• “Heineken…!?” Blue Velvet, Lost in Translation, and more: Great postcards to great characters.
• Old-timey:
  • I do love me some retro illustrations by Matthew Lyons.
  • “Yea, Verily Doth This Look Tapestryshopp’d…”
• Check out this do-it-yourself Piet Mondrian painting with movable pieces & changeable colors. [Via]

• JoeJesus creates some beautiful space-scape artworks (and some cheeky ones, too). [Via]
• I like this proposed NASA logo redesign, though it’s evidently polarizing. [Via]
• “Fancy, your pants are”: Fun Victorian-style Star Wars portraits from Greg Peltz.
• Colt .45 for all! “I, Lobot: A Day In The Life of Lando Calrissian’s Assistant.” [Via]

• The gorgeous design for utility app Kaleidoscope may take the cake for maximum marriage of aesthetics and geekiness.
• What do you do after drawing a dry-erase Persian rug? (Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?)
• Infographics:
  • Art Lebedev provides an interesting peek inside the making of the Moscow Metro map. [Via]
  • I dig this handsome, if now dated, World Cup radial bracket poster.
• I could get behind this mid-century-styled Wooden PC by Design Hara.

• Funky design book idea: The Geometry of Pasta.
• Spirographs can’t be killed. Check out this computer art from the 1950’s.
• Vectortuts features a set of Hot Vector Vehicles.
• “Get Your Mom Off Facebook“: 19 various coupons for tech nerds and web enthusiasts.
• Compare: Spongebob, age 50 vs. real-world Homer Simpson & Mario. [Via]

• “Hipsters, Start Your Photocopiers.” I’m loving The Big Caption. (Sometimes I identify a little too closely with the Thai guy in the helmet.) [Via]
• Real-world Photoshop:
  • Heh: “Photopaddles physically ‘Photoshop’ your pics.”: [Via]
  • Had to happen: A literal adobe photo-shop. [Via]
• Cool: Creating a peeling Escher-style face in Photoshop.
• What if our money weren’t grossly ugly? Check out a proposed U.S. Currency Redesign by Michael Tyznik.
• Video demo: Drawing pixel art on iPad using Sprite Something.

• Atomic age:
  • A Flickr set rounds up beautiful science and tech ads from the 50s/60s. (via @iso50)
  • Animation house Perception has a great in-depth piece about how they created the interfaces, PDAs, presentations, and more in Iron Man 2, including some faux-vintage work. [Via]
  • Graphic design history: Here’s an incredibly detailed history of the iconic fallout shelter symbol.
• “Beautifully Banal”: classified ads turned into graphic design. (I love “Poodle: All Colors”) [Via]
• I really enjoy the lovely colors & palettes from illustrator Lotta Nieminen. [Via]

• Check out this set of great travel posters from Heads of State.
• Mac bits:
  • Master digital painter Bert Monroy recently showed me his Escher tribute self portrait done in 1987 using MacPaint.
  • “Make it so.” Sebastiaan de With says, “This 21st century motivational poster sure makes me work harder.”
• “Happy To Serve You“: RIP, creator of NY’s Greek-themed coffee cup.
• Interesting video: The Art Behind Google’s Doodles. [Via]
• Walking Men is a collage of 99 pedestrian traffic-light icons from around the world. [Via]
• Are these photos or paintings? Living still lifes. [Via]

• Flame is a gorgeous online drawing app. [Via]
• Great literature gets rendered as cigarette packs; well executed. [Via]
• Photoshop joins Bar Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, and other rites of passage. [Via]
• Mikal Reich & team have crafted some beautiful packaging for Kraken rum. Elsewhere, here’s a round-up of Krakens as portrayed across movies & games.

• Cinematic:
  • Graphic design history: Posters for all the Bond films. [Via]
  • Abduzeedo rounds up great old spaghetti western posters (originally charmingly mislabeled “western spaghetti;” nice idea for a restaurant name.)
  • “Suck It, Dreamworks!” Funny movie posters: Honest Movie Titles: Oscars 2010. [Via]
• Automotive:
  • Dig this weird vintage car ad. “I love the little bicycle basket between the jet engines,” says Roger Ebert.
  • Visualize the Difference Between Firefox, Opera, Explorer & Safari. (Firefox looks very Homer Simpson-positive.) [Via]

