File this one under ‘new favorite illustrator‘.

I can’t say enough good things about the work of Mads Berg. With a vintage travel poster and art deco flavor mixed with some Picasso and Bauhaus on the side, Mads creates a wonderful posters and illustrations with simple shapes and elegant typography. I’ve never described color palettes as ‘tasty’ before, but it fits his work perfectly. Killer stuff.

The samples I pulled from his website are the tip of the iceberg (or madsberg, heh heh). Be sure to flip through his extensive portfolio, you won’t be sorry.

I can’t think of another word to describe the photography of Lee Powers other then ‘cool’. If I were to direct a film based on my favorite action shows from the 1980s, I’d hire Lee to add this cool sexiness to every shot.

Excellent use of cropping and color, and Lee seems to dance on the line between slick and gritty. Great stuff.

Swing by Lee’s website as well as his Behance account for more.

It’s time to get the inspiration posts going on the blog again after a short interlude while I dealt with the Haiti donations last week.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Lost, and I featured some excellent Lost-inspired artwork a few weeks ago. And now I’d like to showcase these beautiful posters designed by the talented and diverse Ty Mattson. According to his blog, he sat down to design an invitation to his ‘Lost premiere’ gathering, and had so many ideas that he ended up with these 8 cool posters. Well done.

I see some Bauhaus in there, a bit of Saul Bass, some 50s sci-fi. Fantastic work all around, I’d love to have a copy of that Locke design.

Swing over to Mattson Creative for more of Ty’s work.

“All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch, please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record it is my least favorite quality, it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get . . . but if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.” – Conan O’Brien

Very sentimental. Very inspiring. Well done, Conan.

Update: The embed feature has been disabled on YouTube, click on the image above to watch the clip.

I kept things relatively quiet on the blog for the past week in order to keep attention on the Haiti relief effort. I want to send out a huge thanks to all those who ordered posters over the past week to help raise money to be donated to the Canadian Red Cross. In total, $1,187.02 has been raised, which surpassed all of my expectations.

I really appreciate all of those who brought attention to this effort, notably Applied Arts magazine for bringing people together for such a good cause. Thanks so much, everyone.