Sarah Biermann, Torsten Strer, Felix Meyer, and Pascal Monaco simplify 35 movies into their most basic visual representation and pack them into a slick, two-minute motion graphics piece.  Brilliant:

How many did you recognize?

(via /Film)

If only our favorite LOSTies had one of these from cartographer Jonah Adkins:

Check out the full-sized version.  And order yourself a copy here.

(Via FlowingData)

Using three colors and a minimal approach, Olly Moss created a posters for each of the films scheduled for the 2010 Rolling Roadshow tour.  Terrific work.  Check them all out here.

(Via Daring Fireball)

Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov has captured ghosts of World War II haunting the present-day world.  Well sort of.  Larenkov overlayed and blended WWII photos onto modern-day photos of the same location and perspective producing a hauntingly powerful result:

Stunning.  Check out his entire collection here.

(Via Core77 via Gizmodo)

Impersonations of Jimmy Stewart, Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Jack Lemmon, and others:

(via Daring Fireball)

I’ve talked about the music of ESPN’s World Cup coverage, but what about some of the graphics?  Motionographer recently posted a montage of Prologue’s graphics package for ESPN.  Great stuff.  Check it out!

Watch this.  You won’t be disappointed.

Created by the people at Buck who were also behind those fantastic Sherwin Williams paint chip commercials here and here.

(Via: Nagle)

In case you haven’t seen Patrick Boivin’s “AT-AT Day Afternoon” yet, check it out.  Terrifically well-done and cute idea.  I want one!  I’ll have to check with my landlord, first.

Buck recently released their second Sherwin Williams paint chip spot.  Another beauty, just like their first.  (And a third is on its way.)

(Via: Motionographer)

I saw this Sherwin Williams yesterday for the first time.  Very well done.

School project of Tiago Cabaco:

(Nod: FlowingData)

A terrific infographic from Chilean graphic designer Juan Pablo Bravo charts the heights of 100 Pixar characters.  Very well done.

(Nod: /Film)

Celestial tones — or — what the planets would sound like if they were a music box.

(Nod: Information Is Beautiful)

Back in January, I wondered why there was no web-app that transformed a photo you upload into a Na’vi character from Avatar.  While I still haven’t found one (although I really haven’t been looking), I did find these fantastic instructions to Photoshop yourself as a Na’vi.  The example the author walks you through creates a Tom Cruise avatar:

And via /Film, here’s Shrevatar:

Terrific infographic from Permuto.  Click for full graphic.

(Nod: GOOD)

This short film by H5 is nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the Oscars on Sunday.  “Amazing” doesn’t begin to describe the creative achievement in LOGORAMA.

In a world made up entirely of trademarks and brand names, Michelin Man cops pursue a criminal Ronald McDonald.

Watch the video (contains profanity):

Big thanks to Jon Nagle for showing me this!

Steven Heller discusses:

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

A very informative motion graphics piece:

(Nod: GOOD)

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

Awesome tilt-shift of New York City by Sam O’Hare:

I tried this with some of my photos once.  Cool effect.

Google Maps have hit the slopes.  You can now see ski slopes in Street View.

You can check out the Olympic slopes in Vancouver, too.  I think my favorite part of this new feature is the little character you drag along the map to see Street View.  In normal maps, he looks like this:

But on the slopes, he looks like this:

Nice touch, and another great feature from The Google.

The Favourite Website Awards site of the day today: Record Tripping.

To play different games, you use your mouse’s scroll wheel (or trackpad) like you would scratch a record.  Very inventive and beautifully designed and executed.  This kind of stuff makes me jealous.

A terrific and funny grammar lesson.

(Nod: Meig)

One thing I love to do with my Mac is change the icons—from the folder icons to the device icons to the application icons.  I especially love when I can update my icons with a unified look.

This week, icon powerhouse The Iconfactory released a new, massive set of free iPhone-inspired icons and extras designed by Louie Mantia and David Lanham. The icons are outstanding—and look great on my Mac, giving my system icons and my application icons a terrific, unified look.  Here are a few of my favorites:

In the top row are the icons for iTunes, Pages, and the system folder; in the bottom row are the icons for GarageBand, Mail, and the music folder.

• the iTunes icon uses the familiar double eighth note of the default iTunes icon and places it over a beautiful, blurred gradient that evokes the light effect from a CD
• the Pages icon uses a fountain pen similar to the default Pages icon, and the background of this icon evokes an ink well complete with ripple-effect
• the system folder icon uses the branding of Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• the GarageBand icon is a lovely cropping of a guitar similar to the default guitar icon
• the Mail icon is a stunningly simple crop of an envelope; and
• the music folder icon is a fiery update of the iPod touch music icon

Just as the default Snow Leopard icons are painstakingly created with amazing detail, so too are the Flurry icons. Again, the iTunes icon:

Address Book icon:

Pages icon:

Pubic folder icon:

Music folder icon:

Trash icon:

GarageBand icon:

System folder icon:

They even managed to make a System Preferences icon that is better than the iPhone Settings icon:

Overall, the Flurry icon set is outstanding.  Well done, Louie Mantia and David Lanham!

This commercial debuted last week and is easily one of the funniest, most intelligent “This Is SportsCenter” commercials yet:

I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it as much had I not recently road-tripped to Boston and been at the Old North Church.