I wandered into A+R last night, and *had* to take pictures of these Writers Guild Strikes vintage-esque matchboxes. The typography, pen nib/lightning, colors, and various angles with which to interpret every all the symbolism… For anyone that’s curious, these are not for sale, but for those who want to see them in person, these are in the A+R store on Abbot Kinney. As for the writer’s strike, its been a long nearly three months, here in LA especially, and i’m sure we’ve all been seeing the effects of the strike internationally - with the hold up on shows, awards shows, tv hosts ad libbing their own shows, etc… best of luck to them!

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The Design Police want to “Bring bad design to justice.” and they have even provided a Visual Enforcement Kit to help you with your vigilante justice… whether you choose to make that in the form of stickers, stencils, etc… Personally i’m liking the design of the original stickers of the Design Police Guerilla Campaign in Stephen’s portfolio even more! See more imagery after the jump!

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Who hasn’t been incredibly inspired by the infamous Stan Lee? Due to CES, i missed the opening of the Gallery 1988 Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee… and it looks like an INCREDIBLE show, from many NOTCOT favorites like Luke Chueh, Jason Sho Green, Camilla d’Errico, Kurt Halsey Frederiksen, Dan Goodsell, and more! Take a look here for the full show, and see after the jump for my favorites!

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Ok, while the Busy Beaver package had me all giddy ~ even cooler is what JUST showed up on my doorstep… remember the Skate Life show? Skate Life: Skateboard Inspired Sculptures and Paintings by J. Shea and Freddi C Well it turns out that Joe and Freddi loved the pics so much, they were kinda enough to surprised me with one of the pieces!!! And its SO sweet ~ love the little skater guy, and the great shadows he makes, will definitely need to put this somewhere where the light can make crazy shadows and he can be my artistic sundial of sorts. But the other really awesome thing is the illustration on the brown paper wrap!!! I LOVE this ‘YO FRAGILE!’ guy, and am now debating how to save him, frame him, whether to cut him out, fold it up… ideas? Check out more of J. Shea’s work here. Lots of pictures after the jump!

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MORE NOTCOT BUTTONS!!! I’m so excited. They are just refills (can’t believe i’m out) ~ was too indecisive to pick what should be on new ones. So for anyone who wants buttons ~ Buy Here. But moving along to the awesome packaging… remember that Busy Beaver TAPE i wrote about? They used it on my box! (Last time my buttons were just in a bag) AND they threw in some fun sticker/tear off calendars too! See more pics after the jump! Yay for Busy Beaver Buttons.

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First things first ~ i think my favorite thing about running the NOTCOT sites is YOU. Yes, you readers who find and share the most inspiring and incredible things with us whether it is via NOTCOT.org, email, im, etc. I don’t lie when i say that thanks to you, i haven’t had a day that i wasn’t incredibly inspired by something since the sites launched back in 2005. So, thanks for that!

But moving along, this whole little 4am emotional outburst is triggered especially by the latest TED talk with JJ Abrams that Jason Wishnow was kind enough to enlighten me with. I had never really looked into the background and philosophies of producer, director, screenwriter behind things like Lost, Alias, Felicity, etc… who knew the guy was quite the geek, lives right in my neighborhood, and might have a box/packaging obsession to rival mine? In fact ~ he has a laser cutter! (which he apparently uses to make his own boxes as well as turning his kids sketches into 2D renderings) - all this random info is courtesy of a fun NYTimes interview i just found… and his full TED bio is after the jump.

But if you’re wondering why i have an image of this awesome Tannen’s Magic Mystery Box with the incredible typography up there… well, in his TED talk, JJ Abrams will tell you his story of this 15$ mystery box that his grandfather bought him, that he has STILL YET TO OPEN… and he discusses the concepts of infinite possibility and the power of a sense of potential… how mystery is the catalyst for imagination… and that life altering moment where he realized the possibility that mystery is more important than knowledge… the difference between what you think you’re getting versus what you’re actually getting… and how this applies to movies, storytelling, life… and how incredible it is that todays ubiquitous technologies have made it possible for anyone to instantly try their hand at writing/publishing (i.e. blogging) and movie making to a degree that wasn’t even possible a mere 30-40 years ago. Anyhow, this is an inspiring one to kick off your Thursday with… watch the talk after the jump!

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Coco just sent over her portfolio, and its a beautiful mixed media assortment of works that begin with “experimenting with old-school processes such as painting, drawing and ceramics” and then pulling them together in our good ol’ photoshop for a perfect mixture of physical and digital collaging. Having studied fine arts in paris, and spending the last few years in london, as well as extensive work that started out for fun illustrating fashion, its no wonder Coco has now been seen in Vogue Magazine, Dazed & confused, Nylon Japan, Plastique & Bon magazine. The London & Barcelona Fashion Week. For some of my favorites from the portfolio, see after the jump!

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DGTLHYBRD just opened my eyes to the beautiful site (and movie) ~ Bustin’ Down The Door ~ with .org #8029, and between the music, the site design, and the movie itself, i’m terribly tempted to take a drive down along the coast to San Diego tomorrow, and chill out from the buzz in my head that was CES/Vegas. I’m absolutely taken by the layered tea stained paper look over the depths of a school of fish in the ocean, combined with vintage photos and video of a turning point in surf history.

