Fashion & clothing companies are using the web to escape from the limitations of beauty magazines and their fatigued classic glamour ads. Great sites such as Diesel or Issey Myake are amongst the finest examples of web design in this category, but usually we are bound to US or global brands, so it was interesting to find Apartment.com.com, developed by CuartoPiso from Colombia.
Each new collection has a brand new hotsite, with illustrations that spawn somewhere from Peter Gabriel to the world of TV series “Carnivale“. Even the corporate website has a wicked brit punk feeling !
This work awarded Cuarto Piso with Lapis de Acero, giving more visibility to the company that brought to life the website of renowned illustrator Catalina Estrada.
Re-searcher.com is the child project of Paula Balreira, Carlos Quitério and Graça Santos, that showcases some fine illustration from Portuguese and foreign artists.
It served initially as a representation for the affiliated artists but later extended their mission, developing several cultural activities in Portugal.
Besides the Gallery with all the portfolios, on the front page you’ll have a rich cultural agenda and great links from the illustration world. There’s also a online store, that will surely have more titles available as soon as the site gets some visibility. Go feast your eyes then, on some quality illustration.
I’m beginning to find somenewuses for comics. Besides being an essential tool for storyboarding, they can be used to communicate effectively a complex message or user scenario.
If you’re interested, one of the essential tools to translate your message into comics are Wally Wood‘s panels, that you can find at Joel Johnson or Peter Veneables‘ blog.
As i’m picking up my old drawing passion, i’ve found some brilliant people out there, sharing their love for illustration and drawing. The amount of dedication and work you see on some sites is amazing, and i’m not mentioning the major community sites like CGsociety or deviantart, but some smaller stars like Dani.
An illustrator working in the childrens market, besides her portfolio site, she has a blog with several inspiring videos on the art of drawing and illustration, available on YouTube, where we get to see a in-depth look into the magical world of an skilled artist.
In one more episode of shameless promotion i’m featuring the work of Carlos Quitério, a portuguese artist that just launched Fitacola.com (translated as tape glue), a site/blog with collages from him and his wife Graça.
His personal website is Kodap.com with great drawings, illustrations and other mixed media.
Being itself a former student from ESTGAD University, at Caldas da Rainha, he does regular collaborations with other portuguese artists (such as Adriana de Barros or MusaCollective), altough his work has a worlwide reach.
In the last 5 years most of the illustrations i needed were made directly on the computer. So I gradually abandoned one of my favourit hobbies: drawing.
But in today’s networked culture, it’s easy to get in touch with the latest works and brush your drawing skills. Following one of the latest blogosphere memes, here’s my Z-list of drawing and illustration on the web:
Amateur Illustrator great galleries from tons of artists, and with lots of activities in the forums
Art Backwash Lots of doodles, illustrations and paintings.
Bearskinrug From the author of the illustrations at alistapart.com
