Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism

Attention writers, the AIGA and the Winterhouse Institute are offering prizes of $5,000 and $1,000 for outstanding writing about design. Learn more here—the deadline for submission is June 30th.

Colorware

Gizmodo periodically features Macs and accessories that have been painted by Colorware, and I'm sucked in every time. A laptop in glossy espionage black, sleek Ferrari red, or gleaming high-octane green just seems like it'd be irresistible to the touch. And what a cool branding emphasis for a small team of designers—if/when I ever open a studio my team will all wield Powerbooks (or at least iPods) in "wet". Anyway, for a moment of purely ridiculous inspiration, check out the galleries on the Colorware site.

Gnarls Barkley Crazy Video

Rorschach inkblot tests come to life in this beautiful and creepy and amazingly cool video from Gnarls Barkley (aka Cee-Lo and Dangermouse), directed by Robert Hale. Take a swim in symbols and imagery as the new single "Crazy" fills your head. [via Cool Hunting]

Happy World Design Day!

Apparently today is World Design Day... who knew? It seems most designers are too busy to celebrate... or even to finish the website. But the AIGA seems to know about it—they had a design contest in 2005. Anyone know more??

Tyler Landry: 100 Drawings

What a great way to showcase your sketch work online. Illustrator Tyler Landry takes his bits and pieces and turns it into an engaging exhibit of 100 Drawings.

Warrior Magazine Call For Entries

Warrior Magazine, a Montreal-based arts & culture magazine, is having a cover design contest. Entries are due June 1st—design*sponge also has details.

GelaSkins iPod Skins Call for Artists

GelaSkins makes iPod skins from unscratchable vinyl and works with artists around the world to put out cool designs. "They have currently have thirty designs to choose from and are always looking for more." Learn more. [via Gizmodo]

37signals Job Board

Web wunderkinds 37signals announced their new job board today, and it's shaping up fast into another valuable resource. They're billing it as a place for "companies looking for the best of the best in the online industry." 37signals are the boys responsible for the amazing Basecamp and Backpack online applications (among others), which people of all industries (from freelancers to CEOs) are coming to rely on to make their working lives much more organized.
The 37signals Job Board has been added to GDBar's list of job resources.

Imogen Heap: New Single With Bizarre Type

Imogen Heap has a new single out today (well, a new version of an older song, anyway) and I'm baffled by the type treatment on the album art. Zapfino and... ? Something semi-frosted? I fear this new weirdness will be appearing at an Urban Outfitters near you in the grim future...
Click photo to enlarge

Media Bistro Design Party

Tomorrow night (Thursday, April 27th), Media Bistro is having another of its periodic Design Parties for full-time media professionals (including freelancers) at the Happy Ending bar (Chinatown vicinity). RSVP is required via the Media Bistro site.

Absoluut Architectuur

Absoluut Architectuur is an annual book of architecture and design featuring the work of over 200 architects and designers, who are each given a disposable camera and sent on a mission to photograph their inspirations. The results are then compiled without filters or editing into a volume that claims to be a display of absolute freedom and "a book filled with ideas, different styles and emotions." The website features a clean, attractive animated navigation menu that, while serving as an cautionary exercise in clumsy functionality, is still worth a look.

Phaidon Design Classics

Phaidon's new trio of books showcases "objects that have shaped our lives and those of previous generations." Everything (well, everything pre-2004) from the work of Charles & Ray Eames to the Toblerone bar is covered in these weighty new volumes. [via Coolhunting]

Xyron Portable Printer

I must admit, the photo makes it look like some sort of cheesy clip art fantasy scrapbooking accessory, but Gizmodo reports that the Xyron Design Runner portable printer will be a useful tool for graphic designers. It prints directly onto a range of surfaces (wood, fabric) and can print fonts, so perhaps it will be handy afterall. Of course, they then go on to compare it to the old GameBoy printer, which takes things to a new level of goofy ridiculousness (I remember that gadget), but... I guess we shall see, eh? [via Gizmodo]

Mojizu Character Design Community

Illustrators and animators, get ready to delight in Mojizu, a "contemporary character design community" site. Unlike similar submission/community sites like Threadless, Mojizu doesn't claim exclusive rights to your submitted work. Instead, Moji aims to serve as a showcase and playground for character designers. There are cash prizes and small opportunities to make money, but mostly it's just plain fun. Check things out at mojizu.com.

Design for the Elderly

Gretchen Anderson of frog design has an interesting article on design for the elderly—how it's handled, how it's stuck, what needs to change, how design vs. reality ("Looking at products made for the elderly really says more about what product designers and manufacturers think the elderly are."). Though the article focuses on product design, this is going to be a wider design issue as the aging boomers slowly take over the world. [via Gizmodo]

Renourish: Green Graphic Design

Hey, did you know that the printing industry is the world's third largest polluter (behind cars and steel manufacturing)? Did you know that some Pantone colors are "safer" than others? Have you ever considered how you, as a creative professional, contribute to the depletion of the planet's resources? Renourish is a new online resource for graphic designers interested in "the development of a sustainable and more environmentally conscious graphic design craft." [via Coolhunting]

Pangrams

A pangram is a sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet—very useful for seeing the entire range of letters in a typeface. The good old typography standard is, of course, "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog" but there's no reason to stop there. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs! Or try one in french: "Moi, je veux quinze clubs a golf et du whisky pur." Just google the word pangram for page after page of possbilities, including the link above.

