Articles & Inspiration
There’s no better way to give a design a sense of quality and luxury than to embellish it with gold! Hot foil stamping is the special print finish that adds shiny metallic materials like gold or silver to printed products. Just like varnishes and spot colours, it’s commonly used by print designers to highlight portions of the artwork with an alluring shiny appearance. In today’s inspiration showcase I present 40 magnificent print designs with a gold foil finish, including expensive whiskey bottle packaging, elegant wedding invitations and extravagant art prints.
If like me, you went through a dinosaur phase during your childhood, one of the first genres of art you probably developed an appreciation for is Paleoart—the depiction prehistoric life. I loved browsing though my collection of Dinosaurs! magazine, admiring the pages of colourful hand-illustrated artist’s impressions of oversized lizards. The tools available to paleo-artists have since evolved to include digital illustration and 3D modeling, which now allow both hobbyists and professionals to produce intense dinosaur themed art. Today’s inspiration showcase features 60 fearsome examples of modern Paleoart, including ultra-realistic 3D renders and digitally painted concept art. It’s interesting to compare the difference in art style pre-and-post Jurassic Park (1993), which is now being built upon with a new wave of artwork that depict dinosaurs with the more recent discoveries of feathers and bright markings.
Ambigrams are a really clever form of word art or logo design where the graphic is perfectly legible when viewed both ways up. Not only do these symmetrical designs have the novelty of looking the same when rotated, they produce versatile logos that still work even when viewed upside down, which is an important consideration for logo designs that might appear in unusual places and viewed from multiple angles. In today’s design inspiration showcase I present 40 brilliant ambigram logo examples in a variety of styles, ranging from simple shapes to detailed calligraphy.
Grime Art is a surreal style of illustration that is popular in the worlds of Tumblr and Instagram. It’s a simply concept where portrait photographs are digitally doodled upon with drooping, cartoonish drips of slimy flesh in vibrant colours to produce weird and wonderful zombie-like images with a gross, but somehow cool effect. I’ve enjoyed discovering a variety of grime art examples on all kinds of imagery, ranging from celebrity pictures to candid photos. Check out this showcase and admire this unusual underground art style.
The unique style of artwork from the far east has inspired creatives around the world. One of the popular figures from Chinese mythology that has become a symbol of the culture is the Chinese Dragon. Unlike the winged reptilian dragon creatures from Western mythology, the East Asian dragons have more of an animal-like appearance with long, slender bodies, four large legs and bearded heads. In today’s inspiration showcase I roundup 30 brilliant illustrations and paintings of Chinese Dragons from a range of talented artists.
I find nautical themed artwork so interesting because there’s a whole load of history that provides a foundation upon which these artworks are based, from the imagery of historic ships and equipment associated with sailing, to the mythical creatures and popular sayings from the sea. There’s also historic ties to some of the visual styles used too, such as the art of vintage sailor tattoos. In today’s inspiration showcase I present 25 first-rate nautical themed designs and illustrations that feature imagery relating to ships, sailors and the sea.
