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Mario Hugo is a legendary graphic designer/illustrator/artist who has recently served as a massive inspiration for me. I cannot believe I had never heard of him before after seeing the breadth and awesome-ness of his work! At 27 years old he has already made a name for himself and in New York where he is based he has already pushed a whole generation of new creatives with his personal and arty approach. I love his contemporary style and originality and am so glad that I have come across him and all of his work, to check it out for yourselves over at his (incredibly cool) site here!

Okay, so I haven’t posted up in months now and I’m feeling incredibly guilty about that so I thought to give me a kickstart back into blogging I’d start again with this sweet little thing. The Little Printer is a creation made by the folks over at BERG (who have also made this swish little clock). It is described as being like “having your own printing press, newspaper and a dog to fetch it for you, all in your front room.” A wonderfully simple idea, in such a cute little package and with such practical applications! I cant wait to get one when they are officially released into the wild next year but until then I guess we’ll all have to settle with this video and the site over here in the mean time.

Planetary (voiceover) from Bloom Studio, Inc. on Vimeo.

Planetary is a new and unique visual music experience. It is an iPad app produced by ‘Bloom Studios’ and it looks amazing. I haven’t been able to get a go on it yet from what I’ve seen it seems to be excellent proof of what the iPad is capable and what programmers are capable of too. It pulls music down from your iPod music and displays them in an array of planetary awesomeness. Also, its free on the appstore so head on over to the link here to download it and have a play!

The fashion designer Paul Smith is celebrating the release of Tomas Alfredson’s highly anticipated new film, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by creating these four amazing limited edition silk-screen posters. Each poster costs £100 but all proceeds go towards charity, they can be bought exclusively on the Paul Smith site and if I can save up the money I am definately investing in one of these beauties. To have a look for yourself and see if they are for you head on over to his site at the link over here!

Almasty is a Paris based creative studio run by Anna Apter & Charles Bataillie. They are another one of these agencies that will make anything! They have worked in art direction, graphic design, animation, typography – the list goes on. Even though their body of work is varied it is not huge and there is not much for show on their site but what they do have looks pretty awesome. Playful pixels and funny little characters seem to be the way they play the game and it definitely works, check them out over at their site here!

The D&AD have teamed up with the ‘Peace One Day’ committee and have set a brief for all creative’s everywhere in the world to raise awareness of the event and get people to act peacefully for peace day 2012. Those wishing to firstly aid world peace and also get their hands on this years beautiful white pencil need to head over to the white pencil site here for the brief and also head over here to like the Facebook page and have a look at the video too!

Autodidakt is a website showing off Göran Söderström’s typography. He has made several faces for himself and for big clients such as ICA and SEB, his typography is amazing. Especially his newest face – ‘siri’. The terminals of the letters like a, s, h and E (shown right ->) are slightly rounded in both convex and concave styles which gives the font a much warmer feel that I love. To check out the rest of his typefaces such as meadow condensed (another brilliant font) and others head over to the Autodidakt site here!

Shin Dokho is a Graphic Designer I recently found whilst searching cargo. He has an amazing portfolio which is incredibly varied from the projects he does to the way he does them. His use of typography and new and old techniques are all incredibly well executed and I am amazed I haven’t seen him before! He has done a few books, ident’s and lots of posters that are very much worth a look. To have a look for yourself head on over to his site here.

‘Try Helvetica’ is a Brazilian project that I think is run by a company called ‘noono’ (that’s the link on the page). It is basically a project where people send in photos of their hand drawn/painted signs and logos and somebody posts up a picture on the tumblr of a photoshopped version with its helvetica-ised version and the original image. Its a fun idea and is also very well executed and with a slogan like ‘Brazil needs more helvetica! And so (does) the World!’ who knows what might happen! To check it out for yourself follow the link to their tumblr here!

Those of you who have been watching my blog for a long time may remember back in May I put up a post about quite a lovely little memo holder I had found called ‘Morris.’ Well, yesterday whilst I was looking around the home store ‘Heals’ I came across another, Bianca the Hippo! His golden teeth and shiny black body look fantastic and he is equally as awesome as old morris. But then, whilst searching online to find out more about him for this post I came across Lennie! He is a camel that comes in white and does the same job as Bianca and Morris with just as much style (if not more). Also, I have finally tracked down who makes them and more importantly where you can find them so if you want to have a closer look follow the link here!

