Beautiful and quirky paper cut-outs made to order. The attention to detail is inspiring. I especially love the little hand in the ‘e’ in ‘metal.’

Via Computerlove.

If so, get on this site! I am a Thai graphic Designer.

Superheroes according to Dulce Pinzon are not those born with super powers or bitten by a radioactive spider. They are migrant workers who make huge sacrifices in order to send money to their families back home. Looking at these photos alongside their captions, I’d have to say I agree.

A gallery exhibit in London currently features Leah Gordon’s Voodoo Carnival series, in which she documented the Kanaval event in Haiti. The pictures themselves are as stunning as they are haunting – rooted in religion, scarred by slavery. I’d like to go to the exhibit just to read some of the side stories that went along with these photos:

One man captured front-on in a very fetching off-the-shoulder lace number explains how his gender-bending interpretation of the Devil as a transvestite came to him in a vision when he was working on a sugar cane plantation in the Dominican republic.

Indeed.

I am a loose-leaf tea fanatic so when I saw the design for these packages I did a mental jump for joy. Too often tea packaging can be bland or pretentious. These packages are cute, exciting and original.

Via TheDieline.com.

Studio MIKMIK, located in the U.K., has an amazing website that features their work. I love how playful but simple their portfolio is – lots of colors and interesting shapes.

Beautiful deck designs from Damien Correll on the Behance Network. Even though I am trying to simplify my way of designing, these illustrations go to the opposite extreme – and work nicely. I love the flat colors and the retro-cartoony scheme.

Decks are interesting things to design because you can pretty much accomplish any sort of vision. Unlike web design, where you have to mix usability with aesthetics, deck designs don’t necessarily have to be functional and can even serve as a work of art to hang on your wall.

Just caught this video on MTV – Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson’s Winter Song. The animation is simple but cute and the song is pretty nice too. I found out that the video was animated by Crush, a studio located in the U.K. Very nice work, I highly recommend checking it out.

This is an adorable animation from Onitsuka Tiger that explains the legend of the Chinese zodiac. I love the way each animal is stylized – the tiger in the video is definitely my favorite (just look at his determined expression!) I am an Ox, by the way – second to the sneaky Rat, which coincidentally enough is my boyfriend. Is he using me to get ahead in life…?

When I’m designing a layout, I usually start with a color palette and play around with it until I pick what colors should be dominant, what should be subtle, or what should be used sparingly. Lately I have been really into bright, poppy layouts. So I start to create something and build and build until things start to looked united. I add twists here and there and account for playful scripts for the users to interact with.

But…

Then I wonder if what I am doing is overkill. There is so much noise in public media – TV, radio, and websites – all trying to compete with each other in trying to be the most visually appealing and innovative. In come grunge layouts, textured layouts and desk top layouts. Everything looks like the rest, you know?

Then, once in a while I will come across a beautifully done layout that stands out to me. They are simple, grid-based layouts that use colors sparingly (or sometimes only stick to black and white.) It is like seeing a person who is effortlessly beautiful – of course there is work involved, but the end result seems so natural that it’s hard not to believe they were born that way.

I think I will make it a personal goal to make sure that whenever I feel things are getting complicated, to start over from scratch and go bare bones on the layout, adding only what I need and throwing out anything noisy. Kind of like a spring cleaning for the designer’s mind.