocks.

This journey officially begins in the tiny town of Turrialba and aims for Siquirres town, down inside the Reventazon River canyon. If you’d like to take this entire journey en español, take a peek at the blogspot blog that accompanied along the trail: Cuenticos 506. This is a sort of journey every photographer aught to have to take: one that follows a trail set by a person or organization before them, one where they’ve got to capture a set of images inside a wholly especial set of events during a set of days that had been laid down over a long set of years. In this case, that amount of days for the photographers was two, while the remains of the events they collected was over a hundred and twenty three!

While the photographer’s ultimate goal, that one where they attempt to collect the heart and the soul of their subject, is ultimately impossible, try they must. And try we must to support, for even the most lofty goal is important for the human spirit to run after.

Now take a peek at this one.

To get in contact with the photographer Guillermo A. Durán, email over to gds506 at gmail.com. To continue to fawn over his works with your eyeballs, take a look in the gallery below, then head on over to his official http://duranfoto.net/ internets.

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

Master of oddities Michael Gaughan had an amazing idea. He said to himself, “self, you know that movie Spinal Tap and how in the movie they never produce the original artwork for the album Smell the Glove? You should have an art show about that.” And thus he initiated it. To be held at the relatively new (1 or 2 shows deep so far, max) CO Exhibitions gallery in NE Minneapolis.* This show is to be known as the “Smell The Glove” show and is completely open for submissions. That’s hot. That’s amazing. There’s going to be so many submissions that it’ll be a stench of glove by the time the doors open.

*This location is literally one floor above Burlesque of North America and First Ammendment art gallery. Read these words written by Mike of Burlesque Design:

CO Exhibitions is located at 1101 Stinson Blvd at the corner of Broadway & Stinson in beautiful and historic Northeast Minneapolis. We are open weekdays 12-5pm and admission is always free.

The actual show is going to have a screening of Spinal Tap, a Spinal Tap cover band performing, and will have surprises! I hope the surprises include asparagus like the last CO show, I saw they had some in the pics from the show.

Love to eat that stuff! It’s so smelly.

SUBMISSIONS
If you’d like to see yourself be a part of this show, you can submit your own work!
Deadline – July 15th, 2010
To be mailed or dropped off at

ATTN Michael Gaughan / Smell the Glove
CO EXHIBITIONS
1101 Stinson Blvd
#12
Minneapolis, MN
55413

Medium: whatever you’d like. Any doubt, contact Michael or one of the fine folks at Burlesque and I’m sure they’ll set you straight.

SMELL THE GLOVE
Opening party Aug 7th, 2010
7-10PM
Spinal Tap cover band, movie screening, and surprises
CO EXHIBITIONS
1101 Stinson Blvd
(at the corner of Broadway and Stinson)

Michael Gaughan has several internet connections: first, check his youtube channel out at michaelgaughanicerod, then go over to his hot online portfolio of magic and paint. Then if you want to contact him, michael.gaughan@gmail.com is his email.

NOTE: Michael Gaughan graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the same place I graduated from. You know what that means? It means he rocks, and it’s basically like we’ve go the same blood. But he has more rock and roll in his soul. I don’t go around saying that about just anybody.

DOUBLE NOTE: One of the greatest things MG has ever done is make a band with his sister, a band which you may have heard of: “Brother and Sister.” I once saw them perform at the Minneapolis College of Art and design with a candy guitar – during the set, MG asked people to come up to the stage and lick the guitar as he played it. The entire situation was magnificent. If that’s any indication of what’s to come, expect greatness. The kind of greatness that only comes around every once in a while. Believe that.

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

With the greatest of ease. Actually they’re balloons, of course, and they represent the bubbles found within the candybar that goes by the name “Aero.” It’s a Nestlé Chocolate sort of bar, last I checked, and it tastes pretty alright. This commercial is amazing. It’s more than a commercial, it’s an exercise in glorious graphic activation and collection. Setting up the pins and knocking them down. Really, for real. The skateboarder in these images (and video) is the fabulous Bob Burnquist, a man I became familiar with a few years ago when the greatest game of all time came out: Tony Hawk Pro Skater. He’s part of a special family of those involved. But that’s got nothing to do with this, does it? Yes of course it does! All fate flows according to the will of the great magnet. You’d better believe it!

This man, this skateboard king Bob Burnquist is a special, special fellow, and choosing him to skateboard through balloons representing chocolate is always the right thing to do. Good job! The director of this video is “Skate Fairy” aka Ty Evans, a dude whose got an amazing track record and a mysterious presence on these internets.

He’s doin it right.

