Illustrator / animator Greg Peltz has a treat for the world. After having been inspired by a very similar portrait by illustrator Robert Mackenzie, who in turn was inspired by a should out to participate in a certain Star Wars Illustration Contest, Greg Peltz had to have been thinking he had some large, but cute, shoes to fill. And so he did. Three times he did it, and three times it’s loverly. Here we’ve got three fun and rather dapper portraits of Star Wars characters, one each of Chewbacca, C-3PO, and Boba Fett. Pip pip!

From Peltz’s blog:

Check out this amazing painting by Robert Mackenzie.

A victorian-style portrait of a wookie with a monacle? I mean, come on…that’s just made of win. I liked Robert’s painting so much that I had to make my own rip-off to frame and put on my wall.

You know what’s interesting about these paintings? That since Star Wars took place “A Long Time Ago”, much longer ago than our Earth and etcetera, in painting these characters in Victorian-Era garb, they’ve actually been modernized. Is this the opposite of turning a brand new computer into a steampunker?

These amazing entities are not for sale and I do not think they ever will be. But if you’d sneak yourself a little printout of your own and slip Greg Peltz a few bucks for all his super hard work, I think you’d not be remiss. Then of course, also follow Peltz’s blog for his further adventures in the design and animation world. It’s hot stuff.

June 27th 2010 update : Now there’s a Darth Vader Civil War portrait! What in the world? I’m gonna guess these paintings will continue to explode forth into the world as long as Peltz continues to get massive notoriety off them, so keep on clickin!

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

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.

Renaissance people are amazing. Andrea Hayward is a person such as that. Designer, artist, maybe even architect! Hayward is a master at whatever project in need to creative interpretation that comes her way. And what’v we got here? Keys. Lots of keys. The project you see above is called “Pure Gold” and is the newest in what I hope is a long series of key-grid installations, the first of which was just done late 2009. Upcycling yay!

There’s three projects here, all by Andrea Hayward, all done in the past year, the newest one being “Pure Gold.” The middle project is an untitled one, one I’d call “USED / TNAW” – this one was exhibited at a show called “UpCycling: Recuperating Past Lives” that took place May 8th – May 23rd, 2009 at the Tartar Gallery in Toronto Canada. Then the last, the oldest project is “Come Up To My Room.”

This last project has the most interesting concept, if you ask me, as it’s installed along a staircase and invites the user to interact with this subtitle: “the trade a key/leave a key/spare a key” and “Come Inside / don’t call me again.” Being able to take home part of any sort of installation art is always going to get a thumbs up from me. Love to collect. Love to have.

And how about the use of a single object in duplicate? The collecting and arranging and sometimes even the displaying of objects that’ve got a common denominator is one of the most important activities a designer can do to keep their skills at a peak. It’s next to creation in it’s importance. Having collected a stack of posters, and having practiced making posters for some time, these are the tenants of the house of excellent design.

Poster design, anyway.

Peek at these keys, for they are the keys to a fabulous installation project with a heavily amazing project with lots of potential to spawn beyond itself.

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

The ever-present paper we’re about to talk about is a prop for movies, television, and commercials. This paper has been around for 20 years at least, maybe more in real life. If you’re counting movie and television timelines, this paper has been around for over 40! My goodness that is an amazingly readable set of headlines. So what’s the deal? Is it a joke amongst prop-providers? Maybe. More likely it’s just the go-to set of words everyone in that sort of an industry goes to, sort of the singular public-domain newspaper if you will. Below we’ve got a collection of the appearances of this paper that a fabulous contributor by the name Katus* has provided us with. What an insane sort of search that had to have been done to find these, I tell ya.

This paper we’re talking about here consists of several parts, the most common element being the story about the girl, the girl’s portrait you can see in the majority of these screencaps. Then there’s other content that appears in different ways, printed in different columns, but always with the same text for at least the headline.

Some of these are:
“UN Debates Mideast Crisis: Hopes for Early Solution”
“Board Waives Hearing For Two University Teachers”
“Compromise Divorce Reform Measure Passed”
“Compromise Housing Bill Sent to President for OK”

The lady you see quite often goes with the ever-so-cute and quote-able headline “She’s 3rd Brightest But Hard ‘Gal to See”

Not so hard to see now, yes?

Any additions to this group of photos will be hecka appreciated, backlinked and have a gold star places upon their forhead, so get lookin and report back.

