Designer and art director Nick Dart has an amazing collection of graphic design from the 70's & 80's arcade era on his blog, Art of the Arcade. Here's a selection from his illustration, flyer and logo sections.

Flyers

I meant to post this yesterday in honor of Earth Day but since we should be thinking about the Earth everyday, today is just as good as any day to highlight the amazing and important work of Chris Jordan. While not literally 'colorful,' Chris's images of mass consumption, and the waste that comes along with it, give us a stark reminder of the responsibilities of manufactures, marketers and consumers to manage the product cycle with the best interest of the Earth and all its inhabitants in mind.

Running the Numbers

An American Self-Portrait

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

Gyre, 2009

Depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour. All of the plastic in this image was collected from the Pacific Ocean.

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy or colorology, is an alternative medicine method. It is claimed that a therapist trained in chromotherapy can use color and light to balance energy wherever a person's body be lacking, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental. Not to be confused with Light Therapy, which has been proven to relieve things like major depressive disorder. Healing With Color: Chromotherapy

Chromotherapists claim that colors bring about emotional reactions in people. A standard method of diagnosis is the use of "Luscher’s color test", developed by Max Luscher in the early 1923. When performing chromotherapy, color and light is applied to specific areas and acupoints on the body. Because colors get associated with both positive and negative effects in color therapy, specific colors and accurate amounts of color are deemed to be critical in healing. Some of the tools used for applying colors are gemstones, candles, wands, prisms, colored fabrics, bath treatments, and colored glasses or lenses.

Art Center College of Design

Color therapy is possibly rooted in Ayurveda, an ancient form of medicine practiced in India for thousands of years. Other historic roots are attributed to Chinese and ancient Egyptian culture. In the nineteenth century, European smallpox victims and their sickrooms were draped with red cloth to draw the disease away from the body.

Mundo Nuevo (Spanish for "the New World") was an influential Spanish-language periodical dedicated to new Latin American literature. Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, it was founded in 1966 by Emir Rodríguez Monegal in Paris, France, and distributed worldwide. Monegal edited it until 1968 and resigned after a smear campaign related to a CIA scandal. The magazine stopped in 1971 after 58 issues.

This wonderful collection comes to us from flickr user juanjoseixas. Thanks for sharing.

Though Holi is a month behind us now, here at COLOURlovers we never miss a chance to remind people and share the love of this Festival of Color that takes place each March to welcome in the spring throughout India and other locations with large Hindu populations.

ReefRaff

There are a few stories out there behind the festivals origins (read about those in this nice writeup about the festival by Colette) and you can get a different tale depending on who you talk to and which region you happen to be in, but it is clear what Holi really celebrates is the bright colors that are synonymous with life, joy and positive energy within the Indian community.

Decorating eggs is a colorful springtime tradition with multiple histories. The oldest dates back 2,500 years with the ancient Persians painting eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration, which falls on the Spring equinox. Today, it is a widely spread tradition associated with the celebration of Easter. With so many different cultures practicing this tradition many different decorating techniques have developed over the years.

Pyansky

A pysanka is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated using a wax-resist (batik) method. a common method throughout eastern Eupoean ethnic groups, including the Belarusians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Lithuanians, Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, and Slovenes.

A Thangka is a painted or embroidered Buddhist banner which is hung in a monastery or a family altar and occasionally carried by monks in ceremonial processions. It first became popular among traveling monks because the scroll paintings were easily rolled and transported from monastery to monastery.

Thangka, when created properly, perform several different functions. Images of deities can be used as teaching tools when depicting the life (or lives) of the Buddha, describing historical events concerning important Lamas, or retelling myths associated with other deities. Devotional images act as the centerpiece during a ritual or ceremony and are often used as mediums through which one can offer prayers or make requests. Overall, and perhaps most importantly, religious art is used as a meditation tool to help bring one further down the path to enlightenment. The Buddhist Vajrayana practitioner uses the image as a guide, by visualizing “themselves as being that deity, thereby internalizing the Buddha qualities (Lipton, Ragnubs).”

Process

Painted Thangkas are done on cotton canvas or silk with water soluble pigments, both mineral and organic, tempered with a herb and glue solution - in Western terminology, a distemper technique. The entire process demands great mastery over the drawing and perfect understanding of iconometric principles.

'Local Paint' is a new series of color studies by Alex Fuller. The series sets out to capture color specific to different regions from around the world. His first stop, the the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.

Warm sun, water and color everywhere. I quickly became obsessed with capturing as much of the local paint as possible. Wonderful combinations, weathering and texture. A true reflection of the island and culture.

The BMW art car series began in 1975 when racecar driver and art dealer Hervé Poulain asked his friends Alexander Calder to paint the car that he would drive in that year's Le Mans. Since then, 16 cars have been created from likes of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschenberg to Jenny Holzer & Olafur Eliasson. Here's a look at at each of the 16 cars in the series.

Video note: all the videos are in German except the last one.

Alexander Calder

in 1975 French racecar driver and art dealer, Hervé Poulain, asked his friend Alexander Calder to paint a BMW 3.0CSL which Poulain would drive at Le Mans. Though Calder was mostly known for his mobiles, he agreed and became the first artist to participate in the new series. The art car became on of calders last pieces as he died a short time after.

This is a guest post written by speakin_colors.
A wide variety of styles fall under the term gothic. A gothic wedding dress may be similar to a Renaissance dress, or it may be closer to the dark style of the underworld look of vampires and witches. It could also include some typical Celtic elements adapted to the gothic fashion, with rich fabrics and a variety of deep colours. Other designs could include a skin-tight black or red dress with a Victorian neckline or a plunging or lock-lace bodice, a goth corset with black ribbon detail, a long flowing skirt with lace or a webbed black hose.

Click on the image for the link.

Medieval Wedding Dresses
Gothic themed dresses may also incorporate the look of the Medieval ages. Though some Medieval dresses are in white, darker colours can be chosen for a darker and more dramatic design while still retaining the rich materials and delicate trims that are often featured in Medieval dresses. Typical distinguishing characteristics of the Medieval dresses are puff-sleeves and ruffled necklines.