Inspiration Category:

New York City Subway Train Costume

Sunday, 10.30.11 at 10:32 pm
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Little guys like cars, trucks & trains. Little guys (and big guys) in New York City tend to be a little infatuated with the subway. Living across the street from the Transit Museum doesn’t help… Because of this, every year when my wife and I ask our oldest son (now age 4): “What do you [...]

Illustration, Inspiration, SVA & Bluecanvas

Monday, 08.15.11 at 5:36 pm
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The MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at School of Visual Arts was recently featured in Bluecanvas Magazine. As part of the collaboration, I was asked to be part of an informal (and documented) conversation about storytelling, illustration and the graduate program itself. (Vimeo link)

The Chopping Block Wants to Keep Listening

Thursday, 08.11.11 at 5:06 pm
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We at The Chopping Block are dedicated to the continued listening for signs of other life coming from deep space. Especially as we are are running out of new alien icons to update our alienWe shirt and are always in need of new references. We surely wouldn’t want to miss ET’s phone call as he may have [...]

Space Posters

Thursday, 08.04.11 at 12:04 pm
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If it hasn’t become obvious over the years… we here at The Chopping Block have always been fixated on space exploration. From our NASA themed website (circa 1998), to my personal space imagery blog wanderingspace, to Chop Shop’s Space Exploration tshirt collection — we have been working elements of space exploration into our own promotions [...]

Tatt’s So Cool

Wednesday, 07.13.11 at 3:59 pm
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Entirely too cool temporary tattoos for designers. Another fine concept by the very Swiss Miss. My kid has lots of tattoo books and one is of all these letters. I have actually executed this very concept with her kid/girly letters and spelled out “LOVE” and “HATE”… which in some ways may be funnier that using this more [...]

Speaking in Virginia Beach June 23rd (Updated)

Wednesday, 06.22.11 at 10:06 pm
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Virginians! I will be speaking this Thursday at AIGA Hampton Roads in Virginia Beach, VA. I will be presenting on “Web Design for Non Web Design People”, my ongoing quest to demystify the complexity of web design and provide some real-world direction as to what designers should be doing and learning to increase their comfort [...]

Photo-Lettering is New Again

Sunday, 04.17.11 at 12:39 am
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Thanks to the typographic nerds at House Industries — the old practice of photo lettering is coming back again. An idea so simple that it is amazing nobody had built this until now. You simply go to the START page — enter your message and pick the font you want. You can also optionally adjust [...]

Viewpoint Perspective Trickery With Photoshop

Monday, 09.20.10 at 10:57 am
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One of the sight gags planned in the World Without Photoshop video was to make MacBook Pro’s look like shiny aluminum “CopyBook” scanners. We needed to replace the keyboard and trackpad with the guts of a flatbed scanner. The image you see above is straight off the camera. The illusion of a scanner bed is [...]

How Could We Not Post This?

Thursday, 09.16.10 at 10:43 am
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CHOP (preview) from Peter Buchanan-Smith on Vimeo. Via notcot.org.

A World Without Photoshop

Friday, 09.10.10 at 4:58 pm
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Last week we set forth upon the internets (YouTube) a fun little short film/project envisioning what the daily life of a creative team might be like if Photoshop had never been invented. The project started off the exact same way the video does: with somebody, as designers or photographers frequently do, asking: “Can you imagine [...]