*Katus is a member of the webpage/community Sotozat Junkie, where most/all of these images were first contributed over the past year. Here at WFDJ, we were informed about a gallery that Katus had/has, a gallery which then links back to this. A lovely site for Hungarian pop-culture junkies. We know about that!

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

When I first remember the idea being thrown around that someday we’d have little to no print, that being a world where we’d be able to transmit all of our ideas digitally, I remember the word being “awesome!” there’ll be no waste! Right? Do you remember having this conversation with everyone? No need to waste ink, just use your computer to get all your info, save the world! But now we’re getting there. We’re maybe even within reaching space of eliminating paper and print in a major way, but wait! says we, wait a second! What about making posters and handbills, what about the neatness of having a piece of print in your hands? And what about all those hockey cards?

Artist Laren DiCioccio addresses this all in a big handful of teeny, tiny swoops with her extended “sewn” works.

Your brain will benefit from a read of DiCioccio’s artist statement:

My work investigates the physical/tangible beauty of commonplace mass-produced media-objects, most recently: the newspaper, magazines, office papers and writing pads, plastic bags, 35 mm slides. These media are becoming obsolete, replaced by the invisible efficiency of various technologies. In some cases, this transition is a good thing- faster transmission and distribution of information, streamlined systems, openness to user input, less waste. But a hole is left behind by the disappearance of these everyday objects. What will happen when we no longer touch information? When newsprint does not rub off onto our fingertips? When we no longer write longhand?

The tedious handiwork and obsessive care I employ to create my work aims to remind the viewer of these simple but intimate pieces of everyday life and to provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects.

What you’re about to view are the contents of two projects by the one known as DiCioccio. The first in the gallery is the “sewnnews” project. This is a project done over daily news articles, the New York Times to be exact – this project has been going on for several years now, only put onto the internet very recently. The newest works are from 2010.

Then you’re going to see a bunch of slides. This second project is known as “35mm sewnslides” and is done in a very similar vein as the news. But while the paper is sewn into a casing of hand-embroidered cotton muslin, the slides are instead embroidered directly onto the fragile bridal organza. In both cases, the final product has threads left to hang out in the wind. Loving, lovely strands of color.

Fragility, nostalgia, ritualistic beauty.

Currently Laren DiCioccio is represented by:
Jack Fischer Gallery
49 Geary Suite 440
San Francisco, CA 94108
www.jackfischergallery.com

So be sure to get in contact with them if you’re gonna want to get in contact with her!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies 3D category.

Holy carp. I would eat anything off this menu just to say I did. Look at the starkness! Designed by design duo “The Empty Page” aka Ross Teperek and Paul Robinson, this menu is made for a Leeds-based bar by the name of Nation Of Shopkeepers. Seems like an alright place to eat, yes? I do love being surrounded by artworks when I’m chowing down, that’s for sure. Design works are even better when they’re not overbearing. And if this menu is any indication, they’re not. They’re friggin fantastic and perfect all at the same time. Red. White. Bright. Lovin it.

Also included below are a couple more pages out of this menu the boys’ve designed, plus a small set of posters and etcetera they’ve got under their belt as well. They’ve got a nice sense to them, ay? I think they certainly do. They are based in Leeds in the UK, just incase you’re the type of person who likes to work in person with their designers and live right on over there amongst the gorillaz and sheep for shearing.

If you want to get in contact with team, email them at paul@theemptypage.co.uk or ross@theemptypage.co.uk and tell them you’ve got a wad of money just sitting around that you’d love to give them in exchange for their priceless design skills. I think they’ll be apt to keep some contact going, yes?

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

Let’s talk about an artist by the name of Glennray Tutor. Here is a guy who takes the most difficult of all painting techniques, and just keeps on doing it over. And over. And over again. Until he’s so good at it, it is just spectacularly unbelievable. And he’s got a painting in that movie The Blindside. No kidding! What’s featured above and below here in this post gallery are specifically a set of his collection paintings depicting marbles and fireworks.

Now, this guy is pro. He is so fantastically pro. Just a quick flip through this gallery, even a quick blink at the first image above will tell you that. And he’s still at it! Sometimes when artists get this good, they slow down and paint maybe a few a year, quitting up a bit to drive up prices or taking some leisure time because perhaps they’ve found themselves in their colors. But not this guy! He’s reelin em out, with no lack of quality for it!