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I must say that i was proud to have our sites sponsored by HP when i walked into this booth… it was like a designers wet dream. I was just floored by the intense amount of design classics everywhere, and didn’t expect to find a booth covered in silhouettes of design classics ~ as well as many beautiful design pieces in their settings as well. Can you name/spot all the pieces? I have LOTS of pictures for you below, and it does feel like they might have gone nuts with a DWR catalog. And even down to the tiniest details ~ they have a normann copenhagen WOOFY on a shelf ~ looks like a nava notebook and automoblox on a desk even! And now they have me pondering whether to start printing out silhouettes of life size design classics (like lamps and chairs) with my vinyl cutter! Even the artimide tolomeo mega classic floor lamp is there. My absolute favorite i’m tempted to replicate is their Vitra Algue wall… i never could justify spending enough to make a proper wall hanging of those, but with the push of a button the vinyl silhouette version would be sooooo easy. I think there is even a french bulldog on one of the walls…. and the mix of woodgrain and the various hues of blue for the faux walls in their walls mixed with the crisp black and white of the products…. *swoon* Look at the pics below, let me know what else you spot!

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Koren Shadmi is the most inspiring thing i’ve seen today. Particularly his live journal, which gives us all a peek into the madness that comes before the final illustrations, and a chance to see how things evolve from rough sketch to pencil to brush to photoshop and beyond. My exploration through his work today started with his great illustration in the NYTimes today for the article “Putting Your Best Cyberface Forward” about who we are, and the bizarre behavioral adaptations to show our better sides and alter egos on the internet, be it dating sites, facebook, or just emailing. See some of my favorite pieces of inspiration from his work below… and for the Koren Shadmi’s portfolio here.

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NOTCOT Note: Here’s another article from Anna Corpron of Sub-Studio!

I love Heiko’s illustrations. To me, his work is about contrasts - black and white with a few dabs of CMYK, seemingly innocent scenes with slightly menacing undertones. Sometimes it’s exactly the opposite - a monster or a volcano emanating hearts. The same graphic symbols appear in Heiko’s work over and over again - pandas, hearts, volcanoes, eel-like skeletons, whistled notes, birds, usually reinterpreted per illustration (eel waves, Medusa-locks, eel peacock feathers). And the bonus? Heiko’s work is very affordable, with prints ranging from $15-$35 (via Thumbtack Press), $1 postcards, and buttons for $3.

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Negativity Refuse Bags would have been the *perfect* New Years gifts! Although merely a Positive* Branding/Campaign Concept… still would be a pretty fun gift, particularly for placing all that baggage emotional and otherwise into before burning at a bonfire? The bag states “Here at Positive, we believe that a physical action can reflect your emotional state. We encourage you to dispose of your pessimism and mental demons in a physical manifestation, to help purge your mind. So throw away that photo of the ex, or that poor performance report, and forget about it.”

Instructions for use:
Place items within bag
Seal
Dispose of bag in nearest trash receptacle
Close Eyes
Take a deep breath
Think Positive thoughts.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT RE-OPEN ONCE SEALED. HIGH RISK OF EMOTIONAL RELAPSE. Contains items of personal significance.

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Click away on the 100 tiny pics to see more! So as you’ve seen from the last two posts, i’m clearly playing with the best New Year’s present ever ~ a new chunk of code to play with that Dan gave me so i can make some crazy automated roundups (versus the ones where we handpick some of our favorites) ~ and this is visualized data even we have never seen before now! ~ for the sake of transparency ~ i haven’t quite figured out how to find the perfect measurement of “popularity” ~ someday it will become some finely tuned algorithm balancing click throughs, votes, reports, time its been up on the site, etc? But for now, these are my test creations ~ and this one is 100 of the most popular posts of NOTCOT.org for 2007!

Also on exciting new features to look forward to in 2008, we’re hoping to find some better ways to let you make use of the “votes/nice/delicious” buttons across the sites… would you be interested if we let you save the ones you liked so its easier to filter the now thousands and thousands of posts? sort them? group them? make your own little collections? We’ve been bouncing lots of ideas around, and now that dan is working with me full time, we’re really hoping to have some fun in the design/development dept for 2008! Happy New Year, and thank you so so sooooo much for supporting the sites!

p.s. b/c i couldn’t help myself below is a super crazy tiny top 1200 ever on .org…

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Will Ashford’s Recycled Words do just that… literally. In an obsessive compulsive pattern recognition, pencil doodling, word in words spotting, ‘art’ loving way, he brings out what was already there but not even seen from your every day book pages, and it blows my mind. I love it when i wake up to emails like the one from Ryan with images of Will’s work where i can’t help just sitting here and staring at image after image for a while… and as Ryan said “It’s like he’s made the old study technique of highlighting into an advanced art form… or something.” I concur. Imagine if we reverse highlighted our books to only show the most critical of information! I guess at that point it would look more like art, and as far as info goes you might as well just carry the cliffnotes around? But this would be an incredible daily exercise, the reverse journal basically ~ granted you picked the right book? Anyhow for those of you squinting to read, in that first image the yellow says LOOK FOR the orange says ART the red says AND the purple says IT the teal says WILL APPEAR and the binoculars say THE END. But really, just click through to see more below! My other favorites are there as well!

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I was just checking out Andy’s site and came across this beautiful silhouette animation all about the a fountain of youth in a bottle and the man who goes through the ages keeping it to himself… only to teach the lesson of “how loving a gift isn’t complete until its shared” as Cory Godbey intended with this piece - Le Cadeau du Temps, view the animation below! And read more at Zune, where they even have wallpapers for computers as well as zunes, icons, etc for your downloading pleasure.

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