The different maps are focused in landscape design, aerial city views and more abstract shots- and all of these are made with various techniques and visual styles. The line drawings are impeccable in execution and have this architectural sketching look to them; and the more figurative maps have an outstanding amount of detail and display of craft. Check out some of her work!

, Cartographic love: Illustrated Maps, http://blog.pixellogo.com/design-style/cartographic-love-illustrated-maps/, http://blog.pixellogo.com/?feed=rss2, The Pixellogo Blog, ,
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There’s another piece of his work that’s also based on knife-constructed type but in this case it’s also combined with other media to give it more depth. This one reads “Run Like Hell” and is made out of same-coloured knifes that are placed into a big canvas that’s been intervened with acrylic and glitter. Outstanding work that gives type another dimension both constructive and meaningful.

Via

, Typographic Love: Knife Type, http://blog.pixellogo.com/design-style/typographic-love-knife-type/, http://blog.pixellogo.com/?feed=rss2, The Pixellogo Blog, ,
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Kremlin

Red October

Russian

Hunger Games

Soviet

Nyet

, FontXS Free Fonts: Russian inspired style, http://blog.pixellogo.com/free-fonts/fontxs-free-fonts-russian-inspired-style/, http://blog.pixellogo.com/?feed=rss2, The Pixellogo Blog, ,
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Instead they came up with a beautiful solution: from a zebra’s lines pattern the brandmark was created. The symbol on its own is already beautiful, combining both elegance and the African spirit. This very symbol was later applied in the rest of the branding elements, either as a background pattern or to make a distinction. The colour palette of the whole brand follows the same direction of upscale elegance and ethnic roots, using a lot of earth tones with dashes of brighter colours.

Needless to say, Sankara sets the bar as far as luxury hotel branding goes, accomplishing a memorable, beautiful and elegant corporate identity.

Via

, Beautiful Branding: Sankara, http://blog.pixellogo.com/design-style/beautiful-branding-sankara/, http://blog.pixellogo.com/?feed=rss2, The Pixellogo Blog, ,
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high detail shirt printing

Last summer my husband had a creative streak and fashioned what looked like a small door with a ladder on an old maple tree in our front yard. It actually looked kind of cool so we said we had a new neighbor and called it the gnome home. I kind of liked it so it stayed there all winter. Then with all the flowers popping up with the early warm weather, I have been out in my yard nearly every day taking digital photos of each of the different kinds of flowers as they pop up. I hadn’t really given the gnome home much thought lately, so when I noticed some grape hyacinths growing right around the tree where it was, I had an idea for a shot. I got my camera down very low and pointed it up at the hyacinths. If you know what grape hyacinths look like, you’ll know they’re not very tall at all, so that was quite the feat. I made sure the gnome door was in the background and then said that it looked like the gnome had planted a garden, too! I’m very pleased with how it turned out. So pleased, in fact, that I’m considering digitally printing a sign for the “Gnome Garden”. The next thing to do would be to pretend the gnome migrated for the winter and make a ‘Welcome Home’ banner to hang above his door. What?!? Too much?

, Photos of the gnome home, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?p=512, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?feed=rss2, Digital Printing Blog, ,
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Digital photo of a bug

I was out taking pictures of the flowers in my yard recently and happened to notice a couple of beetles crawling up and down some blades of grass near a grouping of grape hyacinths. I changed my focus from the flowers to the bugs. Those little stinkers are fast when they want to be! They were hard to follow up and down those blades of grass through the lens of my camera. I kept losing them! Whenever I thought I had them in focus though, I took a shot and hoped it turned out. Once I got the digital photos on my computer, I found one that made me laugh out loud. I remember taking the picture, I just hadn’t realized that it had turned out okay until I actually saw it on the bigger computer screen. For some reason, when one of the beetles reached the top of a strand of grass, it held on with its back legs and then flung itself outward. It then grasped onto the blade with all its legs again and scampered on down. I don’t know why it did that, but it was so funny and when I saw that I had captured it on my camera, I could think of only one caption that could possibly go along with the photo – “Look, Ma! No hands!!” Now I need to have some stickers of it printed so I can give them to my kids to use since they got such a kick out of it, too!

