Tuesday is finally looking up! I’d just stumbled across my new favorite tumblr blog (move over English Major Armadillo), Things Could Be Worse. It’s the perfect mix of two-color illustrations, excellent writing, pessimism and absurdity. Just in case you’ve been missing some Edward Gorey in your life.
As I sit here drinking my tea in jolly old Charlotte, I’ve come across the delightfully British blog It’s Nice That which occasionally asks creatives about the books they turn to for inspiration and includes pictures of their book shelves (swoon!). There’s actually some really interesting stuff, many more novels than art books and I haven’t seen one “My Big Book of Awesome Design” type tomes. Of course, this is also a perfect opportunity for me to recommend The Pixar Touch. It’s the story of how the kids at Pixar spent their whole careers working toward something that didn’t exist and for which there was no market. It’s the kind of thing that gives you hope when everything feels like it’s taking way too long to happen.
This video addresses my only two qualms with the Nike Air Mag: 1) it’s not 2015 2) no power laces. As a result, I am completely on board with this from a “child of the 80s” standpoint and a “doing something super fun to cure a terrible disease” perspective. Also this picture pretty much sums up my reaction to the idea of the forthcoming power lacing Air Mags.
You know your teaser campaign is awesome when people want not only your product, but all the other stuff you used to get them to excited about the main attraction. I want these glasses just to have around the house. You know, just in case.
So I’ve seen this shirt in like a million places all over the interwebs. Pretty awesome, right? So it was only after wandering around on my super talented friend Ashley Dailey’s site Pop + Shorty that I realize that it’s not just a shirt she sells, it’s a shirt she MADE. That’s right. Ashley rocks and I’m one degree away from internet design fame.
Google’s new interactive doodles are beyond fun. Their recent Earth Day doodle was cute and all, but man did it have some awesome Easter eggs.
Behold the full doodle:
Mouse over the pandas and they reenact this classic bit of internet revelry:
And then, like the Lion King and every National Geographic special ever, a poor little fish is rewarded for his valiant climb up the waterfall with a trip to the afterlife.
Clearly, I spent way too much time playing with this doodle. Nice work for a company who’s goal is to take you from their homepage to the website you really want to visit as quickly as possible.
Great Gatsby for NES now on the interwebs! There should be more games like this. Like now.
It brings me a special kind of joy that the muppets I was entranced by as a child are just as relevant and funny two decades later. Seriously, go back and watch the muppet movie. Hysterical.
If Best Coast has not already made the Best American Non-Required Reading‘s list of top band names of the year it soon will.
Well that explains THAT. Penguin is celebrating 75 years of being awesome and torturing high schoolers (in many ways, the same thing) and is going all graphic design crazy on their literary classics. Well done.
In other news, if you have yet to visit Penguin UK’s blog, you’re missing out on one of the better corporate blogs on the Web. Much like today’s librarians, you expect them to be all stuffy and uptight, but it turns out that the hipsters were busy taking over the literary world at the same time they were conquering Williamsburg.
