First of all, a happy Labor Day (US) to everyone!

The big news is that tomorrow our good family over, the Proper Villains Collective, of which this blog is a production of, will be debuting our new site! The new site is the collaborative work of PVC members Archetype and Lars Amhoff (Kinkyform, The Substain). After many months of planning and plotting we are happy to premiere the site on the same day as the release of our fellow member Raekwon’s new album, Only Built for Cuban Linx 2.

Just a quick note to everyone that you can now become a “Fan” of The Takeover on Facebook. Check it out here.

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of producing a separate portfolio, solely with book design work, through the Cargo Collective publishing platform. It’s still very much a work in progress, but you can see some of my (never-before-seen) proposed covers there. Book interiors will also be updated in the very near future. So check back and feel free to give me any feedback.

I thought I’d share two new posters I made recently. These posters were to announce the classes I’ll be teaching at Kean this fall. I’ll only be teaching Typography I now, but thought I’d share the other anyway. Thanks to YWFT for the free type. The quote on the Typography poster is by Ellen Lupton.

Howdy! I’ve been away on a little family road trip for the last two weeks through the great Southeast. I’ll be back soon with plenty of new posts and great work to look at. Also, look out for some news about new contributors to The Takeover and our first giveaway. Stay tuned.

We’d like to present The Takeover’s first-ever, all-new, ground-breaking, hyphenated-adjectives-inducing GIVEAWAY! Stay tuned for more news as we prepare to announce the prizes for our first giveaway later this week.

A 24-Page Book, published by John Luke & The Type Directors Club in 1987, is filled with 24 pages of creative typographic treatments representing the numbers 1-24 by designers: Lou Dorfsman, Ivan Chermayeff, Bradbury Thompson, Milton Glaser, Saul Bass, Paul Rand, George Lois, Tom Geismar, Tom Carnase, Herman Zapf, and Massimo Vignelli.

Nancy Skolos is part of the graphic design faculty at RISD, together with Tom Wedell they create amazing posters. Check out the interview over at Graphic Hug.

Darren Booth has some splendid work. Great hand lettering!

“Canon breaks out of the digital camera box with their oddly-contoured Powershot D10. The waterproof camera shoots 12-megapixel photos, can withstand a four-foot drop with its shockproof design, and can be accessorized with different faceplates and even a carabiner clip.”

Via Core77

Nike has a new London space, create by the Wilson Brothers.

Via Core77

Thinking for a Living is proud to announce The Practice Sessions, a workshop and panel discussion by Antonio Carusone, Frank Chimero, Duane King and Matt Owens taking place at the National Student Show & Conference in Dallas, Texas. The Practice Sessions is part of TFAL’s continued efforts as an ever-growing platform dedicated to the concept of open source design education.

This event is sure to please, get yourself to Dallas in a jiffy for this one.

There’s really not much to say about this. You just really need to read it all for yourself.

There’s a great interview up with Jessica Helfand & William Drenttel of Winterhouse over at Portfolio Center.

Original artwork from Los Angeles artist Steven Harrington is featured in the third installment of the Curated by Arkitip series. Available are a Sleeve for MacBook Pro 15″ and an iPhone 3G Sider Case.

READ IT HERE. Via Core77

Doyle Partners just designed a new logo for the Cooper Union. Check out a video of the logo and read what Steve Heller has to say about it. My personal opinion: it’s amazing, but I happen to love everything Doyle Partners touches.

While doing some browsing at Labyrinth Books the other day I came across this spectacular quote, above, in Counterpoint, a great book on Daniel Libeskind‘s work designed by Pentagram.

Typographer and book artist Russell Maret will be appearing at the Type Directors Club in 2 weeks. If you don’t about his amazing letterpress books than I’m so very sorry for you. More info here.

Illustrator Craig Frazier has an incredible 98-page sketchbook online over at 98pages.com

Via Design Observer

Homeboy Nicholas Felton (AKA mgfn) has an amazing ability to organize information and design spectacular visuals from them, especially for editorial projects. I love his work and you should too, he’s based in NYC and has done work for New York Magazine, Esquire, Fast Company, NY Times, Metropolis, Print and Wired Magazine. Whoa, that’s one amazing laundry list of clients.

