Netdiver Mag

Discover Fiona Hewitt a talented illustrator – who with Andy Taiton (an expert in Asian Kitschology) created the Dumpling Dynasty line of characters which are applied to traditional chinese-like packaging on such as shopping bags, wallets, tea sets, pillows, tin cans and more. All quite preciously yummy.

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And of course Wu & Wu website meets all kitschy style prerequisites. Visit to find more visual delicacies.

Elena Kalis is probably one of the best known underwater photographer. With Winter slowly making way here – I envy her current location, the Bahamas. Her work is superb. With a plenty of fantasy and dreamy quality – her models suspended in liquid make for the creation of astounding pictures.

Alice in Waterland – story of a reinvented classic.

Let your pictures do the talking. Simple and creative iPhone app eastyTitler from ubinow.

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1 / Take or load a picture

2 / Overlay text & apply effects freely

3 / Share your creations

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Multi-tasker at large – warp 10 creative – genial designer, illustrator, animator and.. photographer. Kate Moross, a London based creative is just over 25 years of age. On top of her ever expanding client projects, she runs ISO & Isomorph Records.

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BTW, if you would like to pop any thing in to post to her – she loves mail swaps and is always happy to exchange goodies.

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She has a fascination with three sided shapes, illegible typography, and freeform lettering.

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Watch her Think-Work-Play interview where she talks about her favorite colours and some fun trivia.

Shape Type is a letter shaping game. Try it and see how you score. Crafted by Mark MacKay for Method of Action. What I did – is checked the link to original font to ‘see’ how it looks.

Try it – not as easy as it looks.

DWP short for DavidWhitePond Design is an independent branding and design agency. Multi-disciplinarians by choice – they sink their creative skills in just about any and all media. One thing that is strking – is the true diversity of output in their projects. Their portfolio is stellar.

A shiny armored ode to our design industry. They do us proud.

Going all 1970 hippie era in this exquisitely detailed pitch illustration for a Buck project by Steve Scott – a London based animator and illustrator.

One of my fav creative outlet – Colors and the Kids (CATK) have a slick redesigned website. They have managed to commercialize a steadfast production of projects that all have a high creative value by avoiding the seen-it-done-it-as usual approach.

If pictures can fork 1k words. Then have a lookee to make up your opinion.

ADC (Art Directors Club) Annual Awards 91st call for entries now open. Categories: Advertising, Design, Education, Illustration, Interactive, Photography. Submit your most compelling, moving work from the past year.

Deadlines: D / P / I / Interactive: January 20
Advertising / Integrated: February 10

Robot? A 4-wheeled graffiti machine, with a pendulum arm that creates random strokes. Not Senseless – just automated beautiful.

Created by So Kanno + Takahiro Yamaguchi

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View in action: Senseless Drawing Bot

Tired of how boring lorem ipsum got? Cupcake Ipsum – sugar-coated Lorem Ipsum generator.

Tart halvah jujubes bonbon marshmallow icing gummies pastry tiramisu. Chocolate bar caramels lemon drops jujubes apple pie chupa chups soufflé icing. Cookie ice cream caramels pudding topping cookie donut danish. Marshmallow ice cream cotton candy wafer marzipan danish faworki chocolate tootsie roll.

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Sweet!

Probably one of the craziest – time consuming – through the roof $$$ budget consumption.. yet what a result. See the making of the Novum 11/11 cover by Paperlux.

In 48,000 passes and with 140 extremely detailed die cuts per magazine, we created six differently coloured versions of the cover, without exposing the plates again each time.

The result is a metamorphosis of paper, inspired by the one and only Richard Buckminster Fuller.

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Must see!

TDC (Type Directors Club) promoting excellence in typography for over 65 years. Call for entries: Communication Design. Typeface Design. Title Design.

Deadline: December 16

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Identity + posters design: Paula Scher / Pentagram

For all the geeks! Rubiks Cube clock! Extending a classic puzzle toy to new heights. Top part swivel to view either temperature, time and date.

Pictoplasma is the world’s leading festival of contemporary character design returns to New York.

Upcoming: November 3

Rock, Paper, Scissors. by Julien Vallée

The graphic designer and art director Julien Vallée represents a new generation of designers. The young Canadian is a virtuoso at melding the most diverse analog and digital design techniques. He combines graphic design, stop-motion film, and a talent for staging space to create fascinating worlds of images in his work.

