I found this over at QBN yesterday.  Apparently it was a competition to design new bank notes, as described on the Swiss National Bank web site:

As part of the planning process for the development of a new banknote series, a competition for the artistic design of the new banknote series was launched at the beginning of 2005. Twelve artists were invited to present their designs for all six denominations on the theme “Switzerland open to the world”. The jury met in November 2005 to evaluate the submissions and to decide on the winning designs. These were presented at a news conference in Berne on 23 November 2005. You can view them by clicking on the names of the individual designers.

Here are a few examples of the winning entries:

Some of then are very strange, such as this entry that looks like it was made with Microsoft Paint.

All results can be found here.

My band recently changed our name to Looming Lights after about four years as The Atlantic Divide. We needed something new, something to give us a different outlook on our music as we started work on a new album earlier this year. Looming Lights, one of our earlier song names, was the name we chose. It was an interesting process to create new artwork and a new theme for the band. As The Atlantic Divide I constantly felt some sort of need to base themes, artwork and lyrics around the ocean. With this new name, I wanted to stay away from anything too literal and go for something that didn’t really have to mean much of anything. I went through a variety of concepts before looking back at some photos I’d taken of Chicago at night while landing at the airport. While I did not take the photo used above, it’s a pretty close match for a few I’d taken on that flight.

So with the new imagery we are using, I think it has a good connection to lyrics I’ve been writing since we made the change. I like to think of just being above the city thinking about all the stories that are being made in any given second - who’s at a party, who’s in love, who’s breaking the rules, who’s dreaming about something a million miles away from where they are. The connection between imagery and lyrics is something I have always had tremendous appreciation for - no idea how all this will end up but it’s great to be excited about something new in this way.

To view my portfolio, you can use the link above or just click here. The band’s web site is available at www.loominglights.com.

This is a site I found a while back that includes an incredible range of business cards - and what really caught my eye was the great variety of letterpress style cards. Letterpress has always had a strong appeal to me, from the variety of paper textures available, to the ability for minimal typographic visuals to be very bold. If you’re looking to do a new card for yourself, or just looking for design inspiration in general, have a look at the site here:  Card Observer - Business Card Design Inspiration.

Artist Chuck Anderson, better known as NoPattern has recently released a small book featuring a variety of his artwork from the past few years. Over at QBN Chuck was a regular long ago but it’s obvious he’s been spending his time on some great projects. Chuck has a style that’s instantly recognizable, and it’s been cool to see it pop up here and there - the Lupe Fiasco Food and Liquor album cover, a giant Reebok / Chicago Bears banner on a downtown Chicago building, for example.

I had not been to his site in a while and had possibly forgotten about his blog at formatmag.com. He’s got a post up there with some home office pictures, and I’m drooling.

I came across this book while browsing the large list of links I’ve saved with the intent to post here. Any fan of Olympic poster artwork is bound to find this to be an impressive collection of some very timeless design work. I’m adding this to my list of books to buy.

Order the book here.

TypographicPosters.com is bound to keep growing full of new and impressive typographic based posters. The one above is a little light on the typography, but you’d notice it from a mile away and that’s why I think it grabbed me.

Visit the sit here.

I found these somewhere around the web not long ago and wish there were prints available for purchase. They’ve got all my favorite ingredients: gray and red, space, and architecture.

Check them out here.

Some stunning campaign posters were created by Shepard Fairey for the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign. I can’t recall when I’ve seen anything this stylish in a campaign.

More information: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/obey-obama/

As featured recently on Newstoday.com - Corey Arnold is a crab fisherman and photographer, and his web site includes some stunning photographs of his fishing adventures in the Bering Sea, as well as other photos. He’s taken photos about the Rollo on the Discovery Channel’s show Deadliest Catch, of which I am a huge fan.

View his web site: www.coreyfishes.com 

Some excellent work at kilfish.com. I’m loving the main page artwork, included below.