My friend at work pointed these ads out to me. Not a new concept, but a funny one. Dragon Noodle Co.’s  ads feature purposefully poor translation (or maybe just made up stuff) and nonsensical imagery to promote their sushi bar in Las Vegas. Floating baby heads, food with legs and bottles of rabbit liquor abound.

Last Saturday Meg and I went to MassMoCA and saw the Sol Lewitt wall drawing project created by an initiative between MassMoCA and Williams College. A team of sixty two artists and students executed the drawings from April to September 2008. LeWitt’s wall drawings from the 1960s and 1970s were usually executed with lead and colored pencil, many of the wall drawings at MassMoCA were as well, but executers also used paint varying in thickness and gloss. The exhibition takes up three floors and is organized in progression from light paint to thicker glossier paint and then to drawing. It was amazing to see such large geometric shapes and colors. At times my eyes couldn’t take the color vibrations. I can’t imagine working on some of these. Posted above are pictures I took of some of my favorites. I only included one crazy color wall. I preferred the more subdued one. Maybe I’m getting old  You can check out MassMoCA’s website to see more.

Broken Bells features artist–producer Danger Mouse and James Mercer, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the The Shins. I’ve only heard the music that’s on the site, but it seems like a great album. Plus if you buy the limited edition music box you get 44-page notebook that includes photos and illustrations, a glow in the dark sticker sheet, a poster and 2 post cards with the cd. I love design work on this package. Even if the music was lame, and is sounds like it’s not, it would be worth it just to get the music box. If I could only justify spending the $40. I may have to just go with buying the album.

Update: My friend Sarah saw my post land in Facebook and let me know that you can listen to the whole album on NPR’s site.

This week’s Flickr Friday brings you the work of graphic designer, art director, freelancer, Michael Paukner. I’ve been a sucker for charts, graphs and diagrams lately so I was happy to find Michael’s work. See his photo stream here.

Invisible Creature is a Grammy Award winning design firm that among other things does two things that I love. They use a lot of patterns and a lot of illustration. They also incorporate texture really well in their work. I spent a long time on their site and everything is good. Invisible creature has worked on everything from album artwork for the Foo Fighters to working with the blog Grain Edit (one of my favs).

I first read The Catcher in the Rye when I was in college. I know most people read it in high school but I wasn’t much into reading those days. J.D. Salinger actually lived just one town over from me (Cornish, NH) growing up. There were always rumors that someone had seen him in a grocery store or library but I never saw him. From what I understand he didn’t really want to be seen by people. Aside from being a great book The Catcher in the Rye also has some of the most recognizable covers. I still have the hardcover version with the horse. It was the reason I bought the book. I hope Mr. Salinger rests peacefully and that God will comfort his family in their lose.