“Chris Ware has returned with another animated opening for THIS AMERICAN LIFE.”

“Web designers and graphic designers are always looking for new sources of design inspiration. Of course, many of us turn to CSS galleries, and there are even more sources of offline inspiration. Personally, I find the work in many Flickr groups to be another excellent source of inspiration. Aside from the billions of photos on Flickr, there are also some groups that have been established to showcase the work of designers. Here is a look at 99 of them according to category (about half of them are general graphic design groups). Below the link to each group you’ll see the number of members and the number of items (pictures, graphics, screenshots, etc.) that have been submitted to the group, plus I have included part of the group description as listed by the moderator.”

Just what it says.

Update 10 Apr 2008: He pulled it off his site. Sorry!

“I’ve had a lot of questions recently about my process, how I achieve certain “effects” in my illustrations, what my tools are, etc. I’ve made this page very quickly to answer a lot of the questions I’ve been getting repeatedly.

Firstly: my tools are nothing special. A pencil, a fine-tipped Sharpie, copier paper, and Illustrator. That’s it. It’s good to have nice tools, but that’s not to say you can’t be successful without a $40 paint brush.

Before I begin, I feel obliged to say the following:

• ideas are more important than style.
• all the technical tips in the world won’t make a good illustration
• be honest and be yourself. Your work shouldn’t look like mine. We’d all be missing out if it did.”

“Al Jaffee’s fold-ins for Mad magazine, from the 1960s to the present, in interactive form.” And here’s the full article: A Veteran Mad Man Remains in the Fold.

“We’re roommates. We make call-and-response baroque scenes on a dry erase board. They usually have nerdy characters from nerdy things in them. We’re Pat Barrett and Todd McArthur.” (Thanks Drawn!)

Like ffffound (for the rest of us): “We Heart It is a social bookmarking tool for images and videos. We see many great images on blogs and websites around, and now you can put everything you saw and liked on the same page to look again whenever you want.” (Thanks Chris Glass!)

“In 1996, Supreme Court Justice David Souter told a congressional panel that ‘the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.’ While the controversy over whether or not cameras should be allowed in courtrooms rages on, sketch artists remain fairly non-controversial, covering even the most important trials. The general public sees their artwork on the news, online, and in print. These artists see the trials for us, and often their artwork is our only glimpse into the proceedings.

I found myself wondering who these artists are….

(Thanks Waxy!)

“I’m rather sad to be reporting this one, but Vector Magic, the awesome free online vectorizing service is no longer free. It looks like the creators behind the service have left Stanford to make a desktop version of the popular software, which will be selling for a price that has yet-to-be-decided. Personally, I prefer Vector Magic over Live Trace in Illustrator, but that may change if the price isn’t right. Vector Magic is a single-function software. It’s nice, but It only does one thing. I can’t see myself paying more than $50 for a software that only does one thing, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

“As promised a couple of weeks ago, I’ve uploaded a copy of the VHS tape that shipped in the box with Illustrator 1.0, hosted by company co-founder/CEO/Illustrator developer John Warnock…”

“Here’s the short version: Pixish is a new site where you can create image contests.

Here’s the longer version: For Artists: You’ve got talent, admit it. You can draw, paint, take a great photo, or design something beautiful. But you need a way to get your work out there. Pixish is your chance to get published.

On Pixish you’ll find Assignments from people who need visual art for all kinds of projects. Each Assignment will have different requirements and rewards. If one inspires you, you can submit. The Pixish community can then vote up the best submissions. In the end, the Publisher who started the Assignment will choose a winner and give out any listed rewards.”

And here’s Derek’s story behind the story.

“An exploration in form where I take each of the states in the US and turn it into something. Childish? Yes. Awesomely fun? Definitely.” (Thanks Drawn!)

Crazy dynamic whiteboard software and hardware. Watch through to the end — it’s not just about drawing.

“Don’t know really. Started out as something, ended up many other things. I’ve been eating a lot of figs recently. They’re good and ripe right now.”

In other words, this is a Flickr set of scans of someone’s wonderfully odd sketchbook.

“Celebrating great art in humble places: the glorious talents of the artists who illustrated stories, advertisements and comics in the 20th century.”