The rock-star design duo, The Heads of State, give a talk for AIGA NY on April 1st at Museum of Art and Design. They'll discuss how they have collaborative together over the years to create witty and graphically sharp illustrations, posters, identities and books. Trust us, you'll be disappointed if you miss it. 
From sketches, to custom type treatments to fonts, Sebastian Lester's work shows range and craftsmanship. Wow.
This Thursday, February 25 from 7-9pm, gallery hanahou will be hosting the opening reception for Danish illustrator Lisa Grue's new show, Owls Have More Fun. The show will feature Lisa's playful and whimsical illustrations on handmade wallpapers, 100 handpainted ceramic plates, a rug and limited edition prints. Get there early and you might be lucky enough to snag some limited owl goody giveaways. Miss the show? Don't fret. It runs through March 26th.
Here at Pica + Pixel we have always been suckers for amazing prints so we were happy to stumble across a line of stationery and books put together by Djerba Goldfinger who runs the marvelous online vintage fabric store, Reprodepot. Pick from one of the 225 vintage patterns in either the Flora or Folk book for your personal craft projects. Don't feel like DIYing it? Then pick up readymade cards, notebooks and stationery sets instead.
Adobe and Wired team up to show some of the possibilities for what print publications can become on the iPad.
Happy Olympics everyone. We introduced you to the super cute mascots back in November, but don't miss meeting Mukmuk, the first official sidekick to the Olympic mascots. Check out his adorable video.
Gorgeous, mind-blowing paper typography/illustration from London-based Russian artist Yulia Brodskaya.
[Via why not?]
[Above: Yasmine Surovec, Karolin Schnoor. Below: Amy Ruppel, Erik Otto]
The Working Proof is a group seeking to marry artwork and social responsibility. Every Tuesday, they release a new piece of artwork by an emerging artist where 15% of the proceeds of the artwork goes to a charity chosen by the artist. The prints are in limited editions created by the artists themselves and can be done in any medium such as silkscreening, letterpress, linocut, giclee, etc. And as an added bonus, they do an great indepth interview with every artist!
For the last two months, I have started shooting in RAW format. As a result, I have had to change the way I process, store and organize my images since iPhoto does not currently process RAW files. I decided to do a full 30-day trial of both Aperture 2 and Lightroom 2 (I also tested the beta version of LR3) to be fair to both applications and truly explore the options. In my experiences, the actual image processing was comparable but the file organization and added features were very different.
Like iPhoto, Apple's Aperture employs the Library method for file organization where LR keeps images organized by dates or you can set up your own system for organization. LRs flexibility in file management would be most beneficial for anyone shooting specific events or clients. LR includes options for image sharpening and noise reduction that was not available in Aperture though Noise Ninja does offer an Aperture plug-in.
I rely heavily on Flickr for image display and long-term storage so Aperture was a clear winner for me because of ConnectedFlow's Flickr Export plug-in. I have been a loyal fan of the iPhoto version of this plug-in so the Aperture version was a smooth transition. LR2 had limited exporting capabilities for Flickr except for Jeffrey's Lightroom plug-in which was not nearly as intuitive as ConnectFlow's Aperture plug-in.
LR's series of image presets was a nice added feature -- a good starting place for monochrome, sepia and other techniques clients often request. Though overall, on my older MacBook Pro, LR felt sluggish in comparison to Aperture. LR3 beta includes a new Flickr exporting feature which was much easier to use than Jeffrey's Lightroom plug-in.
I am on my last days of my LR trial and was feeling the crunch to make a decision. Today, Apple announced the release of Aperture 3! Apple is boasting more than 200 improvements to Aperture and it still retails for $100 less than Lightroom. The feature set looks awesome, including presets, non-destructive editing tools and features I hadn't even considered like maps and facial recognition brought over from iPhoto. Sorry, Adobe. Looks like Apple is getting more of my money.
Here's a video of some of the Aperture 3 tools in action featuring photographer Chase Jarvis.
Sometimes cute beats all at Pica + Pixel. Mix surf music with amigurumi stop-motion animation and it is too cute not to share.
Emily Forland is a friend of Pica + Pixel and a lovely watercolor illustrator out of NYC. We love her whimsical still-lifes of ordinary and fun subjects, but our favorites happen to be the lovely typographical renderings.
Love 'em or hate 'em but you can't ignore them, the Superbowl, for most designers, is all about the ads. If you missed them, see them all at Mashable. My favorites are the Google spot, the VW Punch spot and the My Generation FLO TV spot (featured above).
The king and keeper of the "slow print movement", Hatch Show Print is the quintessential living and working letterpress print museum. This is a great visual document of the work and hand-cranked machines that are used.
[via David Airey]
It’s no secret that I do not — repeat, do not — enjoy the design stylings of Microsoft. But that’s like a 5-year-old saying he or she does not like broccoli, except for the fact that not even with age does the Microsoft taste become acquired.
Granted, this is mostly for us, designers, for whom the mere sight of an Excel, Word or PowerPoint file can bring us to our knees, as we struggle to find something as natural as the letter-spacing option.
Regardless of what most outsiders see as diva-like apprehension towards these applications...
One of my favorite exhibits that I've seen recently is the Slash: Paper Under The Knife at the Museum of Art and Design. I knew the instant I saw the full-sized paper pirate ship coming out of the ceiling in the lobby that this would be a pretty amazing show and I wasn't disappointed. Everything and anything was created out of paper from tanks to full-sized humans to dioramas of heaven and hell. I loved how each piece approached paper in surprising, beautiful and thought-provoking ways. Check out the exhibit through April 4th.
Sometimes logos scar you for life. "The S from Hell" is a 9-minute long documentary about how a simple logo freaked out a generation of children.