Hilarious. Go check out the site: Anyone Can Swiss

Designers Against Tibetan Abuse (on sale Feb 2nd 2009) is the first project by Designers Against Human Rights Abuse. Founded by Rishi Sodha in the summer of 2008, a non-profit organisation, DAHRA exists to promote and raise awareness amongst those involved in the creative industry of their social, political and ethical responsibilities as well as to raise awareness of different instances of Human Rights Abuse.

As such the first project focuses on Tibetan Rights and is a combination of a book, a limited edition Si Scott silk screen poster and an exhibition in London in the Summer of 2009.
52 creatives from around the world all contributed pieces focusing on different aspects of Tibetan Rights forming this inspiring book, available for £20 delivered worldwide. All proceeds go to the Tibet Relief Fund, who are also distributing the book, and all the money goes directly to them with DAHRA not handling it at any time

Here is a list of all contributors to the book:
Nik Ainely (Shinybinary), Anna Badar, Jonathan Barnbrook, Adhemas Batista, Bek 03, Luisa Bernardes, Diana Bodea, Bartek Bojarczuk, Jon Burgerman, Jonathan Calugi, Giovanni Capriotti, Christopher Cox (ChangetheThought), Nicholas Creevy, Sebastien Cuypers, Adam Dedman, Neil Duerden, Andy Ellison, Nima Falatoori (NMO design), Theo Gennitsakis, Alex Haigh (thinkdust), Christine Hale (Love,Christine) , Nick Hard (Research Studios), David Harris, Sean Canty, Mike Harrison, Peter Harrison, Nessim Higson (IamAlwaysHungry), Piotr Holub, Eli Horn, Eric Jordan (2advanced.com), Evgeny Kiselev, Niklas Lundberg (diftype), Justin Maller (Depthcore), Chow Martin, Kevin Megens (Karma.tv), Shane Mielke (2advanced), Nathaniel Milburn, Saad Moosajee, Jared Nickerson (J3concepts), Joao Oliveira, Snehal Sanghani, Loic Sattler, Si Scott, Rishi Sodha, This is Pacifica, Bram Timmer, Tokyo Plastic, Alex Trochut, Ana Ventura, Ari Weinkle, Oliver Wiegner (Ice Cream For Free)

Please note that this is not an attack on the Chinese or a slur against any other people as this is strictly prohibited by DAHRA. Please show your support by buying the book and joining DAHRA by registering at http://www.dahra.org/blog/wp-register.php. Be sure to check out the current running projects open to everyone.

I love this shirt by Turn Nocturnal.

Legwork Studio is a design studio in Denver that does print, web and motion. Their site is pretty cool, I love seeing simple line art illustrations that are funny and utilized well within the structure of a site.

Check out these revised Super Bowl logos that the NY Times asked a bunch of designers to do. Great stuff, I love the minimal approach to the one above by Aaron Draplin.

I’m happy to announce BETTER: Design for Social Cause taking place at Princeton University on February 28, 2009. BETTER is a design conference that brings together visionaries behind some of the world’s most celebrated designs and students from all over the nation to discuss the possibility for graphic design to serve as an agent for social change.

This year’s speakers include:
Brian Collins & Leland Maschmeyer, COLLINS
Jessica Helfand & William Drenttel, Winterhouse Studio
Abbott Miller, Pentagram
Debra Rizzi, Rizco Design
Jurek Wajdowicz, Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios
Jeffrey Zeldman, Happy Cog Studios

I found out about the Bread + Butter Shop in a strange way. It started with my boss referring me to Melville House Publishing, an independent publisher in Brooklyn (via Hoboken) that has some really great cover designs. I had seen a few of their award-winning covers, but had failed to take a look at their entire catalogue. A Wikipedia entry for the publisher mentioned their current art directors: Kelly Blair and Carol Hayes, who are 2/3 of Bread + Butter in their spare time. Really though, how much spare time do you have after art directing (awesome) covers, creating illustrations for the NY Times, and co-authoring a book on objects with unexpected significance? Here’s a small sample of that book on Design Observer.

