We’ve been loving up Upper Playground at JS for years. From T-shirts and hoodies, to sneakers and skateboards, UP has consistently created apparel and accessories that fuse urban fashions and fine art. Last year was a banner year for the company and and its FIFTY24 gallery. A couple of personal highlights included Jeremy Fish’s Ghosts of the Barbary Coast solo show and UP’s line of artist-rendered Barack Obama posters. This year is off to a killer start with Alex Pardee’s Letters From Digested Children solo show, upcoming toys and compelling collaborations.

In honor of their tenth anniversary, Upper Playground’s first ever “thank you” sale begins today. The sale is good for 50% off on everything in stock at their retail stores and website. With clothes, hats, books and toys by Sam Flores, Jeremy Fish, Estevan Oriol, David Choe and Alex Pardee, there’s never a better time to stretch your dollar. Upper Playground is open 24/7 on the www and has stores and galleries in San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, New York and London.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve added Chuck Anderson’s website to the sites we check as soon as we wake up. His new book, Wondering Off Into Space finally dropped yesterday and we’re excited. Even better Chuck also dropped a few surprise details on us, like limited signed copies will only be $25 and a portion of the profits go to the Invisible Children fund. There is literary no reason why you shouldn’t buy this book — look we’ll even give you a quick link to the buy the book page of his website.

Chuck is one of our favorite illustrators (see our multiple posts about him, including this great interview).

Chuck Anderson Wondering Off into Space: Read JS Review | Buy It ($30)
A new book by one of our favorites featuring Chuck’s catalog of illustrations and photographs, new and old. Themes of his works include sharks, space, light bubbles and colors that make you think you are traveling through time. Just a note, it comes out early December.

Lina Scheynius: Read JS Review | Buy It (â‚12)
The very intimate photographer has collected some of her most telling images into a book. The very minimalist design let the pictures speak for themselves: romance, travel, haircuts, sleep, nature and the capturing of light that will stop you in your tracks. Plus its super cheap.

Russ Mills: Read JS Review | Buy It (£25)
Just a warning, his prints are hard to get hold of. They sell out quick and come in limited quantities because his prices are great and his artwork is better.

Obey (Shepard Fairley): Read JS Review | Buy It ($25-$50)
We all agree it was a good year for Obama, but it was also an amazing year for Shepard Fairley. His Obama Hope print has become a fixture not only of the art world, but of the political world. Unfortunately, his the famous print is sold out, but Obey still has some amazing prints.

Jeff Soto Storm Clouds: Read JS Review | Buy It ($41)
Robots and rainbows. So many of Jeff’s paintings begin that way, but then they become so much more. Storm Clouds is a journey through Jeff’s world, as dark and innocent as it can be.

Dyna Moe’s Mad Men Illustrations: Read JS Review | Buy It ($3-$21)
These are obviously perfect for the holidays. Really classy 60s style art — even if you aren’t a fan of the show. Perfect for your cards and thank you notes. A few larger prints are also available for a few extra bucks.

Michael Latimer Surrogate Print: Read JS Review | Buy It (£60-£90)
Michael might be most known for his skateboards and t-shirts, but he wowed everyone with his Surrogate print. We called it a bit of a Murakami nightmare when we first reviewed it, but it has become one of our favorite prints of the year. Available in red and blue.

Si Scott Smoke and Mirrors: Read JS Review | Buy It ($5.95)
Everyone needs a deck of playing cards, especially for family reunions. Might as well make have a trick up your sleeve. And by trick I mean Si Scott designed cards. His beautiful matching decks (one smoke, inverse colors for mirror) are the only ones you need, hands down.

Design Supremo: Read JS Review | Buy It (£4-£270)
Just to cover all bases, the Design Supremo print factory covers a large pool of artist and their creations. If the other items on this list hasn’t set you off, browse through their collection of prints, clothing, thumb drives, coffee mugs, buttons, cards, books … well, everything. If you can’t find something there to give … bah humbug.

Ah, Chuck Anderson. Fresh, brave, and brilliant from all angles, we turned our sights towards this self-taught, Michigan-based designer in 2005, when the then 20-year old's portfolio was already competitive with those of players twice his age.

Since then, Chuck (aka NoPattern) has been filling his time with work for clients like Burton, Dolce and Gabbana, and Microsoft, and his light-filled designs have had us seeing stars all along. Graphic designer, digital illustrator, 23-year old basking in the glow he drew up himself; whatever he is, he's good at it, and we can't wait to see what's next.

READ MORE…

If you consider yourself a graphic designer, you’ve probably heard of Joshua Davis. As one of the first adopters of Flash, a significant new media artist, an author, and one of the design world's weightiest members, Joshua Davis is a name that rolls off many tongues during discussions regarding progression, experimentation, and development. A pioneer in the word's most technological sense, Joshua has never been one to find a niche and stick with it, instead choosing to find what's next — or in what's often his case, to create it. We chatted with Joshua about things like Praystation, philosophy, and his plans for the future, and wound up feeling a little bit like we do when we look at one of his mathematically composed graphics. In other words: utterly enthralled.

