Awesome Graphic Design

Arist and filmmaker Max Kolomatsky has been using his talent to be a sneaky Good Samaritan to his fellow New Yorkers. He makes better versions of flyers and signs posted by individuals or small businesses around the city, replacing the original ones free of charge and without telling the people who posted them.

Seven years after Ryan Gosling’s character struggled to comprehend the use of the Papyrus font in Avatar, the troubled graphic designer thought he had finally moved on. Then, in an instant, he was forced to confront his demons again after seeing the logo for the sequel. At least they didn’t use Comic Sans.

Designers and artists looking for a source of inspiration would do well to add Vault Editions‘ idea books to their library. This two-volume series features nearly 1000 engravings, etchings, and woodblock prints from the 17th through 19th centuries. It’s loaded with skulls, animals, and vintage objects and includes high-res downloads.

This 432-page hardcover book from Taschen explores the origins and evolution of iconic corporate logos. Graphic designers and history buffs will love exploring the more than 6000 logo designs from the 1800s to the 1940s, some of which are still in use today. It’s a great source of creative inspiration too.

Logos are a big part of companies’ identities, and brands often merge. Brendy Boy played around in Adobe Illustrator to see what might happen if competing brands combined their logos. He started out with McDonald’s + Burger King, then tried combining YouTube + Twitch, Coca-Cola + Pepsi, and Starbucks + Dunkin Donuts.

This black and white wristwatch serves as a reminder that time passes too quickly. The analog timepiece has intentionally blurry numbers to give the illusion of movement. It has a stainless steel case and sits on a black leather strap. It’s part of designer Jason M. Peterson’s Times collection for Projects Watches. Pre-orders save 20% for a limited time.

After looking at the variety of fonts on his computer, vlogger and documentarian struthless wanted to know more about their origins. But as he started to pull at that thread, he learned so much more – about the history of written language, design, pop culture, and communication.

Huion’s displays are created for artists and designers, with built-in pen support for drawing and painting on screen. The 24″ displays come in QHD (2560 x 1440) and 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolutions, and are Windows/MacOS compatible. Their battery-free pens have a 5080 LPI resolution, 8192-level pressure, and 60º tilt sensitivity.

Over the years, brands have made their logos so simplified that they are beginning to lose their sense of identity. But is going in the opposite direction any better? Amateur designer DVNTY took it upon himself to overcomplicate the logos for Pringles, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple with highly questionable results.

The font Cooper Black dates all the way back to 1922, and over its century in use has appeared everywhere from David Bowie albums to ramen noodles, to signs for neighborhood businesses. Vox digs into the history of this playful, yet legible serif typeface, and why it became so popular.

Artist and animator Daihei Shibata has a little fun in this series of playful vignettes for Japan’s NHK broadcast network. Each of the 30-second spots fools around with NHK’s typographic logo and incorporates an adorable anthropomorphic television.

Love the look of old-school advertising mascots? This collection of digital assets from Brian Ritter Design makes it easy to incorporate these whimsical characters into your designs. The set includes five ink brushes and 250 stamp brushes for use in Procreate, along with Adobe Illustrator AI, PNG, and Affinity Designer asset files.

Three centuries before Pantone colors, artist A. Boogert meticulously cataloged hundreds of paint pigments. The Galobart Books is offering a limited run of this fascinating piece of design history. Each book comes in a slipcase with a numbered certificate, 10 frameable prints, and a study guide. View the original book here.

Artist Susan Kare is known for her design of the system icons used on the original Apple Macintosh. In addition, she created the Cairo “dingbats” typeface, which can now be enjoyed on one of Areaware’s woven 50″ x 70″ blankets, crafted from 100% organic cotton. Available in black/white, green/pink, or grey/yellow.

From Nike to Intel to Amazon, swooshes have been part of major corporate logos since the 1970s. Designer and logo expert Linus Boman looks at the history of swooshes in logo design, its explosive overuse in the 1990s, and its gradual descent out of favor.

This hardcover art book catalogs hundreds of forms, patterns, textures, and colors extracted from natural things like fruits, veggies, insects, fish, and more. It’s a great addition to any artist’s or designer’s reference library, providing a fresh source of creative inspiration.

The classic NASA “worm” logo is back, and now you can own a memento of this iconic work of graphic design thanks to Register Seven. The company will produce a sweet CNC-machined version of the logo milled from 6061-T6 aluminum, then anodized in NASA red, black, or grey. Measures 7.5″ w x 2″ h x 1″ d.

Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, xD, Premiere… these are just a few of the Adobe apps we use on a regular basis. But as Humtog points out, there are over 50 different programs that Adobe makes, some that overlap with others. His 10-minute video does a great job explaining what purposes each one is best suited to.

This short video proves just how universal the language of design is. Despite being entirely in Japanese, motion designer Ritsuko Nomura’s clip demonstrates the importance of using layouts, scale, and color to bring structure and legibility to information, regardless of language. From the NHK educational TV show Design Ah!

Could you use more photos to choose from for your design projects? Sign up for Scopio, and get unlimited access to a huge library of royalty-free images for use in digital medial like presentations, websites, and social media. This lifetime subscription deal is available for a limited time from The Awesomer Shop.

Youzign offers a fast and easy way to create professional looking visuals, regardless of your graphic design experience. Their web-based app offers over 2,000 templates and over 1.7 million images, along with tools for producing just about any kind of graphic. Grab a great deal on a lifetime subscription in The Awesomer Shop.

Learn to build visuals for your own video games with this series of six intro-level courses, which cover the creation of game assets using free and open source tools like Inkscape and DragonBones. You’ll learn to make 2D characters and backgrounds, animate their movements, and design UIs and game branding and logos.

This colorful card game is the perfect gift for graphic designers and other visual artists. The game challenges players to use creativity to assemble abstract images of characters using 15 official Pantone colors. Opponents earn points guessing the images with as few clues as possible.