Culture Soak

I can’t get enough of Borja Bonaque’s illustration and design. Check out more work here.

The Pet Milk literary magazine and cd’s are now on sale for $7.00 at CD Central, Morris Book Shop, and Sqecial Media. Very cool, pick one up asap.

The Lexington Advertising Club welcomes Pentagram partner DJ Stout to its March Networking Program & Luncheon - Building Brands and Identity Design. This is sure to be a great event given DJ’s experience and impressive portfolio. Click here to register.

Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Location: Hyatt Regency Downtown
Networking & Luncheon: 11:30-12:45 p.m.
(Hyatt parking passes are available.)

Active Members (prepaid lunch): $0
Active Members and Students: $20
Potential Members: $35

I’m thrilled to announce that Elevation Creative Studios has won 9 Gold Addys and Best of Show at the 2009 Addy Awards in Lexington Ky. I’m very proud to have worked on these projects and want to say thanks to our clients and to the team I’m surrounded by at work everyday. Congrats guys and gal its going to be a great year.

The Name My Design Company Machine by Breadline Design makes naming your design studio a snap.

Very cool. Quotes on Design

The G.I. JOE: Rise of Cobra TV spot that aired during the Super Bowl last night brought back some fond memories of my childhood. G.I. JOE was hands down my favorite toy as a kid. My other love was skateboarding and of course Powell Peralta. You can imagine my excitement when I ran across RetroSkateStickers.com today while I was already on an all-things-retro high. RetroSkateStickers.com currently has over 375 vintage skate stickers in their gallery with many of them for sale. Above are some of my favorites. I remember buying every deck back in the day because of the graphics which meant I always bought VCJ illustrated Powell Peralta. Man, I miss those days. It kind of makes me want to dig out the old McGill board from the attic… maybe I’ll grab the G.I. JOEs while I’m up there.

Pretty Loaded is a digital museum of preloaders created by Big Spaceship. That’s right, an entire site dedicated to preloaders that preload more preloaders. Everyone is encouraged to submit their preloaders for consideration into this ‘infinite loader’. With the ever-changing and always evolving nature of the Internet it’s nice to see an artform like preloaders being preserved. Can anyone else think of other archive-worthy interactive artforms that are seldom or no longer used?

Great news. Chip Kidd will be visiting Morehead KY on the 21st of April 2009. He will be speaking from 5-8:00 on the campus of Morehead State University in the Claypool-Young Art Building.

Chip Kidd is a graphic designer and writer living in New York City and Stonington, Connecticut. Chip is one of the leading book jacket designers of our time and is a very entertaining speaker. His designs for Alfred A. Knopf (where he is associate art director) have helped spawn a revolution in the art of American book packaging. His work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Eye, Print, Entertainment Weekly, The New Republic, Time, Graphis, New York, and ID magazines, and he is a regular contributor of visual commentary to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

Don’t miss this event he doesn’t come around here very often. We will keep you posted with information as we get it and will also do a few reminder posts before the event.

Massimo Vignelli is offering The Vignelli Canon as a free downloadable PDF. This is a great refresher for all designers and in my case an introduction to some new concepts. I particularly enjoyed his insight on American paper sizes.