Coming up shortly, I was requested to live draw at the Agenda Trade show in Long Beach for the Apparel Brand Lira. This piece was a test piece to calculate how long it would take me to start to finish on a piece as well as what materials would work best. As in would the markers bleed, how would they react to the material, and so forth.

This was a successful test run. Granted I could of invested more time in cleaner lines, but this was to see how long / how quick I could accomplish this piece.

Needed more time to make it look cleaner? This looks as clean as one can get. I want to hang this up on my wall.

swissted is an ongoing project by graphic designer mike joyce, owner of stereotype design in new york city. drawing from his love of punk rock and swiss modernism, two movements that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, mike has redesigned vintage punk, hardcore, and indie rock show flyers into international typographic style posters. each poster is sized to the standard swiss kiosk dimensions of 35.5 inches wide by 50 inches high and set in berthold akzidenz grotesk medium, all lowercase. every single one of these shows actually happened.

Swissted

It is awesome to see the different logos and the thought process behind the PBS logo. I wonder how long this process took, but it is great to see how iterative some designs can be.

Excuse the title, but I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to say. I love how some packaging makes you just want to put the item on display. In most kitchens you will find that people hide their kitchen goods in cupboards because they are ugly. However, give them something slick and they want to show it off. It appeals to the eyes and they aren’t ashamed to keep it right on the counter.

Simple enough concept that companies continuously fail at.

Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature, similar to the function of a 3D printer. I really enjoy the rich depth of the pieces and the optical illusion aspect, it’s such an odd process that results in something that’s both a painting and sculptural. Wonderful.

This is Colossal

Give a man a pen and an envelope and magic can happen. Mark Powell takes old and used envelopes and does unbelievable sketches on them with a ballpoint pen. Not sure why he chooses to use old envelopes, but when you are able to see stuff this great one shouldn’t complain about the canvas.

The Taj Mahal. The Great Wall of China. The Pyramids. All of these structures were built long before there was CAD software, bulldozers, and giant metal cranes. We take for granted the tools we have no to finish a project, but to think that some people haven’t been able to create what they want due to the limitations of tools amazes me. If the Egyptians can find a way to build the Pyramids and Sphinx then we should be able to figure out how to make mini-sculptures.

Fortunately, Joshua Harker is able to make his tangled sculptures and they are beautiful.

One of my favorite pieces of design is the London Tube map. Cameron Booth has taken the idea a step further and created a US Route map that covers the various routes (Route 66) across the country.

The latest in my series of transit map-style diagrams – this time, of the U.S. Highway system. That’s U.S. Routes (like Route 66), not to be confused with the newer Interstate Highway system (I-5, I20, etc.). Without a doubt, this is the most complex map of this type I have attempted.

Sometimes it is just best if I don’t say anything at all. Is this a serif?

via JazJaz

If you are going to make a new font for Chiquita Bananas then it only makes sense that you use bananas. Can’t wait to see who comes up with a mayonnaise font.

Today Braun is known for shaving supplies, but back in the 60′s and 70′s, they were an industrial design powerhouse led by the great Dieter Rams. In Great Gadget Designs of the 60′s and 70′s I showcased a lot of great industrial designs that featured a ton of Braun products. I wanted to really dig deep into the Braun catalog to see what other great designs I could find and I was amazed to see how clean all of their products were during this time period.

We must keep in mind that a lot of this stuff had never been designed before so Braun was leading the way. Now take the time to sit back and enjoy the design world of Braun.

9 SpotMonk‘s clever collection of quirky letterpress greeting cards are both minimal and memorable. These handsome cards are printed on recycled Kraft paper and are perfect for the quirky typophile in your life.

What can you do in 20 minutes? Not more than what can be done by Bre Pettis when he created the Cult of Done Manifesto. This is especially helpful to someone like myself who has ideas, but continues to put them off.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish, but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

via Brain Pickings

At my job I am tasked with having to figure out the messaging of a product. Sometimes this might mean I have to write a blurb of copy that is supposed to depict everything about the product and express the right emotion. This can be damn near impossible. Sometimes I like to think that playing charades would be easier in getting a message across. Words are so powerful and yet such delicate tools to use that when they are used incorrectly it can be very bad.

What if you didn’t have the ability to use words though? What if you could only use sounds and images? Would that make telling a story any easier? Probably not, but it certainly is possible and I have collected some videos that tell stories without the use of words.

After watching these it helps me to realize that although finding the right words can be difficult, anything is possible. If someone can tell a story without the use of words then I can certainly tell a decent one with them.

Olly Moss. There are some names you hear that it comes as no surprise to find out the person is talented. With a name like Olly Moss you expect something spectacular. Fortunately for us his talents live up to his cool name. Going through his portfolio is the equivalent of going through a poster museum.

Talking about the details is nothing new here at Drawar, but this piece of art takes things to a whole new level. With over 3,000,000 dots Miguel Endara is able to create a very life-like portrait of his father who he considers his hero. This really makes the times I spend a couple of hours on a header seem like a speck in the Universe. To top it off all of this is done with a single pen.