Enthusiastically multidisciplinary, he is as versed in traditional skills such as drawing, cutting, illustration, and collage as he is in the use of technologies such as stop-motion animation, video editing, and interactive design.

The monograph presents his commissioned work for clients such as the New York Times, MTV, AOL, and Computer Arts, but also includes a selection of personal projects.

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Each book includes a unique log-in code for accessing Vallée’s own making-ofs and other video work online.

Download the JVallee iPhone app.

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The Pro’s Guide to Effects & Presets by Borja Bonaque

Computer Arts Magazine asked him to create a serie of pieces for an article (September issue ) about the Adobe After effects. The illustrations represent the different tools of the program.

The timeline piece represents the time spaces in the AE. The expressions Tool represents the multiple faces you give to your art piece. And the Effects and Title Sequences are represented as a group of elements moving in a concrete space.

Use your powers for good. 52×52.org was set up as a way for those with social influence to use their online reach to help others.

A healthy following on twitter can do wonders for a career, but can be even better when put to use helping those in need. That said, you needn’t be a superstar to get involved and pledge to be a part of something big.

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via: Jessica Hische

Saizen Media team was responsible for a full redesign of the entire Element Energy Drinks (Europe based energy drink) brand, including logo identity, bottle design, full experience website, social media campaign, banner campaign, TV Ad and print material.

Embrace Your Element (water – earth – air – fire) is a Flash experience website that delivers all the wowing elements.

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Showing: iPhone wallpapers.

Doing an encore! Second website redeisgn for N o m a d e___. These powagirrrls rock.

Drop design studio developed the visual identity and promotional materials for The festival Short (short film) which each year adopts a general theme that guides a plural and diverse programming. In 2011 the theme chosen was Stereo: Listening to Cinema, Music.

Love the campaign concept. Super poster!

If time is on your mind as I – then The Colour Clock will be a good addition to your desktop. Representing time as a hexadecimal colour value. It uses an RGB conversion that changes the colour every second. By translating hh:mm:ss to corresponding hex values for rr:gg:bb the effect is a soothing and interesting progression throughout the day.

As imagined by Jack Hughes.

Fontagious app by Duncan A Campbell. Put your knowledge of everyday, famous fonts to the test with this addictive game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

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Challenging your speed at recognising famous bands, movies, tv shows and brands – each font has a pair of clues to help you try and guess as many as you can in two minutes. Sounds easy? Don’t be fooled, its harder than you think.

Past few months have been crazy w/ work and renoferno and I need a break. So temporarirly suspending publishing until next Monday to reboot and recharge. Call it a mini-vacation.

Kind of a few furlough days.

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via: Illustration by Thomas Porostocky

Now these are meant for provoking serious fun at reunions – parties – product / exhibit launch! Have a look at Tattly – designy temporary tattoos – and all – very reasonably priced.

Pay attention to how the domain name is spelled: tatt.ly. Nice logo and as nice website. Load of negative space – makes all items pop!

Happy digging.

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House Industries and Herman Miller are producing a limited edition series of 80 Eames wire-base tables (aka an LTR or Low Table Rod) that include A thru Z, numbers and ornaments from the Eames Century Modern font collection.

If you’re in Tokyo on October 27 – check the info.

Save the Ampersand and number 3 for me.

La Vita Nòva [Il Sole 24 Ore] illustrated by Marco Goran Romano.

The project describes all the photovoltaic process briefly. Starting from when the sun’s rays meet the photovoltaic cell until the produced energy is sold to the power company.

Digging the cool pictogram-like minimalist elements.

Another original super original product by Burak Kaynak: T-Shirt Sketchbook, who brought us the Disk-It sticky notes and WC/CV toilet paper roll and the Like Button tip box.

Doodle – practice – design yours.

BaseKit is an online web editor that allows to turn a PSD into an HTML file in a few clicks. Targeting mainly designers that can create great designs but might not know how to code.

Nice branding, packaging and type design by HolaCocoa.

Just released by D3, a small experiment Circle of Trust that you may like. It’s about how asymmetric is your relationship network on Google Plus (if you’re on G+ – here’s my url to profile). Best using Chrome to view.

Data viz for social media? One of many to come.

