I love the clean look of this website by Mike Kus working with Neil Kinnish and Pete Nelson on a project called Mixture. Launching soon, Mixture is an app for front-end developers and designers that creates a great front-end developement environment. Continue reading Graphic Design, Web Design, and Illustration by Mike Kus
It’s happened: I am now interested in watches. Since Switzerland is the quality watchmaking capital of the world, I guess it was inevitable that I would start dreaming of a nice watch. Continue reading My new Swiss-influenced hobby: ogling mechanical watches
Who knew faux-wooden beer tankards could be so inspirational? Once you start drawing them you keep drawing them, and then you feel the need to create a bird, and finally you end up creating this:
Maybe I’m imagining magical woodland pubs? It must have something to do with all the forests and trees here, plus all that Lord of the Rings and Hobbit reading I did as a teenager.
In any case I’ve just opened up a Cafe Press store named Zuritopia, and I’m selling this graphic on t-shirts. You can visit the US store here: www.cafepress.com/zuritopia, and the UK store here: www.cafepress.co.uk/zuritopia (although I think it defaults to whatever is closest to your IP address, they are clever that way). I’ll have some other designs and products available soon!
I’ve been creating some graphics that look like they come from childhood circa 1958. If we were tweeting 60 years ago, I imagine these could be icons on a child’s smart phone. They could go with educational slogans: “Tweet a cheerful update” or “Stop and think before you tweet”. (Good advice for grownups too).
Here are a few more of my favorites. Although they aren’t twitter-oriented, they are still pretty darned cheerful.
When I worked for JDA I created a design I’ve always been pretty fond of, and which I think of as Happy Squirrel. You can see I now have a Happy Girl and a Hello Groundhog, which is very satisfying. I think it’s the combination of retro style and cheerful nonsense.
By the way, if you are ever looking for vintage images, a very fun place to find them is Vintage Printable. At the moment the site is in the middle of a re-vamp, so don’t be put off. It’s a cool site and getting cooler.
I decided to quickly get myself some business cards before researching printers in Zürich, which gave me an opportunity to try moo cards. First, I created two designs with my personal logo, two with our Applied Intelligence logo, and one with some fun graphics. Then I uploaded the high-res jpegs, provided my contact info for the backs of the cards, and ordered the quantity. The site was fun and easy to use, and I was able to easily choose between US or European delivery.
For an internet print company using uploaded jpeg files, the quality is very good. Plus there’s just something fun about moo mincards. Moo also prints regular (European-sized) business cards, postcards and stickers. If you’re not a designer, they also provide designs and ready-made products.
Zuritopia 