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.

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

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

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

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

Hot stuff.

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

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.

Here’s a DIY project of ease and excellence if ever have I seen one. Designer Fabio Parizzi had the idea to print using nothing but sunlight. How would one do this? One would have to use something that acts as a stencil, the sun to shine through the stencil, and a surface that would agree to fade on command. What Fabio Parizzi has done is make a poster using this concept saying “Every Thing Appears Out of ****- ***”.

The blank spots representing the word “nothing.”

While most posters are made by adding material to paper, this one is made by taking away. That makes it opposite. Also a way to take this sort of project further would be to keep track of the time the sun hit the poster: temporal invisible ink!

This reminds me of another fantastic poster project whose creation process is quite a bit dirtier. It never fails to amaze me how many different ways to make a poster there are that have NOT been done yet. Get to work!

A celebration of the sun!

Sometimes you need to design a mark for a Finnish Heavy Metal band. Well you know that the greatest heavy metal logos of all time look basically the same. Metallica and Judas Priest, Slayer and AC/DC, and of course KISS. Look at them all. All basically totally the same. Sharp and shiny, a 3D version and a flatfaced version. And today we’ve got RECKLESS LOVE by designer/artist James White.

Now this sort of madness is simple to do once you’ve got a nice typography set in place, but you’ve got to know that the type is vital. The type is like the metal in heavy metal. If you don’t have the metal, all you’ve got is the heavy – and then you’re Marty.

This band we’re talking about here is Reckless Love. It’s reckless.

Olli (the lead singer) and I started hammering through the logo style, which went through a few different versions before we settled on the final design. We both wanted something big, like Metallica or Judas Priest, but still captured the fun of the group’s sound. I posted a few of the different iterations above to show how the process went, from the stripped down vectors to the final renders. As for the cover of the single they wanted something bright and colorful, which I was happy to hear ’80s metal goodness.

Check all the different iterations below and decide if you can see the one that’s final. Hint: it’s the one at the top.

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

Above and below are a couple examples of fabulous inspirations for the Reckless Love title mark design. Note that they’re from different ages in each of the bands’ histories, but they’re all part of the overarching identity.

This duo of images is officially part of the “Hero” craze, they being the cover of a “collectable” case for DJ Hero’s Renegade Edition. Eminem and Jay-Z have tracks on this edition of the game, and they hired Studio Number One to whip up a lovely image of these two legendary music making faces. No word on if the images will be produced anywhere else but on the DJ Hero ephemera, but DO expect them to maybe make an appearance in some fine art in the future, as Shepard Fairey like to explore all options with images once he’s done the illustration work. Colors, mediums, rubyliths, everything and anything.

Below you’ll find an extended collection of the portraits Shepard Fairey’s done inside and outside the Obey Giant street art campaign. The portrait making of Shepard Fairey started all the way back in 1989 and continues till today. Some portraits have the person as the subject matter (like Jay and Eminem above, Joey Ramone and the Notorious B.I.G. below), while some others have the portrait “hidden” in the poster (the Pretty Vacant poster below has a portrait of musician Marc Bolan (source being a record album with him on the cover: T. Rex’s 1972 “Solid Gold Action.”)

Check em all out!

This post from the World Famous Design Junkies Celebritarianism category.

Marc Bolan and others on Pretty Vacant Posters

Joey Ramone and the Notorious BIG

Subcomandante Marcos and Tupac Shakur

Michael Jordan and Barack Obama

Huey Lewis and Jimi Hendrix

So I went forward into the year 2000. Forward into the FUTURE. And I found this amazing bit of jewelry made only for the future. You will never see this kind of fashion again! Or you might see it again if we ever get to the year 2000. Maybe then. I’ll tell you how much I bought it for, too. I bought it for one Future dollar. From the future. Believe it.

When I was in the future, I found this particular bug pin in the greatest future store in the world. That store is Ax Man Surplus and Future Supplies. You should check that out too if you’re in to amazing things and whatnot.

Meanwhile, let’s discuss this amazing object! It could change the world. It was made in China. That means it’s quality product (from the future). It’s © Weingeroff Enterprises. You know what that means. Quality. And what kind of bug is that, exactly? It’s a beetle. I don’t know much about beetles, but I know this one is gold, and was probably worshiped in ancient Egypt. But now it’s the future, so it’s got a computer chip on it.

AND THAT IS FASHION.

This post is picked by hand from the World Famous Design Junkies Accessories category! You know you need accessories if you are going to be part of the fashion scene…

OF TOMORROW!

Creatures of the Night! This lovely fashion photo set was arranged and shot by Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov. They’ve got the eyes. This shoot was done for portfolio ammo only, not for a specific fashion brand in particular (though I bet you recognize more than one item here.) Just imagine a brand being assimilated onto the person holding it, yes! Yes! My brand is best! These bags and shoes, they are me!

It is shopping paradise!

It is fashion paradise!

Fashion Assimilation is the alternate title for this post, but I was feeling for the Rocky Horrorocity of that golden shoe there. The project’s title itself goes by the name “Magic Touch.” Lovely, isn’t it?! I must mention that although these are primarily photography and paints, aka analog features, there is a tiny bit of “photographic retouching” done. I’m sure your intarnets super-trained eye can pick out the pixels.

But for now, bask in the lavishness!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies fashion industry.

Hard to pronounce, lovely to behold, Tjep Design does it hard. What we’ve got here is a bona-fide power necklace. A real bad pendant for your big chain. Real b-word in the flesh. That’s what it’s called: the “Bling Bling medallion.” Frank Tjepkema is the main mind behind this lovely conglomeration. Brand on top of brand inside behind and next to brand. Silver alloy / gold plated – 8 x 9 cm of power.

Frank Tjepkema: ‘This medallion is the most branded object in the world, (hint: imagine the money you can save on brand clothes by wearing just this item).’

Precisely! Brand is not something we don’t take lightly around here! Brand is a joke, and it’d better be, because anyone too far up in the clouds has a brand “lost” in my book. Brand is something you whisper, something you wear, something you see and something you talk about but when you go to sleep at night, take the brand off. Sleep in peace.

Thank you, Frank Tjepkema for this fabulous creation! If you want to send me a free copy that’d be just excellent!

Because of this lovely bit of pendant, World Famous Design Junkies now has a real live accessories category. If when you read this, this post is new, there wont be much there yet. But patience! Surely it’ll be full before long.