So these bubbles are the bubbles of an Aero bar. Buy a candybar if you love this video, I bet it’s trying to say. What it says to me is: balloons don’t slow you down when you’re skating a bowl, pipe, or wall, so using balloons to hyperize your movement in a skateboard video is completely a legit and amazing thing to be doing.

Fun, fun, so much fun.

Enjoy the video here and/or peek through the gallery below for some images to share with all your skateboard buddies.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies sk8terb8ters 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.

How does one flatten the world? Everybody whose working on artwork and designwork today is trying to make the world smaller for themselves. It’s making connections, taking confusion away from the world, figure things out for other people AND themsleves so that the environment they live in is simpler. The person we’re speaking about right here in this thread’s got the world pushed down and flattened – almost. Not that he didn’t make it the whole way, no! He stopped pushing right before the end to reach his means! This project is called “Foreshortened Space” and it’s done in wood by Ron van der Ende.

It’s brilliance.

Now this is wood construction, all put together, 3D, done so fabulous it’s an optical illusion. But it’s gotta be deeper than just that trick. This is gorgeous. Each of the works you see here are only the newest of a series of works that spans back a few excellent years now. Each of these works in the gallery are inside the last 12 months, most of them from 2010.

Then, double down! This guy mister Ron van der Ende has a very similar viewpoint of self-empowerment on the internets, take a read:

This website [http://ronvanderende.nl/] was built blogstyle in WordPress by Ron van der Ende with a homemade theme and some WP plugins (Fast and Secure Contact Form, Home Page Link, My Category Order, My Page Order and xili-tidy-tags). The theme was created with the help of this tutorial and a lot of playing around with the css style sheet). I think visual artists should consider taking charge of their own (web)representation as a natural part of their field.

And why not?

Its cheap, quite (but not too) easy and just plain fun!

As you may have guessed, http://ronvanderende.nl/ is where you can see more works by Ende. It’s a really simple, tops online portfolio. If you’d like to just mail him straight away, shoot an email to http://ronvanderende.nl/?page_id=148 – that’s his contact form.

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

So there’s this lady whose name is Erin C that lives in Troy, New York. A few weeks ago she was riding her bike down a hill, and a person in a car had their eyes closed probably because they pulled out in front of her and she basically nearly died smashing into and over it. Now she’s a fabulously talented photographer and stylist, and being the sort of person that people demand more in one season than the others, is in a bit of trouble, this being the top season for the things she does.

So!

What do we do? We have a FUNDRAISER. Not just any kind of fundraiser, a bicycle-ride fundraiser. So jump up. And do it.

The photo above is taken by Erin, and it’s a photo of her two little baaabies, Betsey and Riley. And you know what’s super fun? They’re going to be my nieces very soon! I’m marrying Erin’s sister Elizabeth in less than 2 months from now. Fun yes?

So that means Erin basically my sister-in-law, and she’s in trouble. So you’d better effing help her out or I’m gonna get so pissed.

Here’s some official info from TIGHT KNIT!, the Craft and Art organization that’s running the fundraiser and bike ride and all that fun stuff:

Dear friends,

Erin Colligan, a beloved member of the Troy community, avid cyclist and talented stylist at Indigo Organic Salon on River Street, was struck by a motorist on May 24 while riding her bike through the intersection of Hoosick St. and 6th Ave.

Erin suffered serious injuries including 4 broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade, 2 fractured spinal processes and a broken clavicle which required a steel plate to surgically repair the bone, found to have snapped out her neck, protruding the skin. Thankfully, Erin was wearing her helmet – found to have cracked in half when her head hit the pavement – which saved her life.

Erin is the mother and primary caregiver of her 2 daughters, Betsey – age 3 and Riley – 8 mos. As a result of these injuries, Erin will not be able to care for her children for 8+ weeks while she recovers. She will also not be able to return to work as a stylist during her busiest season of the year given this recovery time. The financial toll on this family will be immense.

WAYS TO HELP:

- Donate Money: Tight Knit has set up a donation link for friends and fellow community members to contribute funds in support of Erin during this tremendously difficult time. Erin has a mortgage to pay and children to feed and with no income, life is truly very hard right now. Please give in any amount you can – all donations made through the link below will go directly to Erin and her children.

- Raise Awareness: A bike ride en masse is currently being organized and will take place in the streets of Troy later this summer. Please stay tuned for details on time, location and how to sign up. “Share the Road” t-shirts, designed by Don Naylor Art & Design, will be sold during our Saturday market to raise additional funds for Erin.

- Share the Road: If you are a motorist, please be conscious and respectful of cyclists on the road. The same laws that apply to drivers of motor vehicles also apply to riders of bicycles in New York State. Reduce speed when encountering cyclists. Don’t tailgate, especially in bad weather. Give cyclists space and yield to them when they have the right of way. Pass with care. Have respect. BICYCLES ARE VEHICLES. SHARE THE ROAD. Had a motorist not taken the right of way from Erin, she would never have been hit.