Do you you have any idea how difficult it is to paint a marble? So hard.

Behold his newest set of them! And fireworks, too!

Take a look through this gallery (noting for fun the image showing where one of the prints of his paintings shows up in The Blind Side), then head over to his store where you can pick up some prints of your own! They’re utterly excellent I’m sure.

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

I’ve got a sauce jar full of buttons. I’ve got about a billion buttons, but only one sauce jar full of one-inch buttons. This is that. Let’s take a look through them, and keep in mind how SMALL they are, just 1 tiny inch across. If you wanna see what the button says, or what it’s got on it, you’ve gotta get all up right in the face of it.

In this collection right here, there’s somewhere around 70 buttons. And they’re all just FANTASTIC and THE BEST aren’t they? The ones with the squirrels on them are the ones I had made for the world.

This is a button… for the world… to give squirrels… to ex girlfriends!

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

Let’s talk about the mouse. The Mickey the mouse. That’s the one. He’s all over earth. He is everywhere, and he is forever. He is an inspiration and a muse for basically every modern artist in any sort of POP field, and he’s made millions and billions of dollars for at least a couple people, if not trillions. As you may be aware, WFDJ does have one story about the, ahem, OTHER mouse in the world on his mind-melding adventure, but not collections. Not until now. This is the biggest and fattest of the Mickey posts. It is a certified Neverending Post, and it’s starting right the mouse now.

From the small paper to the big screen, from the bakery to the playpen. From these internets to the dirty, dirty streets, and from the heart of the United States all the way to the slums of Shaolin. There is the mouse. His elements are spread far and wide. He is recognized all wide and near. He is the epitomouse-mouse. He is the top of mouse.

Below you will find a collection of Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mouse inspired objects, illustrations, and everything in between. If you have any images you’d like to add, please add them below, or if you’d like to submit them via email, hit the contact button above.

Let’s mouse it!

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

Behold a magnificent gigantonormous project from the graphic eyeballs perfection master WACKYSTUFF. What a fantastic name! What you’re about to look at is a project by him, one of re-purposed images done in a maximum style, a collection of images twelve HUNDRED deep! That’s one thousand, two hundred cards in this collection. Each card in this project is postcard sized, laminated, and has added deckled edges. Each of the images is FOUND, that means he didn’t draw them. This is POP. The project has a name, and it is “Metaphysical Graffiti.” Below you will find but a smidgen of the entire project, as twelve hundred would take a little bit too long to load.

In this post you will find one hundred and fifty four of the full 1200 cards, each of them with a missing element, the saying on each, those can be found on the cards themselves! Good luck finding those though, as they’re all already distributed to 1200 different people in the world! An example of one of these phrases written on the verso of the card is “Happiness is a Warm Gun” – this one of course goes with the card you see above.

The images I am uploading now are from a set of 1200 different cards I created for my project METAPHYSICAL GRAFFITI.

Each card showcases a FOUND IMAGE on the front and FOUND TEXT on the back. I didn’t draw any of these. Most of the images come from VINTAGE POSTCARDS.

Each 2.375 x 3.375 inch card was laminated and finished with deckle edges. They were printed in very small editions and given away. All that’s left are the images.

Applausition for you, Wackystuff! You are my hero for taking on such a huge project, executing it with such great craftsmanship and grace, not to mention you’ve got basically the best eye for keeping the right part of the image!

Bravo!

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

Let’s talk. I need you to know who Dan O’Bannon is. He’s one of the largest reasons the first Alien (1979) movie was written, produced, exists. He was one of the two writers on that film, and helped on it through production. Another thing about him that’s rather important I feel is that he was a good friend to H.R. Giger. The artist wild beast that is H.R. Giger is the one who illustrated the monster. Recently, I basically just found out, Dan O’Bannon passed on to death. This is a tribute to that man using his friend H.R. Giger’s artworks, the stranger wildnesses of the film, and the rarities that come from the darkness that is the evil corners of these internets. Be on your guard.

It is a strange legacy to have hit the world strongest with a film about terror. Instead of listing the positive, loving films O’Bannon’d worked on, let’s instead focus on this. The film Alien, basically the place where Dan O’Bannon shined brightest. He worked on a crapload of other things before and after, but this is the thing right now. Right now, nothing else is such a bright star. And in regards to what we, here, at World Famous Design Junkies push into space, there’s a lot of lovely, inspiring, and sometimes fantastically campy imagery, moving images, and sounds in there.