CAPITAL are a company based in the USA that make a very special and new breed of sunglasses, wooden sunglasses. They are hand made out of a variety of different American hardwood’s and are all unique as a result of this. They also cost $95-$135 (£60-£80) which is quite a lot of money for a pair of fairly high maintenance sunglasses, however in all the pictures I’ve seen they look fantastic. The vintage, quirky look and feel to them is truly excellent and I think its safe to assume big things will come from this small manufacturer. To check them out for yourselves or even to buy a pair head on over to their website here

I just came across a brilliant little site that was made to determine what specific type face you are. It was created by Pentagram, ‘the world’s largest independent design consultancy’ and contains a psychologist from the neck down taking notes on various answers you give from questions he asks. A rather surreal experience but one that shows to all those who thought of type as an objective subject that emotion does have a role to play. I turned out to be an ‘Archer Hairline’ which 46,436 other people had also been identified as, the second favourite out of all 16 faces avaliable. To have a look yourself and be analyised by the mysterious psychologist head over to the site here!

A few days ago I put up a post about Simon Garfields excellent book ‘Just My Type.’ Since I have been reading this book, my awareness of fonts and typography has massively increased and my interests in creating my own have too! I’ve spent a couple of days looking around for different programs to have a stab at it and it appears that there is not really much out there. The most well known and obvious choice would be fontographer however, this program costs money. Not as much as photoshop or high end modelling software but still north of £100. FontForge is a good alternative and is also opensource software so the best part is – its free! The user interface is slightly hard to understand but after about half an hour to an hour you can be creating your own alphabet with reasonable confidence. To have a go yourself follow the link over here. A little word of advice though, follow the links on the site to download the ‘fontforge-mingw’ version as it is much, much easier to download than the ‘cygwin’ version…

Austin Kleon calls himself quite simply ‘a writer who draws.’ He does quite a lot of things in addition to that actually. He is an illustrator, a website designer (who specialises in WordPress themes) and can also be a public speaker or a ‘visual note taker’ at your request. A very clever man indeed, however, he has created something creative and clever as well. His series of artwork ‘Newspaper Blackout’ (now published in a book) is, in my eyes at least, brilliant. He makes a kind of poetry by subtracting words from newspaper articles, he gets a sharpie and colours over all the words he doesn’t need giving new life to the newspaper. I love the idea, its simple and no one else has done anything like this and even if they had I doubt they would’ve made the witty and very well thought out poems that he has created. To see more of his work and have a look at his blog follow the link here for more information!

Eero Aarnio is a Finnish interior designer who made his name in the 1960’s with his plastic ball and bubble chairs. However, he has been busy more recently as well, creating a line of children’s toy’s and furniture out of the same plastic material. He is a brilliant modern, minimalist designer and I actually have to say, I bought his ‘Puppy’ chair a few years ago and it wasn’t actually that expensive to buy. His other, ‘classic’ stuff is quite expensive however he still remains a brilliant interior designer and one of my favourites. To check out his website and more of his stuff including a guitar visit his site over here!

Yeah, thats right. Keep calm and jog on or is that party on, no wait, I know what it is! Keep calm and eat cake, oh wait… whatever it is it definately couldn’t be ‘Keep calm and carry on’ thats just plain boring. Now I apologize if I got a little carried away there but I hope you see the point I’m trying to make. One good, simple design and like vultures everyone tries to swoop and cash in on it. I know i’m probably being far too sentimental about this kind of thing but it just seems wrong for everyone to try and alter what was and still is a brilliant piece of wartime propaganda. It’s ruined the meaning of the phrase and what once was a cool, unique and quite patriotic poster to hang on your wall (i’m talking about the original version) has now turned into something fairly commonplace and ordinary. Now, this would be okay if it was through a massive popularity boost in the original but it’s not and in my eyes, and I hope your’s too this is wrong. It seems immoral and in a way emphasises peoples inability to come up with a good design of their own. I mean, seriously?

Now, I know this isnt the most innovative or creative of adverts but that dosen’t mean it isnt a good one. Google and their latest creation Chrome, which comes in many forms, have been advertising the web browser they’ve created. These incredibly sweet adverts depict the story of various fathers sending their newly borns emails throughout their entire life so that one day they look back at them together and see how they grew up. It is all on screen footage and apart from a few youtube videos it has very few people involved and almost no dialogue apart from what you read in the emails. It shows off all the various features of Chrome, things like Picasa, G-Mail and it’s lighting fast speed. With fathers day coming up soon this heart-warming little advertisment will be a great inspiration to many dads out there and is a brilliantly smart move from Google Chrome. The videos above and if it persuades you to get the browser or if you simply want more info, follow the link here!

