Art & Design

10 lovely brochures found on Pinterest

. Art & Design, Inspiration

10 Lovely brochures found on Pinterest

As many of you guys had known, Pinterest is the hottest social website right now! Users pinning up interesting images found all over the Internet that makes Pinterest an ideal place looking for inspirations. In this post I will show you some really lovely brochure designs found in the website.

Besides that, I will also post some useful links related to brochure designs, for example resources of brochure templates and more, just to update my previous post about brochure I posted some time ago. Please continue reading to check out the brochures!

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8 websites to look for infographics inspiration

. Art & Design, Inspiration

infographic inspiration

Information graphics or in short, infographics, are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. With visual aids, complex data can be presented in graphical way and is easier to remember and more enjoyable when reading it. Currently, there are a lot of educational articles are presented in infographic on the Internet, and I found 8 useful websites that showcase the inspirational infographics.

While majority of the infographics are designed and presented in a form of image, but there are also animated one, as well as interactive. I personally really like infographics because it is entertaining and creative. Without further elaborating, below are some websites that you should visit for infographic inspiration.

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TokyoGenso: Illustrations of imaginative ruined Tokyo

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

TokyoGenso: Illustrations of imaginative ruined Tokyo

TokyoGenso is a series of amazing illustrations based on real locations in Tokyo but in ruined condition. It looks like the places has been abandoned for many years and become some sort of a dead city after an apocalyptic event. The artist of this series actually paint the illustration on an actual photo, thus the creation of this highly detailed, surrealistic illustrations.

TokyoGenso provides a very good imagination on how Tokyo will look like when abandoned. Well I think in real life this will not actually happen but it will not stop the illustrator’s imagination. Below are some of his works, and to see more please check out his deviantART gallery, Pixiv gallery (in Japanese and requires log in) or his Ameba blog.

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Rate your favorite “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto” Cards

. Art & Design

Rate your favorite Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto Cards

Here we go again, this is the latest Foldees designer’s greeting card competition called “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto”. From the name itself you will know that the competition theme involves around robot and a total of 85 cards are selected to be the finalists. That’s a huge collection of cards and now it’s time to rate those cards!

From the cards that are available for rating, below are some of the cards that I think are creative and nicely done. Besides that, people who spend some time and rate all the cards will be rewarded a free card. So sign up for an account and start rating the cards, and remember give your favorite cards a 5! Remember rating ends 1st of October 2009.

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Kazuki Takamatsu in Distanfeerism

. Art & Design, Japan

Kazuki Takamatsu in Distanfeerism

Yay! My first post after came back from vacation. During the trip to Japan I went to two big art event in Tokyo, one is 101Tokyo at Akiba Square and Art Fair Tokyo at Tokyo International Forum. Both art fairs are astonishing and I’m really impressed about the quality of the art works displayed and the atmosphere and activeness in art community. Well there is one artist that gave me the most visual impact is Kazuki Takamatsu and his style “Distanfeerism”.

Mr. Kazuki was born in 1978 and was graduated in Tohoku University of Art and Design. When I visiting his booth, I was stunned with the uniqueness of his artwork. From far I thought it was a digital painting, but actually it was hand painted! His works are mainly monochrome based too, and normally featuring a young female character, table lamp, buildings and plants etc.

Actually his painting giving me sense of surrealism and ambiguous depth. The term “Distanfeerism” until now I still don’t really catch the meaning. But indeed his work is one of a kind and cool! More of his information and artworks can be found at Gallery Tomura Page and his own personal site.

Kazuki Takamatsu in Distanfeerism

Kazuki Takamatsu in Distanfeerism

All pictures are property of Kazuki Takamatsu.

Seen at KL: Hari Raya graffiti

. Art & Design

Seen at KL: Hari Raya graffiti

Well it’s a bit late but here I wish “Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri” to all the Muslims, and wish you have a great celebration out there. Today is public holiday and I will have plenty of time to rest. Picture above is actually a street mural that I spotted last week, just outside the Pasar Seni LRT station. I think it’s really a nice masterpiece, so I took the picture and post it up here.

The graffiti is pretty long, and I have to take a total of 3 shots and connect them in Photoshop. Below is the smaller version of the graffiti, and you may click on the picture to view the bigger version. Sorry the picture is a little chopped off at both side.

Hari Raya graffiti full view small

I believe this was done by a group of creative artists that bombed their art at the Kuala Lumpur streets, I had to say that your arts are wonderful, and with all the colorful works, the KL looks more interesting!

