Abstract Satellite Images of Earth
“It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it - just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations.” Albert Camus

Adidas | Originals watch the video it’s great. Created by Adidas, writer/artist and skater Micheal Sieben and Juice Design.

Cartoon characters created by Sieben come to life and accompany him on a treasure hunt From Texas to the the Bay Area.

See the video here
View The Data Visualizations

Stock Textures for use in Photoshop projects

The Money Eating Face Bank » Curbly | DIY Design Community

The only thing that could possibly make this bank cooler–and creepier–is if it made chewing noises. To appreciate the Face Bank fully, you gotta watch the video!

Luxa - Photoshop Tutorials
Luxa is a social learning site for Photoshop artists providing new tutorials and design articles, as voted and suggested by your fellow users.

Awesome!

Google Jumps Into Your Living Room With New Media Server Software (GOOG)

This is bleeding edge tech but.. Google gets a little closer to pushing interactive content onto your TV.

It makes sense that Google would want you to have as many ways as possible to watch their YouTube videos (and eventually ads) on your TV.

This also could be linked to it’s foray into TV ads with its Google TV ADS platform  - Google TV Ads is a flexible, all-digital system for buying more accountable and measurable TV advertising. Using the familiar AdWords interface, you can launch a TV advertising campaign in minutes.

Some futurists have theorized that Google will leverage it’s partnership with Apple on a ITV program.

My guess would be that they would leverage the apple TV hardware and use it as a set top TIVO like device that will layer interactive content over the top to TV shows and ADS. ( with the Iphone as a potential remote control system)

While the whole convergent media idea has been around since the dot bomb nobody has figured out how to do it right. The secret may lie around the idea that you keep the two mediums separate but write a language that connects them rather than creating one massive media channel that tries to do everything itself.

Regardless by 2015 you will see and have interactive content layer integrated into your TV experience.

33 New Places to Get Design Inspiration

classics in Lego
Soviet Design
Action Method - productivity by design
Materialicious

Brands + Amplification = Influence

Check Out The MobileMe Tour

MobileMe, which replaces the company’s ailing .Mac service, also provides a suite of rich Web 2.0 applications that deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser, including Mail, Contacts and Calendar. A Gallery for viewing and sharing photos, as well as an iDisk app for storing and exchanging documents online, are also included.

“Think of MobileMe as ‘Exchange for the rest of us,’” said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. “Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get.”

With a MobileMe email account, all folders, messages and status indicators look identical whether checking email on iPhone, iPod touch, a Mac or a PC. New email messages are pushed instantly to iPhone over the cellular network or Wi-Fi, removing the need to manually check email and wait for downloads. Push also keeps contacts and calendars continuously up-to-date so changes made on one device are automatically pushed up to the cloud and down to other devices.

Push works with the native applications on iPhone and iPod touch, Microsoft Outlook for the PC, and Mac OS X applications, Mail, Address Book and iCal, as well as the MobileMe web application suite.

MobileMe web applications are 100 percent ad-free and provide a desktop-like experience that allows users to drag and drop, click and drag, and even use keyboard shortcuts, all in a unified interface. Users can even switch between applications with a single click and use the Gallery web app to share photos in high quality

THE THREADLESS BUSINESS

Threadless churns out dozens of new items a month — with no advertising, no professional designers, no sales force and no retail distribution. And it’s never produced a flop.

The LearnList
The Learnlist is a simple resource for graphic designers, illustrators, web
designers, developers, basically anyone creative! It lists the best websites
and books available to help you learn something new!
To get started just click one of the coloured links above and get schooled!

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

A great blog with some equally impressive finds

Beautiful Brochures and Booklets

Reverse Graffiti Project
On April 15, 2008 in San Francisco, Green Works brought together an English
reverse graffiti artist and a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker, to create an environmentally friendly work of art and a film about a philosophy of clean.

Full-Screen Multitouch Mac OS X Is Here (But Not from Apple)

Showing Hyperlink Cues
I like the little icons next to hyperlinks that signify if that link will take me offsite, open a popup, or link to a file (as opposed to another html page). Here’s how to do it in a way that’s supported in IE7, Firefox, and Safari.

View Cantori

Beautifull site for amazing Italian furniture.

Such a smart yet simple idea

ALL THINGS PAPERVISION

14 Inspiring CMS Showoffs

Content Management Systems have become common place for website development, custom development saved for the largest and most unique websites.
Before deciding which CMS is best for your next project it is a good idea to see how others have customized the offering to their needs, as a way to evaluate how flexible the software is. Will it stifle your creativity or will it allow you to incorporate your best design and be able to provide a host of other features that would not be possible otherwise.
The popular CMSs all have strong community offerings including forums where you are encouraged to show off your latest creations, a great place to start when evaluating the software. Browse the list below to find some inspiration, some of them have RSS feeds that you can subscribe to, to stay inspired.