GAMA-GO is a company that was started in 2001 by Greg Long and Chris Edmundson and originally purely sold t-shirts with kickass designs on them. More recently its been moving into other merchandise such as cupcake keys and guitar shaped spatulas but the t-shirts remain their biggest thing. They are fairly cheap ($28, roughly £17) and are made of good quality material. A while back I came into possession of their which showcases some of their best designs and I love it. They are punchy and full of colour which I am a big fan of, they are playful and there aren’t really many other companies doing what they do so they are fairly exclusive too! To visit their site follow the link here!

You know when some people take jokes too far? Well those jokes dont always have to be bad ones it appears! A year ago on April fools day the guys over at ‘ThinkGeek’ posted up a terrific (albeit fake) idea whereby they sloted an iPad into a miniature arcade machine. One year later this April Fools product has come to life! On June the 9th they will be shipping out first orders out to the U.S. but theres no word on when it will be hitting U.K. retailers. Still, as soon as I can buy one (and have an iPad) I will be getting one of these! To check it out at their site and put in an order for yours follow the link here!

Made.com is a site that sells designer furniture and other goods at prices up to 80% cheaper that high street value… and the catch? You have to wait that little bit longer for the goods. Thats it. It’s a bit of a strange buying system that I don’t really understand, but if you buy something, it will eventually get to you. I think it’s a system by which they choose what to make communally, a community of people vote on what they think should be made and the one with the highest votes is produced and sold to those who voted for it. I’ve bought from them before, a brooklyn floor lamp for £210 off the high street price and it is excellent, superb build quality and it arrived in good time too! For brilliant design at next to no cost visit Made.com here!

Augmented reality technology has had a real boost over the last few months and now we have our first ever augmented reality music video! Simply hold the broken heart symbol up to your webcam and watch the wonderful John Mayer perform Heartbreak Warfare in the palm of your hand. I am a big fan of John Mayer and saw him perform last year and I think that this is a brilliant thing that him and his team have managed to do. They have managed to work out most of the faults that normally bring down this technology and it’s a really interactive and smart move from Mayer. To check it out for yourself follow the link here to the site!

FCUK have had this advertising campaign going for a while now and I am in love with it. It has brought out some of the best photography and film work I have seen from a major brand in a long time. The idea is very simple, what they have done just contrasts and mixes up stereotypes of women and men which is nothing new, however, they do it in a very subtle and believable way that it makes it both funny, intriguing and fresh to look at. When passing an FCUK shop near me I saw the poster ads for these on the walls with a small booklet in store, so I went in and took the booklet which turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Pages and pages of beautiful photgraphy with amazing subjects, the stills can be seen online here and I thoroughly recommend you have a look. There is both the ‘YOU ARE MAN?’ and ‘You are woman?’ sections of the campaign with a collection of videos and photographs for each which can be seen here on their campaign website!

Papermash is an independent company that sell products from independent designers from the US, Japan, Korea and the UK. They do prints, masking tape and even striped paper straws! My favourite part has to be the Japanese masking tape which looks very cool and i’m sure i’ll be buying some of that along with the equally cool Subway tape. This little company has impeccable taste and has very reasonable prices along with free postage on items over £25! A very sweet and ‘Cath Kidston-esque’ wesbite and one that I think ill be visiting plenty of times in weeks to come, you can too at the link here!

I’ve been wanting to do a feature like this for some time, an in depth write up and history about any major company, agency or thing in design that I thought was cool. This has now lead me to Pantone which I definitely think is large enough for me to write quite a bit about and it also seems like quite an apt place to start. Stay with me, I’ll try to make it as interesting as possible but, as they say – practice makes perfect!

Pantone Incorporated is an American company based in Carlstadt, New Jersey and is best known for it’s PMS (Pantone Matching System) which is widely used in various different industries such as printing, fabrics and even the production of paint. In the 1950’s when Pantone first started (although not under that name) it was primarily a printing company, however in 1956 a young Lawrence Herbert who had recently graduated from Hofstra University was taken on as a part time employee. Whilst at the printing firm he used his experience and knowledge of chemistry and applied it to their stock of pigments and also their production of coloured inks. Over the next six years his ideas really took off and by 1962 he was running the ink and printing division of the company with a good profit margin, however, the rest of the company had worked its way in to a five figure debt that it was struggling with very badly. He therefore bought the company out and started making a few of his own changes.

By 1963 they were dishing out their first “Pantone Guide’s”, these are small 15×5 cm cardboard flip-books that display a selection of different colour shades on each card page. The idea behind this is to allow designers to ‘colour match’ specific colours when a design enters each stage of production, this little swatch meant that, regardless of what equipment was being used to produce the colour the manufacturer could always check that the colour was right. This idea was a stroke of genius from Lawrence and was quickly adopted by a host of people from different fields of work – graphic designers, reproduction and printing houses etc. It was also a steady return for Pantone’s finance as each swatch had to be replaced annually due to the ink going yellow-ey over time. Over the years Pantone quickly digitized it’s products with the realisation of the new computer revolution and recently a new, more modern swatch has been created in 2007 called the ‘Pantone Goe System’. This consists of over 2,000 new colors in a brand new matching and numbering system.

