This really is a place and a typography masterpiece I would love to visit and take picture of .

The photo you’re watching (more in the whole article) belongs to a 18th century chapel, the Ermida Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the Belém area of Lisbon – Portugal – reopened as an art gallery that shows work by contemporary Portuguese artists.

I don’t know why, curiously, in others blogs you can read that this building belongs to a surgery association (!!!), in truth, the real owners of the gallery and R2 Design Studio, that realized the facade, was inspired to create this composition to reunite in it both the original spiritual use and the actual cultural destination by creating something artistic, in order to attract the attention of new visitors in an area full of important historical buildings.

They started by painting the building white and then used it as the canvas for the repetition of plenty statements referring to God. The name itself of the project is “Vai com Deus” (Go with God). The authors, Lizá Ramalho and Artur Rebelo explain some technical detail in SEDG site:

“The words were rendered at various depths and scales in Knockout type, chosen because it is a sans serif typeface that offers a wide range of sizes and expressions. The letters were built from Intasa MDF hydrofuge sheets, an environmentally friendly product recommended for moist environments. A thick paint made it possible to simulate the texture of the façade.”

The whole thing was built up in only two months and with a small budget, but it has been a real success.
They won an Honor Award from the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) and is one of the winners of the Type Directors Club’s TDC 55.

Well done!

Photography by Fernando Guerra

Stumbleupon really is a huge treasure vault of  incredible and talented artists.

A while ago I found this guy that makes amazing images from cut-out pulp book covers.

As I’ve already stated here and there in this blog I like vintage stuff and imagery, and seeing those creations really made me stunned.

Inspired by children pop-up books he loves, Thomas has had one of those ideas each creative always starves for, but his work goes beyond that.

His job is not limited to cut the paper and putting in position the slices.

He is an inspired director of stage, light, and composition, really bringing  photos to life, projecting you in the  world he’s seeing.

By making tri-dimensional sets of what once was a bi-dimensional picture, all carved pieces becomes part of a whole new story to tell, adding to it mistery, tension, irony, just like in a typical ’50 movie, a western, a noir, a spy story.
Decay of the paper itself is part of the tale.
Then, a spotlight and a new shot, make the  image bi-dimensional back again to freeze the moment to eternity.

Am I a bit visionary?

It may be, but considering the success the man is having I’m not the only one.

He takes part in several exhibitions and has even printed a book Thomas Allen: Uncovered, a 48 page “jewel” featured in Amazon Top 100  Best book of Year 2007, and whose reviewers speak of very highly (not to mention that his blog really worth reading).

Recently Thomas has teamed up with the webdesigner and blogger Kitsune Noir (another blog I follow) for his “Desktop Wallpaper Project”, so now all of us can have a piece of his creativity to download for our desktop at various resolutions even for Iphone and PSP.

This is called “INFECTIOUS” and features a man with a wrapped slightly bloodied hand, looking worried toward the woman standing at his shoulder.

Still there? What are you waiting to download?

The Brazilian design studio PS2 created this beautiful self promotional typographic memory card game.

This concentration game consist of 20 pairs of card, each one with a different type family.

Set has some extra cards with a typographical glossary and the explanation of the sentence that names the gift: “the quick brown fox jumps to over the lazy dog”.
The package also contains a text about the evolution of type design, locating in history each font used in the cards.

Set is the annual gift to customers and friends of the graphic design universe and of the agency and comes in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies.

JUST BRILLIANT.

Some Spec:
Principal Type: Univers Condensed, by Adrian Frutiger
Paper: Condat Silk + Matte
Colors: Pantone
Finishing: Lustre Lamination + Die Cut

Click to view a larger image

Here it is again the list of my 10 favorite readings of the week.
Let’s start.

• Most brilliant is new Zippo advertising campaign. Even if message clearly exaggerate the amount of space taken by discarded lighters, it shows an interesting point of view that probably few of us had considered before. Read a full article on StillAd ;
• Most Useful is The 13 most essential plugin for WordPress by Net-tuts. Even if I don’t agree to all of them because I think some plugin in list are not strictly necessary (don’t forget that each plugin you activate eats resources and slows a bit your wordpress!), there are some I didn’t know. I would add to list Login Lockdown: detect and record IP addresses of every failed login attempt and if more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range;
  
• Most stunning is Step into my Cardboard Office from CR Blog. Their article tells about Nothing, a new Amsterdam creative agency that built its internal working spaces with cardboard. Article has plenty of amazing pictures of the studio;
• Most funny is Comments you won’t have seen by DavidAirey.com. I read this clever and wit blog very often and surely there are a lot of graphic design post to point out (I especially like the “Logo of the month” series), but this one was, really, exhilarating;
• Most Interesting is Achieve your goals with Incremental Persistence. I’ve found this article on DevLounge. Very powerful explanation about how persistence conquers all. You can’t miss the linked John Reese article on Income.com too;
• Most Beautiful is a showcase of SmashingMagazine of 40 typography-related websites and blogs. Astounding creativity and a lot of knowledge here;
• Most Inspiring is a DesignM.ag Showcase about landscape photography. Incredibly, the shot of the cypresses has been taken not far away from where I live. Those trees are really famous among photographers here;
• Most Valuable is The Ups and Downs of Business by Chris Tomlison. I’ve found by chance this 5th and last article of an interesting series, so, my advice is to read them all;
• My favorite artist is Jay Horinouchi creates dreamy and intriguing worlds filled with Japanese-inspired creatures. Amazing painting technique. He is having a solo exhibition at Möbius Gallery in Los Angeles until April 7, 2009.

Filthysmutpeddlers.com is a Website (with a nice graphic design, I have to say) born from from a collaboration between photographers, models, graphic and motion artists.

Filthysmutpeddlers.com provides a selection of pictures of pin-up and you have to create a design to enter the challenge.
It is not well explained how long each challenge lasts, but as they states everything is growing and subjet to change at the time that I am writing.

They address to all creatives with the aim, they say, to create “works of art to hang over the fireplace”, but it is true indeed that this initiative really is something different, with some fifties years flavour that we all love (don’t we?) and leaves the doors open to a lot of other opportunities.

If you want to give a look to the Website to apply for the challenge or just propose a wallpaper of the month, click HERE