Edible life-size Gingerbread House

I am still very much in the christmas spirit and yesterday I came across this wonderful edible life-size Gingerbread house! I have always wanted to make a gingerbread house but have always given up because it it rather complicated! So I was extremely impressed when I came across this creation! Sadly it costs a whopping $15000 so perhaps I will end up making my own!

Building Block Set

Leave it up to House Industries to come up with this supercool building block set for Herman Miller Japan. Each set includes eight basswood children’s blocks dressed in House Industries numbers, shapes and patterns. The puzzle sides are based on the original Herman Miller furniture box that was used to deliver American modernism. 

Christmas fun for everyone!

The Christmassy treats keep on flooding into CR Towers. Here are some more of the inventive ways that designers and ad agencies are promoting themselves this festive season... First up is illustrator James Majowski's take on Santa, which he calls 'On the origin of Christmas'.

We've all seen Elf Yourself, but now there's Delft Yourself, a uniquely Dutch take on the whole interactive Christmas card-film-website thing from 180 Amsterdam. Visitors to the site are encouraged to use their webcams to create their own personalised messages that will appear on the site in a Holland style.

Lean Mean Fighting Machine has tackled one of the great questions of the Christmas season with its website Snowman or Fatman? The site invites visitors to pick one option and then watch a small boy approach a snow-covered figure and kick it to reveal which is correct.

Season's greetings (again) from New Future Graphic on Vimeo.

New Future Graphic has created this cute film featuring a wrapping paper-machine. The paper patterns shown can then be downloaded for use on your very own gifts online here

, and there are fun iPhone and iPad treats too.

Digital production house squint/opera has shown its dedication to the Christmas season by painting a giant Christmas tree across its office space.

Torchbox's iPad-tastic Christmas message

The employees of Oxfordshire-based web design and development company Torchbox used their iPads to deliver a festive Christmas message in the form of this film, entitled A Starry Night...

A Starry Night from Torchbox on Vimeo.



A Starry Night was filmed and edited at Torchbox's office in Oxfordshire and the music was recorded and produced at Torchbox by Katie Overbury, Wes West and Tom Dyson.
torchbox.com

Kleenex Does Typography

I was searching through the Internet yesterday and was pleased to discover this beauty by Kleenex!Amid all their floral designs, Kleenex is selling a box of tissues decorated with wood type. I’ve been looking for it in every shop I visit, but no luck so far…

Paper tattoos

Here's a nice idea from Danish artist Jacob Dahlstrup: creating images using a tattooing machine on heavy watercolour paper

Dahlstrup sketches the design in pencil first, then goes over it with the tattoo needle to create the final effect

On a Sailors Grave (no roses grow) from Jacob Dahlstrup on Vimeo.

Invisible Light video for the Scissor Sisters

This striking video for new Scissor Sisters track Invisible Light contains enough supernatural tomfoolery and unnecessarily exposed breasts to keep any 70s B-movie director happy...

Created by directing collective Canada, who are (somewhat confusingly) based in Barcelona, the video has no clear narrative but its collection of scenes (which include stigmata, wolves and a woman lugging a coffin into a forest) are compelling enough to keep you watching until the very end.

More on Canada is here.

Top 12 Banksy Pieces of 2010

12 San Francisco

Banksy is the gold standard when it comes to urban street art. His legendary reputation has only grown since the 2010 release of his intriguing movie, "Exit Through the Gift Shop."

To promote the film, Banksy went into super-overdrive and attacked city walls across North America like there was no tomorrow. The result is an incredible collection of thought-provoking, clever work that only the brilliant Banksy could come up with. Here are Banksy's top 12 masterpieces of 2010.

11 Los Angeles


10 Toronto


9 San Francisco


8 Boston


7 Alcatraz


6 New York


5 San Francisco


4 San Francisco


3 Detroit


2 Toronto


1 Ground Zero
 

Grafik is Back!

I am pleased to announce that one of my favourite design magazines is back! Sadly in June Grafik had close because its previous owners decided to close it down. Grafik is now working hard to rebrand the magazine and relaunch with new ownership by the original editorial team, and we will be re-launching with a new-look magazine and website early 2011. Meanwhile, keep watching the skies for more information about how to get your hands on the new Grafik mag, 

Sagmeister's new site

Stefan Sagmeister's new website offers a glimpse into his studio's working life: the homepage features a live webcam while interaction is via vinyl graphic 'buttons' stuck on the floor 

Sagmeister's sites have always departed somewhat from the portfolio-based norm – the last one, for example, being a headache-inducing clash of colour and type which was more endurance test than pleasant browsing experience.

