+SAMOA #8 is a well-designed journal from São Paulo with a focus on the independent art, music, and performance scene. Worth checking out for the neat illustrations, graphics, and photos. If you can read Portuguese I’m pretty sure the articles are interesting as well. I like a lot the graffiti from Titi Freak and Tara McPherson’s illustrations.
According to Kim Ji-Hwan and Jin Sol from zero per zero, each city’s various railway systems should reflect the character of that city. In an effort to infuse the city’s identity into its subway map, while also trying to simplify the original map, the designers produced a series of original maps for three cities (Seoul, Tokyo and Osaka) in the size of 100 x 70cm (39” x 28")
Seoul Railway
Seoul boasts 600 years of history as the capital of the nation, and features the grand river, the Han Gang, flowing across it. The Han River is the symbol of Seoul. Representation of the Han River in this map mimics the curvature in the middle of the Tae-Geuk mark of the national flag of Korea. The overall circular shape of the map was also inspired by the Tae-Geuk mark. The brighter area in the centre of the map, seen up close in the detail shot 1, shows the territory of Han Yang, the old capital of the Cho-Sun Dynasty. This was the old Seoul marked by the Four Gates, and the growth of the city becomes clear when compared to the modern metropolis.
Tobias Hoss and Christian Schwentke from the University of Applied Sciences Konstanz, Germany designed an A1 size wall calender portraying the company MBTech, a subsidiary of Mercedes Benz, from a new angle. The calendar shows the services of this company in an unorthodox way and translates the highly technical processes in a friendly, humorous world. They created a world out of paper and cardboard showing the different fields MBTech is active in. Everything was cut, pasted, and photographed - no Photoshop. Beautiful illustrations!
A beautiful installation at the Illustrative 08 in Zurich from Julien Vallée, a graphic designer based in Montréal, Canada. I like how his style bridges physical and virtual art by applying available technological tools to manual art. He also has some other neat illustration and motion pieces:
There is a website called Schtock with really neat illustrations like you see above made out of stock photos by a guy who says:
I work at a major stock photo company cataloging images. The majority of the stuff I work with will never see the light of day for no other reason than that most people don’t know it’s available to them. It’s a shame which I’m trying to remedy with this site. As an amateur designer, I occasionally can’t help but play around with the images I see floating across my desk on a daily basis. This site contains the results.
I thought that either this guy is very talented or there is something strange going on. So just a couple of google searches later, I discovered I was not alone in my suspicion.
Either way, if it’s a campaign from Corbis great, if not, this guy shouldn’t waste his time at the wrong job.
The 2010 Olympic graphic identity and pictograms were unveiled yesterday in Vancouver. Overall the system is very comprehensive and impressive. From the west coast colour palette to the wonderfully detailed pictograms, the entire system sets us apart. They have also created a short behind-the-inspiration movie talking about the design team’s process and inspiration. You can view it here
