Alan Horne

Graffiti gets its fair share of bad press, fair enough people tagging and spraying inappropriate anecdotics on the walls might raise a chuckle but it is not art.

True graffiti is something to revel in and some of it belongs in a gallery rather than on the street, you might not share the same view but I personally class it as art.

With the recent interest in pixel art in design of late, I thought it would be great to talk about the pixel art on the street and share a few of the most creative and inspirational.

I recently contacted 10 top designers and asked them to share their workspaces with the awesome The Inspiration Blog, to hopefully inspire this site’s great readers. All 10 designers were delighted to let us see how and where they work and give us some insight to their setups and such, I would like to thank all the designers that took part, they all without exception where fantastic to chat with!

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography is a technique which allows much more dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas than standard photography. Multiple photos of the subject are shot in varying exposures then placed into specialist software that combine the images and make a single image. The effect when done right can be absolutely outstanding, to add some weight to my argument here are 20 examples that will literally take your breath away.

Food packaging is something we don't generally take much notice of because it is something we see everyday, even though some food wrappers have an incredible design and great typography. Over the years packaging has totally changed, although some brands have only gone through very minor changes and haven't moved away from the original typeface and/or design they originally launched with many years ago. This showcase presents the vintage and modern packaging of a small selection of some the worlds most known chocolate bars.

Back during WWII many of the messages the US and British government stressed to their public were limited in the medium they could be relayed, and were left with few options including radio, newspapers and posters. The posters are now described as "propaganda posters" as the posters addressed particular subjects but omitted certain information to give some extra weight to the issue at hand. Aside from the powerful messages they portray, the design and typography in these posters is something to marvel at, which is why we have compiled a small handful of them for you to look at.

Whilst speaking to my brother (who happens to be a Video Games Artist) we got onto the subject of various digital art forms, this is when he introduced me to digital matte painting.

Digital matte painting (or Digimatte) is a modern take on the matte painting techniques used in photography and film making dating back to around 1900 and notably used in the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

This post features 20 stunning and well executed examples of the digital matte painting technique. For those new to this style I hope you find it awe inspiring!

This is the second sport brand marketing post in the series, following up on a similar article focusing on "Nike" posters and commercials. This time we are focusing on another major player in the sports industry, Adidas.

Adidas has became a major force in the sporting world, none more so than in football where they have some of the biggest names, if not the biggest name in the industry; David Beckham. Over the last few years they have became a far larger brand, now focusing on becoming a fashion line on top of just sport wear, allowing them to involve non-sporting celebrities.

Helvetica is one of the worlds most popular and most used typefaces, the original Sans Serif font is 53 years young, whilst the Cyrillic version was released in 1970, Rounded in 1978 and Neue in 1983. The typeface is so popular, it is used in a number of big companies brand identity, for example; American Airlines, Toyota, BMW, and Microsoft. In this showcase I have listed some fantastic Helvetica posters that really do the typeface some justice. If you're not a fan of the font, these fantastic pieces may just make you warm to it a little.

Nowadays marketing is everything with a brand, and the market where this is no more relevant, is that of the Sporting Good Manufacturer's. This showcase will focus on probably the biggest sports brand in the world, Nike. They sponsor some of the biggest sports stars the world has ever seen, and combine all sorts of design and creativity in their projects - completed out by some of the greatest designers to this day and age. Nike are always at the forefront of the trends, and their TV commercials especially are normally trend-setters.

Vintage is a design genre that is being covered in all aspects of media in recent months, whether it is for the web or printed media you most likely have stumbled upon a piece of vintage design. Activities such as burlesque has had a huge revival and this has contributed to the surge in vintage design as it has attracted many people to the imagery of the 40's and 50's. Here is a small collection of twenty interesting and inspiring pieces of art from people such as Peter Driben, who was responsible for the pin-up style covers on magazines such as Titter, Wink and Eyeful.