Maybe those little white mice I occasionally see in the clutches of a magnificent hawk are just getting a ride.

Walking past the convention center I noticed that Denver has chosen Shepard Fairey (of Obama poster and Obey fame) to represent the growing arts and theater district downtown. Two of his illustrations top pennants that are a good four stories tall.

Junji Okubo has shared some beautifully simple yet quite detailed technical illustrations of robots on the website Izmo Juki. There’s something about it being subtitled Industrial Divinities that I find surprisingly charming. It’s worth taking a look (use the tiny numbers at the bottom left of the last image on each page to get to subsequent pages). You’ll feel like your looking at the contents of one of those Jawa Transports from the first Star Wars movie – except these are all clean. After you take a look come back and comment on our tendancy to anthropomorphize.

Check out these great, whimsical bookmarks and book plates by Tim and Ella Wong. The uncle-niece team collaborate in California’s Bay Area but have started to share some of their work on flickr. Two things make these illustrations remarkable beyond how fun they are. First, Ella is only eleven. And, second I can remember drawing with Tim in social studies class in junior high school when we weren’t much older than eleven ourselves! Before anymore time flies by print out some of these great bookmarks and stick them in your favorite book. Each time you sit down to read you’ll start out with a smile.

Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to get off the computer and simply make something by hand. My wedding (a very informal and fun celebration with home made beer and games rather than champagne and fancy tableware) gave me just such an excuse and here is the result. Four bean bags adorned with slightly sheepish looking monsters – who despite all the teeth are really quite friendly. They are eagerly awaiting August 1st when they will be flung through the air at the corn toss boards I made to go with them. I was originally going to illustrate an alien abduction scene in four panels but my fiancée steered me in a different direction and as usual she was right.

The only question is, what to make next?

Hey I’ve got an album cover on iTunes! Of course Victor Johnson aka “V” deserves the credit for making the music but it’s still fun to see my illustration/design in such a high profile virtual location. The story on the cover of a new born bird learning to fly while the gaping jaws of a wolf eagerly await the bird’s failure plays out further on the liner notes inside. Check out CD Baby if you want a hard copy of the CD so you can find out how that goes.

Victor is back in the recording studio and a new EP should be out around the end of the year which means I’m back in the design studio to create a new cover – which will be on iTunes – which I’ll blog about… it’s an endless cycle.

On September 18th, 2009 you will once again see crazy things going on in parking spaces in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul – and around the nation in fact. Started in San Francisco by the Rebar art and design collective Park(ing) Day is a growing tradition in which a wide variety of artists (it’s popular with landscape architects here in the Twin Cites) take their creative expression to the streets for a day of thought provoking, curbside installations. I think the design and advertising agencies should consider getting in on things.

Why am I bringing this up so far in advance? Because now’s the time for graphic designers to get involved in the T-Shirt design contest. I just submitted mine and want to encourage you to go for it too.

Whipped cream bears a striking resemblance to an iceberg. A yummy, yummy iceberg.

What if our first contact with an alien species is made by a meter maid?