hidden treasure

A customer review of Bic Crystal Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point, Black

by Matthew R. Balousek

"Upon receiving my order, I carefully opened the box and dug through the packing peanuts in order to get to the pen contained therein. 'Beautiful!', I thought, and promptly opened up my moleskine notebook to jot down to myself some notes. My previous pen had ran out of ink four weeks prior and I didn't want to splurge on expensive shipping, which meant I had a lot of notes to catch up on writing.

But, when that quality carbide ball touched the surface of the paper, it was not ink that came out. From a distance I heard the screams of men and the cackling of innumerable ravens. I stopped, cold and sweating profusely. I looked down at the Bic Crystal black medium ballpoint pen which I held in my hand, only to see darkness. I dashed it against the wall, recoiling in horror. I saw in the corner of my eye my faithful notebook, which now lay on the ground. Once unmarred, I saw now the small mark which I had made with the devil's own pen. It spread across the page like a plague, and looking at it I gazed upon true horrors. For, what I thought had been ink was in fact a portal to a dark, unforgiving dimension. A portal whose maw was now widening to engulf all hope and joy in the world.

'God, what have I done?' I exclaimed as I weeped and fell to my knees, 'What have I done?'

From beyond the Dark Gate I heard these words, words which I can never forget. A terrible, booming voice said to me, 'Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn!'

I ran, blindly stumbling, away from that place and never looked back. My only hope is that none shall follow in the path I've walked down, too blinded by hubris to realize my follies."

[link]

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Thanks, @Alelex88, you endless source of awesomeness!

this one made me smile

Two nicely executed pieces designed for Cuttie Cut, a kids hair salon in Canada. [via]

Advertising Agency: Y&R, Toronto, Canada
Creative Director: David Houghton
Art Director: Zachary Muir-Vavrina
Copywriter: Sussana Forieri
Photographer: Jeremy Kohm

pop surreal

Beautiful work by illustrator/art director Rafael Silveira. Some of his fine art and comissioned pieces can also be seen on his Flickr.

I've been working on a moodboard all day, and while doing some research I found these collages by Lilliana Pereira that left me completely inspired to try something different. She has tons of stuff on her flickr.

virgil o. stamps

It is such a pleasure for me to post about this. Not only the idea is incredibly awesome, the person behind the idea is just as cool (not to mention she's pretty much my hero).


Virgil O. Stamps is a letterpress laboratory that uses his Brooklyn neighborhood and surrounding boroughs as a source of inspiration and income, by recycling products that would usually be thrown away. All of his cards are backed by recycled chipboard from the nearby comic book store. Virgil can, of course, print on anything you like. Even regular paper. Or nice thick cotton paper. Sometimes you need to be normal—Virgil understands that and promises not to judge you.

Gunned: Shot up targets donated from a New York City gun range.

National Geographic: Pages torn from old National Geographic
magazines and backed by recycled chipboard.

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Virgil O. is officially awesome: it's been featured on kottke.org and on NotCot.org.



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Yay for Minus - the woman who gives me hope that any 33-year old kid can wear patriotic pajama pants for three days straight, and sometimes forget to wear socks when they go outside, and eat nothing but Cheetos and ham and cheese sandwiches, and like stained t-shirts and painted on pants, and not be friends with morning or alarm clocks, and wear mohawk hats and go to city hospitals for their sheer entertainment value, and still manage to make a living and sometimes pay rent and super-size (or “make it a large”) their value meals at McDonald’s!

a lesson on cultivating a creative culture

Approximately 18 kazillion awesome things happen around us every-day, each with the potential to inspire and spark creativity in us, but more often than not we choose to flip through yet another graphic design annual or web design gallery, look at the same handful of magazines that every-one else in our field is flipping through, and skim RSS feeds instead of trying to dig into research and study. We employ the tired, misused excuse of there being "nothing new under the sun" to justify our latest poorly-executed pop culture parody. At some point, we stop cultivating and start copying. Artists and designers walk in a strange tension between derivative inspiration and flat-out plagiarism. The former is natural and healthy, driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and experiment. The latter is a deadly combination of ignorance, laziness, and lack of skill.

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[Your local library] is a free education in exchange for time and effort. I've spent the last six years trying to make up for not studying art or design in college and I've done it all for "a dollar fifty in late charges," as Will Hunting would say. Don't make the mistake of thinking there is a short-cut to learning the basics of your field or that shortcuts are unnecessary. We can't build a strong creative culture on top of a foundation full of holes, so take the time to build on solid ground.

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It's not just about art and design; we need to begin looking outside our field(s) for inspiration. "The thing about architecture is that everybody reads too many [architecture] books. Architects look at architecture, but they don't open their eyes and look beyond that," says architect Mark Dytham. You're probably not an architect, but you can replace "architecture" with your field of choice and it still rings true. Whatever your daily role, chances are you spend your time reading, thinking, dreaming, and planning similarly to many of your peers. Too little of that and you're inept. But too much inward focus, and you lack objectivity or the chance for original thought. Then it's easy to slide into creative cruise control where it becomes tempting to copy and not think.

As fashion designer Paul Smith challenges, "If you can't find inspiration in the things around you, you're not looking hard enough." Magazine spreads from Smith's Small Paul campaign make frequent appearances in my office, so do articles about new takes on craft; photography, architecture, and interior design books; live performance calendars; places to visit; and a laptop full of links relating to installation art, new music, furniture, comfortable shoes, and how to grow tomatoes for a few weeks longer than my neighbor. In fact, after building that initial foundation, I find the less graphic design I look at these days, the less my graphic design looks like everything else. I started collecting magazine grid layouts for inspiration to use in web design user interfaces. Hand-drawn lettering has helped to shake up my Swiss typography sensibilities. Gardening gets me out of the office and into nature. Morning walks give me time to let my mind wander, free from action items and pixel pushing. You can't cultivate anything new from already exhausted raw materials. Get outside, literally and metaphorically, and watch the work you do branch out and improve.

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"Our challenge isn't to strive for originality above all else; originality can quickly become a pressure-laden, unattainable goal and an idol to bow down before. Originality may likely be a byproduct of hard work, but it can't be the goal if we haven't already been diligently working toward competence in our pursuits."

[read the entire article here]