Web Development Framework Showcases | Most Inspired Blog
Following on from our previous post of Inspiring CMS Showoffs I thought I’d compile a list of Web Development Framework showcases.
There are a lot of web development frameworks, but the most established ones you can count on the fingers of one hand, maybe two.

NETTUTS - Web development tutorials and links

At NETTUTS they will be tackling pretty much any subject to do with building websites including:
Complete step by step website builds
HTML and CSS techniques
Flash effects and techniques
Javascript and AJAX
Dreamweaver and other tools
general web development skills

Time Well Wasted - Intro from Crapneto on Vimeo.

The worlds longest Snake

A breathtaking animation piece by www.minilogue.com

Shinybinary

Nik Ainley is a UK based designer who has a passion for producing personal art and illustrations. After teaching himself Photoshop in his spare time while gaining a degree in physics at Imperial College London, he has since moved full time into the design world.

3min and 30 seconds of goodness

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

Advanced Beauty Preview, Rework from flight404 on Vimeo.

Magnetic Ink, test render 01 from flight404 on Vimeo.

Check Out FontStruct
FontStruct is a free font-building tool brought to you by the world’s leading font retailer FontShop.

FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.

Once you’re done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.

You can keep your creations to yourself, but we encourage users to share their “FontStructions”. Explore the Gallery of fonts made by other FontStruct users and download them or even copy them and make your own variations.

Coming soon: superfast internet - Times Online
THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

Photoshop Lady
Good collection of PS tutorials from a variety of sources around the web.

39 Creative Flash Designs | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

65-excellent-flash-designs

showcase-of-creative-flash-preloaders

adobe-flash-tutorials-best-of

39 Creative Flash Designs | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

Advertising and Games

To attract consumers site owners often tend to use some visually appealing Flash-solutions, 3D-experience with sounds and graphics motion is usual. Games are another option worth considering.

Intel’s Robo Brawl game. Very beautiful and interactive design.

Oh, By The Way — this is how an effective album promotion web-site should look like.

Good things — an advertising-project of the company “Orange”. Be pPrepare to endlessly scroll to the bottom of the page.

Neon Bible: Arcade Fires interactive video-clip. Dont forget to click.

Build your wild self — have you ever created a person with animal features? Well, maybe you should. A promotional site for New York zoos.

Farm Rio presents a truly excellent Flash-design, but what is it actually?

Zune — more vivid colors for a boring product.

iDecorabilit — decorating furniture online. Beautiful concept, interesting design.

Agatha — a distinctive, personal, minimalistic and beautiful design.

Sir Patroclo — take it easy, tiger. This little guy at the bottom should get some rest.

Halo3 — interactive Flash at its best. Excellent visual experience.

CDX — very sinematic and beautiful Flash-based game. One of those you-wake-up-in-a-room-and-you-have-to-escape games. Beautiful!

Art & Experiments

Typography Kicks Ass — some fun with Flickr-images.

Masayuki Kido seems to be pretty brave. Visitors can make a ball out of him. Don’t forget to click on his face.

Serge Tretiakov offers an interesting combination of scrolling and background motion. Pretty unusual design, maybe even disturbing.

A photographer Bernhard Wolff has a Flash-layout which is simply impossible to achieve with CSS and (X)HTML.

Sergey Tyukanovs Museum of Art — here “gallery” actually means “gallery”.

Eye-Project is an impressive animated collaborative mosaic. Including a variety of preloading time required to see the site.

Zoomquilt Part II — you can walk across the planet going deeper into the image. Zoomquilt is also a collaborative project.

Bigo and Twigetti — who would have guessed that? Bigo and Twigetti are musicians from London.

(Web)-Designers & Design Agencies

Opulentes by Nitrogenix. We bet you’ve never seen something like this before.

Progetty Design Studio — oh-oh, take it easy, buddy.

Atsushi Watanabe — very calm, peaceful and beautiful design.

Mohammad Rahimi doesn’t use a lot of space. The site is still extremely dynamic and interactive.

Max Shaman delivers something… strange. You can play with the doll and needles if you like to.

Clusta has many lines, interactive lines, exploding lines and flying lines.

Xcel Media seems to love the spreadsheet.

An illustrator Chu Keng Fu from Taiwan showcases his art…
…and his colleague Martin Haake has his own understanding of a modern web design.

