I love the mind behind these great designs. Make sure to explore the whole Glennz Blog for more brilliant designs - or simply buy one you like on his site or check out his huge portfolio of T-shirts on threadless.

A nice series of wallpapers by Hybridworks from Japan. Make sure also to check page 2 for more yummy illustrations.

Now I am hungry.

I am a big fan of simplicity and minimalism - and this cover perfectly unites these two design principles. Great work!

Still looks very modern, like the duo tone setup and composition. I am just wondering if that was a generic template they would reuse for every great leader? Can’t wait for the Putin version …

Too much artistic power was wasted in the time of the Soviets for stupid propaganda. But this poster still is looking great and very modern.

I very much preferred Apple’s marketing when it was based on it’s own technology instead of constantly bashing the PC / Windows.

Today it’s way too much focused on lifestyle or labeling PC users as stupid. Don’t tell I am an idiot because I DON’T use a Mac - you are not making any friends with me …

I am in paradise! The good people at covers.fwis.com offer a huge collection of book covers. An excellent resource for designers and people looking for eye candy.

Excellent cover design - especially considering that this was 1973 and Photoshop didn’t exist.

Click image for larger mountains.

These old pulp magazine character have that naive and totally politically incorrect adventure spirit. White male and his halfnaked damsel(s) in distress against the rest of the world.

I love it!

Thanks to Lisa for sending me the link to the great Stagworld Website.

I am pretty sure you many of this great Maestro’s artwork. His movie posters are legendary. His style is breath taking and often reminds me of ‘Jugendstil’ and the great Alfons Mucha.

But please judge for yourself - and visit this great gallery of his work.

More? Wikipedia entry

I love Ron English - nah, not just for his Cowgirls. He has pulled of some great stunts and created MANY impressive pieces of art. Take some time to visit his great site and discover the many sides of this great Master of wild ideas.

Especially his wacky Billboards are brilliant! Make sure to click through all sections to find some of the better ones deeper into his site.

Overall I am udderly thrilled about this stuff!

More? Official Site or a quick glance at some of his work (with many Udders)

Thanks to Edosan and Lisa for sending these in.

Click image for a bigger propaganda message.

I always loved Rodchenko’s work - although I am not a big fan of the Soviet System. But it’s all gone and all that’s left is the art.

Ah, they don’t make advertising like that anymore - today it’s even worse! Sometimes I wonder if there is any product that can’t be sold with any sex attached to it?

Maybe grave digging?!

This Robot looks like Bender from Futurama. I swear!

Boring 3D has LOADS of charming, funny and very cool 3D moments. Just have a look at this archive and you get my point. It’s just brilliant! I like the mind behind it - Jimmy Maidens - who has a wicked humor and great sense for drama and composition.

Looking forward to more of this. Enjoy!

What a wonderful site! If you like collages and great art this is the place to visit: nshakespeare.blogspot.com. He has a wicked sense of humor as well as a keen eye for great art. His artwork connects with our daily madness in every aspect. He shows scenes from politics, media, sports, spirituality and sexuality.

I especially love this series of collages with two guys playing cards and drinking wine - not matter what happens around them. This is fabulous!

Enjoy!

I am usually not into desktop images and other computer gimmickry - but it was a great pleasure to explore this huge gallery of illustrations of many talented young designers.

To RGB or CMYK - that’s the Question!

You are a person with many interests and many skills? You love art, you produce art - but you also live with a huge pile of creative guilt? Welcome to the club! It’s hard to be a digital artist, since your computer enables you to run amazing tools - which have been unthinkable twenty years ago. A creative powerhouse in one small box.

Wanna make a movie? No problem use Adobe Premiere or AfterEffects. Are you a graphics person? Your choice is vast and wide - Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand, Painter - to name but a few. Wanna go 3D and do amazing effects or animations. Once again the list boasts absolutely amazing tools like Lightwave, Maya, 3D Max.

Oh my - you are a creative person! Wow!

You make music and love to sample and tweak sounds? A small feat these days - cool software is cheaply available, even Star Wars was remixed on a simple PowerBook using everyday digital tools and even great modern musicians use the same Samplers, Synths and Sequencer like you do.

Not to forget our good old writing tools to produce anything ranging from articles or complete books! You can go from a simple solution like Microsoft Word up to publishing powerhouses like Quark or InDesign. And how about your own web page or weblog? I am sure you want to show the world what you are capable off, let’s buy Flash, Dreamweaver or GoLive?

You had enough? Fine.

More human than human - welcome to the new 3D art universe (image: Miles Estes)

Modern designer are rapped and pushed to be digital renaissance artists - nothing is impossible. Since the DTP revolution in the late 80’s smashed the old lines between technician and artist - we creative types have to be both today a Geek and a Michelangelo in one person.

Once it used to be enough to excel as a writer, painter or photographer - know you have to be you own typesetter, reproduction expert, scanner and editor etc. as well. But since this is the analog2digital (A2D) generation we love to have multiple choice - since we know how limited we felt with our old tools: clunky typewriter, tipex, letraset letters, dirty chemicals to develop slides, dangerous cutters, slow snailmail and mechanical copy processes to name a few. No surprise: we love absolute control and absolute choice.