, Bug shot, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?p=507, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?feed=rss2, Digital Printing Blog, ,
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Something fantastic is going to happen in two short days. No, I’m not finally getting that new digital printer that I’ve had my eye on. This something fantastic will finally fulfill some closure in my life. My life will then be considered complete and whole and I will no longer have a gaping hole in my psyche. In two days the most awesome, the most wonderful, the most incredible Titanic will be back in theaters! And I am going to see it. (Maybe not in two day, but definitely during its current 3D run.) Personally I don’t care about seeing it in 3D although I have heard that the post processing has been painstakingly and meticulously done (unlike many movies that are post-processed into 3D). What I do care about is seeing it time number 10 in the theater. When the movie first came out over fourteen years ago, I was a young twenty-something and was enthralled. I saw that movie NINE stinkin’ times in the theater. I bought all kinds of merchandise including a book and posters. And I have regretted every day since (well maybe not EVERY day, but certainly anytime the thought crosses my brain) that I did not see it that tenth time in order to have a nice round number. Now is my chance, baby! And this opportunity will NOT be wasted. I WILL see this movie for that tenth theater time. It matters not that I have seen it numerous times on VHS and also DVD. It must be a tenth time IN THE THEATER! I can’t wait! (I might even buy some new printed posters as well so my girls can have them, too!)

, Digital posters, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?p=498, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?feed=rss2, Digital Printing Blog, ,
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Flowers on t-shirts

Spring has come early this year. We have had extremely unseasonably warm temperatures which has caused all the spring plants to start blooming. The crazy thing is that these plants started blooming in mid-March when they should have been blooming in May! After not really being in the mood to shoot any digital photos this winter, seeing the spring color popping up all over has gotten me back in the mood. I’ve been taking all kinds of pictures. It seems that I have gotten in my head that I have to document every single type of flower that has sprung up early on our property. Maybe I need to have a montage of them digitally printed on a shirt. In other words, I’ve been out most every day taking pictures of something or other. I’ve been having so much fun, though. I was just waiting to have something pretty and colorful to photograph again. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t get a late frost that will kill everything. The first few weeks of this early spring were more of a concern, but now that we’re into April, the concern for frost is lessoning which is good. All I can say is I’ve got my camera at the ready, my digital printer ready to print, and can’t wait to see what pops up next!

, Photos on shirts, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?p=495, http://www.digital-printing-blog.com/?feed=rss2, Digital Printing Blog, ,
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The online music debate is heating up north of the American border. Several companies have formed a coalition in an effort to shut down a free music website recently launched by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) stating that their actions threaten to ruin the music business for the rest of the industry.

The coalition is comprised of Quebecor Inc., Stingray Digital, Cogeco Cable Inc., the Jim Patterson Group and Golden West Radio is convinced that the new free music service offered from CBCmusic.ca will have a catastrophic impact on private radio stations, streaming music websites and of course themselves. The coalition hopes to include Rogers Communication Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc. which are two of the largest owners of radio stations in Canada.

The Coalition intends to file a formal complaint with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) stating that the broadcaster has no legal right under its current mandate to compete with private broadcasters in the online music arena.

"The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing," said Stingray CEO Eric Boyko, whose company runs the Galaxie music app that charges users $4.99 a month for unlimited listening. "There is a cost to everything, yet CBC does not seem to think that is true."

The main source of contention is the fact that the CBC avoids paying royalty fees because they are considered a not-for-profit corporation. The coalition contends that the CBC must charge subscribers of for their streaming service.

In a letter, the coalition demands that Ottawa’s Federal Heritage Minister James Moore to either shut the site down, force it to play only Canadian music, or charge for access like private companies do. There has been no follow up statement from Mr. Moore.

"The CBC is using the preferential royalty rates it receives from the various collective societies because of its status as a non-profit public broadcaster to make the service viable in the long term," the group wrote in a letter to be delivered to the minister today.