The Science — finally some vivid colors!

Communicator World — a little bit too playful.

No-Idea has some pretty nice ideas. A design from Thailand.

Saizen Media Studios presents some splendid animated scenes.

MiniGorille.com — best viewed in the fullscreen-mode.

Esja — so many colorful notes!

Kraftvoll — creativity from France.

Amautalab — a design agency with sweet plastic characters.

Aardman Animations — home, sweet home…

Something Completely Different

Manuell Dall’olio interacts with site visitors using his own hands. That’s not really beautiful, but creative.

Receptionist? Administrative assistant? Those titles are for office drones half-assing their way through the day at those monolithic corporate houses of evil we call “businesses”.

No, Mary Jayne, you’re more of an office hero. Or maybe a clerical saint from some far-off magical land like Canada. Without you, Jerry’s print queue would be backed up to last October and the ir500 paper tray would be aimlessly moving up and down, unsure whether to print or copy.

The conference room phone would still be programmed in Norwegian, and the only chips in the cupboard would be the baked Cheetos which nobody likes, not even Murphy. But with your steady hand and unflinching eye for detail, documents were properly collated, mail was delivered in a timely fashion and always with a smile, and we never ran out of staples, not even that time we had a lot of stuff to staple.

Now that you’re leaving us for greener pastures, we wish you the best in your future endeavors. But we’re sad to see you go. Because now all we have to look forward to is a never-ending flurry of error messages, dangerously low toner levels, paper jams out the ass and a coffee machine that continuously blinks “Empty Bin”, a grim reminder of your absence.

Just some of her talents include..
Kim Murray Action Reporter (click to view)
Action Reporter Clip 2 (click to view)
Action Reporter Clip 3 (click to view)

And Bar Structural Support System Inspector (click to view)
and this is just a small fraction of a very long list.

We will miss everything about you.

the first volume of a two-tape collection called “Internet Power!” from 1995.

PS Brushes.net - Photoshop Brushes, Your Number one source for Photoshop Brushes
All the photoshop brushes are now categorized into their proper categories. We got rid of the Submit a photoshop brush button, but you can still submit your photoshop brushes using the contact button. We’re going to be adding new photoshop brushes weekly so be sure to check back often.

60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design | Fonts | Smashing Magazine
Typography is more than being legible and looking good. Among other things, effective typography manages to achieve two important objectives: a) to create an appropriate atmosphere and enable users to develop trust toward the site and b) to make sure visitors get the main message of the site and (if possible) become interested in the services offered on the site. Since written text is the most efficient instrument to communicate with visitors precisely and directly, the power of typography shouldn’t be underestimated.

80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design | Fonts | Smashing Magazine
Every now and again designers stumble upon the very same problem: the choice of a unique and beautiful typeface which manages to fulfill three basic tasks. Support the corporate identity, enrich the visual appearance and is compatible with the overall design. However, usually there are simply too many options you can consider, which is why you need time to find the option you are most comfortable with. Although the choice usually depends on clients’ requirements, it is necessary to have some pretty starting points for your font decision.

They’re not fun, but necessary, says Marketing Evolution.

1. Know the purpose of your campaign and psychological mechanism of your ad.
2. Apply the brand mark persistently.
3. Use a simple, iconic message. and make sure the image and copy work together. It’s tempting to use flash animation to create TV-like ads, but outside interstitials, gateways and over-the-page narratives are too complex for consumers with divided attention to grasp. Animation in other formats (such as banners and boxes) should be used to focus attention, not tell a story.
4. Consider the format. Keyword buys can work for consumers actively seeking information, page skins to raise brand awareness, and over-the-page formats for more complex, animated narratives.
5. Optimize creative. Pre-testing is relatively rare outside TV, but it can make a difference in digital, too. Marketing Evolution has found much if not most of the variation in campaign effectiveness comes from the creative, not the media buy.

the Mazda Furai
In the past year the Japanese carmaker Mazda has been working consistently on a new form language, and has unveiled their most extreme ‘sculpture’ yet: the Mazda Furai. A car designed to take the 24h Le Mans challenge.

motion graphic’s in the 80ies -
The making of the classic HBO intro.

Form + Function: Digital design goes well beyond Web sites

Funny microsites are giving way to useful, sometimes entertaining applications; the showing off of flashy technology is yielding to design geared towards generating sales; and crafting for social interaction is replacing one-way experiences. Now that digital points exist far outside the browser, designing for the Web is passe, with digital design chasing the elusive goal of designing experiences that wrap all of the above together.