THE BEST Art & Design

Keith Thompson is one of our favorite sci-fi/fantasy artists; not only is his work awesome, but he takes the time to write background stories. Spend an hour here; we sure did.

Greg “Craola” Simkins has a surreal style which isn’t easily forgotten (we love the Cadillac UFO above). Once a graffiti artist, he’s worked with Vans, Kid Robot and Disney. Thanks, Ben!

Opening 9/25 at Le Gallery in Toronto, David Tratrimas’ Habitat Machines are architectural compositions made from household objects such as coffee pots and waffle irons.

Design You Trust has a collection of 84 retro-futuristic images available as a RAR file. They’re mostly collected from German magazines; several are perfect as desktop wallpapers.

Dan McPharlin’s Analogue Miniatures have us awestruck; made with framing matboards, most of his models are musically themed, mixing dials and sliders with keyboards.

Check out these sweet silkscreen posters by Hydro74; they’re actually an uncut promo print that includes nine of his favorite illustrations on 14″x21″ French Paper. Limited to 40.

Temporary graffiti isn’t so bad: Jaybo aka Monk recently “painted” the Berliner Dom in Germany with a sea of cartoon hands; it was powered with Skudi Optics projectors.

If you need inspiration, Fubiz has an excellent post up with 70 creatively designed business cards, with everything from smoked plastic and metal cutouts to wood tokens.

Rodrigo Braga’s artwork is creatively disturbing; based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he’s worked for companies such as Chevy but does quite a few club flyers. He’s also a DJ, too.

Lockwasher is a prolific artist who creates robot sculptures with found objects. Our favorite by far is BeertooD2, although we do wonder if it’s as helpful as the Bud Light Bot.

Transit Maps of the World is perfect for map lovers; it contains every urban transit map on Earth and makes an excellent coffee table book. Our fave: a fictional world transit map.

To say Nick Veasey has an obsession with x-ray photos would be an understatement; he’s imaged over 4,000 objects including an airliner, a bus and even an apartment building.

You’ve likely seen his art or imitations of it; Chuck Anderson, aka NoPattern, is only 23 yet has already worked for clients that include Burton, Reebok, Microsoft and Absolut.

We’ve been having a bit too much fun with light painting lately, but we can’t help it: this trippy stop-motion 4th of July video by Jon Thomas is perfectly set to MGMT’s “Kids”.

Whether you’re a fan of the Man or not, Matador Nights has a gallery of the 13 coolest structures ever built at the Burning Man. Big Rig Jig (2007), above, is our favorite.

Created by German graphic designer Heiko Klug for Desktopography, Tiny World is a brilliantly executed wallpaper, even with all the balloons. You can also purchase a print here.

Not that Japan doesn’t have enough monsters, but the Water Dragon hologram above was filmed in Tokyo Bay. It’s actually part of a Sony ad campaign for The Water Horse movie.

We’re totally digging these fantastic lightpainting photos by artist Andy Hill, who makes and sells retro sci-fi Saucerbots from LED lights, leftover CDs, DVDs and hard drive platters.

Art director and 3D animator Emmett Feldman’s Interstellar Sugar is fantastic in monochrome; the visual style seems perfect for a remake of the classic shooter Asteroids.

Citylight is a trippy, sci-fi meets aurora borealis meets urban graffiti wallpaper by Polish graphic designer Kamil Kotarba. Click here to download the wallpaper (it’s a RAR file).

These sweet limited edition Change The Thought posters by Chris Cox have a 70s/retro style; they’re printed on thick 100 lb. A3 paper and are signed and numbered by the artist.

On display at the BMW Welt conference hall in Munich, this undulating kinetic sculpture is composed of 714 steel balls suspended on strings; it gets wild about 50 seconds in.

Anyone with a camera that can adjust shutter speeds has goofed around with lighting effects at one time or another; Lightmark elevates this to the level of high art.

Symmetry Explorer is a Flickr mashup that takes images (based on any search term) and arbitrarily reflects them on the fly. Above is our super bendy MacBook Air.

Situated in Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow Airport, Cloud is a kinetic sculpture with 4,638 flip dots. They’re so mesmerizing that folks are liable to miss their flights.

Juxtaposition has never been quite as fun or geeky as these photos of various Star Trek and Star Wars fans. They’re photographed by Steve Schofield; PS: there’s a Wookie in the kitchen.