Jazz Books

Helping to clear my boyfriend's late-Grandad's house last weekend we came across a whole stack of vintage niceness. He loved jazz and also had French family so these things combine in a whole collection of fantastic book covers, vintage ephemera and gorgeous postcard books.

Unfortunately my camera battery gave up fairly quickly but next we journey up to Birmingham I will adding a whole stack of lovely vintage postcard-book covers like those below to the Flickr set.

Bookshopping

I found these fantastic book covers in a second hand bookshop in Lichfield - there were so many, but I think these were the choice picks. Lucky for me, Penguin Plays seem to be pretty unpopular in Lichfield.

ATMOSPHERE

ATMOSPHERE, originally uploaded by wearebrainstorm.

Atmosphere
18" x 24"
5 color silkscreen print
$30

www.wearebrainstorm.com

Beth Pohlman's Jewellery

I discovered Beth Pohlman's jewellery recently, absolutely gorgeous pieces. She does a fantastic range of modern organic designs, but the ones that particularly stood out to me were these 'Pyramid' styles and the 'Sphere' necklace. I love the geometric structural quality, contrasted with the handmade silver construction. Beautiful things! If anyone would like to buy me one from her Etsy shop I'd be really grateful. Thanks.

The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings

oooo pretty. Spotted on ebay.

Charting the Beatles: Working Schedule, 1963-1966

Charting the Beatles: Working Schedule, 1963-1966, originally uploaded by ChartingTheBeatles.

Charting The Beatles

I need these in my life.

Letter Coasters & Number Placemats from Little Factory.

Lubalin Now

Jessica Hische


TV Land, Gretel, Matt Owens.

This is what you might call my cup of tea.

I'm not sure whether this is at the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography or Cooper Union’s gallery, or both, but it doesn't really matter unless by some miracle someone hands me a free ticket to New York. That would be nice, though.

Whippy

Love this ice-cream inspired light fitting design from Mixco, the 'Whippy'.

My New Favourite Blog

Bakerella might just be the best thing ever (besides actually eating cake). Concerned not only with making A LOT of very yummy cakes and other sweet lovely things, the posts are as much about imagination, decoration, colour, styling and photography. A feast for the eyes. eh? eh?! (sorry, had to...).

Joshua Covarrubias

I saw the fantastic flowchart below from the Pipeline, designed by Joshua Covarrubias (through a tweet from @yellowgoatetsy) and it made me smile. I'm glad I Googled him and found his website (bit mean of them not to link to it I thought?) as it has some lovely pieces, particularly the image above (for Kalina Magazine).




The Sartorialist

Joanna Rutter

Gorgeous jewellery from Joanna Rutter, soon to be stocked by Soma Gallery in Bristol or you can buy direct.

You can also keep up with Joanna's new work on her blog and Flickr stream, currently featuring some lovely surface pattern designs and pretty leaf cut-outs too!

Rob Ryan. Yes, again.

Bristol's Soma Gallery brought some lovely lovely new prints to my attention. (How is this guy not writing songs?)

UK Wired

Possibly a bit weird that I'm quite as excited as I am about seeing this. It's looking good I think, some nice type - I like the squirmy 'start', it's a good springboard, and that header sans is lovely (not sure what it is though, I'm not very good at type-spotting). Some great illustration too, although I'm not sure about the clash of that orange with the orange-toned photograph on screen, but perhaps it will make more sense on paper. Nice portrait too with some lively colour (even with the floating punch-in-the-face arm). The article doesn't mention credits for these unfortunately.

Original article at SPD.

Plundered from Binky the doormat.

Words Are Pictures

I came across some fantastic work by Craig Ward today. It's so inspiring, and also really interesting to be able to see the work in progress on his blog. I find other people's work processes quite fascinating, perhaps because I'm not all that confident in my own; it helps de-mystify these fantastic finished pieces a little. Sometimes I don't feel like I exist in the same universe as some of the amazing artists I guff about on here.

Good Shape Design

Some nice posters available at Good Shape Design, the work of Wayne Pate. At $30 a pop for silkscreen prints I think they're pretty good value, even though they don't appear to be limited edition.

Via Design*Sponge.

Today's The Day

Celebrate Change limited edition print by AngeliArndt


I'm not going to say a lot about the whole design + Obama thing, as plenty of other people have already posted much more eloquent points than I think I could squeeze into the last bit of my lunch hour (see below). But it has really struck me how everyone seems to be getting involved. Maybe it's more of an indicator of the design trends in general and the surge of designer/makers and craftspeople facilitated by things like etsy, folksy, dawanda. Whatever it is, it has to be good in terms of people actually getting out and voting, whoever they decide to vote for.



Hand printed lino cut by Jason Krekel at HandcrankedUSA
Wooden inlay pin at Obamastuff



Hope silkscreen by mmsuperstuff
Photograph © Marisa Allegra Williams



American Presidential Wrestling letterpress poster from YeeHaw


Just a couple of many more eloquent posts I mentioned;
Michael Johnson's Design Week/Thought For The Week article
Steven Heller

Beau Ideal Editions Calendar

A gorgeous new calendar from Beau Ideal just popped up on my reader. Hand screen printed in limited edition, it's slightly pricey at $48 plus delivery but there's obviously a lot of work and love gone into it. A simple idea that's been designed really consistently and effectively, with loads of yummy hand-drawn type. Yep yep.

French Found Type

In-keeping with my French mood at the moment, I found the fantastic Jules Vernacular blog full of French found type today. There's some lovely stuff on there.

Wanderlust Map

There's a really nice interactive map featuring famous routes on the Good Magazine website. It's a little light on information once you get into it but it could be really interesting if/as it grows. (And why haven't Google maps done this already?)