Design: Whirled

In honor of the “Barko de Mayo” theme of the Amarillo SPCA’s 2010 fundraiser, Muttfest, I created El Barko. He was seen around town on the poster, and looked fine on the fiesta-colored tshirts, too. Most of my poster projects are for non-profit events.

Barko de Mayo poster

Season 3 is almost here. To pass the time until it starts in August, Mad Men yourself. Design your perfectly mad self for use as a Twitter, iPhone, or desktop presence. Today the part of Rock will be played by a redhead having a quick smoke and a hot beverage before heading off to ride. Eat your heart out, Betty!

Reinvent yourself here: www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

This turned into a fun little adventure on Twitter, where many of my Tweeps got their MadMen on. At one point, my entire TweetDeck was nothing but Mad People.

Lillian Bassman lives a creative and artistic life on her own terms. Not chasing trends, or working for posterity. Does anyone live a life like this anymore? An inspiring story of a creative life well-lived.

Lillian Bassman, 92, at home in Manhattan. In recent years she has reconfigured fashion photographs that she discarded in the 1970s. (Damon Winter/The New York Times) More Photos »

This is a exquisite collision of cultures: Russian Modern style meets Magical Realism in an illustration for the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Christopher Walken is so himself, here. Evgeny Parfenov is the artist. Other illustrations can be seen on his blog.

Refreshment and relaxation are not exactly the first things that come to mind when we see a freight container, but it could be time to cast a new eye on those big metal boxes. Macro|Sea creates swimming pools from containers. Big, bright, shiny, beautiful ones, installed in unconventional configurations and urban locales. Think of the custom color possibilities. See the installation on their site.

In keeping with their interests in tranforming the urban landscape, Macro|Sea is going to take on the strip mall. Please. Have at it. If the results are as refreshing as these pool installations, we’ll all feel better.