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In the world of LiarTownUSA, Pat Boone recorded a live album at Jonestown, Mila Kunis is perpetually “80% upset,” ankle scarves are the latest fashion trend, and raccoons have a Pope (and sometimes they’re called “toilet bears”). Created by Sean Tejaratchi, the graphic designer behind the legendary Crap Hound series of anthologies of scavenged vintage line art, LiarTownUSA is a next-door universe where the banality of late-capitalist existence is amplified to a sinister (and hilarious) extreme, fleshed-out with expertly faked cultural detritus like romance novels (Juggalo’s Surrender by Jeffrey Anne Durango), Netflix listings (Ghost Puncher: Spirits of the Old Plantation), and Yankee Candle scents (“Summer Jorts”). The consistency and uncanniness of Tejaratchi’s vision is matched only by its ability to send creepy, Lovecraftian feelings up and down your nervous system even as you ROFL.

Follow LiarTownUSA on Tumblr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week the Band of Outsiders Tumblr is posting a new Polaroid series of Rashida Jones wearing its Fall 2013 collection along with her sister, Kidada Jones. The series is just over half complete, with six of the ten photos posted as of this morning. From what we've seen already, namely the lo-fi film, elaborate headwear, and booths at The Dresden in Los Angeles, it looks like the collection has an Old Hollywood vibe. 

Photos from Scott Sternberg. Follow along on the Band of Outsiders Tumblr








Thematically speaking, the combination of lyrics from The Smiths and imagery from Charlie Brown cartoon strips is a no brainer. Neither party is ever satisfied, and a big part of the appeal is their shared brand of digestible and relatable sadness. After seeing a 1986 show poster from a Smiths gig in Chicago, which featured a particularly defeated image of Charlie Brown, Bay Area designer Lauren LoPrete realized Morrissey's depressed quips would make a lot of sense in classic Peanuts speech bubbles. Turns out lines like "Is it wrong to not always be glad?" pair extremely well with a slouching Charlie Brown.

Lauren LoPrete also designs releases for her label, Loglady Records. Follow This Charming Charlie on Tumblr 








 

 

 

 

At one point in time, we took them for granted. Payphones were a must—if you were running late, lost, or traveling and needed to make reservations—or perhaps didn't have a home phone. The eventual affordability and popularity of mobile phones wiped them out, destroying the market for their use and making payphones, it seems, not worth the time or money to maintain. Some still exist, sometimes in the oddest of places, and we're sure that some of us still need them in a pinch. By now, their increasing rarity makes them ripe as a photographic subject. #payphoneography is a bit like a chronicle of the last days of a connected, cheap public communication network—with the occassional shot of an exotic callbox from a far-flung locale. Particularly sad, we think, are the "carcasses" of ripped-out phones.

In February of 2012, fans who pre-ordered the Islands album A Sleep & A Forgetting received a hand-drawn Valentine's Day card from the band's frontman Nick Thorburn. Inside the card was the dark but kinda sweet message, "I Want To Die in Your Arms" with an illustration of a skeleton lying on top of its human lover. Many of Thorburn's comics and illustrations are similarly dark and funny. But some are simply absurd, the exploits of his protagonist Howie Doo, or his illustration work for The Classical, for example. 

Thurburn's This Is Howie Doo 55-page digital comic book is available now. 

Follow This Is Howie Doo On Tumblr.




"self portrait quadtych"





Tilman Zitzmann, a German designer for the agency The Warriors of the Light, noticed that, in his time outside of the studio, he had a habit of making simple geometric illustrations. The habit became a daily ritual when he realized that the simple illustrations were actually increasing his creative energy for his contract work. After a few weeks, the images started piling up, and he started a Tumblr to share each day's sketch. All of his work is done digitally, but to give the illustrations a more tactile appearance he processes the images in Photoshop to give them a physically printed texture.

Follow Geometry Daily on Tumblr

Paper Darts has a nice interview with the designer.

Photo by: Bettmann | Bob Dylan at Kronborg Castle, Denmark.

If we told you there was a mammoth underground bunker in Pennsylvania's Iron Mountain built to withstand a nuclear attack, you might believe us. If we told you the former limestone mine also happen to hold 1.7 million square feet of archives, including master tapes for Sinatra, Elvis, and Glen Miller as well as original prints of E.T., that might not even bother you. If we told that heavily armed guards kept watch over it all, including the massive, photographic, physical Corbis archive, you should actually believe that, too. We were skeptical at first, but it's true. And it seems Sonic Editions and Impossible Cool author Sean Sullivan teamed up to visit the mythic archive and pull some of the greatest and not-often-seen images for another installment in The Impossible Cool Collection. So today, you don't need security clearance to see The Greatest driving a bus, you can buy the photo and hang it on your wall.

Visit soniceditions.com for pricing info.

The animated GIFs posted to the Rrrrrrrroll Tumblr seem to exist in the same meditative state. Characters and objects spin seamlessly on a single axis against a static setting, typically with an intense focus and a deadpan expression. Although there's no context provided for the images, it's tough to not project ideas about indecision or dissatisfaction watching a figure rotate endlessly staring at a plate of food or shopping in a store.

Follow Rrrrrrrroll on Tumblr.

Quayores is a collaborative illustration project organized by French illustrators Antoine Marchalot, Ophélie Bernaud, and Quentin Duckit. Their mission statement: "A picture, you click it, it's explained." Each post features a titled illustration, and clicking the image takes you to the French Wiktionary entry for the word.

But there's much more at work here than a charming illustrated dictionary. Each image incorporates surprising parts of each definition. For example, the "gastronomy" illustration depicts a solider attacking an enemy in the stomach with a bayonet, playing on the definition of the word broken down as "stomach," with a -tomy suffix, which originally meant "to cut." We've seen a similar project in the past from the Illustrated Etymology project, who also took a humorous look at word origins.

Follow Quayores on Tumblr.

The van represents a carefree, mobile, active lifestyle to which we all secretly aspire—that plus a convenient place for make out sessions. Van Life collects images of blissful, adventurous, and often solitary vans—Vanagons, Microbuses, and custom Dodges in farflung, picturesque locales. This is one vehicle you'd be advised to start tailing.