As a fan of miniature design or photographic essays involving figurines or toys – icon design fits the bill of the extraordinarily detailed eye candy jewel-like pictograms we love to use.

Showing? Some yummy examples.

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via: Pizza box by Iconlicious

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via: b.telligent and varia brands designed by Helvetic

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via: Web 2.0 Users by IconTexto

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via: Sanscons by SRJ aka Some Random Dude

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via: CMS Icon Set For Smashing Magazine by Pixel-mixer.

Grind is a 22nd century platform that helps talent collaborate in a new way: outside the system. A members-only workspace and community dedicated to taking all of the frustrations of working the old way and pulverizing them to a dust so fine it actually oils the wheels of the machine.

What do you think of that? Have you ever used or considered using a co-location space as a freelancer? Pro? Con?

Today is the day! How befitting! My first line of defense against the continuing renoferno and in order to concentrate, is to focus on a new project.

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It’s all About Being Creative

I’m going to self-publish a book containing brain bites around creativity, design and business of design topics. I’m taking my stacked of print-outs to the library to sort, edit, tinker the book structure and content.

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I will practice Make Change as suggested and illustrated by Ivan Huwa – till I make it happen. Making it happen derails adversity.

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Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules…

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

— Steve Jobs

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Now I am Champion (well, aspiring to be :)

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via: Commond Cloud

On & Beyond is the blog / portfolio of talented Vincent Tsang, a young photographer who specializes in the lifestyle – sportswear industry. Love the high density charged lighting of his b&w pictures.

Definitely someone to watch.

C5 aka Column Five Media is another agency that specializes in infographics. As the world moves faster each day, it is necessary to communicate your message in a quick, clear and engaging way that sets it apart from the noise. You can see some of their infographics in their work section.

Nice website w/ lovely icons too.

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Infographics is their iPhone / iPad app in lieu of a newsletter. Pretty smart self-promo strategy.

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They say knowledge is power, but how do we make knowledge powerful? The Power of Data Visualization video.

Digging the FDN (Future Design Now) bar code colored identity created by SGNL.

Sparkbox is a team of seven people who build websites that possess both brains and beauty. They specialize in building sites that are just as brilliant for mobile as they are for the desktop. That’s why they call them SmartSites.

Love the captions and interface design.

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via: Ryan vs. Clark

(AND) Abandon Normal Devices Film Festival branding and campaign work. Work included brand identity and application across various printed items including posters, festival guide, flyers and teaser stings which were displayed on a huge screen outside Lime Street Station.

Marcus McCabe aka MMC is a freelance designer and art director design studio Uniform where he worked on projects for several notable clients.

Funky posters and branding campaign – must see.

This Studio is clean, crisp and graceful. It is beautiful work, always for you, the client. This Studio was founded by David Bennett. This talented collective is showing off their projects in a most unusual and original way.

All team’s works (and they are pretty impressive) are photographed as if resting on an angle wall. Must see.

What happens when you use foam, wood, plaster, video projection? A light sculpture. Dimensions? Approx 8′ diameter. View the Parmenides I by Dev Harlan.

Driv aka think simple, act simple is a multidisciplinary designer, art lover, big fan of indie music and crazy about analogue photography. He works across graphic design, editorial, art direction, illustration, and any other mediums that can communicate the idea better. In 2011, he went back to Kuala Lumpur and started his own graphic design studio, LIE.

Showing the whimsical and playful Salt Films website he designed. Luv the litteral metaphor he used. View the live version here.

Just released an electro compilation by Beware. Free to download.

Aside from illustration and design, Karan Singh is a curator and writer for a self-initiated side project by the name of Pig Bimpin’. It’s an online resource documenting creative people, articles of industry and a showcase for excellent work.

The name, “Pig Bimpin”, is a play on the title of a famous track by American hip hop artist Jay-Z, ‘Big Pimpin’, a slang used in describing those who exude success, fame and fortune. “Pig Bimpin’”, flips the script on this name, a direct allusion to the often less the glamourous fruits of creative labour.

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Excellent interviews w/ Alex Trochut, Matt Moore, Justin Maller, Arnan Chair, Jeremy Somers and Ravi Vasavan.

Tunnelblick Music identity, packaging by HelloMe.

The visual identity for HipHop musician Exzem is based around the custom made display typeface HM Extra. The typeface is combined with metaphoric imagery that on one hand refers to backpack-HipHop clichés and the anonymity of coming from the countryside.