Owen Jones Online

For anyone interested in patterns and textile design (or block printing, or general flourishes, etc.), The Grammar of Ornament, the monumental 1868 book by Owen Jones, is available online at Illuminated Books. The plates are hi-res (gasp!) so you can actually make good use of them. [via Design Observer]

Slate Online

Slate Magazine always has something interesting to say about art. From slideshows on Hockney to staff critic Lee Siegel's irreverent podcast tour of the Met, Slate's worth checking out (do a search for "art"). Recent articles have included musings on what Dada means today, as well as reviews of the Munch and Islamic art shows at MOMA.

Flippies Flipbooks

If you've ever been to art school or do animation on any level then chances are that, at some point, you've made a flipbook. Flippies takes things to a new level by creating custom ad flipbooks that become promotional and marketing tools for clients. [via Cool Hunter]

Brooklyn Snaps Contest

Calling all photographers: design*sponge and BKLYN DESIGNS 2006 are accepting entries for Brooklyn Snaps: a celebration of the borough of Brooklyn through photography. There are many prizes to be won, not to mention some nice visibility... Entries must be submitted by Tuesday, April 25th.

UPDATE: Winners announced! Check them out at design*sponge.

Edvard Munch at MOMA: Extended hours

The Edvard Munch retrospective at the MOMA is apparently so popular that the museum is extending hours until 8 pm for the exhibition's final three Saturdays: April 22, April 29, and May 6. The exhibition surveys the entire career of the Norwegian painter, printmaker, and draftsman.

Animated New York

Gothamist reports that the blog Ironic Sans is featuring animated shows and films that have portrayed Manhattan. The Simpsons, Tom & Jerry, Antz... quite a range of styles (ha, and comedic styles!) are represented, from classic to hip to digital to the Hirschfeld homage in Fantasia 2000.

Art School Confidential

Sony Pictures Classics has put up a site for the upcoming film Art School Confidential. Based on Daniel Clowes original four-page comic strip from Eightball and directed by Terry Zwigoff (who previously adapted Clowes' Ghost World), the film takes place at a fictionalized version of Pratt and has an impressive cast including Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Houson and John Malkovich. Coming soon to a theater near you!

FontShop: FF Headz

Fonts... not just about letterforms anymore. Dingbatty* and pattern-generating typefaces* are popping up all over. FontShop's latest typeface is FF Headz, by designer and illustrator Florian Zietz. Individual characters combine to form complete heads. Illustrators will likely scoff, while designers who don't draw will enjoy creating faces for (granted, limited) use as iconography.
*previous posts

House Industries: United

House Industries has released a new font family called United. Partly inspired by unabashed G.I. Joe nostalgia, House says that United is "the largest-known U.S. font family ever released." You can purchase it, of course, but the thin stencil version is available as part of the free sampler. If you don't know House Industries, you should check them out (for the dingbats alone!)—they're much more than Tiki type...

Senior Exhibitions 2006

With graduation looming, it's time for seniors in design programs all over the city to show off their stuff. The trusty AIGA has a breakdown of which schools are showing when—shows start today and the last one ends June 10th.

Art and a Monkey

Table of Malcontents basically sums it up: "Pre-Impressionisme is an animated story about art. It involves a monkey." This cute animated short leaves me wondering where I can find my own little inspiration-generating monkey. Watch the film.

Airport Short

Iain Anderson's short film Airport consists entirely of animated symbols and info graphics. Check it out.

Thank You For Smoking

What a surprise it was to enjoy the film Thank You For Smoking from a design perspective—I'd heard the film was smart and funny (which it was), but it was creatively interesting as well as just flat out entertaining. From the cigarette-branding extravaganza of the opening title sequence (created by Shadowplay Studio and available to view online), to the quirky use of iconography, to blurbs of dialogue relating statistics about how consumers process info (I think he said that 80% need images to process while only 20% actually read type)... design is definitely part of the Spin. Worth a watch!
View trailer
Official site

UPDATE: Fontspotting: Typographica attempts to identify all the typefaces used in the Thank You For Smoking titles.

27 Animals

Here's a rare opportunity for visibility AND creative control: "The 27 Animals project will assemble 27 new or lesser-known graphic designers and put them to work showcasing the world's lesser-known animals." Throw your name into the ring by Friday, April 21st to be considered.

Cavern Wallpapers

Cavern creates wallpapers and interiors... and does some interesting things with patterns, color, animals and texture (not to mention their flash site). Call me a sucker for a wall papered with ghostly grey tigers, but there it is. Design*sponge has a nice showcase.

Doane Paper

While pdfs of Doane's combo stationery (ruled lines AND graph paper) have been available for several months, actual pads are now finally available to buy from the Doane Paper site.