23 cool illustration style J-pop CD cover art

. Art & Design, J-Pop

23 cool illustration J-pop cover art

Today we are going to appreciate the beauty of illustration style Japanese music CD cover art. CD cover art is something unique, some covers are designed to reflect the music styles and atmosphere, and some are to portray the personality of the music artists or groups. Many of them are using illustration instead of using their own appearance to design the CD covers, and it does giving an artistic sense of the artist itself. This also shows that art and music are inseparable!

Various illustration style can be apply to the cover design, for example some using clean vector style, and some are using hand drawing to illustrate the cover. Plus, it does not restricted only Japanese Pop music, many other music genres also using illustration style especially rock/alternative music. Well I don’t want to touch much on anime related soundtracks, because most of them are illustrated! Ok, below are the 23 covers selected by me.

高須光聖 松本人志 - 放送室

ロリコンの地位向上 - Land of the Phantasm

Sotte-Bosse- Namida no Koe

Rainbook - Sora no hana

YMCK - Family-Genesis

vistlip - Sara

TWIGY - BABY'S CHOICE

the telephones - JAPAN

Tatsuo Sunaga - World Standard.o7

Special Thanks - SEVEN COLORS

SCANDAL - YAH! YAH YAH! HELLO SCANDAL

relaxingroove - Sunset Lovers

myonmyon - 蓬莱姫譚

Murasama (ムラマサ☆) - WORLD

MORNING GLORY - I'm Still Green

Kigurumi (キグルミ) - Kigurumi's Children Songs

JUJU - My Life

dorlis - swingin' singin' playin'

De De Mouse - sunset girls

CHERRYBLOSSOM - GO!

Aqua Timez - Niji

Abe Fuyumi - One Night Trip EP

Chi - Chi's Sweet Home

Well this is it. I hope you like some of those cover designs. To check out the larger versions of the cover, I created a Flickr sets to store all these nice covers above and will upload more J-pop nice illustration style CD covers in the future.

Credits: Amazon JP, j-pop.cn

6emeia – Blending street with art

. Art & Design

6emeia - Blending street with art

Everyday people walk on the streets. There are so many street elements that many people taking for granted, for example manhole, storm drains, light posts, and more that form the street. They are something that people won’t care about but for street artists group 6emeia, it is something special for them. They decided to blend them with art and redefine their role in street.

6emeia consists of two members – Anderson Augusto and Leonardo Delafuente who lives in São Paulo, a city without commercial ads. The aim of 6emeia is to modify the means within which we all live, and proposing a new way to view things by reflecting upon themes generated through creative and unusual works. Normally their street art works can be found on the storm drains and manholes. For example, putting a character on the storm drains and the drain entrance become the mouth of the character, and using the natural shapes of the manhole and make it into food.

6emeia artworks are truly amazing and having a sense of humor too. I think two of them are really creative and unusual, I can’t even think of blending such street elements into art and giving them life and new meaning. The works are cute and fun, I think everyone will like them at first sight. Below are some of their works, for more works you can visit 6emeia’s homepage.

6emeia works 1

6emeia works 2

6emeia works 3

Picture credits: 6emeia

Fun with FONTPARK 2.0

. Art & Design, Typography

FONTPARK 2.0 by Morisawa

Do you know that the image above was made out of Japanese characters? Recently I stumbled upon a very interesting flash site FONTPARK 2.0 by font foundry Morisawa. In FONTPARK 2.0, you can create interesting artwork by using only typography. It’s absolutely freedom on the creation and the only limit is your creativity and imagination!

The interface is totally intuitive and easy to use. You can start creating your artwork by dragging out the characters you want to use at the character selection at bottom of the page. You can have a selections of different beautiful Japanese fonts, and you can even use romaji too. Below shows the basic controls to manipulate the fonts.

FONTPARK 2.0 - How to play

I can say it’s a deconstruction and appreciation of the beauty of typography. No doubt you can create really interesting graphic images with type. The fun part is after you finish creating your image, you can save it and FONTPARK 2.0 will give you a permanent link so that you can see the animation process of your masterpiece creation.

The site is truly amazing and beautiful. The site is majorly in black and white color which can give more attention to the aesthetic of type. There’s a gallery shown below where you can see the artworks in thumbnail, and rate them or click it to see the artwork creation process. Some works are really well done.

FONTPARK 2.0 - gallery

I’m absolutely have fun when creating the artwork. I’m so amazed by the Japanese characters because it can create so many interesting artwork! The picture below shows my attempts: Butterfly and Carrot, Sports Shoe, Walking Man and Superman. Not bad right? I’m strongly recommend to everyone to try out this site. It’s fun! 😀

FONTPARK 2.0 works by me