It’s a moment in history that inspired lots and lots of other positive things, wild things, and really really WEIRD things. And here they all are. All of them. Every single one.

DAN O’BANNON! Thank you for such a lovely thing.

ALIEN POST GO!

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

You know that terrible feeling you get when spring comes and everyone is all happy but you’re kinda bummed out because you can’t wear your big ugly boots anymore? That’s like kinda sorta the opposite feeling people who garage sale get. The garage sale people (and me, I’m one of them) get really pumped up. They go get their cup of quarters, their fanny packs, their walking shoes, visors, and maybe even their water bottle ready. They have all this stuff ready, and they get out there, and they buy stuff. They buy stuff they might never have ever thought about needing, and they pay 10 cents for it. The photo set you’re about to lay your eyeballs on is called “!GARAGE SALE!”, taken by Caroline Palla.

Photographer Caroline Palla had a hankering. A hankering for a journey of weird proportions. So where did she go? To AMERICA. Yes! Perhaps you’ve heard of the epic 127 Corridor Sale, the one that runs through the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama? Yes, she went there.

*I realize that “To AMERICA” doesn’t make much sense to the majority of WFDJ readers, so I think mentioning that artist Caroline Palla comes straight outta Zurich, Switzerland.

Read this mission statement, it’s excellent!

Garage sales are part of a do-it-yourself-culture, where people help themselves and create a parallel economy. My work traces this otherwise unmapped trade and reflects on the ever-changing value of objects under given circumstances. I create a document of every item before letting it re-enter the commodity circuit through my own garage sales/exhibitions, using a scanner or a camera. As the project progresses, other materials such as sales receipts, invitation cards, polaroids, texts and more documents are added to create a snowball effect. Each garage sale generates new material for an ever-growing image database.

The photos you’re delighting yourself in looking at here are only a small portion of the 120 photos in the !GARAGE SALE! extended set. Will we ever see all of them all? Please miss Carolina Palla please, oh yes, that would be amazing. Some gallery! I am looking in your direction.

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

Welcome yourself back to the ATARI 2600, one of the definitive moments in both home entertainment and interactive communication in our modern world. In these early years (1970′s, 80′s) of video game distribution, there was a bit of a learning curve. What should be done about advertising and branding these games we’ve got to sell, said the interactive masters of the day, the games are fun, but there’s no way we can use these little pixels as the covers of their packages! ZAP! There was a split. In this age came the strange world of describing not what was actually in the game,* but what you were supposed to imagine while you were playing it. *In most cases, that is.

Lets be straight up about this right now.

This gallery post is packed up full of ATARI game manual covers from the 2600, 5200 and nothing else. In this one product you will find the first voice of the game producer as spoken directly to the interactive-home-entertainment user.

This is inside the box.

Now take a look around in this gallery, and see many models. Along with the magnificent paintings and illustrations came several setups that lots of different games used. What you see above is an ever-so-slightly modified version of one of the more common layouts used by lots and lots of ATARI 2600 games. These black cover manuals have the title above, a picture in the middle, and copyright information below. Same font, same everything. It was embellishments that made the manual.

Notice then, will you, some of the impact and staying power lots of these books had. Take Donkey Kong for example. Look at that! It’s stayed basically the same graphics for hundreds of years! Then peel your eyeballskins back and experience the majesty of space travel with Space Shuttle – A Journey Into Space. And then there was Gas Hog, whose battlefield can only be entered one player at a time. Don’t worry, no Pitfalls here, only quality connections.

And for you Kevins in the audience, there’s Bounty Bob Strikes Back, which instead of being a book-type manual, folds out into a poster.

Also this sort of collection relies heavily on contributions from those with much more invested in the game. I’d like first to thank Atari Age, without a doubt the most complete and astoundingly devoted ATARI website this side of the internet. Go there for ANYTHING you might need concerning the ATARI phenomenon. Then let’s get into this list of other contributors: IHateMyScreenName, Retro Dude, Joe Kral, ewitch, SpaceInvaders, nickstone333, amster girl, Metal Misfit, djdac, DJ Romarcade, Amster, Meringues, Dionisio, PaperGhost, ZawTowers, Dimic, Hustler, John Mundy, Old Man Winter, Semper Novus, JBCurio, Willceau, Kuilman, Mr Phillip, and Old Man Musings.