THANK YOU!!!

Here’s the button for you to donate:

Or you can go over to the Tight Knit site and donate there. Same thing. Same button. All goes to the same place. Donate all your money. All of it. And keep checking with Tight Knit for more information on the ride.

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

Don’t you just love it when you discover a new artist or musician, love them, then find out they’ve got a new album or show coming out? I love that. That’s happening right now. The artist’s name is Marco Zamora, he does fantastic works in black and white with explosions of color, and he’s got a solo show coming up at gallery Miscelanea in Bercelona.

Above and below you’ll see a selection of paintings and prints that are indicative of what’ll be in that show. Flip out.

Zamora lives and rolls out in Los Angeles, California, but that show is definitely all the way over in Barcelona. He does paintings, drawings, and screenprints, all of them in a very similar vein. Street life, buildings, and people carrying bags are amongst his favorite subjects, all of them made juicy sweet with his ice-cream flavored color dings.

Sensory Overload
Solo Show
JULY 15th 2010
Miscelanea
c / Guardia 10
08001 Barcelona

Dings and dings and dings! Below you’ll find works he’s already done, this show’ll show more than likely a bunch of new works that expand on these. It’s like a fantasy of perfect blacks and whites and colors. I just can’t believe how magical this situation is.

If you’re in Barcelona… you know… go to this show.

And if Zamora is there, give him a high five for me.

To contact Zamora, email him at zamorart@gmail.com. To click through additional works of his, head on over to his http://www.marcozamora.com/ personal portfolio, http://zamorart.blogspot.com/ blog, or flickr photostream.

BONUS: He was also just in a show called “Totally Spoked” in Portland Oregon. The poster for this show was designed by none other than WFDJ favorite Aesthetic Apparatus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes a certain type of person to stand directly in front of another person they’ve never met, taking a photo of them and running away. That’s what Samuel Hervas does, he does it so good. And you know where he does it? Rome. He’s got this set of photos called “Tourists”, the whole set of photos taken in Rome, Italy, the whole set of photos taken of tourists walking all about the city. I went there one time and never saw Hervas, but I would not be surprised if he sneaked a pic somewhere or another in there. I ate lots of pizza and gelato.

When you live in a city like Rome, it’s difficult to take photos of people who AREN’T tourists. When you do, you capture the Italians waving their hand backward saying “chau.”

Take a peek at this whole set, then peek a look back at the rest of the works done by Samuel Hervas on his portfolio site. On that note, if you enjoy excellent and fantastic photos of city-centric scenes and people in those places, take a lurk on up to the search bar here in your upper-right and type in the city of your choice inside quote signs for good measure. If you don’t see the city of your choice, enter the city of your choice in the center top submit section that’s normally reserved for portfolios. Do it. Rock it.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

All you hellbound cats, let me tell you what the fanciest amongst you brings to the party with the Mad Metal Hatter – this teapot. Pour from it your motor oil and glasses of greasy slick. Sticking feathers in your butt doesn’t make you a chicken, but incorporating mechanics into your body DOES make you a machine. “You’re a machine, baby” my high school art teacher used to tell students when they seemed to be doing hard work. Designer Richard Symons is a machine. Designer Richard Symons made this coffee pot.

This “Robo Tea Pot” is only the newest in a line of fabulously constructed, molded, and poured in resin set of mechanistic sculptures by Symons. Each of these represents an alternate reality, one that we imagine now to be the future of our culture. This is what the folks who worked on Star Wars and Blade Runner would call the “Used Future.” One that’s not clean, smooth, polished, but closer to a semi-truck stop. Not dirty, but certainly functional. Dings, cuts, and chips.

These metal amalgamations work like the Death Star, or an H.R.Giger painting – model kit after model kit of boxes, circles, pads, bits, all for texture, aesthetics, and since it’s so simple to understand as hyper-overly-machined, the look of these pieces is in place simply to move the idea as an understandable one.

So, each piece, as an understandably “machined” object, then must be interpreted as the object it is without the metal. The teapot you see above? There’d be no reason to have all that machinery on a pot for tea. Then there’s the skull. Devil if that doesn’t say something about our modern world. Putting anything on a skull says something intrinsic about the human condition.

Take a peek at the rest of these here, then keep your ear to the streets for the new ones coming out in the future by Symons. Excitement for the machined-look collector culture!

If you’d like to contact Richard Symons, mail him through his portfolio website. He’s got these on sale, and if I’m not mistaken, he takes commissions too. And since he’s not the most famous artist in the world, these pieces are extremely reasonably priced. Metal.

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