Illustration for a card holder. Boats and buildings were traced and the rest was painted in Photoshop. It’s going to be printed in a very small surface so I didn’t bother with too many details.

This is a floppy disk illustration I did last Friday. Remember how popular they were?

For over 80 years Hergé entertained entire generations with the wonderful Tintin comics. His clean and simple drawings even received their own designation: the ligne claire style.

I visited a Tintin shop in Belgium and was amazed by the variety of products and specially by the quality of the figures. Whoever did the sculptures, they’ve managed to recreate the cartoon style in all figures. They look like they came out of the books.

Netbooks, cell phones, media players have joined radio and television in the last years in a continuous battle against newspapers. Why read news on paper when we can get them faster online? Upcoming generations of e-books (fully connected, easier to read, foldable, readable under sunlight) will probably say goodbye to newspapers faster that we imagine.

However, there is still hope for one our oldest publications. Designer Jacek Utko started redesigning newspapers a couple of years ago. According to him, there is “no practical reasons for newspapers to survive” and they need a complete update in both content and design.

Jacek studied the business and the goals of the newspapers before he went to the creation phase. This is a very solid approach for a designer. He believes that the new role of the designer is to change the process from the beginning to the end. With a good knowledge of the publication he started experimenting with types, illustrations, graphics and colors. He says he treats newspapers as posters, where the front page is his signature.

Want to know the result?

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It’s amazing how many designers get inspiration from the videogame world. In this area Nintendo is king! From kitchen accessories to toys, there are thousands of items based on Nintendo’s icons and games.

In the last few years the average age of the videogame player has increased a lot, thus most of the game inspired products are not for kids. They are candies, figures, clothing accessories and design items, usually with an oldschool touch.

I’ve always enjoyed videogames, my name is famous because of Nintendo and I really like miniatures: naturally, I have a classic Mario 64 figure on my desk!

Read the full article for more photos!

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