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

Being a boy in the late 80′s and early 90′s meant that I played with action figures. Like most the kids I knew, I had TMNTurtles, legos, and all that fun stuff, plus a bunch of He-Man figures. I don’t know where they came from, I never even watched He-Man! But I know the characters because I had the figures. The man who did the poster print you see above and below knew his stuff. He was an AVID He-Man fan. He knows so much about He-Man that he hypothesized the history of He-Man and did this print: “Mr. Villians Class of 1983.”

Classy.

As you might already have guessed, every one of those characters there is a He-Man villain except for He-Man himself. He-Man is of course a dunce in this, he being the only one who does not like evil or killing for fun.

This image was made for an art show called “We’ll Be Right Back…After These Messages” that pays homage to the classic cartoons of the 80′s and early 90′s. Friggin neat. The poster print is an edition of 50 printed in the giclée fashion. You could even buy it I bet if you headed on over to the artist’s shop: Christopher Lee (The Beast is Back). I believe he has just a few left!

Print details:
Edition of 50, hand signed and numbered
Paper Size: 13″ x 19″
Image Size: 11″ x 17″
Paper Type: Hahnemuhle Torchon, 285gsm
Printed with archival inks

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

When winter hits the midwest, the boards go away. I’m talking about midwest USA of course, but this sort of thing happens all over the place. This particular brand of skateboard gets my engine revving. I found out about it from the designer Francis Pelletier who’s spearheaded the design for the brand. La Vie! Look at the class.

Making a brand, or modifying a brand for a skateboard company can be difficult. It IS difficult I should say, if you’re going to do it in a way that’s going to compete with the competition. Skateboarding and other X-Game sports have become a giant industry, so much so that it’d not been “underground” for twenty years now. To compete, you’ve got to be not so much unique as reliable. You’ve got to do a ton of things like sponsor good skaters and get your name on events, but more than that, your brand has to be powerful and worthy of trust. La Vie has that down right here. This is a nice set of graphic gestures.

Now all they’ve gotta do is everything else!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies Sk8terb8ters category.

A reduction in the excellent junk. That’s what this is all about. I am a collector of things. Tiny things, mostly, things that can fit on the tiny shelves we’ve got up in this apartment. The tiny things I collect come from the drawers, books, and boxes of people’s houses. They come from stores, from storage units, from under the boots of the average man or lady. I collect things that a design conscious person would blink their eyes three times at, in appreciation, adoration, or disgust. In this cleaning transition, photos were taken, one each for all of the 141 items taken off the shelf – several months of collecting.

Each of these items is from one of my wall shelves, about 3.5 feet long and 4 inches wide. Made it meself! Lots of these items come from the street (from countertops, businesses, friends friendly hands, or from rummage sales. Lots of trinkets and small moments of design smarts. Sometimes just silly things, but always a good gesture in social interaction.

If you’ve got any questions about the 141 items below, be sure to mention the picture number for easy reference. All photos taken on a roll of butcher paper usually reserved for rolling poster prints in for safe shipping.

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

For the grand price of $5 came this journal from 1886. In it is pages and pages and pages of simple accounts of farm life and amazing pagebreak graphics and horoscope pictures.

Gigantic ALIFE sticker still on its hard backing. When I was in Hollywood two springs ago, these amazing things served as bottoms of bags when you purchased clothing from the ALIFE store. (I got some checkered shoes, if you’d like to know.)

Amazing little man clock from the estate of a lady who lived on the North side of Minneapolis, one of the first buildings over the river. It works!

Coaster from the Zombie Bar in North MPLS. There’s weapons on the walls, living dead movies on the televisions, and the bartenders are dressed up as Shawn of the Dead. Nice display of prison shanks in the bathroom too.

One of several “Blank” cards included in the Harry Potter : Clue game. I’ve never been able to figure this one out. The other side says “Black.” Not part of the game.

Business card for Minneapolis print duo Aesthetic Apparatus. Other side has more info on their contact information. 100% Screen printed inks on medium weight paper.

The fun continues through twitter, email, and comments below.

