It’s New Year’s Eve 2009, time to look forward to 2010 but also to look back and be inspired by some of the design goodness (and greatness) of 2009. This is a list of some of the design and photography eye candy and useful resources that I came across during the year. It’s informal and covers a multitude of sites, packaging and graphic design that I liked this year and thought you might be interested in. It’s always hard to pick favourites but these are just some examples of items I found inspiring in the various disciplines. I’m also really interested in design goodies that you came across during the year so please add your own favourites.
Alcohol Packaging
Is it bad that alcohol came to mind first? Just excited about drinking some fizzy with friends tonight. Anyway starting off with the Velvet Glove wine designed by MASH which looks like pretty fancy stuff.
The Kraken spiced rum. Love the bottle, love the label and the website’s nice too.
Other Packaging
This carton featured on one of my earlier posts on food packaging this year. The Batman Milk Cocktail sounds gross but looks oh so cool. Designed by Alexy Hattomonkey.
Advertising
I’m not 100% sure if this was actually produced as a product or if it was a concept, but it made me laugh. Funny and clever packaging design for Rellana Wool by Ogilvy & Mather, Germany
This ad was probably not seen outside Ireland, but it is for Pat The Baker with the tagline “The Toast Of Ireland”. Nice bit of photoshopping of Samuel Beckett’s face onto toast.
Web Sites
For me, the best sites provide the information I’m looking for in a quick and easy manner and if they look really good that’s an extra bonus. Realistically the sites I go to most often tend to be fairly practical and provide a service, such as newspapers and bookmarking sites like delicious, visualiz.us and ffffound. I’ve picked out just a few sites I liked. Each one represents a different style – clean, colorful, grungy, illustrative and nice typography
Illustration
There is some incredible design work going on out there. I couldn’t pick one favourite so these are just a few of the illustrators with different styles that I really admire.
Noma Bar is an illustrator from Israel who’s witty illustrations show a superb grasp of negative space.
I could look at Andrey Gordeev’s illustrations for hours.
Jessica Hische is a wonderful type designer and illustrator.
Fernando Ferraro’s work is exceptional.
I first came across Linzie Hunter’s illustration when her illustrations of spam emails she had received became really popular online. I love her humorous style.
Photography
The Big Picture on Boston.com is consistently putting out superb and thought-provoking photographs from around the world.
Timothy Allen is a photographer with BBC Wildlife. His work is stunning.
Design Company With The Most Imaginative Use Of YouTube
Boone Oakley have done something a little bit different with their website. Maybe there’s loads of companies doing this, but this is the first one I’ve seen running a full website through Youtube.
Favourite Advert That I Saw On YouTube But Not On The Telly
Sheer brilliance from Evian.
Phew! Well that is a teeny tiny fraction of the eye candy I enjoyed this year. What about you? What design goodness did you love?
Finally, I’d like to wish everyone the very best for 2010. Hopefully the world will calm down a bit and cop on a bit too. Thanks to everyone who has read my posts over the past few months and thanks to all the staff at Sitepoint, particularly Matt Magain. I’ve really enjoyed writing here on the design blog and am looking forward to writing more design posts in 2010.
All the best for a peaceful and prosperous new year!
Jennifer
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