Regina's New Brand...

...went live today. Here's the website. I give it a "B+" and I'm picky as all crap with this kind of stuff. Our designer's take: "hm, it's good." One member of our fun little gang hates the ribbony "R" but he's just wrong, so too bad for him. The tagline "Infinite Horizons" is quite good, even if it kind of suggests urban sprawl. But as long as we don't start suddenly scheduling bus routes to Harbour landing Wal-Marts it'll all be fine. (Ha. Such a silly thing would never happen.)

Cities, provinces and countries need brands so the can promote themselves to attract new residents and investment. $400K well spent, I says.

(This post was updated Feb. 11)

Star Wars Travel Posters

Oh man, that poster tickles all the nerd centres in my brain. And my brain is mostly nerd centres.

It was made by Justin Van Genderen, a freelance illustrator from Chicago. He's mocked up a whole series of these Star Wars travel posters and put them on his Flickr stream. (Discovered via Drawn.ca.)

When sign design goes awry

I'm sure I can't be the first person to have noticed the Pimpark sign near the corner of Broad and 11th, though I'm not sure if Pimpark noticed it when they were designing this sign (or the logos on their website, for that matter).

Pimpark.

Perhaps it's a reference to the ever-popular 'Pimp my Ark' chapter of Genesis wherein Noah totally puts a 52-inch plasma TV in the back of that shit ... for the unicorns, you understand.

Or maybe it simply proves that no matter how cute a company's pseudo-manga-inspired mascot is, no one is above a freudian slip.

Nonetheless, legend has it that if you stand near this building and listen closely on Monday mornings, you can hear a voice in the wind asking "Where my money at?"

On the topic of graphic design...

In response to Stephen's previous post, someone named Olly Moss made these book covers based on video games.

Then, because this is the internet, a bunch of people started making them-- much to the overwhelming joy of those of us who enjoy looking at things that reference newer things but look like older things.



Ah, to live in a world where everything isn't generically airbrushed in Photoshop. I love these things! NERRRRRRrrrrr....

Today in Ridiculously Beautiful Graphic Design, Part 2

I read Kerouac's On the Road when I was younger, and I feel I've had enough. Consequently, I feel pretty much no desire to read The Dharma Bums.

The new cover by cartoonist Jason honestly has me thinking twice about it, simply by virtue of awesome. On the inside flaps, Jason illustrates a scene from the novel that does an excellent job of showing just how hillarious Kerouac could be.

A good cover should convince readers to pick up the book, and that's just what a lot of the Penguin Deluxe Classics do. They've been enlisting a lot of reputable graphic artists and cartoonists to make up new covers for classic books for a while, including Chris Ware doing Candide, Seth doing a Dorothy Parker anthology, Joe Sacco doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and, my personal favourite, Tony Millionaire doing Moby-Dick.

Today In Ridiculously, Stupidly, Beautiful Graphic Design

Wow, I love this stuff. Some dude has designed a retro-looking faux-book cover poster series for several of the biggest Web services. They're so gorgeous, just looking at them I feel like my face will melt faster than that Nazi's in Raiders Of The Lost Art. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty. The Youtube cover is probably my favourite, although the colour red works best with this style, to me.

I found this on Boingboing, Cory Doctorow's spectacular uberblog. You can buy work by this graphic designer here. His name's Stéphane Massa-Bidal, his handle's Retrofuturs, and I think I'm gonna break out my credit card now.

Cool-Lookin' Poster Documentary

Prairie dog's designer Alex apparently doesn't want the next issue to get to the printer on time. Why else would he be sending me distracting links to movie trailers for neat-looking documentaries on rock and roll posters? Links I would have to watch RIGHT NOW, then do a blog post about?

What a dumb troublemaker.

The film is American Artifact and like I said, it's a documentary about rock concert posters and the artists who make them. It's the same idea as a doc I blogged about earlier this year called Died Young, Stayed Pretty--but this looks heavier on illustrated posters and less on text- and design-intensive work, like the poster by Nashville's Hatch Show Print. (who are great; see more work here.)

It also looks a little slicker overall. But the important thing is there's an Art Chantry interview so it's a must-see for fans of this stuff.

Here's the trailer!


And the film's website is here.

Posters of the Week

There is just too much awesomeness on Poster Cabaret. It really isn't fair. I won't type any more because anything I could type would be inadequate to express how mind blowing great these posters are. Stop reading. Click the link. Click it now.

poster(s) of the week

Here's a link to a web page (site is Agreyspace Creative (agrespace.com), a Kansas City graphic design company) with dozens and dozens of beautiful, vintage posters (mostly movie posters) from Eastern Europe. Pictured above is one gorgeous sample, swiped utterly without permission. We don't actually have a poster of the week blog column. Should we? I like good posters. I like graphic design.

Good Movie, Left Happy

The new prairie dog is out today and full of good reading, including Carle Steel's takedown of the whole online dating racket and not one but two articles about beer.

I'll say that again: TWO stories about beer. Ah, you're running out the door to pick up your copy now. Excellent.

There's also a short write-up on a good documentary playing at the RPL tomorrow. Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a made-in-Canada (well, Calgary) flick about underground rockaroll poster culture: the posters, the weirdos (and in at least one case internationally recognized graphic designer) who make them, their cultural significance--basically the wacky shenanigans of the whole nutty scene.

I saw it tonight with Carle and Paul Dechene, and we were all dazzled, educated and entertained. If you care about underground/outlaw art, rock, punk or gay Elvis, work as a graphic designer or you're in a band in this city, you should see it. It plays again tomorrow night at nine.

Hey, this could even inspire people to build a killer poster culture in this town. Okay, that IS crazy.