Art & Design

So suddenly you found out that your working space is a little boring and wanted to put some little cute miniature stuffs but without spending any money. Well, why don’t just making this do-it-yourself free papercraft?

There are several sites that offer free downloadable nicely designed paper models in PDF or picture format. You can print them out on a heavy paper or card stock, and cut out the model shapes and fold and lock/glue them to become a 3D model. It is really economic and fun to do too. Personally I haven’t try making any but I would like to try somewhere near future! Below are the sites.

Fwis – Readymech Series 002

Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5″x11″ page and printed with any printer. You’ll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time.

Papercraft – 4Kids TV

You can find papercrafts of cartoon and game characters like Sonic, Yugi oh, Ninja Turtle in this site.

Canon 3D papercraft

Presenting every kind of papercraft you could imagine – from simple toys to intricate crafts, there’s something for all the family! Enjoy papercraft – it’s free to download!

Corbis Readymech Cameras

Take a break from your computer! Download, print and build your own pinhole camera. Follow the instructions and enjoy!

Cubecraft.com

Each toy features interlocking tabs for construction – eliminating the need for tape, glue or other messy adhesives. To download click on the model you would like then save the template image. Each toy is designed to be printed on a standard piece of 8 1/2 X 11 A4 letter paper.

Paper Foldables

You can find really unique designs of papercraft models here!

toylava download

This site offers really cute papercrafts like rabbit and panda. By the way, you can check out their other cute works at here.

Paper Crafts from Yamaha Motor

Make your own paper models of motorcycles, rare animals and more.

Extra
For more information and more links access to the world of papercraft, please visit this blog article about 100 Exeptional Free Paper Models and Toys and this dedicated papercraft world blog!

Look at the sweet collaboration between Tokyo Plastic’s famous geisha dolls with Jon Burgerman’s Tiddles character illustration. This dolls was part of the Tokyo Plastics’ “King of Masters” exhibition at The Showroom in New York City. Well from the result, it is just plugging the Geisha Dolls head into Tiddles, but indeed the result is cool and funky!

I get to know Tokyo Plastic geisha dolls when watching their ultra-entertaining flash animation “drum machine“. The cuteness of the dolls had caught my eye and the animation has been my most favorite flash motion of all time. On the other hand, I’m very admiring on the illustration styles of Jon Burgerman. Both are just amazing and awe-inspiring to me. You can read more about Tokyo Plastic at Tokyo Cube here.

Source: Tiddles Tokyo Custom

Sometimes a small little changes can make a lot difference. Today I want to talk about the small design change of one of Malaysia bank call Bank Islam. Established in 1983, Bank Islam primarily to assist the financial needs of the country’s Muslims and to further extend its services to the whole population at large. Not long ago, they revealed their whole new corporate identity to this maroon and gray color scheme with a more globalise kind of logo design. But when I saw the logo, I feel not right about the logo.

Please look at the picture shown above. Originally the logo design was presented like the one on the left. Can you see something was not quite right in that logo? Well, from the logo rationale I read from the Bank Islam site it says that

The Bank Islam logo incorporates a “crescent” embracing the word “Islam”.

So in the initial design, the crescent which is in maroon color was incorporated into the character “K” of Bank. But when the “K” was being modified as part of the crescent graphic until it does not look like a readable “K” anymore, will you think that it looks and sounds like BANK ISLAM rather than BANK ISLAM?

That’s really causing a big confusion there (at least for me). However, about a month back when I walking to work where I will pass Bank Islam, immediately I spotted a little changes on the logo. Now it looks the one on the right. The crescent has become a graphic on its own and the “K” become the regular “K” and having the same color as other character. It must be some people having same opinion as me and propose for design amendment. The new version looks and sounds far better than the previous design, and it won’t cause confusion to viewers too.

Conclusion

Designers loves to play with typography when comes to logo design. But, we still need to take into consideration on the logo clarity and whether it will cause confusion to the viewers or not. In the end, kudos to the design team that made necessary changes. Small changes, big difference.

Today when I was surfing through Wooster Collective, I stumbled upon this stunning piece of street art by one of my most favorite street artist Banksy. It shows a video footage shoot by Jeremy Gibbs on how the people reacts to the art when passing by that area. It is very relieve that many people are appreciating the artwork by stopping by and observe it, or take out camera and take a picture.

This street art appears in Essex road London depicting three little children, one is raising the plastic bag of Tesco to the top of the pole just like raising a flag. While the other two children stand slightly further away and putting their left hand on their chest with serious face looking at the plastic bag, as if they are showing respect to Tesco, the biggest shopping mart in UK. Continue reading

Yesterday when I surf Del.icio.us Popular page, there is an image got to that page and I clicked it, a huge picture appeared. It’s a magnificent painting consisting of most influential people in the world, I think had more than 100 of them. The influential people are from various fields, from politician, scientists to celebrities and sportsmen. While the background are combination of different historical places. This painting also created quite a stir in Digg.

Because of lacking historical knowledge, I only can recognize some influential people like Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee etc. Besides that I also curious on who painted this. So I googled “Most influential people painting”, and came across Painting of Influential Historical Figures with Image Mapping. Just rollover the figure and you will see the name of the people on the ALT text. Still missing some, so if you know the unidentified figure just email to the address stated on that page. Great effort and thanks!

By the way, who is the painter behind this great painting?