• Adobe tips & info:
  • Thorough & useful: All About Transformations in Adobe Illustrator. (Applying transform effects, especially to strokes, isn’t nearly well known enough.)
  • Nice, quick tip on painting dotted lines in Photoshop.
• International Icons:
  • The NY Times hosts an interesting short video covering Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages. (Sometimes the “Genius!/Garbage!” tenor of critiques like this strikes me as a little excessive. I did like our two-year-old son’s observation on the classic pictographic idiom: “Head popping off.”) [Via]
  • Speaking of pictograms + Finn, he and I found this gruesome, functional graphic design yesterday while traipsing around a piece of unattended heavy machinery.
  • No Exit: On Slate Julie Turner offers a nice overview of the battle of the green running man vs. the red EXIT sign. [Via]
• “What is HTML5 good for?” Funny, coarse, and concise. [Via]

• Dear God these are good: Tavis Coburn illustrates the BAFTA Nominees.
• Glenn Jones makes excellently droll illustrations. (Our two-year-old is still trying to process Thomas the Tank Engine as a Transformer.) Vectortuts interviews him.
• Zoom zoom:
  • Apple sponsored a race team in the 70’s? Check out the images & short video accompanying “Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars” I love the Porsche-as-cuts-of-meat design. [Via]
  • Check out this elegantly simple Mini Cooper convertible ad.

• “Is that a Riding Hood in your mouth, or…?” Check out some ingenious negative space illustrations by Noma Bar.
• Chopping Blocked:
  • Viva old school: Photoshop “Filter Heroes” poster.
  • Behold, Nerd Rider!
• Check out the beautifully complex patterns that Tatiana Plakhova creates. [Via]
• Star Wars-related:
  • I dig the weirdly offbeat acrylic paintings of Ryan Jacob Smith.
  • These minimalist Star Wars tourism posters are great, but I’d still like to see one for Mos Eisley. (Maybe “Wretched hive of scum & villainy” is too long to be “minimalist.”) [Via]

• Check out these gorgeous planetary posters from Ross Berens. [Via]
• “Shaped by War” is a gripping 4-min audio slideshow featuring photojournalist Don McCullin.
• Great linework & palettes populate the retro illustrations of Brent Couchman. [Via]
• Outrageous numbers of pushpins go into Eric Daigh’s detailed photo reproductions.
• I dig the colors & shapes of Marc Kolle’s illustrations.

• Dig this super fun Chiquita banana redesign. I want the luchador sticker! [Via]
• Here’s a high-res set of 60 Recent Movie Posters. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but there’s some solid Photoshop action here. (I like the Crank 2 and Terminator Salvation pieces in particular–more than the corresponding flicks themselves.)
• Newsweek features “Unattainable Beauty: The Decade’s Biggest Airbrushing Scandals.”
• Infographics:
  • “My Heart is Divided“–fun schematic shirt from the Chopping Block.
  • Meet The Milky Way Transit Authority: our galaxy as tube map. [Via Ellis Vener]
  • Man, does Japan have fast broadband. This and other stats get visualized via the State of the Internet Explained In One Giant Infographic.
• “Evil and Lazy” shirt. How nice. (Couldn’t get the Adobe font right, though.)

• “What you need, my friend, is an Internet Online Website!” Clever tool for educating newbie clients. [Via]
• UI designer Mark Coleran appeared on NPR, talking about creating fictional computer UIs for movies. [Via]
• Depression Press serves up a tasty carnival of retro logos & illustrations.
• I dig these groovy caricatures from Fernando Vicente. [Via]
• Heh–here’s a wry comment on the excessive comping of screens in Photoshop.
• 50 cars or 1 bus? Here’s a vivid visualization of the impact of mass transit.

<ul

• “Batgirl Is Now Prince”: Classic album covers get reinterpreted via superheroes. [Via]
• “V is for Vanish”: Robert Samuel Hanson makes beautifully clean, simple illustrations. [Via]
• Dig these rather spectacular Japanese-flavored vector art from Sheena Aw.
• Printing:
  • Letterheady.com features the custom letterheads of everyone from Einstein to Hitler to Johnny Cash.
  • Maggie Frost has created a tasty papercraft-flavored concert poster.
• The future of the past:
  • The year 2010, as seen from a kids’ book in 1972. [Via]
  • Matthew Lyons illustrates with a retro sci-fi kick. [Via]