The stash is here. Cliff Chiang‘s sent us in a box of fabulous flats. Prints from the streets of comicdom. Everything we need to start our insane Cliff Chiang collection! First, a set of Atomic Bombshells postcard-sized prints. Then, an insanely colorful signed print of the whole gang from Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Mortality (fear the Nazi ape.) Next, two more brilliant prints: Batman over Gotham and a totally bad warrior woman battling a minotaur that even if you don’t recognize, you’ll have to love. And the crowning jewels: prints of both the Electra/Flashdance record cover AND my favorite Batgirl/Purple Rain.

Holy crap these are fantastic.

If you’ll remember right, you’ll know we covered the 12″ series a few days ago, and it promptly exploded all over the internets face. [Batgirl Is Now Prince]

Now check them, and the friggin rest of the riggin in the gallery below. Notice the most excellent printing on these prints. I’m a screenprint man, so I’m pretty harsh on the giclée prints, but these, these, holy crap they are finely done. They’re bright, they’re correct (the colors are very TRUE), and the quality is quite fine. The Batman and the Minotaur prints both have a chop, which ads a whole other level of quality.

Makes them look real pro, if you know what I mean.

A “chop” is sort of like a stamp, but instead of laying down ink, it’s got two parts, both metal, that when pressed together on paper, make a 3D mark. The paper is pushed outward in whatever design the artist has chosen. In this case, it’s Chiang’s box signature. Super!

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

Thanks to well-written fellow collector of lovely ideas Yorath Roth from Letters from Berlin, I’ve re-discovered my favorite sticker from my travels overseas! I live in Minneapolis now, and my trip was to England (Alnwick, London), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), and Italy (Rome). More than likely I found this in either Rome or Paris. I believe it was Paris. There was a bit more graffiti there than in Rome if I’m not mistaken.

In celebration of this discovery, this post is a small compilation of photos of the stickers I put up in Paris myself! Yay!

Ohh I bet you thought this page was gonna have something German in it! Well, jokes on you, basically everything has a little bit of German in it. What this post DOES have is the small group of photos I’ve got of the stickers of mine that were all the way up in Paris.

Circa 2005.

I may or may not have put squirrel stickers up in the bathroom of the Louvre, on the streets, in the hotels, on that 7 foot tablet in the middle of La Grande Arche de la Défense, and under the railing at the top of the Eiffel tower.

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

Hey baby get up on this right here. This project is titled “Don’t Believe The Type”* and if simple looks are first looks are simple looks are final words, this is tight. Discover how explosively 3D and graphicky-modern type can be in these examples. I’d LOVE to have a stack of stickers of these amalgamations. Designed by none other than Marta Cerdà Alimbau herself. Such glitz, such magnificence.

*the project is called Don’t Believe The Type because it’s part of an exhibition of projects all called that too. Check out the description right abouts below this.

Project: Collaboration for the exhibitions of www.gofonturself.com.au and for the Ship of Fools exhibition “Don’t belive the type”. I tryed to make a tacky, kitch, vulgar and acid piece, where we can read some lines of the world we are living in. Very aged and retro, as if it was part of an old ridiculous civilization, allready dead. We try to make letters beautful, more attractive, more visible, when many times, consciuos or not, the content of the message we’re working on is totally wrong. This is an exaggeration, it’s not ment to be a beautiful typographical piece, it’s more a personal refletion.

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

This post is a collection of hundreds of Star Wars photos from the set, of the movies, and from the promotional shots of the 70′s and 80′s. Doesn’t matter how you feel about Star Wars, it’s affected the way you work. The world you live in today is the world you live in today because of Star Wars. You’d better believe that. Its basically like this: Luke Skywalker: New York, Princess Leia: Los Angeles, Han Solo and Darth Vader: Minneapolis.

These have been scrounged from all over the internets. If you are one of the photographers of these phantastic photos, shoot me an email or a comment here. If you’d like to take credit for bringing an image here to the internet, I give you a hearty thank you and internet hand shake. If you’ve got photos you’d like to add to the collection, feel free to also contact!

This post is composed of photos from the movies, (the original trilogy,) making-of photos, a few posters, products, and advertisements. MOSTLY it’s photos from cut scenes and promotional photos. Everything is super amazing and very wild.

Star Wars: one of, if not the greatest non-Jesus brands in history.

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

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

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

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

Oh it’s real, mama, it’s really real.

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

Yes that’s it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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