Articles by Ethan

I love these patterns from Telegramme, a London based design and illustration super duo. They have a nice way of mixing old, worn illustration and imagery into their work. Besides patterns and posters they also specialize in web, identity, print, and redesigning playing cards.

All around design champ Jez Burrows of It’s Nice That, Evening Tweed, and that cool Destroyer poster you’ve been seeing around is at it again. He and Lizzy Stewart are Sing Statistics, and have just put out a wonderful new book called “I Am The Friction.” The book is a combination of short fiction by Jez, and illustration by Lizzy. It reads front to back, and back to front. So the end is in the middle!

See, buy, or read an excerpt of the book at Sing Statistics.

We’re really fond of Wayne Pate’s work over here, and were very excited when he sent over a bundle of prints, including the above “Love Saves the Day” piece. In all of his work Wayne really nails it with simple patterns, bold shapes, and perfect colors.

He combines a nice mix of flat organic shapes with textured images and illustrations really well. On his site there’s a nice range between collage work and more simple graphic work. A lot of the elements feels like they could be found in nature, or translated from found objects.

Thanks again Wayne for sending these are way. Keep an eye on the prints section of his site, as Wayne will be releasing some new prints.

You may have seen these colorful blocks and the accompanying video where they move, running around on the web lately. It’s the work of Evan Geltosky, a recent Long Beach State graduate. On his site he has some nice typographic work, and a sweet poster/illustration of Mike Tyson!

German Shepherds and Ham Radio! My two favorite things together at last! Matthew Bowers, purveyor of such fine imagery and juicy type, is a Portland, OR based designer. In addition to his regular work, he also publishes the art book series, Downy Bird Art Kingdom.

Philippe Apeloig runs his own studio, Apeloig, in Paris, France. Not only does Philippe have a lot of work his site, but it’s very well documented and photographed. You can get a sense of the amount of experimentation and playing that goes on in his work.

Process colors! Animal illustrations! The fantastic pop stylings of Black Kids! Michael Fusco and Co. did a great job of mixing the band’s outgoing, addictive hooks with their literate lyrical side.

In addition to the posters, MFD can also handle your book cover, identity, CD packaging, and wedding invite needs.

Our good friend and design champ Jason Munn designed the above bag for book publishing champs Chronicle Books. Chronicle wanted to create and encourage a non-wasteful, reusable bag solution, and Jason had the perfect caterpillar turns butterfly idea.

For more info, visit Chronicle.

Many thanks to Hannah for posting the mock ups!

Evening Tweed is a Brighton based design collective, formed by four students at the University of Brighton. If the above image is any indication, all the work from these four is great. As a whole, the work is nicely varied and shows strong directions from each member. Lots of personality and experimentation going on.

Check out their class site. More talent there as well.

Tears of joy! It’s The Little Friends of Printmaking, Wisconsin’s #1 husband/wife design team super duo. LFoP are a Milwaukee based design studio whose work is really exciting and inventive. Each piece has a great story/narrative (and typography) that pulls you in. You can really tell that there is a lot of experimentation going on over there. I would love to see them get into motion graphics, a lot of this work is aching to be animated.

Their website is great too; it’s as engaging as the work. Lot’s of little things to look at and click at.

They also have a store and a blog.

Mar Hernández aka Malota aka really cool designer living and working in Valencia, Spain, offers an extremely fun and inspiring collection of work for our viewing pleasure. Mar’s style is really bold and graphic, but very detailed and complex at the same time. She has a nice range of work — from very flat, computer drawn images, to a sketchier, looser, hand drawn style.

Check out the video entitled “Greenville.” Very cool motion graphics.

Marcus Walters, a designer and illustrator from the UK, loves washing machines. A lot of his work is similar to the above image — which reminds me of putting felt onto a feltboard as a kid. They have that very flat, semi-dimensional quality to them which I love.

Marcus is also a part of New Future Graphic, which is more graphic design-oriented (posters, ad’s, books, etc).

Wayne Pate runs GoodShapeDesign, a Brooklyn, NY based design shop and all around fun place. I’m really into his “Flock” series — if you’re a fan of our feathered friends, now you can have 18 on a single poster!

Also check out his artwork section for some really inspiring collages.

Mike Krol designs for musical bands, sandwiches, accordions, gorillas, light bulbs, and maple syrup, among many other things. He has a very good sense of humor, wit, and typography. I love finding work where the designer’s personality shines through. Especially if that includes heavy metal and Eskimos.

Check out the walking backwards to school video. I loved that!

Frank Chimero is having a great time, apparently. His portfolio is full of super fun, exciting work. As a design student, it’s always thrilling to see work that is equal parts vision, humor, inspiration, and a snappy idea.

He also has a cool blog, and a flickr.

Frank Chimero is having a great time, apparently. His portfolio is full of super fun, exciting work. As a design student, it’s always thrilling to see work that is equal parts vision, humor, inspiration, and a snappy idea.

He also has a cool blog, and a flickr.

The Futile Vignette is a design studio run by Mick Marston, out of Sheffield, UK. Mick’s work is a fun combo of contemporary and vintage illustration styles. Lots of rabbits, cats, girls with pig noses, hands holding things, and 2 George Saunders book covers! (Anyone know if those are in print?)

Bonus points for an interesting website, too!

Leonardo Hss comes to us all the way from Flickr. I couldn’t find any info on him other than what is on his Flickr page. Lots of different styles represented here. Corporate, logo, and some more playful graphic work (like the above image).

Be sure to check out his experimental work as well.

Hello Freaks are based in Paris, and led by one Jerome Castro (who has a cool blog, in French.) Their illustration work is really impressive, and includes lots of mouth-watering type. Be sure to check the motion work as well. It’s a nice departure from the standard motion reels we’re used to seeing all over.