GDBar goes tag wild at Ma.gnolia

Technology continues to make life more convenient: GDBar is now firmly established on Ma.gnolia, a social bookmarking site that not only allows us to increase our visibility, but also to conveniently tag all our posts by category. Want to find something specific in our archives? Check out our tag cloud.

A what? Tag cloud? Believe me, social bookmarking sites like Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us are great online tools that you should familiarize yourself with. By using these sites at work, we've been able to cut down on daily emails, consolidate our vast collection of links (both work related and ridiculously diversional), and wrangle tag categories into helpful areas of reference. These sites are useful, accessible and free.

At this point we've tagged all the forum posts (though the site has been around since July 2004, the blog forum has only been active since June 2005), and will be incorporating the resources and links into our tag cloud as well. We're spring cleaning here at GDBar, and may do some renovating—if you have ideas for improving the site or would like to help out, please drop us a line at info@graphicdesignbar.com.

(Seriously, check out the tag cloud...)

"I come here for design..."

"The great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else," says Michael Bierut in his recent article Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content. Posted on Design Observer (which is a great site, but also needs a legibility overhaul—don't get me started on the palette of brown background, tiny white type and yellow links... sigh), the comments fuel an interesting discussion about the needs, wants, roles and requirements of the working designer today, and mention some of the leading design-related blogs and forums currently online.

Taschen: Web Design: Flash Sites

Taschen is releasing Web Design: Flash Sites this month. Another in their popular $9.99 Icon series, it joins Web Design: Portfolios, Web Design: Studios and 100 Favorite Websites as the latest in Taschen's growing showcase of online design. And while we're talking Taschen, be sure to check out another new icon book: Signs, released in February.

Otis Book Database

A potentially amazing resource for folds, ideas and general inspiration: "California's Otis College of Art and Design have a huge database of artist books, tunnel books, experimental fiction books, pop-up books, concrete poetry books, miniature books, playing card books, copy books, visual poetry books, moveable books, flip books, comic books, folded books and more in a website that recently went live." [via BibliOdyssey]

Drawn: Illustration Spotlight

Having recently discovered the Drawn Illustration Blog, I am enjoying a daily dose of illustrated art—something that usually manages to inspire me completely by either offering a new and exciting drawn reality... or turning me off to the point where I get creative and start thinking about how I'd do things differently. The point is that decent illustration always makes me react, which keeps my design-mind cranking. Some illustrators that have made me think recently:
Alberto Vazquez
Dan McCarthy (stars, dinosaurs... I'm a sucker)
Rooster Iglehart (I love that he's added just a touch of animation—brings the drawing instantly to life!)
Jeffrey Fisher
Yamauchi Kazuaki (takes me back to European children's book illustration from the late 70s)

Baskin-Robbins Rebrands

Honestly, rebrandings generally baffle me. UPS, Kodak (mentioned previously here)... and now Baskin-Robbins. Granted, BR isn't quite a global icon or anything (though brand recognition in the US is significant) but this is a dramatic change to an old standard that has some nostalgia value. Not to mention a concept that worked—what American kid didn't want to try all 31 flavors? BR was a step up from the ice cream truck in kid sophistication. 31 flavors, in mind boggling combinations (I grew up in a pre-Ben & Jerry's era where the only mainstream flavor mashup came from those Neopolitan stripes). It was the idea of 31 flavors that sold it—in the new version, the 31 is too easily lost amidst the noisy typeface (too late 80s/early 90s/Bratz). Why, BR? Why? Speak Up has a more thorough exploration of this and a few other recent rebrandings.

Metropolis Magazine Turns 25

Metropolis Magazine celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special issue (available on newsstands now) looking back at "the catalysts that are responsible for today's directions in architecture and design." A companion show will exhibit from April 10-28 at the Art Director's Club and will feature work from 25 of the magazine's contributing photographers.

Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint 9

The IFC has released Drawing Restraint 9, the latest film from artist Matthew Barney. Fans of his Cremaster Cycle (and of his collaborator Björk) can read more via the Onion, or visit Björk's site for a full rundown.

Modern Heraldry

Speak Up's Marian Bantjes makes a somewhat bizarre case for a kind of modern heraldry, in which the established and intricate graphic language of original heraldry is resurrected for the digital age. The comments on her post make good points about the role of symbols in the modern world, the overlooked visual vocabulary in Japanese family crests (hello!), and the design process. Though I'm a little surprised by the general lack of knowledge about heraldry—seems people really don't learn history anymore, do they?

How To Feel Miserable As An Artist

Illustrator Keri Smith lays out 10 pointers for how to feel miserable as an artist... or, what NOT to do. We've all been here—see the comment session. [via Drawn] Also: Keri Smith's site

Kara Walker at the Met

American artist Kara Walker's new show After the Deluge is on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Walker, famous for her "exploration of issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the 18th-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes", explores "the transformative effect and psychological meaning of the sea" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the gallery of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (Modern Art) through July 30th.

Worldmapper

An adventure in info graphics—Worldmapper resizes global territorial maps "according to the subject of interest." Pictured above: worldwide rail passenger traffic.