Vootie's blog

That's right, once again we're treated to a week of all things Adobe, thanks to Adobe UK. If you missed it, Monday the focus was on the creative industry, while Tuesday was all about the relationship between print and tablet publishing. Adobe asks: "Can the two work together? And how can print survive in a world of pixels? Join us as we find out!" The presenters are perhaps a bit too eager to convince us to subscribe to Creative Cloud but the fact remains that this week Adobe is delivering a ton of content, so ignore it at your peril. You can get started here.

Olef Hajek is one hot illustrator these days. His work is to be seen just about everywhere, with Gestalten recently releasing Black Antoinette, a collection of his most recent work. If you're a fan, the good news is that Gestalten has now published limited editions of seven of his illustrations, as shown below.

How is life treating you in the post-Flash era? Has your online experience become richer as a result? Are more things possible? Is the Web a more beautiful, inspiring, creative place to hang out? I ask myself these questions from time to time, usually when I stumble over one of the increasingly rare designers or developers who have created something worthy that's Flash based and doggedly maintain it. I had that experience recently when checking out the one2edit service, which makes it possible to review, edit and deliver InDesign documents online.

Type is what you make of it, with every face generating a range of associations and emotions in the viewer. For Andreas Xenoulis, the geometric construction and extremes between the thin and thick strokes of Bodoni signify "good taste, the classic, the elegant, the different." Carrying that a bit further, Andreas decided to create a limited-edition silkscreen print in which a female figure is created entirely of Bodoni characters, with the decision to use silkscreen and gold leaf based on his desire to have the print "reflect the ultimate woman nobility." The result is quite neat, with prints available using different inks and papers. It's worth visiting his area on Behance to check out all the images of the printing process of the poster, a few of which are shown below. Up next, Helvetica Boy?

Who hasn't been in a situation that required significant keyboard input but had to struggle, thanks to cramped phone, tablet or even laptop keyboards? Those days are over thanks to Brookstone's latest gizmo, the aptly-named Virtual Keyboard. Any flat surface can now be transformed into a keyboard for your device, driven by a laser-based Bluetooth system that tracks finger movement. The battery is said to deliver up to two hours of typing and can be recharged via USB.

For more than 20 years the New Directors' Showcase has formed an integral part of the annual Cannes Festival of Creativity. This global mix of directors has a reputation for spotlighting new talent that goes beyond the realm of advertising to include short films, titles, animations, music promotions or simply examples of new techniques. A good example of this is Andrew Thomas Huang's mesmerizing Solipsist, above.

The clientsfromhell.net site is a repository of anonymously-contributed gems from designers sharing the pain of dealing with impossible clients. Most have a comic element, such as the following story about designing menus for a Persian restaurant, which involved a suggestion for the owner. Designer: To be honest, I would change the name to ‘Taco-Dog’ on the menu. Client: What’s wrong with Dog-Taco?

Old maps are cool, there's no doubt about that. But purchasing them, especially large ones, is simply not possible for any but the happy few. Trying to change all that is the team of Alex Toledano and Seth Rosenbaum, who together comprise Bedrock Images, founded last year with a mission to make reproductions of large urban maps of historical interest available to a wide audience. In that they seem to have succeeded, with their site now offering affordable, high-quality reproductions of historical maps of Paris, Rome, Beijing, New York and Washington DC in a range of sizes and formats. Above, a detail from Will Taylor's 1879 portrait of New York shows the Brooklyn Bridge, imagined before its completion.

Süperfad describes itself as "a brand-driven design and live action production company." Founded in 2001, this collective of designers, directors, animators and artists has assembled an impressive client roster, including such brands as Honda, Sony, Target, Adidas and AT&T. One of its recent initiatives is On Creativity, a series of informal interviews with designers, artists, musicians, animators and educators, which spans everyone from Milton Glaser to graffiti artist Craig Costello.