The new site creates an interface out of a series of vinyl stickers applied to the studio floor and shot from directly above by a live webcam. So now the world can thrill to the site of a bustling modern design studio at work ie designers sitting in front of screens for hours on end with their headphones on, rising occasionally to get more coffee/relieve themselves/go shopping for more skinny jeans and overpriced trainers . And presumably clients can keep an eye on things too...

No doubt Sagmeister's detractors will see it as an exercise in vanity but it's certainly a fresh and intriguing way to tackle an issue which all design studios struggle endlessly with – the dreaded studio website.

This film shows the installation:

Simon Cook at Concrete Hermit

A few months ago I did a post about the wonderfully talented Simon Cook. Simon Cook, one of six graduates featured in Creative Review's  'Class of 2010' issue in September. I am pleased to have found out that he opened his first solo exhibition at Concrete Hermit's Carnaby Street space in London yesterday evening.


Cook set up his own company, Stone and Spear, back in 2008 while still a student on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course at Nottingham Trent University. His distinctive tyle, which combines photographic imagery with brightly-coloured graphics, has since appeared in work for clients including Anorak Magazine, Poolga (who make art and wallpapers for the iPhone and iPad) and DPI magazine.

The show will feature a series of A2 prints by Cook, which are shown here. He will also launch the Stone and Spear product line, which includes badges, stickers and greetings cards, in the gallery at the same time.

More info on Stone and Spear is at stoneandspear.com, and Concrete Hermit's website is concretehermit.com.

Who is Banksy?

Aardman Animations created this cute little animation for the Encounters Festival in Bristol. The film plays on the mystery that surrounds the identity of one of the city's most famous sons: Banksy..

The film was created by Aardman director and animator Chopsy, and was commissioned by the Encounters Festival for the Grafitti Animation section, appropriately enough.

New from Nobrow

These lovely new publications are from Nobrow. Each little book contains a story that is accompanied by beautiful illustrations.

First up is The Wolf's Whistle by Bjorn Rune Lie - a 32 page hardback which represents Nobrow's first foray into children's books. The book tells the story of a young Wolf called Albert who grows up with a dream of working for his favourite comic book publishers. Albert grows up and fulfils his dreams but is heartbroken when his three best friends from school suffer at the hands of local gangsters, the Honeyroast brothers.

The book ends with Albert on the cusp of reaping sweet revenge (in the name of justice, of course) as he reaches under his bed for the costume of the superhero he's been drawing all his life: Lone Wolf... This is surely the first of a series that charts the heroics of Albert / Lone Wolf as he does battle with the forces of evil and the dastardly Honeyroast brothers. Here are some spreads:

The Wolf's Whistle, £12 from nobrow.net

The Bento Bestiary is illustrated by Ben Newman and written by Scott Donaldson. This is an updated, hardback version which features no less than 14 illustrated  Yokai - a particular type of ancient Japanese beast and demon that were the forefathers of such famous Kaiju as Godzilla or Mothra. Each beast is accompanied by a description of what the beast is like, and also the consequences of eating it...

You probably wouldn't guess it from perusing Hildafolk – the latest in Nobrow's 17x23 series of illustrated short story publications – but its author, Luke Pearson, only graduated this year. This is a really accomplished comic story of a young girl that goes exploring the mountain on which she lives, discovering trolls and giants along the way...

I think I'm correct in the assumption that this is Nobrow's heftiest volume to date at 24.5cm x 19cm with 176 pages and a hardback cover and a rather nice cloth spine..

A Graphic Cosmogony is an anthology of comic stories about the "creation of everything". The 24 artists whose work features in it are thus: Stuart Kolakovic, Mikkel Sommers, Brecht Vandenbroucke, Luke Best, Rob Hunter, Jon McNaught, Ben Newman, Andrew Rae, Luke Pearson, Jack Teagle, Jon Boam, Jakob Hindrichs, Clayton Junior, Daniel Locke, Isabel Greenberg, Mike Bertino, Nick White, Rui Tenreiro, Sean Hudson, Luc Melanson, Katia Fouquet, Yeji Yun, Matthew Lyons, and Liesbeth De Stercke.

A Graphic Cosmogony, £24 from nobrow.net

And last but not least is Nobrow 4 - the latest issue of Nobrow's regular, 60 page, oversize A4, compendium of artwork by various artists on a particular theme. This ssue's theme is Night and Day and the cover (above) is by mcbess. Here are some spreads:

Nobrow 4 has been printed in an edition of 3000. £11 from nobrow.net