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Design

Elegant Retro Redesigns of Contemporary Album Covers

By Tom Hawking on

We do like a good redesigned cover or two here at Flavorwire, and we also like a bit of retro design action, so we were delighted when we spotted these redesigned covers for classic albums at The Design Blog. They’re the work of Brazilian designer Rodrigo Maia — the idea behind them is to marry contemporary album covers to a jazz-era cover art aesthetic, and they work a treat. … Read More

Architecture

10 Incredible Repurposed Train Stations

By Alison Nastasi on

The heyday of railway travel may have passed, but the nostalgic allure of architecturally striking infrastructure has ensured that it’s not the end of the line for many historic station buildings. We recently learned that Union Station in Denver, which opened to passengers in the late 19th century, will be transformed into a trendy hotel, with adjoining restaurants and a beer hall, by 2014. Click through to see how other train stations have been repurposed into thriving cultural centers, libraries, and… Read More

Design

Heirloomists Hollister and Porter Hovey’s Remembrance of Things Past

By Jason Diamond on

“I was basically Pinteresting before Pinterest,” Hollister Hovey tells me as she sits on a brown leather Chesterfield sofa wearing a (probably vintage, I guess 1970s) black, belted, muumuu-style dress with blouson sleeves.  She and her sister Porter, dressed in a sunny yellow draped shift dress, settle down after a few moments of rearranging things around their apartment. They tell me there had been a problem with the pipes in the building a week earlier, right before they were supposed to start showing off their living space, which has become well known since Hollister launched her blog in 2007, so there’s been a bit of shuffling around over the previous few days. Yet they seemed totally undaunted by any of it, and the place looks wonderful. But the timing of the plumbing problem coincides with the release of the sisters’ first book, Heirloom Modern, which tells their rich family history and explores how it influences their aesthetic, but also features the stories of other like-minded heirloomists. … Read More

Design

These Wonderful 3D Infographics Are Taller Than You

By Julia Pugachevsky on

Belgian studio Coming Soon is all about making it big. Their Hand Lettering creations filled a giant chalkboard with letters in a variety of fonts and styles. And with Infographics XXXL, they’ve taken actual graphs and blown them up to a huge size for Ablynx, a client that specializes in the research of nanobodies. The result is that, instead of casually glancing at the same old pie chart or bar graph, shareholders have something to keep their gaze on the numbers, like a blurry scientist walking by human-size bars or holding up a literal piece of the pie. See a selection of Coming Soon’s giant infographics after the jump. … Read More

Design

Amazing Album Covers for Time-Traveling Fantasy Supergroups

By Tom Hawking on

A Brazilian artist by the name of Butcher Billy — whose pop culture-obsessed work has delighted us in the past — created these fantastic faux record covers for a series of time-traveling fantasy supergroups (supergroups that, we submit, would be a whole lot better than plenty of real ones). The covers, which we spotted via Design You Trust, are so well done that on first viewing you do something of a double-take — surely David Bowie never managed to transcend time and space to moonlight in a band called “Stardust Vicious Robots” with Sid Vicious, Slash, and one of the dudes from Kraftwerk? There are a bunch of other similarly outlandish combinations on show, and they all look great — even if the sight of Skrillex in the same shot as Joan Jett is somewhat jarring. … Read More

Design

Insanely Detailed Posters Charting Beatles Musical Arrangements

By Judy Berman on

Pop Chart Lab has issued a series of posters that are sure to separate the millions (billions?) of casual Beatles fans around the world from the genuine Fab Four geeks. In three prints that divide the band’s output into three eras (1963-65, ’66-’67, and ’68-’70), the Beatles Song Charts break down the instrumentation on every single one of their songs. Behold all three paeans to songwriting below, and visit Pop Chart Lab to see larger versions — and, if you’re ready to give over your household to an all-Beatles interior decorating scheme, purchase prints. … Read More

Fashion

Fandom Goes to the Beach: 10 Gloriously Geeky Swimsuits

By Julia Pugachevsky on

Now that spring break (and Spring Breakers!) is upon us, we’ve been fantasizing about the beach. What could be better than wading through the water with an air of calm gracing our once-fevered brow? Well, how about doing all of that with the uniform of a comic book heroine printed on our bikini? And what could be a more appropriate adornment for that bathing suit than the image of a favorite action-flick heartthrob? If you agree, click through for our roundup of gloriously nerdy swimwear. … Read More

Architecture

Beautiful Posters Celebrate Museum Architecture Around the World

By Judy Berman on

We may go to museums to see art, but how often do we stop to appreciate the beauty of the buildings that house these works? In the series of posters below, illustrator André Chiote reminds us that many of the world’s great museums are also architectural marvels, celebrating everything from Zaha Hadid’s Riverside Museum to Oscar Niemeyer’s Whitney. Click through for some of our favorite posters from the collection, which we discovered via Fubiz, and visit Chiote’s website to see more of his work. … Read More

Design

Minimalist Posters That Cleverly Showcase Famous Scientists’ Greatest Achievements

By Judy Berman on

For decades, that one poster of Einstein sticking his tongue out has been the go-to dorm-room decoration for eager science majors. Thankfully for the design-savvy future physicists of the world, Indian graphic designer Kapil Bhagat celebrated his home country’s recent National Science Day by creating a series of attractive posters that subtly highlight famous scientists’ most important discoveries. Darwin’s theory of evolution plays out typographically; the “o” in Newton’s name becomes his famous apple; and, yes, Einstein’s famous equation gets a clever shout out. Click through to see the series, which we learned about via io9, and buy the posters at Society6. … Read More

Design

Retro Redesigns of Indie Record Label Logos

By Tom Hawking on

Here at Flavorwire, we have something of a hankering for retro design, and as such we were rather taken by these reworked logotypes, especially as they happen to be the logos of some of our favorite record labels. The designs, which we spotted at Design Work Life, are the work of graphic designer and filmmaker Ben Geier, and form part of a project whereby he “redesign[s] all the logos of my favorite record labels in a retro style… taking lots of inspiration from the Batman animated series.” The results are kinda cool in a suitably retro kind of way; if you like them, there are more to be seen on Geier’s website. … Read More