Giant Space Eye

Comets Clash at Heart of Helix Nebula

A bunch of rowdy comets are colliding and kicking up dust around a dead star, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The dead star lies at the center of the much-photographed Helix nebula, a shimmering cloud of gas with an eerie resemblance to a giant eye.

Take a closer look and read all about Helix nebula over at the Spitzer Space Telescope official site.

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HMK

Play The Advertising Agency Game

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be the Big Boss? Well then, this is the game for you!

It's the smoking hot new Advertising Agency Game where YOU are in total control of Your Universe as the Creative Director and Mastermind of an Advertising Agency!

Play the Advertising Game now!

Almost as fun as Snood and perfect after a nice long mid-morning nap.


Patience Grass Hopper, it'll take a few seconds to load!

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HMK

Contemporary & Modern Cha-ching!

Detail from Andy Warhol's "Brigitte Bardot," 1974.

A new phenomenon was observed at Contemporary Art sales in London last week.

Records were set for works by Peter Doig, Frank Auerbach, Gerhard Richter, Piero Manzoni, Alberto Burri and Francis Bacon while works by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly and Roy Lichtenstein also fetched high prices.

Warhol's portrait of the French actress Brigitte Bardot bagged £5.39 million (that's roughly 10.5 million US!) points to new forces at work that auction professionals had not anticipated.

Read the rest: International Herald Tribune

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HMK

The Nissan Qashqai

Awesome spot from TBWA, London.

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HMK

Thanks Freddy!

The Candid Man

Chameleon, voyeur, outsider, Sammy Davis Jr. used his camera to create one of the greatest unknown picture archives in show-business history.

Check out this glimpse of the previously unpublished images, from the new book Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. over at Vanity Fair.

Really amazing shots.

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HMK

New HMK Cards!

Sweet. I finally got a fresh box of my new HMK cards just in time for SXSW and beyond!

Viva stochastic printing! (Thanks Neenah!)

I'll soon have a bunch of my work, both past and present, up and online.

For now I've got a small set of recent illustrations over at my flickr site: HMK Illustrations

And a Grande Gracias to my true blue network of amigos and support system, you know who you are - I couldn't do it without y'all!

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Big Love,

HMK

A Little Slice of Weird

The world doesn't always make a whole lot of sense.

Less so because of these people.

A little slice of weird, everyday at 0015.

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HMK

Thanks to the cool folks at Coudal Partners

Comedy Central

These are genius!

Why? Because they understand some basic rules of comedy.

Rules like - "Only a guy in a wheelchair can give another guy in a wheelchair a gift like ice skates for Christmas."

One of my mom's rules was "Never make fun or tease someone about something they have no control over or cannot change." The ice skate joke works dispite this rule because of the expression of the gift giver, the guy on the right, as we're laughing with him and not at the guy getting the skates."

Super funny stuff from the Kempertrautmann agency in Hamburg.

If you've got some rules about comedy to share, add them in the comments.

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HMK

Thanks to Freddy over at Advertising Goodness.

Jackie Earle Haley on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley's looking pretty happy on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

And don't miss this great Washinton Post article.

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HMK

Super Fresh

Now this is nice.

It's from PUBLICIS and the Creative Agency Team Publicis II for Premium-Distributie Grups mints brilliantly called FRESH.

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HMK

Thanks to the good folks at 24.

Holy Bat Blog!

Quickly Robin! To the Bat Blog!

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HMK

Stay On Top or I Can't Wait!

Check out the Museum Of Modern BETAs.

This a nice little site that gives everyone a hint as to not only what's on the horizon but what's on the minds of those hoping to be the next big thing scooped up by Google.

Updated each Saturday, MoMB lists the 50 most anticipated applications in the webosphere, as measured by the number of bookmarks at del.icio.us for apps which are not publicly released yet.

Though what I really like is the fact that it's also a groovy little source for researching all the amazing new names for future stuff too - a nice, unintended byproduct for research trend junkies like me.

As of today, Scrybe is numero uno, fast forward and check out their demo video: Scrybe.

Have fun! Museum Of Modern BETAs.

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HMK

Meet Clocky!

Oh boy. Our pups Ringo & Dazy are gonna just love this!

Meet Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don't wake up.

Clocky gives you one chance to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand and wheel around your room looking for a place to hide. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time.

Nice! Meet Clocky!

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HMK

Strange & Fascinating

It's easy to get lost looking at all these cool and, yes, Strange & Fascinating Maps.

The above map by Johannes Vingboons (1639) is from the American Treasures of the Library of Congress.

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HMK

Happy Valentines Day!

Did this little collage for my Chrissy!

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HMK

Readius

This is kind of interesting, my buddy Raygun, from GearNut, sent me this this morning.

Answering the question: How to get a 5-inch display in a device the size of a mobile phone?

