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.