The Publics

(more…)

I recently wrote an article for the current issue of Elemente Magazine entitled “Aerosol Interiors“, which details the exploits of Graham Oatman - graf writer turned interior/graphic designer extraordinaire. Since finishing the article, I’ve grown quite fond of the wily yank and we’ve collaborated on a few projects here and there. The most recent and tactile of these collabos is the ongoing redesign of my century-old kitchen, which is being transformed through the science of design and the magic of “art” from a mess of vomity salmon pink nonsense into a cool n’ breezy Iberian-style la cucina.

(more…)

I was quite struck by DDB Berlin’s award-winning campaign for Funk Sunglasses “No one needs to know what you did last night” . The eyeball-narrative illustrations, which contain references to ecstasy, marijuana and cocaine, succinctly communicate the two following ideas:

(more…)

One of the most celebrated American illustrators of the 20th century, Robert McGinnis is best known for his era-defining film posters of the ’60s - the 007 films, Barbarella and Breakfast at Tiffany’s just to name a few. Before becoming involved in film, McGinnis spent the bulk of his career designing jackets for pulp crime novels, wherein he became renown for crafting images of sexy, intelligent and dangerous women - a fresh representation that helped reform the sexual politics of his time.

(more…)

Experimental cartography meets anti-corporate resource under the umbrella of slick web design with They Rule, a site that allows its users to seamlessly explore the business connections between America’s ruling elite.

From the site:

A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy. They are proud to rule. And yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye.

Remember that brilliant idea you came up with but we’re too drunk, stoned and subsequently hung-over and braindead to actually get around to doing?

Well, Argentina’s Yaia, ( aka Julio Cesar Battistelli), is the dude who acts upon those impulses and follows through with those brilliant ideas, crafting a cuttingly pop-toxic design style that represents all that is still holy about “street aesthetics”.

(more…)

Colors Magazine (often confused with Color, a skate mag produced out of Vancouver’s Railtown district) is essentially the propaganda wing of The Benetton Family, who own and operate numerous clothing brands including United Colors of Benetton and Killer Loop. If you can suspend your disbelief for a moment and view the magazine not as one giant Benetton advertisement and focus on its exceptional editorial content, Colors is one of the few magazines on the rack actually worth its asking price ($10). The latest issue, which opens with the sentence “Money is an illusion, a psychological relationship between an object and a value that has been given to it”, is an impressive achievement in content & design semblance that makes your average periodical look grotesquely unsophisticated in comparison.

(more…)

Democratic front-runner Barack Obama has personally thanked Shepard Fairey for his artistic efforts in a written letter and has commissioned the former wheatpaster to design this new “Change” campaign poster. This comes at a good time for Fairey, who is currently embroiled in a dispute with Baxter Orr, a freelance designer out of Austin, TX who has built a modest career off of “re-engineering” some of Fairey’s most recognizable works. Fairey has sent a cease and desist order to Orr and threatened to sue if the posters up for sale aren’t removed from Orr’s website.

The whole situation is a little too ironic for my tastes, but I guess we’ll have to chalk it up as yet another example of art-parodying-communism-imitating-capitalism turned art-imitating-communism-and-inadvertently-parodying-capitalism.

Click more to see further examples of Baxter Orr’s cutting-edge design genius.

(more…)

Founded in 1997, The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is a specialty cinema located in Austin, Texas that serves ice-cold beer and shows white-hot “movie-movies”. The Alamo is distinguished by its cult-friendly programming, which includes retrospectives like “Burt-A-Thon” (a night of popular Burt Reynolds movies) numerous signature events and frequent guest appearance from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Fred Savage. More posters after the jump.

(more…)

(more…)