Back in 2008 a project by the name of “Designer Gas Masks” was released by Diddo Velema, and with the perfectly tuned details on each side of each mask and the feel made right from start to finish, the artist fooled the web. You’ll find both Louis Vuitton and Gucci masks here, both of them ready to be displayed right up front of an anchor store even here in 2012 – they’re timeless. Don’t let yourself be fooled – they’re not made by the real brand beasts – but they are definitely fabulous.
There’s a bit of a hardcore artwork movement going on that’s been hitting the graphic design addicts of this planet for the past several years. Even before the techno dance revolution hit the pop radio spectrum, there was a really hard collection of colors out there beating up people’s eyeballs. If you were looking at the beginning of Tumblr, you saw this madness – here you’ve got a bit of artwork from a designer / artist by the name of Dobbeldenk.
The manifesto of this person, unnamed, aka Doppeldenk™, is as follows: Continue reading
Oh so you don’t know who Pharrell Williams is? You LIAR! He’s a dude. For basically a billion years now he’s been producing music with his pals in Star Trek, they all make music in the band N.E.R.D., and they all bump up the brands BAPE, Billionaire Boys Club, and Ice Cream shoes. Two of those three are owned by them, or at least Pharrell, and the third happens because Pharrell’s got a sweet deal with Nigo. It continues now! He’s got a new watch, N.E.R.D. is playing some music at an air base, and Terry Richardson took some flash photos of Pharrell and Lupe Fiasco. I know you love these things. Continue reading
If you know anything about television, you know that Conan O’Brien has been on television from 1993 till 2009 with a relatively popular show called Late Night, then a slightly less well known show called The Tonight Show for a faithful few episodes before he parted ways with the National Broadcasting Company in 2010. Now he’s got a show called “Conan” where, as he puts it, he’s a lot less likely to get replaced since the show’s title is also his name. Conan seems to me to be a really nice guy, and judging solely by the numbers of people who watched his first show under the “Conan” title, lots of other people seems to think he’s a really nice guy too, one who should definitely, definitely keep doing a show with a masturbating bear in it forever and ever and ever amen. Continue reading
Behold the weaponized hotness. The fabulous electronic guitar duo Ratatat are on a world tour and they’re coming to First Avenue, thusly there is a concert poster for it. Illustrated by Chris Burns (yours truly) and distributed without official clearance. Free bullets of musical magic for sale today. Continue reading
Detach yourself from the dirt and the grass and the sand and the bullets and the buildings and the entire war landscape, looking at then the tank. The tank and the truck and the car. The most excellent (despite their death-dealing) automotive machines from the second world war are here, in full color, taken out of context for a beautiful vision of engineering mastery. These are the photographs of artist Jim Naughten, a photographer with some amazing eyeballs and sense of space. Continue reading
We live in a state of flux. This year, 2010, there are people doing all sorts of work. Whatever they can get, in basically every facet of trade and service. While only a few years ago I was informed by a professor at my college that there was no way a designer in my generation would be able to work exclusively off-line, with no internets, now it’s apparent to me that there’s a shit-ton of people doing just that, and not only in trades like carpentry. Let me show you a guy who, although he doesn’t appear to work exclusively non-computer, definitely has a heavy handle on working without the mouse clicker. This is the hand-made lettering work of designer Jordan Jelev, aka The Labelmaker. Continue reading
Drodding about the internet helped me happen upon the image you see above this sentence. It is a high-quality patch made in the real world reflecting the alternate-reality depicted in the 1986 story “Watchmen.*” This patch is presented by The New Frontiersman Watchmen fangroup, made by the people who were in charge of promoting the 2009 Watchmen movie, I’m pretty sure. Inspired heavily by this excellent manifestation of what was and what wasn’t, I went on a hunt for other, more “real” patches from the Vietnam war, as worn by the real soldiers on either side of the conflict. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
It’s that time again, that time when the whole world (surprisingly, even the USA,) is embroiled in the heat of futball madness. It is the World Cup of soccer right now, and we’re getting down there in teams already. USA is out, Britain just got beat by Germany by about a billion points, and Ghana’s advancing toward the goal. Then there’s the losers. The people who totally got destroyed, and only one person’s to blame. The goalie. Always with the goalie. Of course, it’s them who saves the game as well. It’s never easy being the highest commanding officer in front of the net, and photographer Bill Cramer knows this. In this recent set, Cramer sets eyes on the prize, depicting the the world of füssball with a female goaltender with a fabulous jersey in orange, white, and red. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
It puts the lotion on the skin? No. Put shoe on head? Yes. The following is a set of selections from graphic design group Akatre‘s photo project “Mains d’Œuvres” – Series pictures for annual communication. They take these photos, yes, then they print them up and mail them out as “mailers” – communication papers to their former and current clients, friends, and maybe even family. This is not only a perfect example of taking the basics of one’s life to an extraordinary level, it’s also just the sort of pie anyone could make to fly over the pages of the entire internet overnight. Continue reading
