The use of Osgood’s signature in the header delivers a sense of authenticity that carries through all of Osgood’s work. You can see a slice of his personality and raw emotions in the brush strokes of his characters.

Osgood is an urban contemporary artist and muralist who grew up in Edmonds, Washington. His studio is located inside Bherd Studios Gallery, a gallery he co-owns with his wife Michele, located in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. John also offers custom design services that include murals, illustrations and commissioned paintings.

Personally, I like how the illustrative man in the footer has giant pecs that look like science beakers.

Russian paper artist Yulia Broskaya turns the constraints of paper illustrations into beautiful works of art. Pictured above is a new portrait she has completed of an older woman smoking a pipe.

She has mastered the ancient technique known as quilling; coiling and shaping of narrow paper strips to create an illustration or design. Coiling has been around since the Renaissance. French and Italian nuns and monks used roll gold-gilded paper remnants trimmed during the bookmaking process, as an economical way to decorate religious items. Later it became a pastime of 18th and 19th century English ladies, who would decorate tea caddies and furniture. Quilling often imitated the original ironwork of the day.

Yulia Broskaya papergraphics of people, typography, nature, and more, has taken the quilling method to an entirely new art form. She says “this material limitation turned out to be a strength for me: there is the potential to contain thoughts and ideas in unique ways so that the medium can become a significant part of the message.” Since her art is three dimensional, each piece provides different viewpoints and perspectives that change when you have the ability to see it in person. (I would love to see some of her work in person!)

By pursuing a way to combine her love of typography, paper, and detailed hand-made crafts she has created art and design that is loved by people and businesses world-wide. See lots more of her artwork.

I dream of a world where we all follow a driving passion to do what we love.

Via Colossal

TPS—a division of the National Park Service—provides the tools and information to care for and preserve our nation’s historic properties.

They develop the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. These standards promote historic preservation best practices that will help to protect our nation’s irreplaceable cultural resources.

With over 150 publications in print, (mostly for free) TPS is a knowledge bank for preservation practices.

In partnership with State Historic Preservation Offices, they administer the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program. TPS certifies approximately 1,000 projects every year, leveraging nearly $4 billion annually in private investment in the rehabilitation of historic buildings across the country.

Multiple web page templates were designed to adapt to TPS’s wealth of information. For example, the Weatherization feature allows TPS to present in-depth content about improving the energy efficiency of historic buildings within the existing website design.

The website’s visual design cohesively portrays TPS, while maintaining a strong brand identity connection to the National Park Service.

See the information graphics designed by Blank Space for TPS.

Bherd Studios, pronounced “Be Heard”,  is an urban and contemporary gallery featuring emerging to mid-career Pacific Northwest artists. Owners John and Michele Osgood work hard to support and promote Seattle artists, all while facilitating an environment for artistic collaboration.

Bherd Gallery also curates group shows at two satellite venues: Gene Juarez Spa & Salon downtown Seattle and Bellevue locations. Their gallery is located in the heart of Greenwood above the Chase Bank on the corner of 85th & Greenwood Ave N. You can find a new exhibition each month at the Phinney Ridge / Greenwood artwalk on 2nd Fridays from 6-10pm.

The Osgood’s—the owners of Bherd—are also co-founders of S3A, a group of artists and galleries committed to raising awareness of the alternative art scene in Seattle and the Northwest by chronicling and promoting events, artists and venues. These art advocates also chair the Greenwood Arts Council and are actively committed to making the Seattle arts community a strong & viable place for local artists.

I love this amazing illustration created by second grade students at Seattle Jewish Community School. These creative kids captured all of Seattle’s famous landmarks; from the Space Needle, to the Public Market, to the Duck tour, to the pink elephant neon sign, to the brand new waterfront ferris wheel. This artistic drawing shows young creative minds at work—the colors, the textures, the DETAILS—every time I look a see something new. (Click the image to get a larger view.)

SJCS provides an excellent, egalitarian Kindergarten through 5th grade General and Judaic education that promotes Jewish identity and practice, respect for diversity, responsibility for our world, and lifelong learning.

SJCS has been our client since 2009. Our very first collaborative design project with the school was the interactive Tz’dakah caterpillar sculpture installation.

Weatherization means implementing cost-effective measures to make a building’s envelope more energy efficient. Weatherizing a historic building requires undertaking those measures in ways that have minimal impact on the historic building’s design and materials.

Air infiltration is the exchange of air through cracks and gaps in the outside shell of a building. Infiltration increases heating and cooling costs and reduces the comfort level of occupants. Loose fitting windows and doors, cracks between the house and the foundation, and gaps around plumbing and electrical penetrations are typical sources of leaks. Reducing air infiltration is often the first action item of a weatherization plan after the energy audit has been completed.

Natural air movement within a building, temperature differential between the heated and unheated spaces, and accessibility make the attic the most cost-effective location for insulation. However, insulating basements or crawlspaces can also have value in improving both comfort and efficiency. It is best to limit insulation to attics and basements where it can be installed with minimal damage to the historic building.

See the website design by Blank Space for TPS.

TPS is a division of the National Park Service.

Public Interest Design Week delivers a sneak peek screening of IF YOU BUILD IT. The official World Premiere is in April 2013 at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

The documentary IF YOU BUILD IT spends a year in the life of one of America’s most innovative classrooms. Designer/activists Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller of Project H Design, together with their high school students, unleash the power of humanitarian design to help their struggling community in rural North Carolina.

Emily Pilloton launched Project H Design with the desire to teach design for social change. In their own words “Project H uses the power of creativity, design, and hands-on building to amplify the raw brilliance of youth, transform communities, and improve K-12 public education from within.” I admire Pillonton’s optimism and conviction that through design we really can build the change we want to see in the world.

Pillonton has also written two books. Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People, features safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, and more. Products that are that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary. Avid book review blogger Maria Popova says it “reads like a manual, thinks like a manifesto, and feels like a powerful jolt of fire-in-your-belly inspiration.”

Her second book—Tell Them I Built This: Transforming Schools, Communities, and Lives With Design-Based Education (TED Books)—tells the story of Project H through the eyes of her students. It shows how creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, and dirt-under-your-fingernails construction can radically transform both high school education and the local community. It is a way to connect in-school learning to out-of-school possibility.

Via Public Interest Design

Aren’t these brilliant? Head over to the Head Like an Orange’s blog for endless animated gif entertainment. Enjoy!

London artist Robert Currie transforms gallery spaces with the simple materials of old cassette and video tape ribbons. His large scale installations explore the contrast of positive and negative, rational and irrational, and as stated in his artist statement “the inevitability of the emergence of order from disorder.” These repetitive reflective textures change based on your physical position and create dramatic optical experiences.

I would love to have an installation like this integrated into my future home or office entry way. This is just a taste, peek at more of his installations and sculptures.

All images are courtesy of the artist, Robert Currie.