"We asked that the CBC be compelled to justify its actions and explain how the launch of the CBC Music service is not competitive with existing services offered by private broadcasters and how it is not damaging to the industry."

The CBC’s actions are part of a larger dispute regarding the role of the CBC, whose federal funding was slashed in Jim Flaherty’s most recent budget and about how online music services should compensate rights holders for music played online.

Broadcasters feel that because of the recent budget cuts, the CBC will record fewer live music broadcasts and will need to introduce advertising on its Radio 2 network. There are growing concerns that the musicrtc, cbc, c service is a foreshadowing of the CBC’s larger ambitions to cut into their profits.

"These actions further distances the corporation from its mandate, while placing it directly on a collision course with private broadcasters who can only rely on advertising and subscription revenues to sustain their services," the broadcasters warned.

After the service was launched by the CBC in February, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers stated that when it set flat fees for the more than 100,000 music publishers it represents, it never envisioned a constant stream of music flooding the Internet.

The society plans to review the royalty policies in the wake of the new CBC service which is becoming exceedingly popular with over 4.2 million hours of music streamed from listeners to date.

For old-school nerds, this might seem boring. GMailFS came out years ago an it allowed GMail users to add a ‘GMail’ drive as a file system in your PC. Anything you drag over to the GMail drive would be uploaded to your GMail account as hidden email messages with attachments. Browsing the GMail drive on any internet connected PC would show you all your files and you could copy/delete/upload from any location. It was actually pretty handy.

Sadly GMail’s technical staff saw the potential nightmare that would arise if something changed with these ‘special hidden messages’ and quickly moved to block the GMailFS tool from working before it became too popular.

Everyone using GMailFS knew it was a hack, against the EULA for GMail, and so the move to block it wasn’t a big stink, more of a ‘bummer’ moment like when they realize they forgot to increase the price of your favourite soda in the school’s vending machine and then fix it.

Also, while Gmail offers almost 8GB of storage, using it for files could cause mail interruptions if you were to max it out trying to copy some files between machines. Plus all your mail eats up your storage, and in my case, that means only 3486MB of storage not 5GB.

While prices aren’t available, we know all Google storage limits are expandable for paid accounts. It would only make sense, given the processing needs of email, that Google Drive will allow you to add more space to your drive for less money than you’d pay for the same storage in GMail.

Speculation is that Google Drive will have desktop integration on Windows, Android, and Mac meaning it should be as easy to use as a USB drive yet you only need to pack around your username and password.

Other operating systems will obviously have web access to the drive, that’s a “no brainer“, so even obscure versions of Linux and potentially even appliances like WebTVs will have limited access to your shared files.

Why not sign up a few friends using a DropBox referral ID and get 15GB of free space? Well if you want to use your friend’s info like that, you either hate your friends or they are really understanding. Plus DropBox doesn’t have the best track record of privacy and security; in fact it seems like the hackers lay off DropBox just long enough for it to become a ripe target and then they hack it again.

Even without the historical issues surrounding the competition, this is going to be just like G+ vs. Facebook, Skype vs. Google Voice:

• If you use GMail you already trust Google with your most private assets, using them for files is no extra risk.
• Google is a hardware and software solutions provider. Anything they deliver will be more advanced than the competition.
• Google has a much larger exposure base than the competition yet a much better track record on security and data integrity.

Personally, to me this is a no-brainer, and the only questions I have are how awesome the integration will be with other services?

• If I upload a music folder with a playlist so I can put my music onto my car-pc, can I open the playlist and stream my tunes from Google Music on my work PC?
• If someone emails me a file and I wanted to share it with my co-workers, will GMail let me save the file to a shared folder in Google Drive?
• If I put a huge RAW image from my DSLR camera on my Google Drive, can I open it in Picasa and share a thumbnail on G+ without making 5 copies of the same picture?
• If something crazy happens while I’m in a Google self-driving car, can I save the last 5 minutes of exterior video to my Google Drive and then later share the pertinent time-segment of that clip on YouTube without having to upload/download?