These video portraits of top women tennis players are simply beauteous. Brought to us by the NYTimes Magazine — produced by friend Miki Meek, and amazing sound design by super hero Pam Chen — I watched each one several times over. Basically I heart slow motion film + photographer/videographer Dewey Nicks.

This would have been a great campaign for the WTA. I didn’t think it was possible, but I’m now even more excited for the US Open.

A mosaic of humorous animated gifs about nonstop design work can be seen at iamnotanartist.org. The project was created by communications agency Soon in Tokyo and started with 56 animated gifs. It’s hoping to expand on that by allowing people to create and add their own gifs through the site directly — either frame by frame or using personal webcams. I love the idea of an online creative community expressing themselves through 3 second repeating animations.

Strangely, this isn’t the first time I’ve posted about moving gifs. Apparently I have a weakness for them.

I was recently wading through my links looking at imagery references for an upcoming shoot — I rediscovered renowned photographer  Nadav Kander. Check out his “God’s Country” series. Honestly though, as expected, you can’t go wrong perusing all of his photography. There is a lot of light viewing enjoyment to be had. And his bio is a fun read.

This shopping bag design by Prompt, is such a cute and simple idea. Using peel back tabs, it allows shoppers to personalize the front of their own bag. It kind of makes sense that it’s for chocolate which is such an emotional food (alright, at least it’s the one I turn to when I need to eat my stress away). Now you can buy chocolate and then use drawings or letters to reveal your mood, your sense of whimsy or just random swear words. Thank you Kokoa Hut. (via the dieline)

Imagine coming across this randomly in your local grocers frozen food section. A cute idea for a Bosch appliance launch campaign promoting their new cooling technology. Apparently they used a variety of “mammoth steaks” “dinosaur legs” and “sabertooth fillets”, complete with QR codes on the plastic wrap packaging. (via lost at e minor)

I love the idea behind this collection of wallpapers by milan duo known as Carnovsky. The cool collage is made up of 3 different colored patterns overlayed on top of eachother. Each pattern, representing various animal/plant worlds, can be identified clearly when seen through the filter of a red, blue or green light. Is it wrong that I want to have this in my living room with special RGB track lighting dimmers?

This link was passed on to me by friend and user interface designer, Alicja. I require emoticon charts to read most emails from her when we’re working together on a project, her vocabulary is incredible. This takes it to a whole new level. Here are a few of my favorites:

*:0 = “MY FACE IS ON FIRE!!!!”

!,! =  ”Hi.  I am a rabbit”

% = “I feel like I am a mosquito looking directly at you.”

|:( = “I am displeased with my unibrow.”

Q:| = “I’m Davy fucking Crockett.”

:$ = “I am trying to look unimpressed, but someone drew a squiggly mouth over my real mouth and this must be terribly confusing for you.  I am sorry.”

Walking the line between beautiful and creepy, these “masks” definitely catch your attention. Designer/artist Frederique Daubal cut up fashion photos from magazines for this “Hide And Seek” series.  I love the use of body language, clothing and hair styling that bring these face plates to life.

They’re intended to address identity and transformation. On a less profound level, I can’t help but imagine them used in a very crazy music video or campaign. (via designboom)

You can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can’t take the 80s out of the girl. I just updated my flickr page with some new pics…

So it was on like donkey kong last night at the Drake Hotel (and yes, I just used that in a sentence). Friend and futurist Tom Purves, hosted his second powerpoint karaoke event in Toronto last night. We sat at a bar for 5 hours on saturday helping him come up with crazy decks filled with images of gorillas, charts and people with bees in their pants — it was very fulfilling to watch the unsuspecting presenters get up on stage and talk their way through them. It was improv meets business cultures meets the internet.

My favorite of the decks was”8 Things To Do On A First Date”. Amazing.

But really, freed from the confines of good design and finding a few real power points, every slide had some humorous potential.