• 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.

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• “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]

• Kings of the road:
  • Here’s a cool large-scale Photoshop job: “Snakes on a Bus.” [Via]
  • Okay, I’m reaching in calling this illustration, but I dig Art Lebedev’s concept for a “transparent” semi truck. [Via]
• VectorTuts has some great ideas/techniques for building a face from typography.
• Posters:
  • Brandon Schaefer makes terrific minimalist movie poster designs. [Via]
  • Check out these cool poster designs for Slaughterhouse Five, Moby Dick, & more.
• Cinematic hacks:
  • “Photoshopped Movies“: kind of speaks for itself. [Via]
  • Photoshop, what hath ye wrought? There’s a whole blog of Nic Cage as Everyone.

• I dig these beautiful minimalist renderings of TV shows from Albert Exergian. See also his excellent portfolio site.
• The Web Design Ledger showcases clever negative space in logo design. [Via]
• Crazy, often beautiful: Matt Kish is doing one drawing for every page of Moby-Dick.
• True copy & paste: Billboard hacking with Doom’s HUD. Solid. [Via] Reminds me of Photoshop “adbusting” in Berlin.
• How to make dotted borders in Photoshop. (Not hard, but we should simplify the process.) [Via]
• Amazing–EyeWriter: Physically Paralyzed Artist Draws Graffiti on Buildings w/His Eyes.

• Book design:
  • “Man Hungry!” Gotta love vintage pulp novel covers. [Via]
  • The Book Cover Archive rounds up the Top Ten Book Covers of the ’00s. Some good stuff, but somehow I’m not quite as blown away as I’d hoped to be. [Via]
• Impediments:
  • Inspired set of “Ideas & their enemies.” (But come on, marketing managers are the Big Bad Wolf? That’s giving ’em too much credit.)
  • “Four Obstacles to Writing“–funny illustration from Tom Gauld.
• Violence Illustrated:
  • I dig “The Ancient Circle of Mutual Aggression” & other illustrations from Juan Molinet. [Via]
  • “Theatre of Cruelty“: Medieval peeps really did get medieval.
• The “Aqualta” project presents visions of New York & Tokyo under water. [Via]

• “Accidental Geography” consists of photos of objects weirdly resembling recognizable landmasses. (via @kottke)
• Superfly Wi-Fi:
  • “Ernie & Birch”: Christoph Niemann illustrates with nothing but leaves. (Love the “wireless ginko.”) [Via]
  • Check out this beautifully simple ad for Wi-Fi at Mickey D’s.
• Toddler-vision:
  • Our lad Finnegan sees the Champion sportswear logo and says “Mailbox!” He just might be onto something.
  • Finn + Marker + Kix Box = A.M. “art” lesson w/Dad. “Unicorn lady… beard… tattoo!”
• Distilled to the limit: “Expressionist” renderings of classic arcade games. [Via]

• DesignrFix rounds up 40 solid business card designs. Dig the illustrated characters in particular, plus the obsessive behavior of Marian Bantjes. [Via]
• Physical graffiti:
  • Peep some sweet hand bags made using book cover illustrations. [Via]
  • Laser-etch art onto your MacBook, Moleskine, etc. [Via]
• Photoshop CS4 wins over an industrial designer for concept sketching. Adam O’Hern shares his findings and tips.
• Europa:
  • Dig the detailed vintage style on display in this “Caricature map of Europe, 1914.” [Via]
  • See Bibliodyssey’s “Theatre of Cruelty“: Medieval peeps really did get medieval.

• Heh–fun poster for the Jewish Film Festival. [Via]

• “Nothing Really Mattress…” Creative, often edgy ads from around the world. [Via]
• Eastern Bloc:
  • Cyrillic lettering Яocks. More cool Russian posters. (Just don’t try to match drinks with this guy.)
  • Abduzeedo hosts a fun collection of modern Constructivist-style posters & illustrations.
• Artists interpret literary figures at Hey Oscar Wilde. (Love the Chekov, Lord of the Flies pieces.)
• Simplicity:
  • I dig the flat, clean illustrations of Katie Kirk. [Via]
  • Nice, simple vector/raster animal art from Ty Wilkins. (“‘Vector/raster’ = Illustrator/Photoshop,” he notes in reply.) [Via]

• Check out some incredible concept art from Rodolfo Damaggio.
• I love these automotive manual cutaway drawings turned into giant wall art. If the imagery trips your trigger, Bryan Hughes suggests How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. [Via]
• Cool map to the LA Olympics… of 1932: (More info is here.)
• Tutorials:
  • Slick–How to Create Smoky Brushes and Type In Illustrator CS4.
  • Halloween+Photoshop: Russell Brown shows how to turn people into monsters.

• Seasonal creepiness:
  • I love these bizarre illustrations: Anatomy of Japanese Folk Monsters. [Via]
  • “I want your skulls…” Lots of cool illustrations.
  • Oh, this heart doesn’t look healthy, does it? Here’s more such weirdness. [Via]
• Abduzeedo rounds up great Guinness ads past & present.
• The Chopping Block crew has posted tips on using Photoshop to Prep & Color Scanned Drawings.

• The original IBM ThinkPad (Spoiler: It’s an actual pad.) [Via]

• Dang–artist Eric Natzke keeps raising his game: “Is it made with Paint or Code?” [Via]
• Tutorials:
  • How to Create Vintage Vector Bottle Caps In Illustrator CS4.
  • Dig the bold 3D type in this poster tutorial.

• “Is God Dead?” The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time. [Via Jackie Lincoln-Owyang]
• Getting clever:
  • “Shoot forth thunder.” Visual plays on Shakespearian lines, as sprinkled through “Romeo + Juliet.”
  • A great set of logos featuring visual puns. [Via]

• One bedtime treat is reading young Finnegan an ABC book from the amazing Charley Harper. (Reading him the marvelously weird Charlie Parker Played Be Bop is another.)
• The Photoshop team coffee pot was recently broken again–and yes, QE has graphed the impact!
• This “Tech support cheat sheet” from xkcd is spot-on funny. [Via]
• Here’s a 6-minute video on how Wired makes mag covers. One involved a 1GB (!) Transformers .PSD rendered by ILM. [Via Adam Pratt]
• Check out some impressive photo manipulations/illustrations from Erik Johansson. [Via Kirsten Harris]

• Volkswagen has created a fun MC Escher homage. (Click the images for larger versions.)
• Heh: from the Onion, the “Che Wearing Che T-shirt T-shirt.”
• Fancy a beer? Make mine a Berserker. (“Lumberjacks give them the grunt of approval.”)
• Check out the beautifully simple “Redacted Book Series” project.
• Gene Gable rounds up solid vintage Ex Libris illustrations. I like this one for Woodrow Wilson.
• Enjoy some “Dirty Prancing” with the Swayzaur–not to mention Robocop + unicorns.

• “Game over, man–game over.”: Don’t be this (8-bit) guy. The image is part of a funky “Make Something Cool Every Day” collection.
• Colour Lovers features a collection of beautiful vintage typewriter tins.
• Of new Mountain Dew, Neven Mrgan writes, “Two-word review: Orc pee.” And speaking of oddball snack products, apparently Asia features Crotch-Kick Flavor Doritos.
• CS4 icon cupcakes! (Just don’t get the icing on your Creative Suite pillows.) (via Jeff Warnock)
• Awesome URL o’ the day: http://jon.dntfckwth.us/ (Worth a click for some awesome art there, too.)
• Vegetable steamer = awesome spaceship. I *so* did that as a kid.