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Everyone at Creative Spark would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Thanks to Laura for the illustration!

Rick Banks (Face  37), has created a set of Top Trumps style cards where classic typefaces are the subject matter – hence the name, Type Trumps. Each card is designed to make the most of the particular font it features, and typophiles will happily find such faces as Frankfurter, Times, Helvetica, Johnston Underground and Neu Alphabet in the pack. Type Trumps players can battle it out using such statistics as year of design, the amount of weights, cost etc to win their opponent’s cards. Banks has given each typeface a ‘rating’ score, a ‘legibility’ score and even a ‘special power’.

Grab yourself a pack here

The talented Art Snob Solutions have been busy doing the new advert for Adobe’s Photoshop CS4. A simple concept, but one that took a hell of a lot of time and effort. This interface will be familiar to any designer but is made up of real, full-scale objects, including paint pots, gloves and a couple of pad locks.

You can see the making of it here.

The ever-wonderful Smashing Magazine have posted up 35 stunning high-speed photographs in their usual “N examples of X” style. Some of them are absolutely incredible, like this bursting balloon that someone filled with Irn Bru, Britain’s favourite girder-derived soft drink.

Expect Big things! This is the full, unabridged Lomo LC-A Book. It’s
been two years in the making, and along with the help of thousands of
images submitted by the Lomographic community this book encapsulates
over 25 years of LC-A history. Stuffed with more than 3,000 unique
images shot with this unmistakable camera hailing from St. Petersburg,
the book traces the LOMO LC-A back to its roots. It’s huge! 664 pages
of high quality matt and glossy paper covered with 3,000 LC-A &
LC-A+ images. Weighing in at a hefty 3.75kg – it’s a hefty hardback and
truly ultimate LC-A Book!

Read more about it here, and if you do get a copy, keep your eyes peeled you might even see a familiar face or two ; )

Christopher Cox, the man behind the design blog changethethought, has been busy creating lovely posters throughout the 2008 Presidential Election in support of Barack Obama. And who said politics ain’t pretty?

Using digital technology, graphic designer Hans Weishäupl has carefully reconstructed portraits of 13 dictators over the past 100 years. However, the photo montages, which measure 1.8 m x 2.3 m do not contain a single piece of original picture material, but are made of countless tiny, specially shot portraits of the citizens of the country the dictator ruled over. Christian Lechelt and Hans Weishäupl photographed over 350 people between November 2007 and March 2008, in Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Dresden, Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Belgrade, London, Barcelona, Paris and Milan.

The portrait of Hitler is made up of 37 people. His nose belongs to an estate agent from Berlin, his upper lip is from a locksmiths in Dresden, and so on. Each wrinkle, each mole, each eyebrow was reconstructed to resemble the original.

Pretty amazing stuff!

Recently we had a client asking about just how environmentally friendly recycled paper is, as they’d heard that the sheer volume of industrial chemicals used in the recycling process outweighed the benefits.

We felt we had the responsibility to do lay out the facts to help point our customers down the best path.

There are a few different methods for creating recycled paper, some of which are more environmentally-friendly than others. For print-quality recycled paper, the ink has to be removed from the pulp through either washing, flotation or both, neither of which are particularly damaging to the environment. The ink removed in the process(es) can then be put to various other uses including compost or road material.

The issue comes when the paper is then bleached to get it as white as possible. The idea of this being environmentally-unfriendly comes from when chlorine bleach was most commonly used; nowadays the most common agent is hydrogen peroxide which breaks down to water and oxygen and is much kinder to the planet.

Where possible we use environmentally-friendly recycled or FSC-certified paper.

After six long months the Salford Music Map was finally launched!

In celebration of Salford’s musical heritage, we were commissioned by Salford City Council to create a map highlighting hotspots across the city. Salford has a rich musical history and the Music Map aims to cover all genres across the ages from The Smiths to The Ting Tings, Russell Watson to New Order. The map highlights venues, artists’ birthplaces, concert halls and iconic locations.

If you were tuned into BBC last night in the north west, you might have spotted some of us. The programme, Inside Out, did a feature on the map and sent Nigel Pivaro on the trail of Salford’s musical past. You can watch the program on BBC’s iPlayer.

Pictured with the map at the launch party is Salford’s very own Peter Hook (New Order).

Yesterday the Northern Quarter was transformed into the set of the new Guy Ritchie film, Sherlock Holmes, and we had the perfect view to overlook it all. We were all a little excited in the office, but it’s not every day you look out your window and see Jude Law (Dr Watson) and Robert Downey Jr (Sherlock Holmes) filming their latest movie. Above are a couple of exclusive shots; one of Guy taking time out to have a sing song with his guitar, but what’s he playing? My money is on Like a Virgin!