Awesome Art & Design

A profile of Kiva Ford by online arts & crafts market Etsy. Ford is an expert glassblower who crafts both decorative and scientific glassware. Check out his shop and his website for more.

Remember the Concrete USB Drive concept? Turns out you can actually buy one now, albeit from a different designer. Kix Berlin’s heavy duty Usbéton flash drives come in two capacities, 1GB and 4GB.

Joey the War Horse is a stunningly lifelike puppet made by the Handspring Puppet Company. We’d recommend you watch the whole video, but if you want you can skip to 9:00 to see Joey in action.

Tim Wheatley cobbled together a zoetrope using a bicycle wheel and a camera. Unlike a traditional zoetrope, the Cyclotrope can use not only images but actual objects to give the illusion of motion.

Martin Backes’ Pixelhead mask is a humorous attempt to take back anonymity in our increasingly invasive world. They’re more like improved burglar masks to us. Contact Martin if you want to buy one.

Brian Stuckey’s mixed media art gathers our most iconic breakfast mascots for one final meal. It took him 3 months to finish the whole thing. The actual table is 38 in long. Prints available on Etsy.

Allister Lee of Studio B.I.B wants to hold the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of black markers. This 34″ x 42″ hand-printed poster features the 500 markers he has collected so far.

Brian Dettmer carves parts out of individual pages in books, creating layers that expose the contents all at once – a delayed collaboration with authors to create an homage to a fading medium.

A head-scratching concept designed by John Leung of Clarke Hopkins Clarke Architects, the bookshelf has a couple of slanted wires in the middle that converge into one when viewed from up front.

Pawel Kuczynski is a very prolific Polish artist who recently began making satirical illustrations. His drawings are simple yet deliver timely and powerful messages. More here and here.

Oh, those pigs are really in trouble now. Shouldn’t have stolen those eggs. They should consider growing plants around their fortress to fend off these monsters. Art by Tomasz Kaczkowski.

(Links NSFW) Juan Francisco Casas drew these photorealistic portraits using nothing but a ballpoint pen. Are his subjects are too distracting or do they show off his skill? Either way, we can’t look away.

Directed by Henrik Hansen, this short film is a glimpse into the mind of legendary custom bike maker Shinya Kimura, who was one of the first proponents of the zero-style motorcycle.

This kinetic sculpture was made by Seth Goldstein. The complicated device continually ties and unties a necktie. Not a bad way to symbolize the monotony of a working man’s life.

A cheap vinyl alternative to carbon fiber parts or slick paint jobs. It’s relatively easy to apply and comes in several finishes – carbon fiber, brushed aluminum, matte, even camo.

Australian street artist BUFFdiss uses strips of masking tape to create his art. He often makes oversized hands that interact with the environment, but he also has more complicated pieces.

Now you can hug eBoy’s pixel-packed art. Choose from landscapes of New York, Los Angeles, and Baltimore Docks – if those cities had giant apes and robot dinosaurs, that is.

As part of his exhibit at the Konami Style store in Japan, Konami illustrator Yoji Shinkawa did a live painting of Big Boss aka Naked Snake in the smoky and gritty style familiar to fans of Metal Gear Solid.

Mauricio Arruda cheated a bit to make the Mesa Baralho. The playing cards are actually 4mm-thick steel plates 13 times larger than an actual card, enabling the two stacks to support up to 550 lbs.

Papercraft can often be pretty simplistic, but Brian Chan’s intricate creations were all made by folding alone; not a single cut was made on any of them. We want the WALL-E one for our office.

Some of the finalists in the Radically Porsche pattern design contest. The winners will get a masters degree scholarship and will have their designs applied on actual Porsche Caymans.

The Bio Phone is powered by sensors and “artificial muscle actuators”, allowing it to respond to both digital and physical stimuli by lifting and folding its cover in various ways, much like a notepad.

These spooky drawings are the work of John Kenn. A TV show director and writer, Kenn said he draws to relieve stress and boredom, and that Post-It Notes let him “create stories” in a jiffy.