In promotion of his graphic design and illustration business, FENiks has whipped up this excellent rendition of everyone’s favorite boy king of Egypt. Tutankhamun is represented here as being the world’s first fashion victim. I would argue that it was Adam or Eve, though, with those terrible leaf coverups. Those were the worst. This graphic is meant to promote the skills of FENiks as well as spread the word that FENiks is rad at character design, and can represent even the eldest posse. Continue reading
Hoozay! Artist / designer / illustrator Michael Fleming, hereon referred to by his artist name Tweedlebop, has completed his alphabet of strange and/or little used Star Wars characters. What makes this one unique is the use of the “Aurebesh” alphabet, a Star Wars specific alphabet that was originally used in the original SW trilogy randomly, developed in 1994 by RPG (Role Playing Game) designer Stephen Crane at West End Games in the book “Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion (1994).” It was later used in the prequel movies, then edited into the original trilogy in the Special Edition releases, all according to the rules Stephen Crane created. Cool! And now Tweedlebop is using the letters correctly as well, in two ways on each card! Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Italy, Netherland, Amsterdam, all the good places. Thats were these geometry-loving graffiti artists operate. I name KURZ and CT because they’re the easiest to identify here without knowing the names of everyone in each of these crew paintings. A few more are listed below. What’s important is that these are utterly splendiferous, a real testament to the state of things on… the streets… because these things don’t just take five minutes to toss up. These aren’t bombs, that’s for friggin sure boy howdy. Continue reading
So Stussy, international streetwear brand and pioneer, all that neat crap, have begun a collaboration with MTV owned Ren and Stimpy brand. It’s a singular t-shirt, one of two they’ve made – one came out last year, you’ll find that at the top of the gallery below in black and white. See the story on 6.21.10 at Stussy Japan. Now I love that they’ve got their eyeballs on something I hold so near and dear to my heart, but in my grand opinion, they approached the wrong group. MTV owns the rights to most of the Ren and Stimpy artwork, but the creator, John K, is still alive and still has the skills of a heavy cartoon master. Below is what I imagine might have happened if they’d gone the with the K. Continue reading
Photographer James Dodd presents this “LRP” titled group of images. In these photos you will find a brief glimpse of the world that is Live Role Playing. The people who participate in LRP games are called “Larpers” and make it an epic event to travel to a single meeting place dressed in full garb, using weapons of steel or plastic, cardboard or paper mache. Given a set of rules, point values, and boundaries, they play games in an alternate universe. An alternate universe where people have fur and green skin. LRP for life. Continue reading
This is the first time World Famous Design Junkies has covered anything made by Little Thunder 門小雷, so there will be some extra details so you know who she is below. In a nutshell, she is a comic-style illustration artist and designer who also does Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Do you know what that means? It means she’s open to doing all sorts of radical things! In today’s post we see Little Thunder 門小雷 at the Hong Kong 2010 International Licensing Show, showing some lovely 3D items including models of her work and some SUPER CUTE pillow creatures! Continue reading
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. The Greatest Show on Earth. Al G. Kelly and Miller Bros. 2nd Largest Circus. These are the dirt and mud spawning beds of some of the most fantastic poster design in the history of the world. I’m drawing a line in the sand here, a circus line. One that clowns honk their lives on. Lions and tigers, trapeze artists, acrobats, and everything else they could fit inside three rings and a whole mess of tent. This is a poster collection consisting of the Princeton University collection of American Circus posters PLUS a whole mess of additional posters as wrangled up from collections across the internet, including of course the US Library of Congress – our friends! Continue reading
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. Continue reading
The prince of darkness and peace-loving drug abuse has his own health column. Yes. You can find it at Times Online if you dare, in the HEALTH section. Not the entertainment column, or even the offbeat tear-away section, nay! For real, health and fitness. This first column tells tales of Ozzy’s visit to an incredulous American doctor and some nice clipppies about him being a first-class hypochondriac. What a weird world we wiv in. Continue reading
Hello world, have you been to London? In London, Adidas has several stores, one of which is there just a bunch of boxes with shoes in them, showing some of the more fantastic collaborations and celebrations the shoe co has done. Today, Adidas STEPS IT UP a NOTCH with this fantastically epic Star Wars video made to prep the universe for an “intergalactic” 2010 FIFA World Cup™. Chilling in the Mos Eisley cantina is a rogues gallery of Adidas affiliates including some you’d never expect. Continue reading
So graphic design and poster printing team Aesthetic Apparatus is ten years old. …wait a second, weren’t they ten years old LAST YEAR? Yes, yes they were. That’s why there’s an exhibition at the MCAD gallery here in Minneapolis that’s going by the name “AAXI: A DECADE OF AESTHETIC APPARATUS, ONE YEAR LATE.” View MCAD-approved photos of the opening night below. Continue reading
It’s what you’ve always wanted. The world over the past forty or fifty years was/is so full of kitsch that I don’t doubt that we’ll never stop “uncovering” treasures such as this ruby you’re about to swallow. The Bay City Rollers sing their hit single “Saturday Night” in front of an audience of elderly citizens who are so excited to be there it is unbelievable. And wait until you see the lady knitting! Continue reading