Community Bridge

5 Years.
1 Artist - William Cochran.
10 Assistants.
1 Bridge.
1 Community - Frederick, Maryland.

This mural project has transformed an ordinary concrete bridge, into a gorgeous work of public art. It would be wonderful if other cities could take an eyesore and turn it into a piece of beauty and pride for the community. See for yourself:

Before:
After:

Self Analysis

I recently came across an interesting article from UnderConsideration.com. Designer, Armin Vit, took an honest look at some of his logo designs that "never made it" for one reason or another. In the process, he noticed quite a lot of similarities between the logos. This would be an interesting, and perhaps frightening, exercise for most designers to go through. What does it say about us, our preference, our likes and dislikes. How much were we designing for ourselves instead of for the brief.

Here's a snippet of the article:
As a respite from the pristine show and tells of finished work sprinkled with anecdotes that support the fabulous work on screen I wanted to focus on the unglamorous side of graphic design. The endless revisions, the variations, the changes, the odd requests — “I like turtles, can my logo have a turtle?” — and the inevitable doom of much of the work we do as bezier- and pixel-based compost for piles of archived CDs, DVDs and 200-gigabyte hard drives. For my slide show I went through almost ten years of archives looking for all the files that never quite made it… the good, the bad and the ug…

Below is the flow chart analysis (click on the chart to enlarge). Click here to read the full article and see the logos.

Happy Monsters

What's cuter than a family of funny looking monsters? Um... not much. Yann le Coroller works in the broadcast industry as a 2D/3D designer. While I do like the motion work, his illustration have a certain appeal on their own. Here are some portfolio pieces to brighten your day. To view Yann's full range of work, click here.

Take Two

You can't turn on the TV, or open a newspaper, without hearing some reference to "being green", reducing your carbon footprint, reusing, recycling, etc, etc. I advocate this and try to apply it to my daily life. But here are some people who take it to a whole new level–ART. (Found via NOTCOT.org)

Jeremy Mayer de-constructs old typewriters to create fantastic sci-fi creatures.

Beverly Ng's "Spark Lamp" collects solar energy by day, and becomes a night light once the sun sets. Additionally, it provides digital feedback to your home computer to track your energy consumption. Pretty smart little lamp!

Recycled skateboard jewelry by Maple XO. I love their motto: "Save Landfill Space in Style."

A new use for the everyday lightbulb. Who knew they were so pretty? Buenos Aires-based sustainable design studio Minimahuella creates these smart reminders of the choices we make.

Now, what will you create? {Submissions are encouraged!}

Logo land

Some well know logos have recently shed their 1980's skin, for a fresher, trendier look:


Walmart has changed the spelling of their name (no more hyphen), opted for a friendlier lower-case font, and a brighter color palette. Gone is the star, and in its place is an ambiguous light "burst." Well, it is more pleasing to look at. I'm not sure how "ownable" this burst icon is, or what exactly it's supposed to represent... but it's definitely more modern. There is a chance that it's trendy and will look dated in the future, but that remains to be seen. At the end of the day, I think the original logo spoke more to the brand... crowded, frustrating stores and a dictatorship toward the brands they choose to sell ;)


Stop & Shop is more of a North East institution. The original logo is chunky and a bit garish, but it's totally recognizable. While the new logo is pretty... it is certainly a complete overhaul. Nothing remains of the original brand equity. It's a bit trendy, and again, I wonder about it's timelessness. Frankly, I wonder what exactly it is. A flower? A fruit bowl? I guess it does speak to freshness, and that is a good thing for any supermarket. Thoughts?

(Images from underconsideration.com)