The ethic and design of the company was (and still is) massively looked up to by many designers and it had become a timeless, cool and cutting edge corporation. With the fame of Pantone building and building over nearly half a century of work, people started wanting Pantone products. The people got what they wanted too with the birth of ‘Pantone Universe’. Under this name hundreds of Pantone products have emerged from eyewear to bikes they have made it all. They have even made an entire Pantone hotel with themed bedrooms! From what started as a simple, humble colour swatch snowballed a multi-million dollar business and all I have to say is – fair play Lawrence Herbert, fair play indeed.

Carboard Safari are a tiny little company that can be found in the States over in Virginia, it was started by two guys Chris and Luis who “strive to design fun and fascinating products.” This they do very well with their Carboard Safari animal trophies! I have in my room a Buck Jr. and he is an instant conversation starter for anyone who walks in. Their range of deer, bison, rhino (the list goes on) trophies can give that room that little bit of fun it needed for around only £30! They are cheap, easy to assemble and great to look at, to buy your own and have a look at their other stuff visit them over here!

This is Stefan Sagmeister talking about ‘happy’ design and his experience with happiness over the years. His witty speeches are very insightful and if you enjoyed the one above I recommend that you watch a slightly shorter 5 minute speech he made 4 years after filming this one here!

I came across YEAH Magazine a while back and have only seen a few editions but from what I’ve seen it looks to be very good! A showcase of young talent from across the U.K. compiled into a small, short magazine with only a few adverts. The creators are friends, Errey and Stevie and the basic concept of their magazine is simple. They put out a theme for the magazine such as ‘age’ or ‘the scene’ each quarter via the website or in the magazines for young people to put fowards art, designs, writing and photography of their own for that theme. The best work is put in and credited and it seems to be a good way to get your name and work out in to the big wide world! To have a look at what their working on and what they’ve done in the past, check out their website here!

Morris the memo holder is an inspired design from the Studio of Yaacov Kaufman, a dog/donkey looking memo holder that contains 140 sheets of square paper. I have one on my desk and he is the most practical and best looking way to remind myself of all the things that I need to do. He’s only £10 and is avaliable in white, charcoal and red and I thoroughly recommend him to everyone! To get one for yourself follow up the link over here!

Some more innovative advertising via YouTube now, but this time from TipEx! The idea is that a hunter is out in the forest, his friend his filming him brushing his teeth (like so many videos on youtube) when all of a sudden a bear comes out from nowhere. You the viewer then have to decide whether your going to shoot it or leave it, whichever one you choose doesn’t matter as the hunter doesn’t shoot the bear either way. Instead, he grabs the TipEx out of the ad next the video and erases the title asking you what they should do next… that’s, him and the bear. Now, there are a plethora of possible things to type in, (40 to be exact) from playing football, going shopping to doing it up against a tree… All of which are very, very funny. It’s a big win for TipEx as their little marketing brainwave appears to have paid off with 16,723,146 views to date on a budget of less than €700,000! (just over £600,000) To have a look at the video head over here!

With all the hype building around London hosting the 2012 world Olympics, here in the UK certainly the posters and advertisements for the event have been cropping up more and more all over the news and billboards everywhere. The posters are good, but it got me thinking about some Olympic posters I had seen that were even better. The posters from the Munich Olympics are fantastic, some of the best promotional work I’ve ever seen. Abstract art as the main image and ‘Olympische Spiele Munchen 1972’ in plain, sans-serif font underneath. There was also the more obvious designs also created by Otl Aicher who was one of the best German graphic designers of the 20th century, these were posters with pictures of the various sports in a linocut style and coloured in very vibrant colours. All this minimal design I adore, especially with the use of the bold, vibrant colours – the picture I used on the home page for this post is by far my favourite but at prices around £200 I doubt I will have one hanging on my wall any time soon. To see more of these posters I’ve found a brilliant little website that has a database of them all, just click here

Mugs, everyone needs them and just recently I have seen a few designs for them that have caught my eye. I’ve also been wanting to start a ‘Top Five’ theme for a while so here goes!

1. At number one we have my personal favourite, the ‘Moustache Mug!’ I actually got given one of these for my birthday along with the ‘Moustache Glass’ which means I have the entire set! There are varying types of moustache you can purchase including the ‘Magician’ moustache which is also very cool!

