Xavier Barrade for Dry the River

One of my favourite things about writing this blog is coming across things that I genuinely think are brilliantly creative and yet don't take a massive bank balance or a lot of resources to achieve -just some imagination and willingness to put in the hours.

So I loved discovering Xavier Barrade’s 3D posters for rock band Dry The River. Xavier spent over 35 hours creating each 3d poster, hand cutting all the pieces and gluing them together.

The finished result is an ad campaign that sticks out (ha!) from the rest. The video of people's reactions to the posters is great too.

Minimalist Poster Design - Graphic Design Inspiration

I have seen so many reworked and stylized movie posters recently (including a previous post on Mark Welser)

It seems a lot of artists heavily inspired by the work of Saul Bass and are developing a similar approach at the moment, so I thought I would do a bit of a round up.

Albert Exergian

Moxy Creative

Federico Mancosu

Hexagonal

Ibrahim Youssef

Jamie Bolton

Jerod Gibson

Laz Marquez

Nick Tassone

Pedro Vidotto

Olymoss

Graphic Design From Radiandesign

Radiandesign is a graphic design studio from France. They merge photo-manipulation, graphic design, logo and web design to create some pretty interesting work.

Blaxploitation Posters - Inspiration

The Blaxploitation movement is often used as inspiration when creating design work with a retro, kitsch feel. Frequently parodied; the posters of that era got straight to the point showcasing guns, girls and action in a now humerous way.

More Blaxploitation inspiration here.

Mark Welser - Poster Design

Vintage style movie posters by Mark Welser, a comic book artist based Erie, Pennsylvania.

Two Design Competitions

I was just browsing when I found a couple of design competitions that I thought I'd share with you all:



Egency want artists/illustrators/designers to transform "ho-hum" flyers, brochures and posters into unique, well-crafted applied-artwork.

They are challenging you to enter original, creative designs for flyers, appointment cards, posters, etc. that fit one of these professions:

* Party or Event Planning
* Medical
* Professional Services (such as florist, cafe, shop, attorney, accountant)

Applicants may submit as .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf, .psd, or InDesign and the deadline for set-one entries is January 31st 2011.

Three top winners will receive their choice of either Wacom Intuos 4 XL, Wacom CintiQ12 WX, a Macbook or $1,000 cash.

Seven additional winners will receive a Booq laptop bag.

All 10 winners will be featured in a press release announcing the results of Egency's Design Challenge.

More info here.



The next competition from the New Zealand Book Council is to design a conceptual book cover for "Parade", by Māori author Patricia Grace.

There is a lot more background information about the competition and the book including the full text on the website here:

The deadline is January 15th 2011 and the prize is $1500NZ/$1150US/£725 plus having your design published.

Sonic Youth - Posters

Gig posters are nearly always brilliant, here are some great ones for Sonic Youth I found here.