Category: Inspirational Designs

Good Design Expo 2009

Post author By prawn1
Post date September 1, 2009

The Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO) hosts an annual event to showcase well-designed products. At the Good Design Expo this year, over 2000 products under consideration for the Good Design Awards were shown to the public. And the Pink Tentacle were in attendance to snap photos of the eye-catching designs.

This hourglass-shaped freshness label for meat products measures the amount of ammonia in the container and will change colour to indicate the meat has gone bad.

These beautiful lamp shades from Sony stores energy from sunlight during the day and use it to power the lamp at night.

These cute flash drives can be used as magnetic stickers when not slotted into the USB slot of your computer.

See more designs at Pink Tentacle. We’ll keep you updated with the winners when 1) we learn enough Japanese to navigate the Good Design Awards site or 2) the English part of the site gets updated.

Tags consumer products, Good Design 2009, japan

Arty Awesomeness Featured Inspirational Designs

The Psychedelic Art of Tadanori Yokoo

Post author By prawn1
Post date September 1, 2009
2 Comments on The Psychedelic Art of Tadanori Yokoo

I don’t know much about graphic design but I do know what I like. And I love the art of Tadanori Yokoo. The 73-year old graphic designer is widely recognized as one of Japan’s most successful and influential artists.

Yokoo’s interests in mysticism and psychedelic art shaped his work and in the late 60s, he created a number of eclectic posters. Take a look at some of them below – click the embiggen.

See more after the jump.

Tags 1936, graphic design, illustrator, japan, mysticism, pop culture, psychedelic, Tadanori Yokoo

Arty Featured Inspirational Designs Music

Soy Tu Aire: An Interactive Music Video

Post author By prawn1
Post date August 28, 2009

In one of the most striking music visualizations I’ve seen, the video for the single “Soy Tu Aire” by Spanish band Labuat lets you use the mouse to control the movement of an inked line as it moves across the canvas. The site records your effort and at the end of the song, you can re-play it.

It’s beautiful stuff. Check out Soy Tu Aire and let us know what you think.

Tags animation, beautiful, flash, interactive, labuat, music video, Soy Tu Aire

Arty Inspirational Designs

The Impressive Artwork of Nik Ainley

Post author By prawn1
Post date August 24, 2009

Shake what ya momma gave ya. In the case of Nik Ainley, it would be mad photoshop skillz. Hailed a one of the “Top 10 up-and-coming creative talents of 2006” by Computer Arts magazine, this UK based illustrator has been creating stunning art work for magazines, books, and clothing. Here’s a small gallery of this illustrations. The images may take a while to load.

See more at Nik’s online portfolio, Shinybinary, or hit up his work at deviantART.

[via The Inspiration Design]

Tags creative, graphic designer, illustration, nik ainley, shinybinary

Arty Inspirational Designs

Dispatchwork: Rebuilding the World, One Lego Block at a Time

Post author By prawn1
Post date July 22, 2009
2 Comments on Dispatchwork: Rebuilding the World, One Lego Block at a Time

The world is in disrepair and a handyman is sorely needed. Enter German artist Jan Vormann who started Dispatchwork, an ongoing project that seeks to restore distressed architecture by using colourful little toy bricks to fill in the cracks. His project started out in Italy and has taken him to Israel, Holland, and to Berlin where he, with help from the local community, filled in World War II bullet holes at a building of the Humbold University.

During an interview with Halogen Life when asked about how long he’d be continuing with the project, Vormann had this to say.

I want to “repair” every broken wall in the whole world with Dispatchwork. Why not? I think it is a fun approach towards conceiving the decay that time brings along. Also it leaves a positive imprint in people’s mind. As long as kids play, adults will build walls. And those wall break. Let’s patch them up with colorful plastic pieces. Life is serious, so that makes playing sometimes even more important.

See more at Dispatchwork Israel | Berlin | Amsterdam.

Tags amsterdam, berlin, dispatchwork, israel, Jan Vormann, Lego, restoration, toy bricks

Arty Inspirational Designs

Creative Products Ads You May Not Have Seen

Post author By prawn1
Post date July 3, 2009

As seen in the previous post, there are some supremely creative people out there. As part of the unwashed not-so-creative masses, it’s inspiring to see the imaginative content that can be made. This holds true for advertising – I have become desensitized to it, and try to avoid all the bland, run-of-the-mill stuff. However, these incredible examples of product advertisements from deviantART that you might not have seen give you an idea on how creative advertising can be.

Tiger Beer Energy

Playstation 3

Nike Environment Protection

Nikon D300

Bacardi

Adidas

Ecko unltd

See the full list of 55 incredible product advertisements at Presidia Creative. And let us know of any that you liked.

Tags adidas, advertising, bacardi, deviantart, ecko unltd, Inspirational Designs, nike, nikon, playstation, products, tiger beer

Arty Awesomeness Featured Inspirational Designs

Shohei Otomo’s Badass Manga Illustrations

Post author By prawn1
Post date June 25, 2009
8 Comments on Shohei Otomo’s Badass Manga Illustrations

Artist Shohei Otomo combines traditional Japanese art with modern style to create some amazing manga illustrations. From geishas in bondage gear to ninjas playing baseball and a fair dose of sex and violence tossed in, Otomo’s work is pretty odd to say the least. As regular commenter Macross would say, “The bomb really did affect them more than they care to admit.“

Here’s a small gallery. Click the images to embiggen.

See more of Otomo’s badass illustrations at www.hakuchi.jp [some content NSFW]. Pity it’s all in Japanese, I’d surely like to what he was smoking when he made them.

[via Popwhore]

Tags black and white, hakuchi, illustration, japan, manga, sex, Shohei Otomo, violence

Arty Awesomeness Featured Inspirational Designs Video Clips

The Longest Way

On November 9th 2007 (and his 26th birthday) the clean-cut, beardless Christoph Rehage planned to take a little stroll from Beijing, China all the way to his hometown of Hanover, Germany. Whilst he didn’t accomplish the feat on foot, he did spend a year trekking through China. During his journey from Beijing to the town of Urumqi, Rehage walked an astounding 4646 kilometres!

During that time he grew a mighty long beard, and his inspiring time-lapse video The Longest Way chronicles the journey and his hair growth. The Times Online think it could be the best travel video of 2009. Take at look at it below; I would recommend however that you see it in HD at YouTube.

BONUS: If you have the time, MapVivo plots out his route. They currently have 237 days of his trip available for you to browse – on each day you can read his notes and see the photos that he took. Check it out!

[via Trendhunter]

Tags beards, beijing, China, Christoph Rehage, germany, maps, photography, the longest way, time-lapse, travel, Urumqi, video documentary

Cautionary Tales Inspirational Designs

Fallen Princesses

In contrast to the predictable happy endings depicted in the Disney fairy tales, Dina Goldstein’s Fallen Princesses project takes those fairy take characters and places them in modern day scenarios.

From unhappily domesticated Snow White to heavy boozer Cinderella, to a cancer-stricken Rapunzel, Goldstein replaces those “happily ever after” moments with more realistic outcomes.

See more images and Goldstein’s motivation for the project at JPG.

[via The Daily What]

Tags Dina Goldstein, fairy tales, fallen princesses happily ever after, modern lives

Cautionary Tales Inspirational Designs

Street Gang Calling Cards From the 70s and 80s

Post author By prawn1
Post date June 5, 2009

Like all business men and women, gangsters too need calling cards. In 70s and 80s when guns weren’t the norm as they are today, gangs in Chicago, USA used business cards to make new friends and intimidate other people.

Here are a couple of those calling cards.