MARK WEAVER

Things I love about Mark Weaver: Found images. Square frames. Circles. Outer space. His ability to rebrand the Futura typeface for himself despite its having been branded before. Landscapes. Animal heads. Grids. That his images in sum create a world that is his own. A world conjuring the past and the future, memories, dreams and fears. MW has staked his claim as the proprietor of the modern digital collage, creating an iconic world that is aesthetically his and his alone. Mark Weaver's official site, flickr, twitter.

CHILDRENS BOOKSHELF: Den Kvite Konkylien

Here are some photos of a neat vintage childrens book I picked up at Avol's in Madison, WI. Translating by Google as "The White Conch," its written in Swedish although the writer, Benno Pludra, is German. Searching the title online, I can't find a single thing about this book. Nor can I understand exactly what's going on in it, except that it centers around a young blonde boy (like me) who lives by the sea, meets a girl, talks on the beach with a man and some other kids in town, and at some point meets/dreams about a penguin who comes out of a chest and takes him on a night flight in his bed. Strangely enough I don't see any pictures of a white conch to speak of. More images from this book and others on my Flickr page.

MIGUEL CALATAYUD

On my morning website rounds today, Grain Edit reminded me about Spanish artist Miguel Calatayud by putting up for sale a few copies of his comic books Peter Petrake and Los doce trabajos de Hercules. If you were as lucky as I to see this post in time, maybe you were able to get your hands on a copy. I first learned about Calatayud just a few weeks ago when Mike Davis posted about him at So Much Pileup. Obvious comparisons will be made to psychedelic-era artists like Peter Max, but I think it's safe to say that my man Miguel has his own style locked up. I can't wait to see these pages in person. Here are a few sample images, and thanks again to Mike and Dave for turning me onto Senor Calatayud. Click to enlarge.

TADANORI YOKOO

I recently discovered the art of Tadanori Yokoo, only to learn that he's considered one of, if not the most influential Japanese graphic designers of the 20th century. While his popularity in the 60's led to a lot of work providing psychedelic artwork for bands (including The Beatles), his primary medium seems to have been the poster, where his design and style just blows my mind. Each poster has its own complex layout and architecture, from his beautiful borders to the layered collages of images within the frame, ranging in scale from the miniature to the massive. Bright bold colors, but always within a decisive palette. A perfect integration of hand-drawn images and lettering and photographic images. Playfulness and beauty. I plan on stealing as much as humanly possible from this guy in the future.

There doesn't seem to be an affordable way to hang any Tadanori Yokoo posters on my wall, but I've ordered this book on Amazon to study these designs and a prolific amount of others in greater depth. Thorough scavenging in bookstores around the world sometimes leads to a discovery of a cheap book of Yokoo posters, or, if you're lucky, a copy of "Waterfall Rapture: Postcards of Falling Water:" a photographic book devoted to Yokoo's personal collection of waterfall postcards. It might be my favorite book I own, and it deserves its own blog post.

I love everything Japanese, especially visual art and design, but Tadanori Yokoo just about takes the cake. And to make him even more of a badass in my mind, I just learned that he starred in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief. Check out this blog post at 50 Watts (one of my very favorite art/design blogs on the internet) to learn a little more about Yokoo and see some additional images. Be sure to click on them and enlarge to appreciate the detail.

ERIC SKILLMAN

One of the pleasures of working with The Criterion Collection was meeting a fellow designer whom I admire, Eric Skillman. Eric is a designer, illustrator, art director and comic writer, and he handles a lot of Criterion's gold-standard DVD cover designs in house. His blog, Cozy Lummox, is a great designer's bookmark, as Eric frequently posts about the design process behind some of these already-iconic covers. As someone who recently fell head first into pro cover design with my recent work for Criterion, Eric's process blogs have been extremely helpful and inspiring. Plus, if you're a Criterion junkie like me, it's neat to see all of the rejected cover designs, no matter how unfinished. Below are some of Eric's Criterion covers, including some fantastic illustrations for the release of BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (also seen above), and his latest cover for John Ford's STAGECOACH. I watched the latter on Blu-ray just last night, and I can say that this cover definitely amps you up to appreciate this black-and-white western as a piece of entertainment. Also check out this 20 Questions piece, in which Eric talks some more about his process and designing for Criterion.