Sam Bolles, designer: Archive

The World Doesn't Read in English

Part of the fun of seeing commercials or ads in foreign countries is to play the “Hey! I understood that!” Game. Catching the Japanese spokesperson try her hardest to pronounce “McDonalds” or seeing the familiar swooshes of the Coca-Cola logo make travel fun, if only to see how the other half 99% of the world lives. I often forget that many brands are international, and...

Feb 28th

Nov 27th

1 note

Oct 19th

2,850 notes

2 tags

Sep 18th

8 notes

Anonymous asked: are those boot cut?

Aug 28th

3 tags

Aug 28th

5 tags

Buffaslug

Hockey has been a part of my life for a while now. I grew up playing it, but I was never any good at it. I remember it being very complicated and I didn’t quite understand it all, but I played hard and – hindsight being 20/20 - think I could have been a pretty good player if I had just bothered to learn the rules. Damn you, offsides! It died out in me for a long time. I...

Aug 12th

1 note

3 tags

World Series

In the spirit of the Olympics and all things video games, these Playstation XMB themes are pretty damn awesome. (from The Studio, via Surfstation)

Jul 29th

2 notes

3 tags

Jul 11th

5 tags

Jul 10th

4 tags

Jul 10th

1 note

3 tags

Ekaterina Koroleva

Love these watercolors by illustrator Ekaterina Koroleva. Watercolor has this effect on me… (via BumBumBum)

Jun 20th

4 notes

1 tag

May 16th

6 tags

Apr 19th

3 tags

Apr 15th

5 notes

Apr 15th

450 notes

2 tags

Apr 10th

6 tags

Death Pop

Shake off that holiday slump, we’re back. Mark Hall-Patch did some fancy lettering for some death metal logos, only they’re for pop artists. Oddly enough, I could see Lady GaGa using this one at some point… (via Buzzfeed)

Jan 17th

10 notes

4 tags

Nov 20th

4 notes

2 tags

Take AIM

Good bye, little AIM guy. You served us well, in buddy icons throughout my school career. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, It looks fine. And all the collateral surrounding it looks equally as good. But it feels a bit too Tumblr, Vimeo, Aviary-y. It seems to entrenched in trying to look like something and feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. Huh. But what is good is a...

Nov 18th

13 notes

4 tags

“We prove our worth with our portfolios, not with a membership badge.”

– – Grace N., in a comment on the Creative Review There’s a new show on Bravo, that home of “reality TV” which is more competition shows than it is “reality” (they’re cheap, easy to produce, and honestly more entertaining than you’d think). But this new show...

Nov 11th

94 notes

Nov 11th

4 tags

Watch

Oh yeah! I forgot about the music video that I went crazy over a while back, and I was just reminded of it. Machine Molle did this video for Justice’s “DVNO,” off of their 2007 album † (which is where the rather conspicuous cross toward the end of the video comes from; it became somewhat of a de facto logo for the band, incidentally). Outside of being a really great song, the...

Oct 24th

3 notes

3 tags

Oct 23rd

95,462 notes

4 tags

Oct 7th

67 notes

4 tags

Title Scream →

My childhood is a blur of wasted summer afternoons spent playing videogames in the basement. My mother says that we spent so much time down there that the smell would stick to us and permeate throughout the rest of the house. My friends were the same way; when I would go to their houses, it was nearly exactly the same routine. Videogames in the basement. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of...

Oct 4th

31 notes

3 tags

Oct 4th

3 tags

To Fly. To Serve.

Heraldry has always fascinated me. Much in the same way I talked about sports team logos, the crest you carry should be proud and intensely personal. And like sports logos, it’s your heritage and your future. British Airways recently radically revamped their coat of arms (hey, did you know British Airways had a coat of arms?) to stunning results. It’s quite gorgeous...

Sep 27th

2 tags

Sep 20th

1 note

5 tags

…And No Two Alike

The MIT Media Lab introduced a new logo – or I guess logos… logo system? – recently, that’s really crazy. I’ve seen logos that have permutations on a theme (Nickelodeon’s old identity springs to mind), but this one most assuredly takes the cake. The overarching idea of the logo is the three variously colored spotlights mixing and coming together, each maintaining it’s...

Aug 27th

10 notes

4 tags

Aug 12th

2 notes

4 tags

“What is art? And does being art automatically justify something? Does art have...”

