Giant Mechanical Spider!!!

So this French company, La Machine, thought it was awesome to hang a 50 foot long, 37 ton arachnid (dubbed La Princess) on a building, scheduled for demolition, in Liverpool. It'll stretch its legs out (doubling its size) and come to life early Friday morning. Garggh!

Banksy has done it again

Via Daily Mail

The Alphabet

The alphabet, a typographical performance by Job & Roel Wouters, Amsterdam, Feb 2008. Superb!

Statistics and you

A very fascinating look at graphical interpretation of statistics, and how design plays an important role in statistics literacy.

The Super Art And Music Festival

Don't mind the cheesy title. With big guns sponsorships and support by Ministry of Youth and Sports Malaysia, and organized by The Super Sunday, the event will be a blend of young creative minds from the likes of 84cube to crowd favs Hujan.

The only catch, an "explosive" opening by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Youth and Sports Malaysia at 8pm.

PS - Theres this new trend in Kuala Lumpur to bundle up music and arts together. Lets just see how far they can stretch this idea.
PSS - Someone is getting a head start for the next G.E

Woot woot

Courtesy of our new Art Director at Bright Lights At Midnight (website still in progress!), I was introduced to the works of Faizal Reza, a wonderful Malaysian art director and designer. Check out the origami-inspired Capital Corporate Communications website that he made (pic below), which won a slew of awards in Malaysia and beyond.

Conscientiously Wiping

Something that would be quite interesting to design for Malaysian toilets. I wonder if we Malaysians don't think about Earth issues because we don't care or we just don't put aside the time or what...

A Design of Immortal Proportions

"I deliberately designed it to breed like rabbits," says Jim Fitzpatrick, who produced the ubiquitous high-contrast drawing in the late 1960s as a young graphic artist.

"The way they killed him, there was to be no memorial, no place of pilgrimage, nothing. I was determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation," he adds.

Read on about how Alberto Korda, Fidel Castro's official photographer, captured the iconic image here.

Via the BBC.

cool covers

I love what FWIS is doing with these compilation CDs of theirs. Crisp illustration, minimal treatment, aaahhh.

My Country

Just a couple of days ago a set of greeting cards celebrating 50 years of Malaysian arts was launched. Designed by the wonderful studio of William-Harald Wong, 25 cards of Malaysian arts practitioners are distributed throughout 5 beautifully packaged boxes. Check out the website to see the images that appear on the cards for yourself, and to order them. I bought a whole set - it's well worth it!

Tread Lightly on the Land

From one of my favorite small-time 'big boys (and girls)' of landscape design comes Sekeping Serendah, an absolutely beautiful retreat designed completely with a focus on the environment, located about half an hour from the Kuala Lumpur city center.

Come on, touch it, we know you want to...

The latest Apple toy from Uncle Steve: the iPodtouch. With Wi-Fi web-browsing capabilities. Woot.

Y.A.C.H.T.

Y.A.C.H.T. (or Jona Bechtolt) makes music on his machine and then makes music with that music on stage. Laptop rockers are great.

Heavy metal design

Just make it bigger. (Check out the song, of course)

Break out your monocles

As we wait for the third edition of Monocle, that stylish, high-end newsmagazine from the guy who brought you Wallpaper*, have a read at what makes the man - and his magazine - tick.

One-upping Damien Hirst

Xu Zhen, a Chinese conceptual artist, has re-created a bisected brontosaurus for an art exhibition in Beijing entitled 'NONO', a show without explanations or preconceptions.

Check out this article for more views.

Warm Fuzzy Lights

Saw this on coolhunting, and thought it would be interesting to share with you light freaks out there. A hollow steel-framed stand holds the three pair-shaped LED lights. You pluck them out, use 'em for about an hour, then just stick 'em back on the tree to kick back some juice. Nice.

Designed by Nick Foley.

Manifesto

50 influential designers and architects share their thoughts on the world of their design. Part of ICON magazine's 50th issue. Makes for reflective reading.

Mind the Map

Check out what Information Architects Japan has done with their research on 200 of the most successful websites online today! Trust the Japanese to be so orderly about these things. Makes for very instructive reading.

You can purchase the map, download it as a wallpaper/for printing, or even peruse a navigable online version of it. Oh so functional!

Free Time

"Five to Nine is a PDF magazine that explores what designers & artists do in their free time, and is published by skwiot/smith, a small graphic art & design firm based in Saint Paul Minnesota. Issue are curated&designed by Peter Skwiot Smith."

The current issue, entitled Oui ou Non, shares with us how graphic designers interpret the idea of opposites, in black and white.

You can download these nifty magazines from their website.