Have you seen animals on the London underground?

They should rename all the lines into animal and imagine how fun that would be; "Take the dog to Piccadilly, then change onto the horse to Green Park and then take the Snail to Holborn".
Considering what hell London Underground has been in the last few months we all need a little cheering up...

I vote, close London Underground all together, fix it, and then re-open.
Who is with me?!

I think at some stage everyone had one of these things.

I loved it- the everchanging patters and colours...brilliant :)

Watch it here...

Circleculture Gallery in Berlin opens it's doors on May 30th to Anton Unai's show 'The Disenchantment of the Bourgeoise'. Unai, described by the press as 'Berlin street art scene's enfant terrible', shows large-scale painting, photography, collage and impromptu performance.
Anton Unai originates from Barcelona, lived in various European countries and has now taken up residence in Berlin. He is a true street artist, dissecting the environment in which he lives and recreating his vision of the urban environment. His work is both messy, elegant, violent and sombre.

read more here...

I believe we mentioned Visual Complexity blog here before but if you missed that post than here it is again. Art, Biology, Networks, Food, Internet, Music, Patters, Politics, Social, Transportation and much, much more in the form of visual and complex.
There is some truly amazing work there that definitely deserves a visit.
583 Projects and rising!..wonderful!

Jump: visualcomplexity.com

Here is a nice introductory movie made by the Breda Graphic Design Festival organisers. The current exhibition "Sweatshop" is part of this festival where we also have or shirts on display. It's been running since May 23rd, so if you're in Holland over the next 4 weeks, make sure you pay them a visit...

watch it here... 

The weekly badge review. The features from Monday May 19 to Saturday May 24 with a call for entries to all of you Allmightys designers: A button art project out of beautiful Ireland:) and another one out of the city with most quality of life worldwide: Vancouver. Check them out!   

For today's Friday Animation, I came across a very funny and lovingly made stop-animation. Cigarette packets, matchboxes and condom boxes become the new pocket-sized Transformers :)
Looks like the guys had tons of fun making this!

Watch it here...

Here is something wonderful. These images are taken from google analytics we use here at Allmightys to monitor visits to the site. The pictures show all the places in the world visitors to Allmightys come from, including you.
We broke it down into few continents and you can see visitor locations from Europe, North America and the world. It is also safe to assume that google may not be right always and there is some data "uknown". These are all based on IPs so if there is some tunnelling going on via proxy servers then google would probably get confused and list some as coming from North America whilst in fact they may be located on a little island somewhere in the Atlantic (Lost).

Cool, eh!

The guys at Staynice.nl are soon launching Sweatshop, a graphic design exhibition which specializes on graphic design on T-Shirts. We sent them a copy of all our designs and they will be exhibited, along with shirt designers from all over the world, in Breda (Holland) from May 23rd until June 29th.
I went there myself to hand-deliver our shirts, and the location as well as the exhibition design is very cool indeed :) Well done, guys!

So, if you are in Holland during that time, go and check it out!! I'm sure it will be great fun and a cool display of amazing shirts from around the globe!

I have been using Evernote for over a month now and I have to say this is really one of the best note taking apps out there. This is not just because of the app but the fantastic integration with mobile devices, multiplatform, clipping web pages and much, much more.

about: Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from anywhere.

Evernote is available for Mac and Windows, has a web app (automatically synced with your desktop), mobile app and iPhone web app. Taking your notes could not be easier, from using your desktop app to taking pictures with your phone and mailing the pics to the web app that is synced instantly with your desktop.
Evernote is curently in beta stage so you will need invites if you would like to try itout. I have 17 invites available so if you want to have a go, leave a comment and I will send you an invite.

The site has very good tutorials/ideas on how you can use Evernote. You can also check out rohdesign's public notebook SXSW Sketchnotes.

We read and argued your wonderful comments and the winner is: hworks

with the comment:

'patterns are the strangest things. i pick up my bicycle in the morning, the 5am breeze brushes over my shoulder, the quiet drone of the bicycle chain announces the awakening of daily sounds, the colours of the bangalore sky rush to greet the sun and i smell the moist morning leaves.. and then, suddenly yet creepily at times, i realise i am a minute yet necessary thread of a very large fabric, a pattern larger than life. without me, the pattern is incomplete, and without the pattern, i am nothing. i am within what i am.'

Congratulations :)

Thank you all for submitting great comments and we hope to do another Mini Contest very soon so stay tuned!

You live in London and need more inspiration for our current competition? Then maybe should pay a visit to Welcome Collection Gallery in Euston.

This exhibition explores the intriguing creations of the Festival Pattern Group - a unique project at the 1951 Festival of Britain involving X-ray crystallographers, designers and manufacturers. At the instigation of Dr Helen Megaw, a leading Cambridge scientist, diagrams of atomic structures inspired an eclectic array of patterns on curtains, wallpapers, carpets, lace, dress fabrics, ties, plates and ashtrays. read more here

24 April-10 August 2008
Crystal structure designs from the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road
London
NW1 2BE

The Weekly Badge Review's theme of the week: Birds 

In today's Friday Animation we present a beautifully made, colourful animation by Gabriela Sanchez that also has to do a lot with patterns . More of the pattern stuff to get you inspired ;)

watch it here...

Carbon-neutral media wall made of photovoltaic system which collects solar energy during the day and use it to power an LED display at night. Designed by architects Simone Giostra & Partners.

Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing, China. read more (dezeen.com).

We don't talk much about architecture here, probably because it is what Kon and I do day in day out..but maybe we should.

Here is something that spans between graphic and object, a representation of a barcode in the form of a building, and yes, its a shopping mall.

"The centre is located in a soviet residential area on the bank of the Neva River. Placed in a vast nameless square by the Volodarsky Bridge, formed by grey housing blocks. Vitruvius and Sons liven up this space by introducing a splash of colour. At the same time they are playing with a post-modern symbolic; the elongated windows which create the impression of a barcode help to clarify the functional identity of the building" source

A great read on architecture and iconography, a regular topic over at eikongraphia.com

Don't expect much else but this month we are totally committed to spam this blog with absolutely anything having even slight relation to patters, which in fact is pretty much everything :)

Today, we bring you Fontstruct
A great site to share, discuss, build, clone and download an amazing collection of fonts build by the community. It has definitely one of the easiest interfaces to build fonts, have a go, we guarantee lots of fun!

If you are not after fonts, one thing is for sure, plenty of patterns to build here :)

I've always been a big fan of installation artists (as long as they're good, as the bandwidth is huge) and I'm happy I recently stumbled over Olafur Eliasson.
The Danish-Icelandic artist lives and works in Berlin and just hosted a retrospective at the MoMA and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. His work focuses on the "cognitive aspects of what it means to see". He explores the actual feat of visual perception, the act of looking on a very engaging, subjective level. By means of illusions and visual experiences out of the ordinary he challenges our visual behaviour and probes a critical approach.

Look at his work at MoMA here...

The Weekly Badge Review's theme of the week: Monsters 

Here are two short animations, one Oriami and the other pure geometrical, to get youguys thinking about patterns even more ;)

watch Origami here

and the black and white one here...

Accompanying our current 'Pattern Battle' competition, have a look at Kent Rogowski's work. This artist combines puzzle pieces from over 40 normal puzzles and re-creates patters of his own, coming up with dissected landscapes and still-lifes. Yet another way to look at re-piecing together things to create new patters.

Read more here...

In the theme of our current competition here is some work examples of architecture students from University of Greenwich. This was one of their early projects where they investigated Penrose tiles. The task was to draw a system and explore the never repeating patter. They then moved on to create three dimensional versions of the patters they created.  Basically, Penrose tile is a mathematical system of generating patters that never repeat. Constructed of two rhombuses you can create an incredible number of wonderful variations.

Flickr

You can read more about Penrose and his tiles on Wikipedia.

I will upload more photos of the work in the next 2 weeks or so once the 3rd year portfolios are marked. Enjoy..

Win Two Free T-Shirts of Your Choice!

To celebrate the launch of our new competition, we are launching a mini contest for our members and and visitors to win two free t-shirts from our store. Our new competition is themed “Pattern Battle” and we would like to hear from you what do you think about patterns whether these be patterns in our lives or patterns we draw on paper. Whatever it is we want to know!

How to Enter

Simply write about why you think patterns are great or not in the form of a comment to this post. Please write at least one sentence, thats all you have to do! The contest begins now and one winner will be chosen by Allmightys Team and announced Monday, May 19th of 2008.

Contest Prizes

Two free t-shirts of your choice from our store!

Schedule

Contest Begins: Monday, May 5th of 2008

Contest Ends: Monday, May 19th of 2008

Additional Comments and Rules

Please provide a valid email so you can be contacted if you win

We reserve the right to not approve any comments we deem inappropriate

Minimum Age Limit: 16+

Winner can pick any tee from the store

Package and postage included and international shipping available

We have just launched a new competition!!

Theme Title: Pattern Battle

Description: Pattern is a surprisingly mobile concept, used by sociologists, anthropologists, urbanists, mathematicians, physicists and psychologists to reveal the organisation of the human mind. For this competition, we would like you to think organisation, repetition, grid, structure, data, threads, figuration, abstraction, ornament, decoration….from unified to disorganised and from the smallest to the biggest.

Submission Deadline 23rd June 2008, 23.00 GMT

Dates:
Competition announced: Monday 5th May 2008
Submission Deadline: 23rd June 2008, 23.00 GMT
Voting Ends: 27th June 2008, 23.00 GMT

Competition banner artwork by Nikola Kostic

For more details on this competition please visit the competition page here.

What do you want to do?

I stumbled on Brent Stirton the other day- a truly amazing photographer from South Africa, who spends a lot of time traveling and shooting for, amongst other institutions, the Global Business Coalition against Aids and for the World Wildlife Fund.
His photos are often disturbing and sad in their depiction of reality and unwanted truths, and capture athmosphere and situations with a close and unfiltered eye.
He has won a series of acclaimed prizes for his work.

check out his work here...  

We have just added another designer profile to the Allmightys list of designers. Tony Aguero aka ALIADOTONY is a bronze prize winner from our recent "Out and About" competition with his wonderful The City Letraset. The design is currently in print and should be available in store by the end of the month.

If you would to know more about Tony, make sure you check out his Designer Profile and also his wonderful website.

tomo77.net

Today's Friday Animation by Darryl Hutchison features a beautifully made stop-animation on man and his relationship with his shadow.
Shadows can be so cool- looming or tiny, long or short and everyone I think has at one point tried to make funny shapes with his own shadow :)

watch it here...