Nate Williams / Alexander Blue

Nate Williams

His designs are sketchy and raw. They are made with natural looking colors and look like they might have been printed on paper, or doodled, for that matter.

Alexander Blue

His designs are cartooney and rich. The colors are bright and deep, and they look like something that might be part of a kid's sticker collection, or maybe on his lunchbox.

Two designers, two totally different styles,
one person.

The person is Nate Williams, but in the design world, he is also Alexander Blue. He is one person in reality, but when designing, he goes by two names. Both styles are so distinctly different from each other that they look as though they really were made by two different people.

Shoes designed by Nate Williams and Alexander Blue.

When asked in an interview about why he designs under two names, Nate said, "I created the alter ego Alexander Blue, so I could do another style of illustration, but not confuse "Nate Williams" clients. I think every illustrator realizes you must have a strong unique consistent style, but struggles with committing to one style, so this is how I deal with the struggle."

I think this is a brilliant way to make such an artistic distinction. It keeps clients unconfused about what they will be getting, and it opens up two worlds for him to design in - it gives him more opportunity to design, because he appeals to two different audiences.

I have even had this struggle in my own work: the pull between designing with a natural, smooth look, or a bright, harsh look. My photography often goes in both directions.
I don't know if I'll go as far as Nate Williams did and create my own alter-ego. But I do think that what he did was a good idea, at least for him. At least now, I know the option is open for me. And who knows, maybe I will.

Letter Playground

At LetterPlayground, users have created artistic representations of letters and numbers and posted them. Then other users can leave comments, create a list of favorites, et cetera. LetterPlayground is designed for typographic designers and for people who think creatively about the symbols they are surrounded with.

One interesting feature of LetterPlayground is the Letter Count, which graphs the amount of letters being submitted.
Another interesting feature is that LetterPlayground gives the statistical proportion of its members' occupations in a nice simple pie chart. Pie Charts are a great way to visualize large amounts of information.

LetterPlayground is interesting because it opens up a new side of typography. It allows people to really play with letters and numbers in a way they probably haven't done since watching Sesame Street as a child.

Photo from Flickr

It reminds me of the playfulness of the giant letters on the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. That's a literal letter playground. This is a figurative one.

Tailcast

Tailcast is a website made for artists, writers, and musicians.
It allows people to share their pieces for free or for sale, and it gives them a place to form community with each other. It allows for drawings, paintings, sculptures, photos, and other artistic mediums; for poetry, short stories, and passing thoughts; and for musical works in progress or full compositions.
It creates a space open to collaboration by allowing people to leave comments on other people's posts. Each post is put on the website itself, and each member has a page to themselves, where they can share things about themselves and have conversations with other members.

Essentially, it's a combination of Facebook and Deviantart.
But it works well. It's small enough that nothing has gotten out of hand, but it's large enough that it has a good flow of artists. And its friendly, clean, bright layout makes it a happy, trendy place for people to visit. I think that Tailcast will do very well in the webworld, at least well enough for its creators to make a decent profit.

IllustrationMundo

IllustrationMundo is a website that connects illustrators to other illustrators, or just artists to artists. It's an easy way for people to get connected to other people's creative work. It features illustrators that are particularly good, illustrations that have recently been added and commented on, articles about site members' work, polls, forums, and questions for pros.

What's interesting is that each person's work is not uploaded onto IllustrationMundo itself. Each time a person's work is mentioned, it links to their own website. It makes IllustrationMundo into a resource for connection, rather than a means of presentation.

IllustrationMundo is a great resource for people wanting to build their professional careers as well as people wanting to get started or to be more informed about being an illustrator. It's a really great way for people to connect to others, build their networks, and offer each other good critique.