L’outsider is a street artist from france. I don’t know a whole lot about him beyond his work. But what he does resonates with me deeply. He has taken the effected piecing style graffiti, and meshed it with a very Herb Lubalin typography. Looking through his sketchbooks you’ll fine he’s an extremely creative individual with his type, using negative space really well. His abstract art is also well crafted and fun to look at.

Them frenchies keep killin’ it!!

One thing about graffiti i find interesting, is it’s basically a career created out of a calligraphic / typographic study of one word, spanning over years and years. Funny to think about, considering all the different words designers set and manipulate through their career.

Recently a friend of mine was kind enough to hook me up with a FFFFound account, which i’ve been loving! Now i have a place where i can have a mood / inspiration place without spamming my blog. Here are some highlights from last night’s internetsssss raid.

Onedreamrush / Zhestkov.com from Maxim Zhestkov on Vimeo.

I have to say this video gave me the strongest visceral reaction i’ve had in a long time. Maxim’s other videos are also amazing, i’m loving his strong throw back to retro psychedelia, and the MC Escher undertones, this guy has a great handle on black, white, and minimalism.

Maxim Zhestov is a 24 year old designer from Russia.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

An amazing short documentary on NYC sign painters called Up There, produced by the forward thinking ad agency, Mother. Between jumbo screens and vinyl; a dying trade within advertising. Personally i love and pay more attention to hand painted advertising, an aged craft that has human sweat and blood behind it, and i feel less like the ad is cheaply being jammed down my throat by the now mechanical / digital world that advertising has become.

It’s also wonderful when you see an old, faded, hand painted ad on a building, it’s the only advertising that i feel adds to the city’s character.

Found via: World’s Best Ever

C215, one of the most prolific and talented street artists i’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing, almost daily in NYC, that’s how many ups he has. He is from Paris, but he spreads his beautiful work, all over world, from Brazil to India. This shot was taken in Brooklyn, in the DUMBO neighborhood where i used to work, sadly it’s been buffed (painted over). Take a peek at his flickr, it’s cool to see how complex is work has gotten over the years.

Found these gorgeous old promotional materials for some ancient type foundries and print shops. They are so detailed and ornate, to think it was all hand made back then is amazing! The designers back then did have some analog assistance though, the machine illustrated in the last image is a curving machine, used to make brass rules to get those perfect curves, and this was before Si Scott!

Also, the H. Berthold card is legendary! The foundry established by Hermann Berthold in Berlin. Responsable for Helvetica’s forefather, Akzidenz-Grotesk. They were also responsable for reviving such heavy weights (and i don’t mean bold / oblique ) as Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, and Bodoni.

Found via: sheaff-ephemera.com

The work of David Ope, found via Kervin Brissaeux’s blog.

In particle physics, supersymmetry (often abbreviated SUSY) is a symmetry that relates elementary particles of one spin to other particles that differ by half a unit of spin and are known assuperpartners. In a theory with unbroken supersymmetry, for every type of boson there exists a corresponding type of fermion with the same mass and internal quantum numbers, and vice-versa.

I’ll just look at this pretty picture.

Kandinsky, a russian artist, who was a design instructor at The Bauhaus. His work is so energetic. A simple Google image search is quite inspiring

BNE 12.10.09 from ANIMALnewyork.com on Vimeo.

One of the most prolific and mysterious graffiti artists of the last decade, BNE; whom you’ve more than likely seen his super adhesive stickers somewhere in the world, is having his first exhibition tomorrow in NYC. Sponsored by the online zine ANIMAL and the ad agency Mother.

Some consider his tag to over shadow many major global brands. A real lesson in branding.