Familytree is a small creative studio that got its start in 2008. Over the last few years their posters have been popping up in familiar places like, PRINT, Apartment Therapy, and Under Consideration FPO

I also came across this awesome process video of Alex Pearson in action. Combining rich textures and colors he cranks out a beautiful 1950s style illustration loaded with detail.

Get more Familytree

An odd coincidence that this is being posted the day Facebook goes public. Rob Sheridan designed the album art for the Social Network, and many other films you may have seen, and I’m pretty floored with how he went about it. He and Trent Reznor, one of the composers for the film, wanted to make the album art similar to the movie but also “wanted to make it weird”.

An early idea I had was to digitally corrupt the images we had from the film, combining a “glitch art” visual aesthetic I’ve always been interested in with a metaphor for digital images shared on Facebook, the corruption they’re susceptible to, and the corruption portrayed in the film. This idea resonated with Trent, so I began experimenting with different ways to destroy the publicity stills Sony had sent me.

Rob went into the source code of each image in a plain text editor, like Text Edit, and copied pasted and deleted code to create the effects seen. By manipulating the code of the images by hand he was paying homage to the hacker mentality at Facebook. Its the perfect marriage of concept and execution.

See more from the Social Network and more of his work.

Writing for a blog is no easy task, especially if you’re putting in the extra effort to write about something you believe in, something organic. If you’re a regular to The Donut Project, you’ve probably noticed an increase in posting over the past few months.

The Donut Project is about opportunity, serving up ideas and bringing to light new possibilities. That being said we welcome a new batch of talented guest contributors, young creatives, aspiring to inspire others and find their own voice in a larger ongoing conversation of inspiration, design, and opinion.

We’re excited to introduce Casey Sandala, Jason Richburg, Eric Courtney, and Todd Wendorff, each bringing their own fresh perspective to our blog, broadening our voice in the design community.

Stay tuned.

A few of us TDP-ers have been working on a collaborative playlist and we thought we should share it with all of you. The playlist is what we’ve been listening to at work and all of the tracks fall in the ‘Future Garage’ genre. Give it a listen, let us know what you think.

The first tablet most of us ever owned wasn’t the iPad. It was the Etch A Sketch.

A new project up for funding on Kickstarter, the Etcher is an iPad case with functioning Etch A Sketch knobs that turn your iPad into a real Etch A Sketch.

Etcher adds functional knobs to the iPad. As a user turns these knobs, lines appear on the iPad screen, exactly like the original Etch a Sketch. Improving on the original, users can save their drawings in digital format and share with friends and family over email and social media sites like Facebook.

It even erases when you shake it! (Just like Mitt Romney! :p )

Funding just started, so get one of the early-bird pledge-points while you can → Etcher on Kickstarter

I would hate to be the person behind this algorithm, I’m sure it was one headache of a math problem.
Using the building height and the sun’s path, Bright Light calculates where the sun will be shining at certain times during the day. This application could also be used to locate groves of Hipsters as they will all be in the sun, wearing Ray-Bans, and in big cities, as depicted in the video. I don’t know if I love wearing my Ray-Bans enough to go chasing the sun with my iPhone, but none the less a pretty ingenius application. Nice work Ray-Ban!

As a designer, he stressed, you should be able to design everything from a stamp to a battleship. Even after a client presentation gone wrong with Yellow Pages, his devotion and passion for typography remained contagious.

Enjoy a few slides from his presentation. His wit and approach to typography is a real aspiration.

“Develop the technology between your ears. Technology doesn’t make a bad idea better.”
—Tony Di Spigna

This week we have something a little different. Darq E. Freaker with Detroit’s own Danny Brown will get your Monday shaking. The video could be considered NSFW depending on where you work. Enjoy.

This small fire lane in an apartment complex’s parking lot is where I have been finding myself spending a good bit of my time lately. It by no means looks like any place to be inspired, but it has done just that.

This gravel-covered, unevenly-paved, broken-glass haven, has become my makeshift soccer field. And whether you have played soccer before or not, you must know that this is by no means, a soccer field. An ideal soccer field would be covered in well-kept green grass and have regulation goals and maybe even clearly marked lines. I have played on those types of fields for a good portion of my life, and have never gained as much as I have from the past few weeks playing in my small little hazardous nook of a parking lot. I’ve been forced to gain new foot skills, I’ve been challenged to keep more control, and I’ve learned the hard way to be a bit more graceful in doing so.

You may be asking yourself, why am I reading about this girl’s weird pastime in a parking lot? But stick with me, I have a point.

As designers, or creatives in general, we may always be aspiring for a golden moment to let our particular talents shine. The project that will get our name out there, or make our portfolio just that much better, or maybe even make us a lot of money. But this reject soccer field has reminded me and inspired me to take on the weird, runty, less-glamorous projects. Learn from them, gain new skills, be challenged to keep more control, and to do so gracefully. It is easy to make a good project turn out good… but it’s a challenge to take on a fire lane and make it soccer field.

Oh, by the way i’m Casey

Nesl is a neat and simple desk organizer created by a few students from the Cleveland Institute of Art. It’s durable rubber polymer fingers hold on to cords, pens, phones… really anything you can cram into it.

It’s currently being funded on Kickstarter, where $20 will get you a pair for your desk. Head to Nesl’s Kickstarter page and get yours. I’m crossing my fingers for some white ones.

I’ve been drooling over the trailer for the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi for months now. Jiro, considered to be the world’s best sushi chef, operates out of a tiny shop in the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. Although I haven’t made the journey to his restaurant yet (and I will by the way) it’s clear through the presentation that this is authentic as it gets. The humbleness of both the restaurant, which operates out of a subway station, and its owner is inspiring. Jiro is 85 years old and despite being the only sushi chef in the world to win a 3 star Michelin review he still feels he has not yet mastered his craft. As young designers we would do well to take a lesson from Jiro and remember to be humble and to approach ourselves and our craft as if we haven’t arrived yet, no matter our level of success.

Visit the official movie site here.

Another Monday, another video. Released last year this album has been getting a lot of spins at my house. Enjoy.