Nikolay Saveliev is a designer based in good ‘ole NYC. His Pop Matters project holds a special place in my heart as I am currently employed by a scholarly publisher. Saveliev reproduced vinyl record albums covers by pop artists as though they were academic titles. He even renamed them, for example: Jessica Simpson, “Magnanimity of Two Spheres”. Brilliant!

Thanks to my colleague Karl Spurzem for sending me this link.

Famed ad agency Wieden + Kenendy recently launched their own online radio station, W+K Radio. The radio project hopes to “keep the agency culture woven tight”, something that may be easier said than done being that the agency has seven global offices on three different continents. They appear to has some pretty cool programming and feature employee spotlights and live performances.

Via Creativity Online

Im new to the sounds of Flosstradamas buttt… i recently found out they did a colabo with Caroline Polacheck inspired by our Big Bills and Icy Grills shirt!  okay maybe its not inspired by it but any one who loves BIG BILLS or uses the term is cool with me! 

Click here to listen and/or download

If you don’t know about Paris design duo Antoine+Manuel then I feel very sorry for you. Their work is truly breathtaking and includes some innovative examples of illustration, typography and form-making. Go pre-order their debut compilation book with 240 pages of their work over a 10-year period.

Just saw this on the Behance website and it looks like an awesome conference with speakers like Michael Beirut and the dudes behind Threadless.

Click here for more info.

Thanks to Lou for sending this in…good stuff

Congrats to Le Messie and Amanda on the release of the first issue of False Magazine. Only 100 copies were made by hand and you can only get it on the FALSE e-store. If you don’t know about the FALSE brand then go get schooled here.

I just found out about this group, Designers Against Human Rights Abuse, and I’m giving them my full support. Go check out the DAHRA site and register to become a member. As creatives we have an awesome ability in providing design solutions with a social impact.

Keith Loutit is a photographer based in Sydney, Australia (one of my favorite cities in the world). He makes these remarkable short films that incorporate tilt-shift and time-lapse photography. I don’t know what to say about these miniature worlds he creates, they’re just awesome. Check them all out on Vimeo.

The New York Times has a great feature in their Week In Review section titled “The Buzzwords of 2008″. Typographic illustrations by Jessica Hische.

Via Design Observer

All I know is I came across this site and it has some amazing illustration work by a dude named David Waters. Crazy stuff, love how the portfolio is presented along with the process in a slideshow format.

MadebySix have just posted out this very attractive Christmas card to their extended family, clients and friends.

Via Swiss Legacy

There’s word that a patent has been filed by Apple showing what could be a multi-dimensional desktop. Read more about it here.

Ridiculous paper-cut illustrations from Russian designer/artist Yulia Brodskaya.

Via Computerlove™

I was able to meet Joey Roth when I attended the Princeton Design Conference earlier this year in March. I remembered being mesmerized by the design of his Sorapot teapot. A little web searching after Joey’s presentation revealed that there was a lot of interest in his design and he’s continued getting press from just about everywhere.

He’s currently running a contest for the Sorapot right now where anyone can send in drawings, renderings, and artwork inspired by the Sorapot. The winner receives a free one!

One of my favorite designers, Marian Bantjes, was commissioned to design snowflakes for Saks Fifth Avenue. The original drawings for the snowflakes were done in July and then left to be created into whatever the department store wanted. The results are astounding. Read about here on Marian’s site.

Some of the snowflakes were even interpreted by jewelry designers and now sell for anywhere between $12,500 and $81,600!

I’m loving these Boom Box gift tags I found on Etsy. They’re handmade and printed on some really nice paper.

Just found out that a book I did the cover for was reviewed in the Holiday Gift Guide/Books section of the NY Times! It printed in the NYC edition on November 28th, 2008 so if anyone out there has a copy please let me know. The book is “BLACK: the History of a Color” by Michel Pastoureau.

We are blessed to announce the birth of our 2nd daughter, we’re still deciding on a name!
She was born on 11/22/08 at 7:21AM. She weighed in at 5lbs 12oz. and measured 18″ in length. Mom and baby are both doing great.

Big props to Jason Teegarden-Downs over at Delicious Design League. They are a Chicago-based design boutique that does design, illustration, posters and silk-screening. It just seems to natural to call them “Delicious” when there work is this tasty. Go check ‘em out and buy some stuff while you’re there.