::slingthought::

Jessica Hische has a remarkable gift.  Her hand lettering and illustration style go, well, hand in hand.

Love the illustration style, typographic treatments and fluid motion and transitions of this piece.  The message is quite nice too.  Watch the animated video and judge for yourself.

Ahhh, now I see.  I’m not getting anything done because my list is constantly unmanageable.  This design could change my life.

I finally got my copy of Pens Are My Friends from Amazon and it has quickly become a treasure.  I’ve been watching Jon Burgerman’s work and unique style of illustration and character design evolve since the days of his Biro-Web.  I loved the quirky doodles on post it notes, envelopes and graph paper.  He has this remarkable line work that looks like he’s never lifted the pen from the page.  Now that I look across all of his work in the book, I have an even deeper appreciation for his penmanship, grasp on color and ability to transcend almost any media.

I haven’t even gotten to the included DVD and black and white booklet yet.  I’m saving that for a moment where I need added inspiration.

This book belongs in the library of every visual designer and illustrator and serves as an endless source of visual stimulation.  It’s one of those collections that you need to look at, take a break from and come back to again and again.

I’m ending with three thoughts…
1. More than anything I appreciate Jon’s commitment to his craft and style.  It has evolved into something amazing.
2. His inspiring work makes me wish I had committed to my own style years ago.  I suppose it’s never too late.
3. Pens are his friends and I wish he was mine.   Seems like a really cool cat who, with no question, has remarkable talent.

Buy the book and you’ll see what I mean.

I dig the retro stylings of S. Britt and this behind the scenes look at work in progress satisfies my sketchbook junkie habit. I love seeing the creative process unfolded.

I’ve followed Steph Kardos for some time and love his loose sketching. He’s bumped things up a notch by demonstrating his skill at sketching on the iPhone. I’ve played with a few drawing apps and honestly felt they were clumsy, but he somehow manages to control line, texture and color in his signature style. Amazing talent if you ask me.

I’m a sucker for illustration and visual diagrams, so the nostalgia tucked into it makes for a great piece.  Wish they made a poster  I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Flashback to 1995.

Hootie and The Blowfish, Allanis Morissette and Pearl Jam were playing on my radio.

I was using my Mac PowerPC 6100/66.  That’s 66MHZ and believe it or not my machine ran both Illustrator and Photoshop at that speed, not at the same time of course.

It was then that I fell in love with Apple.  I think it was the combination of my year old mac and the first interactive experience that seduced me into the online world.  It was Apple’s flagship online service dubbed eWorld.

What was eWorld?  It was “a place where you can send and receive electronic mail, access information about everything from news to finance, and find great things to do – all from the desktop of your Macintosh computer.”

I got this direct marketing piece and instantly signed up for the service based solely on the promises contained in the marketing information.  It certainly helped that the design of the brochure had a hip illustration style.

The “town hall” metaphor with unique illustration style was the first online user interface I remember that brought delight.  Despite the slow load of images over a modem/phoneline (probably 28.8kbps), Apple managed to curb my appetite for design and information all in one place.

Take a close look at the marketing of the service from the brochure.  There’s a screen capture of what the UI looked like at the time.  Visitors would access different buildings for information ranging from business to news, arts and leisure, or entertainment.

Here’s a brief history from the book Apple Confidential 2.0…

“Unfortunately, eWorld was slow to catch on for a variety of reasons.  By mid-1994, the Internet was beginning its meteoric rise,  and there were already several other proprietary online services, such as America Online, CompuServe, Delphi, and Prodigy.  Due to a lack of cohesive strategy, it wasn’t until late 1995 that the eWorld client software was included with every computer sold.  In the meantime, AppleLink came installed on PowerBooks, and client software for some of Apple’s online competitors was bundled on desktop Macs, while eWorld was left out.  Another problem was the pricing.  A monthly subscription set you back $8.95, which included just two free hours of evening or weekend use, with subsequent hours priced at $4.95 on the evenings or weekends, or $7.90 per hour from 6 AM to 6 PM weekdays.  Apple intentionally kept the price high to moderate demand, but failed to adjust it downward when the demand never materialized.”

I’m a huge fan of 80s arcade design.  Aside from the nostalgia of playing games, I’ve always had an appreciation for the typography, design and illustration used to attract “players”.  When I came across these marker renderings for cabinet designs, I was quite delighted to get a glimpse behind the scenes for the concepts that drive the physical design of some of Atari’s arcade cabinets.  There are even some concepts for how to display the cabinets in an arcade setting.  Enjoy.

Marker rendering of an Atari Arcade Console Concept

Here’s the full collection of Atari Console Concept images…