Yeah, When Monkeys Fly Out of My Butt

We love a great combo of letterpress and die-cutting, so we had to highlight this promo piece for A Hundred Flying Monkeys, an outfit based in California. Funky illustration, beautiful printing, AND it'll put your eye out.

Slots Are Our Friends

Is anything sacred with slot machines?!?!

While traipsing around Las Vegas, we stumbled upon the slot machine above. Now, we've seen some oddly-themed slots before, but this one caught our eye. (And not just because the whole premise of this machine is built around one really bad pun.) Pictured above the "Easel Money" marquee are a series of fictional painters, including the requisite dude with beret. But are those characters really fictional? Seems one of them is heavily inspired by our favorite painter ever, Bob Ross.

And that's no happy accident.

Patriot Paint

Ever wonder what it would look like if Uncle Sam threw up on your car?

Fans can now choose from three potential paint schemes for Kevin Harvick's Budweiser Chevrolet, two of which are pictured above. The winning design will run at Daytona over the July 4th holiday weekend. While the summer Daytona race has always had a dose of Independence Day fever -- from the '60s through the end of the '80s it was known as the Firecracker 400 -- has there ever been a paint scheme that has been so yea-rah-rah America?

Perhaps not. But don't let that stop you from trying to top it. Now's your chance to create one even more Americantastic! The Toyota Sponsafier is back, allowing you to design your own paint scheme from scratch! And what can be more American than slapping your red-white-and-blue on the side of a Japanese car?

Plumbing the Depths of Typography

How easy is it to get information these days? As easy as turning on the tap, according to Richard J. Evans. To illustrate that, he completed the installation informationleak_part two (pictured above) as part of his studies in Birmingham, England. For those letterpress purists out there, don't fret: no vintage type was hurt in the making of this art. The wood type used was cut specifically for this.

And if you're wondering, yes, there's an informationleak_part one.

City Maps in Lettering

If I ever get lost in a city, I want it to be this one. No, not Washington, per se, but a city that's built entirely from type. Axis Maps has created a series of five city maps that weave together nothing but letters to shape the city form. From waterways to the street grid, the posters aren't only accurate, they're distractingly compelling. So much so that your mind might actually get lost just looking at them. Finally, a map that you get more lost the more you look at it.

Pictured above is DC. You can also find Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City on their site.

Modernist Poster Sale

It's time again to salivate over Swann Galleries' annual Modernist poster auction. As always, it's packed with treasures from the heyday of avant garde graphic design. Though the catalog is wide-ranging — from wartime PSAs to sporting events to film debuts — pictured above is sampling of travel-related posters we culled from the 200+ posters being offered. You have until 1:30pm to wipe that drool and start your bidding.

Click on the images for a jumbo view. Bib not included.

May Flowers

From Luis Vega and Alberto Cerriteño, here's a beautiful letterpress reminder of springtime's bounty. They've created a 200-edition print of an umbrella-toting elephant. (Betcha didn't know elephants used umbrellas, huh? Well, umbrellas sure use elephants!)

The print is available at their Grinket site.