– Ricky Gervais, in an editorial on the Huffington Post

Jul 27th

4 tags

Jul 24th

8 notes

5 tags

One Great Logo!

I’ve always enjoyed and placed a lot of emphasis on sports team logos. They seem akin to a coat of arms or a medieval banner. They become more than just an image in the center of the field; they become a rally, a source of pride and strength. So, with people as passionate as they are about their team, it’s important to get it right (looking at you, Buffalo Sabres… Hey, where’re...

Jul 23rd

2 notes

4 tags

Harry Potter and the Criterion Collection

Fantastic work by Patrick Sullivan, who made them for his senior portfolio class at Cooper Union. I may not be the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan, but this set just might make me one. (via io9)

Jul 11th

97 notes

3 tags

LGLCRPB.org Redesign

But enough about you, internet. What about me? I was contacted to redesign the Lake George-Lake Champlain Regional Planning Board website. I was pretty happy with the results, and so were they!

Jul 9th

4 tags

Gregory Euclide →

Beautiful beautiful artwork from Gregory Euclide, most notably for his cover for Bon Iver’s new album. Surreal and tense, yet at the same time calming and beautiful.

Jul 9th

1 note

Jun 12th

2,890 notes

May 24th

258 notes

2 tags

Apr 24th

6 notes

1 tag

Explorations in Typograpy →

Through the wonders of the internet – you, too, can set type! Interesting little tool, and the text to go with it. Change the font, change the leading, add drop caps, indents, etc., etc. Learn what goes into laying out text. HOW EXCITED ARE YOU?! (via Surfstation)

Apr 21st

2 notes

2 tags

“If the way to motivate someone to put their hand in their wallet is by drawing a...”

– andyjohno, commenting on a Creative Review article addressing the creative industry’s response to Japan relief. The article questioned certain designers’ motives for selling prints to raise money, whether is was truly altruistic or self promotion.

Mar 23rd

7 tags

Social Media at the Other End of the World

Really interesting series of photos here. Italian photographer Filippo Minelli used third world backdrops to put our social media usage in stark perspective in an ongoing series Contradictions. Minelli puts it best in a 2008 interview, so I won’t muck up the words: Technologies and the marketing behind them usually push the almost religious aspect of their evolution… and the users...

Mar 21st

3 notes

5 tags

Are Touchscreen Tablets Effective Design Tools? →

I’ve been wondering this for sometime. They say that tablets and touch interfaces, like the iPad and the new Xoom, are going to be the wave of the future (see Microsoft’s Surface technology), and soon we will all be using touch interfaces. While this has yet to be proven for personal computing, does it hold true for industry professionals like designers? Smashing Magazine, where the...

Mar 20th

11 notes

3 tags

Pretty Loaded →

Mesmerizing. Almost philosophical in a way. It’s a website that showcases Flash site preloaders in succession. What is it loading? Will it ever finish? Who knows the answer?

Dec 5th

4 tags

Watch

Interesting little note of design on the Daily Show last Thursday; Jon remarks a bit on how well the cover of Stacy Shiff’s “Cleopatra: A Life” is designed.

Dec 3rd

1 note

4 tags

Typography for Lawyers →

I love the idea behind this website/book. While it is geared to lawyers, I found it tremendously helpful for anyone needing a guide to make stylish documents, students and laypeople alike. Worth a skimming!

Oct 19th

3 tags

Cut the Gap

The internet is a-buzz about the new Gap logo. The new logo was unceremoniously pushed to their website a week or two ago, and the internet hasn’t looked back since. Designers (including myself) and the layman alike have decried the new logo and have made it very public that they kind of don’t care for it. On their Facebook page, a spokesperson has said, in that very special brand...

Oct 10th

1 note

7 tags

Halfstravaganza

I’m a musical person. I used to play the viola (in grade school), I can play some mean Rock Band drums, and I like to think I can sing (alone, in the car, just like everyone else… but I really can! Really!), but usually I let the professionals handle it. I love the discovery of new and amazing music that I can appreciate now or add to my ever growing library of personal favorites....

Jul 20th

3 tags

Watch

This thing is so cool. I know it’s everyday information, but there’s such a beauty behind it. Do you suppose they sell a home model? (Note: This actually won an award, the 2010 National Design Award for Interaction Design, awarded to Lisa Strausfeld at Pentagram.)

Jun 20th