Welcome to a mad artists world.

But it’s driving us mad. Instead being limited to a certain area of art or projects we suddenly find ourselves doing a thousand creative things all at once: writing articles & weblogs, drawing illustrations, retouching photos, programming web sites, layouting a new CV and looking for background music for our presentations.

Did you really think one huge monitor would be enough?!

So much to do, so little time and energy. And the web as a global showcase doesn’t make things easier. There is a constant stream of competition and inspiration to cope with. Have you seen those cool Japanese animations? This great Danish photographer? These old retro covers of some weird fashion magazine?

All these choices, ideas and doors waiting to be opened drive any creator mad. The total overflow of choice makes it hard to focus on just one project, just one set of skills, just one insanely great idea. A tough decision for anyone who loves to surf in possibilities.

Modern artists still want and need to be kissed by their Muses as well.

And we feel a lot of guilt of not pursuing all those ideas that pop up in our minds. The guilt of not pursuing another great business idea or product the world desperately needs. We get paralyzed by all the doors we could jump through and enjoy another adventure in creativeland. And this guilt sucks big time.

Anything else Sir? But there is an additional problem: business. Today’s clients and employers all want a young super geeks with a Maestro’s thirty years of experience and wide ranging skill set. But just one arty farty person please. We are on a tight budget these days.

Ah, when art was simple and computers limited. (Image: Andres Becerra)

So it’s really hard to say ‘I am just an illustrator’ or ‘I can only write good articles’, since you don’t want to cut yourself out of the market. So we learn and buy many different software packages, try to stay on top of a gazillion technologies, names and gizmos. But most of all, we lose the time, energy and focus to be masters of our trade - to be simply open, productive and creative.

Although art involves knowledge and craftsmanship as well, once again we should start to make distinctions between mastering expressive techniques and mastering production technologies.

There is a difference between animating something and writing a flash script. There is a difference between composing a great stream of words to entice your readers and operating a content management system. There is a difference between taking great pictures and layout an art book. Let artists be artists, technicians be technicians and geek’s … oh well …

*repost 2003-08-19*

Gee, the Mother of all image manipulation programs in it’s infancy. I grew up with Photoshop - but I don’t envy anyone trying to learn this complex beasts from scratch. Great software … almost an operating system by itself.

Photoshop (and computer graphics) have changed our world completely. The phrase ‘doctored pictures’ reached a new level with ‘it’s photoshopped’. Stretching the truth got a lot easier with this great tool.

And designer use it on a regular basis to masturbate eye candy for our screens … it’s all about filters, effects and coolness baby!

To be honest I am still surprised about Mr Warhols fame. He certainly was a great artist, but his work (in my eyes) are not as breath taking and special as Picasso’s. But I guess ‘The Factory’ which was not only just a cool place, but a celebrity hang out that played an important role. He was well connected and created his own fans and market in one go. I guess at a certain point he simply was a social anchor as well as Godfather to anything related to art in New York?

Another part of his fame is his commercial ’soup art’ - his understanding how to create mass media compatible mass art. I think in that respect he was truly groundbreaking:

In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.

I think in this quote he summed up everything you need to know about today’s media society (although today it’s 15 seconds of fame on YouTube). His art reflected mass produced images of the same people / themes over and over again. Art was no longer an unique object, but a mass produced variation of an idea / topic.

Mr Warhol was not just a rich and famous person. He also did volunteer work for social institutions. He not only painted soup, he also handed it out. This - more then anything - honors him.

More? Wikipedia

Enjoy this brilliant and tasteless advertising. It is good to see that more and more marketing people understand the cynicism of our times and the sarcasm swelling in their clients.

We all hate advertising! So smart marketing drones help us to love hating it.

via the BRILLIANT 2WENTY 4OUR blog.

Looking a cool wallpaper for your desktop? Or maybe two or three? Or maybe a dozen … or maybe 432?

Vlad Gerasimov has a HUGE collection of well designed wallpapers. Normal sizes are for free - bigger ones cost you some Euros. I actually think his work is worth some cents since it is well made and he offers a great site and support.

Thanks Edosan for the link!

Douglas Fraser is one of my favorite illustrators and modern artists. I have seen his illustrations in many magazines - and I always enjoyed them. His style is strong, his characters larger than life - yet he always puts some emotion and sense of depth into his work. Make sure to visit his great gallery. Enjoy!

Typical technical simplicity.

Snap! had all it’s cover in this comic style. Unique style.

The techno style included a lot of image recycling. Thanks to cheap scanner and photoshop.

Very stylish: silver sleeve, simple symbols, cool attitude.

Font distortion was all the rage - once people discovered how to make outlines in  FreeHand and Illustrator.

No techo collection without a smiley.

Actually a very rare cover style - with a real human. Disgusting!

Stylish image blending.

Mixing the techno comic style and showing off a fertile female.

One more of these undefinable images from the great master. Still beautiful and fascinating.

"Hey Frank, next time we really need a cover illustration that screams!"