Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

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Inspiration | Imps and Monsters

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Both of us really enjoy a certain style of illustration, and we have a soft spot for monsters, so of course, Justin Hillgrove‘s work gets our admiration. His style to me is rather Burton-esque (which is no surprise I guess, if you read in his bio that one of his influences is Tim Burton). You can buy original artwork and prints through his site, Imps and Monsters.

Eric’s rather partial to Justin’s “Sock Monsters” (11″x14″ prints for $18):


But for me, “Bath Time” always brings a smile (limited-run giclee print, $100):

See more of Justin Hillgrove’s work at Imps and Monsters.

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Inspiration | Font-loving

Monday, June 16th, 2008

Since we like to stay abreast of what’s current in all types of design, including graphic design, we get regular updates from Veer about their various product offerings. (While we like their design-geek merchandise, unfortunately their shipping costs to Canada are rather prohibitive to me actually ordering anything).

In any event, we get updated about their fonts, and each and every time we see their font selection, we always instantly in love with anything by Alejandro Paul. It has to do with the beautiful ligatures in his script fonts — exampled by the “lf” of “Hybrid golf nights” and the double-ff in “My Affair” below.

Script fonts by Alejandro Paul

The question is how to justify the need to purchase these beautiful fonts ($395 for 5 typefaces), or do we just make our own project (jewelry perhaps?) that needs them…

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Inspiration | Alphabet soup

Saturday, June 14th, 2008

I bookmarked this video a while back (found originally via drawn.ca).

I have a love for beautiful scripty fonts and I love how effortlessly the elder Wouters seems to write his letters. Of course, the younger Wouters’ lettering is oozing with charm and appeal :)

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Inspiration | Cool DIY pinhole cameras

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Corbis (a source for images of all sorts) has a fun little site where you can download .pdfs of readymech pinhole cameras that you can make yourself. FOR FREE! Readymechs are *free* flatpack toys that you can download, print and build using a standard letter-sized page.

The downloads give you a full list of required materials (which includes an empty film canister and how to open one), and then you too can make your own pinhole camera.

Check out the site to see some of the images taken with a pinhole camera. I’ve always loved these simple cameras and how you can take an ordinary scene and produce these wonderfully surreal images with a box, a small hole and some film.

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Inspiration | When pigs fly

Monday, October 8th, 2007

A while back, someone (my better half, maybe?) introduced me to the Flying Pig company, because they obviously knew that I have this fascination for paper engineering in its many forms (elaborate origami, pop-up books, whathaveyou).

I just love the idea that something that comes as a 2-D form can be manipulated into something almost magically 3-D.
The Flying Pig makes these wonderful paper animation kits that are “paper models you make that move.”

And they do have some pretty elaborate and whimsical models. Of them all, my favourites include their namesake ‘Flying Pig‘:

and the ‘T Rex‘:

Make sure to check out their page of free downloadable kits too. They’re FREE! (I downloaded one, but I haven’t had the time yet to actually assemble it).

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Inspiration | Art of the Business Card

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

If you’re looking for inspiration in the design of your own business card, or just want to go looking at some good examples of well thought-out, graphic design, take a look at this Flickr Group: Art of the Business Card.

There are over 500 images of different business cards. Most of them go beyond the simple little piece of cardstock that just gets thrown in goldfish bowls in restaurants offering a draw for a free lunch :)

Here’s a couple of examples.
A clever use of props for this hair and make-up artist’s card:

And a full set of company cards, indexed depending on which department you’re looking for:

While there are some great ideas here, and some fanatastic-looking ones that are round or longer or bigger than your typical business card, like this manicurist’s card(that puts die-cuts to good use):

the ones I like best are those that actually work within the normal parameters of a business card since the unusually shaped ones just don’t work for practicality for fitting in rolodexes!

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Inspiration | The Beauty Within

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

I’ve been very negligent with the whole blogging thing. I’ve been leaving it all up to my better half. Once in awhile I would send her links to cool stuff, but that’s been pretty much the extent of my involvement. Well there’s no turning back now…

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all someone shows you something that was never meant to be seen. Like the early sketch of a painting, the complicated tools used to create the simplest tasks. These are often more interesting then the final product. There’s something magical about the thought process, the production method. Along comes Kent Rogowski with his photographic art of teddy bears turned inside out.


Childhood magic lives on, albeit in a slightly twisted way. In his interview with Nicole Pasulka, Rogowski says that his work is more about the childhood icon represented by the teddy bear than about recreating the toy. I beg to differ, but I’m not about to turn my boo bear inside-out to test it.

Found via BoingBoing.

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Posted in Art and Illustration, Inspirations, Photography | 1 Comment »

Inspiration | Beyond just a folding chair

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

I can’t remember where I found this originally, but I did think it was cool enough at the time to bookmark it.

This is definitely a design I’d like to see up close and personally.

P.S. Happy fourth of July to our American friends!

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Inspiration | Recycling in a cool way

Monday, November 6th, 2006

We actually have a little folder of goodies that we mean to blog about, and over the last two months, this folder has slowly gotten bigger and bigger, but there never seems to be the time to sit down and write a post. This is where we conveniently blame our kid (gratuitous picture of offspring here):

Now on to the real reason for this post… I’ve been meaning to write about Freitag for a while. Freitag sells a number of different bags (including all sorts of totes and messenger bags),

and the idea is that you choose not only from different truck tarps, but also the exact piece of the tarp from which you’d like your bag to be made. Just go to the F-cut, and you can start customizing your own bag:

A completely customized bag is then cut by hand and made just for you (For $220 US). Pretty cool eh?

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Inspiration | Expanding shoes = Longer product life

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

We found Inchworm shoes recently via surfing Gizmodo.
These kids’ shoes expand one full size (in half-size increments) thereby increasing the amount of time that your kid can actually wear them since for such wee little feet chances are, the shoes won’t get worn out, but rather grown out.

There’s quite the range of styles for both little girls and boys. It’s nice to know that 5% of the sales goes towards Juvenile Diabetes Research.
The Prowler ($19.95)

Cute! These slip-on Primers ($19.95)

From a product design point of view, I’d love to get my hands on a pair to see just how the sizing mechanism works.

(They even address this a bit in their FAQ:
Why hasn’t this been done before?
Because as simple as it is to operate the shoe – this was not easy to accomplish!)

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Posted in Inspirations, Product Design | 1 Comment »

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