2. Second is a marvelous and practical creation from SUCK UK, the MyCuppa mugs! There is a different design for tea and and for coffee and on the inside they have a ‘Pantone-esque’ style colour chart all with a description underneath of what type of coffee or tea your are brewing. It’s very simple, just match the type you like to the colour on the mug, different types include ‘Builders brew’ and ‘Classic British’ and it looks like great fun! To have a look follow the link here!

3. At number three is a creation from the Pantone Universe, it is of course, the Pantone mug! They can be bought either individually or as a palette of colours, ‘Yellow C’, ‘Process Blue C’ all the way down to ‘Orange 021 C.’ The simple design is timeless, and is a must have for any designer to look the part whist thinking over their latest work. To look at the mugs (and the espresso collection) click here!

4. Number four has to be (as childish as it seems) the Mr Men mug collection! For both the young, the old and those in between the Mr Men books will have, at some point, impacted on us. Everyone I’ve asked has always had a favourite character and who wouldn’t want that character on their mug in the morning? (Besides Mr. Grumpy) To buy your favourite little Mr. Man or Little Miss follow the link here

5. Now, number five may not be as exciting as the Mr. Men that preceded it however it is very, very cool in its own right. The Ardoise mug by virages is a mug and a blackboard, so you need never forget that thing you had to do in the morning again! The french company make the mug in different coloured slates and even supply you with 3 chalk sticks to get you going. Check it out at their site here!

Native Union and French designer David Turpin have teamed together to create the Moshi Moshi POP Phone, a brilliant little handset that can plug into your iPhone, iPad or computer via the 3.5mm MP3 jack. It has a classic shape and style with a unique finish, the soft texture on the outside adds some new flavour to the familiar shape and the ‘end call’ button in the middle makes the phone feel well built, makes it practical and also make it look as good as it feels. The microphone and speakers aren’t anything very special and speaking and listening through it dosen’t particuarly enhance the quality of the call. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a bright red one of these last May and I use it for every call I can, be it a Skype call or a mobile call there is definately something special about using a handset rather as opposed to a hands free device or just your regular phone. I love it, it’s reasonably cheap and although it is something of a novelty it is practical and it does look damn cool. To have a look, you can visit the website here!

I’ve recently come into the possession of David McCandless’ book Information is beautiful and I am in love with it. The designs within are inspired and are all brilliant visualizations of huge amounts of information and data that McCandless has accumulated over the years. I thoroughly recommend that you buy yourself a copy if not for the information (some of which is quite shocking) then for the designs themselves! He is a very clever and inspiring man who has become very famous through doing something that is actually very simple but doing it very well. To see more of him talking about himself and what he does at a TED conference click here. Also if you just want his website about him click here.

The mighty Stefan Sagmeister has recently made a few changes to his website – a few very daring changes, the main one being that the homepage is actually a like webcam link to his office in New York! On the floor he is either projecting or has physically drawn the menu with ‘work’, ‘store’, ‘news’ and all of that and they all link to that part of the page. I’ve never seen him actually in their but I presume if you stayed on it long enough you would eventually. I very much like the idea and cannot wait to catch him out live over in New York! To visit the site click here!

Would you believe it, Pantone, the humble colour palette now has a hotel to his name! Located in Brussels the Pantone hotel consists of 59 rooms (in a selection of colour themes), two large meeting rooms and a ‘chic’ rooftop bar/lounge. I personally can’t think of a cooler way to visit Brussels or anywhere for that matter, especially when you could tour the city on this baby – so if you want to spend a fairly reasonable €109 for you and a friend to visit for the weekend, check it out here!

The pop tart cat is BACK! A massive come back for the Nyan Cat has taken my Facebook stream by storm. A looped animation of a pop tart cat who likes to ride rainbows, listen to some rather garish synth all in the comfort of 8 bits – continuously. Love it or hate it, it’s made a terrific comeback! There is also a game if you fancy becoming the Nyan Cat! To check him out go here!

I came across the O’CLOCK Watch whilst on a visit to Spain in the holidays, a beautifully simplistic design at only €20. The watch faces can be taken out of the strap and are interchangeable with other sizes and colours. Straps cost €6 individually and are made out of good quality rubber and come in an assortment of well picked colours. The unique packaging is also an eye-catcher, a tin can of all things! I love the philosophy and design of ‘Fullspot’ and hope all of you can spare the €20 (£17) to buy your own O’CLOCK Watch!

For more information check out the website

An assortment of clever and creative bag designs for you here – both fashionable and functional we have a bunch of them for you to look at! Even more in the Facebook album!