Thanks to Sharon for the heads up on Hello Freaks.

Cover illustration/typography for the Yale University Art Gallery spring catalog

Garrett Morin does great work. He draws lots of type and makes people happy. You may have seen his works in the likes of Mike Perry’s Hand Job book. If you click on over to his site, you’ll find lots of happy characters, t-shirt graphics, corn-cob pipes, animated GIFs, skateboard graphics, magazine covers, and a great animated spot for Death Cab for Cutie / MTV.

Garrett’s also a member of the Rad Mountain collective, which recently did some yummy illustrations for Good Magazine. Check it.

Jesse Kaczmarek is a one-man, super-clean design shop located in NYC. His clients include BMW, Sony, Pepsi, HBO, and on and on. The work remains consistently clean, sophisticated and fun — all at once! Just look at those happy families in their Hertz rental cars!

Also, bonus points for a super slick website.

Luke Williams is a third year graphic design student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. While making sweet calendar-meets-packaging cubes, he is also working for Abbott Miller/Pentagram in Baltimore. From magazine and book layouts to posters and self-initiated work, Luke’s work is fresh. It’s nice to see a large body of work with this much variety, attention to detail, and experimentation with other mediums.

Christopher David Ryan is a “Brooklyn-based graphic artist, daydreamer, pseudo-scientist, wanna-be astronaut and untrained intellectual.” His work shows a similar range of experimentation — photography, collage, illustration, found images, etc. Why! He even makes pillows! On his personal website, Ryan is posting at least one image of his work per day for every day of the year. Busy, busy.

Damien Correll is a Brooklyn, NY based “designer/maker/illustrator.” I first came across his work in the fabulous book Hand Job, by Mike Perry. I really love seeing the intersection of graphic design with his DIY hand-drawn aesthetic. This work is difficult to pin down, but it’s quirky and full of personality.

Spike Press is the monikor for one John Solimine, a Chicago based designer. In a world overrun by gig-poster designers, it’s refreshing to see someone with a little originality and illustration sense. These posters are fun, whimsical, and full of narrative — each poster has a very engaging mini-story that will pull you and your wallet right in. Enjoy!

Woot! Aesthetic Apparatus is a member of my weekly design web site “do they have any new work up yet?” visiting rituals. So I was happy to find not only new work, but a new web site too! There are plenty of new posters, some new test prints, and if you have not yet seen their “doom” series, it’s worth a look. Very fun.

You can scream along with Dan and Michael on YouTube as they show you how to silkscreen a poster.
Coudal has a nice interview with Aesthetic Apparatus as well.

I’ve always been told that when designing a film festival poster to “NEVER use a camera!” in the imagery. Well, Jesse Kirsch just did it, and I’d say it turned out pretty awesome. While he was at it, he also designed a map of Manhattan as a leaf, and a Beatles poster using only hair! What a rule breaker!

My favorite thing about Jose Rodriguez is not his great work, nice type, or his motion reels. It’s his URL: HeyJose.com! It’s probably the hottest domain name on the web right now. Anyway, the work is definitely on par with the URL. That’s right, solid gold! From the long-suited men of “beginning” to the technical-but-beautiful diagrammatic analysis of FF-Meta, this Sarasota, FL, designer is making some really great images. Go over and check out Hey Jose!

I have a very special place in my heart for poster design. Especially poster design that incorporates type in an interesting, fresh way. I mean, how do they do that? It looks too easy! Andrio Abero, the man behind the poster and design studio 33rpm, is a master at “type and image integration.” This is one of the first firms that kick started my obsession with the poster, way back in the early 2000’s.

Non-Format are a twin-continent based award winning design firm. They also happen to be the kings of super thick and chunky left justified type. They posses the unique ability to seamlessly integrate their big type with organic illustrative elements, with very nice results. In addition to running their studio, they also design Varoom, a journal of illustration and made images, art directed by Adrian Shaughnessy. In addition, they just released a book.

Now in its 4th year, Personal Views is a unique series of conferences that brings together an unparalleled group of designers, writers and educators from the world of graphic design. Coordinated by Andrew Howard, and taking place at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design in Matosinhos, Portugal, the series aims to examine contemporary definitions of graphic design by asking these professionals to talk about the values and objectives that have value for them. It is an attempt to explore where the boundaries of contemporary practice lie, to discuss what we might expect of ourselves, and to examine what social and cultural objectives we seek to fulfill.

Available online are lectures by Experimental Jetset, Ellen Lupton, Erik Spiekermann, Wim Crouwel, Steven Heller and Neville Brody among others.

We’re really diggin the online portfolio of Bo Lundberg. He draws influence from modern antiques, objects and patterns that he stumbles across in everyday life.

If you like experimental typography, art, Moby Dick, and the letter ‘E’ this is the exhibit for you. Hailing from the midwest, Justin Quinn makes fascinating typographic compositions based on Herman Melville’s epic. Using only the letter ‘E’ and graphite, Quinn recounts entire chapters from Moby Dick. For example, the above piece is entitled “Moby Dick Chapter 55 or 9200 times E.” That’s a lot of E’s. If you’re in the mood for more typography a la concrete poetry, please see Justin’s work at MM Galeries.

Self described as “Wayne and Garth meets Chermayeff & Geismar,” Post Typography, from Baltimore MD, was originally conceived and founded in 2001 as an avant garde anti-design movement by Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen. They specialize in graphic design, conceptual typography, and custom lettering/illustration with additional forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work, design theory, and vandalism.

Self described as “Wayne and Garth meets Chermayeff & Geismar,” Post Typography, from Baltimore MD, was originally conceived and founded in 2001 as an avant garde anti-design movement by Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen. They specialize in graphic design, conceptual typography, and custom lettering/illustration with additional forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work, design theory, and vandalism.