Check it out: Readius.

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HMK

Fountain of Fonts

The fine folks over at Fountain have some pretty sweet Pro Bono fonts available for both Macs and whatever those other computers are called.

The above font, PAVEMENT, was designed by Peter Bruhn.

As Mr. Bruhn describes it's origin, this font was "Made in the late hours after coming home from a Pavement concert."

Fill your font cup over at Fountain.

Wowee Zowee!

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HMK

Dynamic & Changeable

Well, we've all seen the ever changing Google logo on special days of the year.

The latest dynamic dynamo is the new Saks Fifth Avenue identity.

A 1973 Saks signature logo was revived — and refined — by the Pentagram design group, then sliced into 64 components that are arranged in different configurations on bags and boxes. "Fragmenting the logo gave it energy and bravura," said Michael Bierut, the Pentagram partner who led the Saks project. "And now we can create numerous permutations of the logo."

Dynamic identities fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that consistency is essential to an effective corporate identity. The more we see the same corporate symbol — or so the consistency camp argues — the more likely we'll be to recognize and remember it. Companies adhered to this throughout the 20th century; and the designers of some of the most successful identities, such as Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books in the late 1940s, and Paul Rand as a consultant to IBM from the 1950s to the early 1990s, were renowned for their rigor.

Tschichold specified how every element of design at Penguin should be executed — down to the spacing of the letters in its books — in the Penguin Composition Rules. Rand did the same at IBM in a series of documents with self-explanatory titles, such as IBM Logo: Use and Abuse. Their objective was to protect the purity of their carefully planned design systems from being botched by dodgy printers and overzealous local managers. Both designers occasionally broke their own rules, but resisted the right of others to do so. As Tschichold wrote: "It is the master who establishes the rules... and is permitted to break the rules, even his own."

Read it all about it: International Herald Tribune.

And here's the word directly from Pentagram.

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HMK

The Ara Chest

Winner of the 1st prize at the Elle Decoration competition. The simplicity of this chest and its wood melange gives the interior an extravagant yet minimalistis look.

I totally dig this!

More info at IQ Matics

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HMK

Thanks to the kids at Design Milk

Balloon Bling!

Lights for your balloons … Lights for your Party

Now you can light up your nightime parties with Balloon Brites. No assembly needed, just inflate with helium. Balloon Brites is perfect for any party decorations.

And they're totally affordable: Balloon Brites

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HMK

Thanks to: Brain Fuel

Merci! Danka! Grazi!

Behold - the most important part of anyones identity system or personal stationery.

The only thing better than recieving one is sending one.

The Thank You card. Not an email.

The above is a working sketch of the first in a series of six cards I'm getting ready to print to aknowledge everyone I can think of for helping me get to where I am today and to those for just simply believing in me.

There's no substitute for what's sadly becoming a rarity:
A heartfelt, simple, real deal handwritten thank you note of sincere appreciation, acknowledgement or just some good old fashioned, humble Gratitude.

Thanks to Robert Fulgham's "All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned..

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life.

Thanks for reading!

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HMK

Poor Bird!

I was sitting with my coffee this morning and looking out the window and a huge flock of these little birds, I'd guess a few hundred of them, loudly swooped down in the yard and then suddenly off and on their way.

A few seconds later, smack! This little thing hit one of our windows and faceplanted right on the bench.

What really made this kind of weird was the fact that just moments earlier we were listening to a piece on NPR about Bernard Herrmann's work as the sound designer on Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds - which we had just watched a few nights before.

According to eHow, it's estimated that more than 90 million birds are killed each year as a result of hitting windows.

Damn.

I waited a bit to see if our little guy was just stunned but I'm sorry to say that this one didn't make it.

That's a bummer,

HMK

Pimp My Bus!

The Volkswagen bus: 1960s beach bums dug it, brah.

And no wonder. It was cheap, had plenty of room for surfboards, and was about as complicated as a lawn mower. That’s why, when Volkswagen of America’s Electronics Research Lab in Palo Alto wanted an unassuming vehicle to house some of its undercover tech, it settled on a roomy, 21-window Deluxe Microbus from 1964.

Dubbed Chameleon by the ERL team, the van — purchased on eBay for $20,000 — has been completely restored, converted to electric drive, and stocked with the lab’s souped-up automotive electronics.

But the best part?

It still looks boss on the beach.

Read the rest of Mike Spinelli's cool article over at WIRED.

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HMK


Thanks to: Wired Magazine

Cool Room Divider

Check out the custom room divider solutions over at: dVider.

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HMK

Teaching The Machine

So. Just exactly how did we get from handwritten text to Web 2.0?

Here's a super nice short attention span theatre version: 101 To 2.0

Thanks to: Reaction

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HMK

The envelope above is courtesy of Eunice and Ron Shanahan