I love to go out and take photos of things that inspire me or very often textures to use in illustrations; but I never considered taking photos of simple painted walls and stripes. Grant Hamilton has done just that with his Polaroids and the results are fantastic! His Flickr photostream can be seen here. His simple compositions are truly inspiring and have made me appreciate what is often overlooked.

Images via Flickr

This Beatles picture gives me a chance to work on a photo with harsh shadows, and still have recognition of the subject matter. The two Beatles on the left are indeed Ringo and Paul, so 20 points goes to Sean Gaffney. (Note: 1,000 points equals 1 Schrute buck)

This is a product named the Wine Can and took the 2006 Swedish packaging design award. This product, designed by Jens Andersson and Jonas Forsman, has a beautiful matte finish and a lot of appeal.

It’s great to see that the new Bond brought not only a new face to the character, but also a nice consistent branding of 007. With this second installment with the new said items, they use the same treatment for the typography in the title, and the movements when it shows the release date. If they will keep this up in the future I don’t know, but I enjoyed seeing it used a second time.

A new glass bottle for portuguese olive oil company, designed by Industrial Designer Michael Young. I love the shape of this bottle with the thick glass bottom. The mix of serif and san-serif typefaces are beautiful as well.

Great design + environmentally friendly + a twist of humor = a product I would buy.
Visit their site here.

This morning I worked a little on a hair study for a future piece. I haven’t done many recent pieces with a person in them and want to do a few studies as reference.

Great branding for Highway, a new sub brand of Hertz car rental. Work by jKaczmarek.

Here’s some great design from long ago. A very refreshing piece with nice images and a clean layout. Images from this site.

What an amazing concept. Visually beautiful, and factually hard-hitting. By using a familiar image like a country’s flag as a way to illustrate the unsettling statistics, this campaign connects so easily to the viewer. There is a good write-up about campaign here.

This fourth day of July, as Independence is celebrated across the US, let us all remember the things we take for granted—one of the greatest being the right to choose.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”