Bay Area designer and long time Grain Edit friend, Jason Munn, was recently commissioned by Alamo Drafthouse to design a series of posters for their cinematic Texas Monthly Rolling Roadshow. The series focuses on films that take place in Texas.
Traveling is one of my favorite past times, and it’s always exciting for me to see illustrated maps like these created by UK based illustrator Owen Gatley. He’s created a handful of city maps for Ling magazine, Vueling Airlines’ inflight magazine, depicting some of their many destinations. Each map is colorful and thoughtfully composed with its collection of intricate and sometimes humorous imagery, capturing some of my favorite things about traveling, including food and drink, cultural landmarks, and activities. It makes me want to hop on a plane somewhere and discover these little treasures on my own.
Hailing from Melbourne, Australian designer Sam Chirnside creates some fresh graphical work. Sam’s visual themes tend to weigh on the cryptic side with his use of darker imagery and glyphic geometries to create stunning type. I really enjoy his use of grainy textures to add dramatic tone and give the work the perception of being rendered in pencil. Sam’s client list includes Volcom, 55dsl, and Handsome Clothing. On his website he also holds down a great inspirational blog with his own work sprinkled in.
A while back, Grain Edit pal Sanjay Patel enthusiastically showed us a comic titled Ouroboros by British illustrator Ben Newman. In addition, he also showed us an awesome vinyl toy based on the comic. I was completely smitten with what I saw, and have had a major illustrator-crush on Ben’s work since then. His style is fresh and unique with its fun characters, bright colors, fuzzy textures and complex layering of shapes, and this piece from a developing print series “Masks” is no exception.
I am a sucker for the gig poster. That’s the truth.
Running across the work of Alvin Diec was a real treat. Alvin’s in Atlanta, and he sure makes a fine poster, among other things. I love his use of type and restrained style.
Our friend Will over at 50 Watts (formerly A Journey Around My Skull) is holding a fun contest. Participants are encouraged to design a Polish edition of their favorite book. Top prize is $400 with runners-up winning some snazzy books including One Thousand Polish Book Covers by Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński and Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig.
I (like many other typophiles) first heard of Dana Tanamachi a couple of months ago and was really impressed by her amazing chalk lettering projects. The other day, I saw a couple of time-lapse videos of the projects being created, and was completely blown away by how quickly and well it all comes together. Since she doesn’t use stencils or a projector to aid her drawings, it maintains an almost-perfect notion that this is a one of a kind, fleeting moment in the life of a word, which will probably be soon erased (how poetic!). She is also a part of Louise Fili Ltd., the amazingly prolific lettering studio, where she helps to create some of the world’s most lovely type work.
Valero Doval is a Spanish artist that combines hand drawn elements with collage, often cleverly piecing together objects with similar themes, which is evident in this illustration for Elephant magazine. Combining a bird with a plane is a simple yet elegant concept, and Valero executes it in a stunning way.
Jamie Cullen is a Brighton based illustrator with a flair for symmetrical compositions of mind bending proportions. Citing Pop Art and M.C. Escher as influences, Jamie’s work is vivid and elaborate in its multiple layers of color and pattern, as well as enigmatic imagery.
Very sharp, intelligent identity work from Swedish-Australian-Parisian art director Hampus Jageland. It’s delightful to see work that combines striking minimalism with smart thinking. It’s one of those skills that is easy to identify but difficult to imitate.