It is the story of a lone wolf from the countryside who collects sticks to make pencils of them so he can write rhymes.

Steve Jobs – 1955-2011

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A Collection of 60 Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes About Life, Design and Apple by Federico Viticci

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Steve Jobs and The Value of Saying No by Ben Popper

You’ve got to say no, no no and when you say no you piss off people and they go talk to the .. and they write a shitty article about you.

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Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying no to all but the most crucial features.

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Now we understand what it means. Illustration by Chang Kim, professor of Graphic Design & Information Design at San Jose State University. Brilliant!

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via: the internets

In no uncertain terms, this is probably the best facelift and (re)branding projects I’ve seen so far this year.

Neenah’s new line of colors – The Perfect Ten – demanded a flawless promotion. As imagineered by DesignArmy – made the debut a splash with pure PERFECT10N.

More pictures of the project and creative process revealed.

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As icing – view the behind the scenes – making of.

The strange and kitschy kiddy-like imagination eye candy dripping world of Takashi Murakami as reviewed by Designsigh.

The Audience Became the Band. The smiles of the audience pouring through the Echo Temple were an amazing payoff for all the hard work. People danced and played all day, reacting and smiling in wonder as their movements shaped the music around them.

As the day grew on, the crowd got bigger and more energetic, ending with a massive party.

A collaboration between Moving Pictures and Mother, NY.

Christoph Hitz was born and raised in Zürich, Switzerland. Some years later I graduated with a graphic design degree at the top of his class, then worked for a small ad Agency, designing billboards and creating short tv commercials.

Years of collaboration and moving to NYC, having his first Mac and doing retouching (without layers or multi-CRTL+Z) he started doing illustration.

Just my kind of illustration: pared down details and emotionally strong storyboarding.

10 Books Every Designer Should Read by Skaaren design

To help all you busy designers, here is a list of 10 books that will remind us why we love design, what it is we really do, how to do it better, and refresh us on the little things like the basics of visual communication.

Reigniting Your Creative Spark by Denise Jacobs

We cannot expect to be inspired or creative while we’re stressed…or can you? Frequently, at the root of a debilitating creative paralysis which cripples our imaginations is negative stress from perceived pressure from external sources, fear of failure, and a sense of danger.

Not all stress is negative, however.

Negative stress has an upbeat doppelganger known as eustress. Triggered by taking on challenges that are internally mandated, eustress causes exhilaration, focus, optimism, curiosity, and a sense of excitement. Eustress transforms uninspired boredom into high motivation.

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via: Jeffrey Zeldman

Strata #4 is a multi-channel immersive video-installation commissioned by Palais de Beaux Arts in Lille. The subject of this work is a series of iconic pieces from the museum’s Flemish collection, focusing specifically on Rubens’ and Van Dyck’s grand altarpieces.

Strata #4 is the result of a study and exploration of the paintings themselves, delving beneath their figurative appearance and looking at the very rules behind the composition, colour schemes and proportions of each piece. It is a precise process aimed at creating new contemporary images based on universal rules of beauty and perfection.

Imagineered by Quayola. Be amazed!

Strata #4 – Teaser 1

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Strata #4 – Teaser 2

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via: lostinspace

Superb art direction projects mostly book covers and editorial designs by prolific Rodrigo Corral who has a background in illustration, strong affinities with using original typographic fx and layouts because of his long time fascination with popular culture.

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The Brief and Wondrous Career of Rodrigo Corral by Ooligan Press

The diversity of Corral’s work derives from his desire to regularly take on projects designated for an audience that is new to him. In approaching a new audience, he begins by analyzing what that audience reads.

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Q&A: Rodrigo Corral on Book Covers, Design Inspiration, and the Changing Media Landscape by Ryan Shelley

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More of his book covers can be found here.

Rizon Parein is a 3D letter typographer and art director who started out as a graffiti artist. When 17 – he embarked on graphic design and is self-thought. Showing liberating personal work – 3D Digital Type.

It’s so important to pursue personal projects to grow both our skills and personal style.

What is the connection between setting-up a cave-like temp store and using 154 pairs of tights to decorate it with a muted palette? Arnsdorf Temporary Concept Store designed by Edwards Moore.

Ain’t that a genial idea and a cheap (yet strikingly beautiful way) to do so?