Joshspear.com: For our readers who aren't as familiar with your background, can you give us a brief rundown of your life up until today?

Joshua Davis: My name is Joshua Davis, born 1971 in San Diego, California, moved to Littleton, Colorado where I pretty much grew up. I had always been interested in art and in high school I entered a statewide competition and took second place in the state for painting. After spending ‘89, ‘90 in Huntington Beach, California skateboarding and ‘91, ‘92 moving back to Colorado living in Frisco to do some snowboarding, I moved to New York in November 1992 and eventually attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. At Pratt I worked on Design and Illustration and through fellow classmates got into working on the web in 1995 (Netscape 1.1). When Netscape 3 was released (at the end of 1996) I had a moment of clarity to use technology and the web to create my work. 13 years later I run Joshua Davis Studios where I use design and technology to create work for corporate clients, private collectors, galleries, museums, and personal exploration.

READ MORE…

Chuck Anderson Prints: Read JS Review | Buy It ($35 – $65; shown as 2)

Holy kaleidoscope! We’d paper maîche our houses in these were they a bit more weatherproof. Until that day, we’ll just enjoy their sparkly-ness from the comfort of our climate controlled living rooms.

20×200: Read JS Review | Buy It ($20; shown as 3)

Jen Bekman’s affordable art project let’s you choose from a wide variety of wonderfully curated print, photographic and mixed media limited edition offerings — and at 20 bucks a pop, there’s nothing snooty about it.

Ice Cream: Read JS Review | Buy It ($69.95; shown as 5)

We reviewed Ice Cream, an awesome (and shiny) selection of 100 of the most significant emerging artists working today…but anything from Phaidon will make the creative people in your life happier than a two-year old with a Snack Pack.

Colby Nichols Prints: Read JS Review | Buy It ($7 – $50; shown as 4)

This up-and-comer is filling my daily monster quotient with his prints, paintings, and sketches of zombies, toothed animals, and one-eyed beasts. His tees are rather awesome as well, but I guess that’s for another post.

Richard Goodall Underground Store: Read JS Review | Buy It (prices vary; shown as 1)

The only place to go for the biggest selection of everything urban artsy. Aside from the tragic exchange rate you’ll experience shopping here (if you live in the US), there is not one bummer about this art and culture superstore. Prints, originals, designer toys, skate decks — it’s a winter wonderland.

Shelta’s Ntrl Tiny Bubble Tee: Read JS Review | Buy It ($84, Shown as 1)

Swedish designers always do it better, right? Ultra comfy, designed by Swedish brand Ntrl Tlnt (Natural Talent). You can thank the weakness of the dollar for the price conversion on this puppy!

Chuck Anderson’s No Pattern T-Shirt: Read JS Review | Buy It ($24, Shown as 2)

Who doesn’t love Chucky? What happens when the No-Pattern legend does a t-shirt, well, duh, it’s good. Kinda-funky design printed on AAA fabric, worldwide shipping is $10 from an international designer of mystery.

You Are So Last Year: Read JS Review | Buy It ($25, Shown as 3 and 4)

Pretty much every t-shirt YASLY drops is worth owning, from the Monster Eyballz T-shirt to washed out Aztec Patterns. Always limited edition, always soft, always classic.

Beautiful Decay Winter 2007: Read JS Review | Buy It ($27, Not Shown)

One of the softest-wear-for-your-money t-shirts on the market, the Winter 2007 Beautiful Decay Line is incredible to look at (they’re like works of art), incredible to wear, and damned near impossible to get when the line sells out. Get yours quick, they will be gone fast.

Hecklewood’s Teenage Wasteland: Read JS Review | Buy It ($32, Shown as 5 and 8)

Hecklewood is our favorite up-and-coming line– we call them the Portland bad-asses, the little t-shirt line that could. We’ve been long time lovers as they’re always on top of the best fabrics and most ingenious printing methods. This new winter ‘Teenage Wasteland‘ line is too much, we had to choose two pictures to share!

Monsieur T Winter 2007: Read JS Review | Buy It ($28, Shown as 6)

An oldie, a goodie, who doesn’t love funny French-guy living in Oregon t-shirt humor? Designs are always creative and quirky, I’m a big fan.

Star Electric Eighty Eight: Read JS Review | Buy It ($28, Shown as 7)

Arguably one of the most impressive new lines I’ve seen in a very long time, point blank, SEEE.us is going places. Go, indulge, the selection is incredible. The Jane Fonda t-shirt is just too much!

Momimomi’s TEaA Party Subscription: Read JS Review | Buy It ($120-$360, Not Shown)

A JS mainstay, a family affair, an always-in-the-ring for top 5 anything t-shirt related, Momimomi reigns supreme. Best gift of the season? Give yourself or a loved one a subscription to the Momimomi TEeA party, a limited edition supremely soft t-shirt every month. Just awesome.

Are you ready for the JS08 Gift Guide? If you are, that’s a shame; we’re actually not doing one this year — we’re going to do even better. Over the next month you’re going to see itemized lists, broken down into separate categories for your easy perusal, and all you’ll need to do to get to those posts is hit the “gifts” tag at the bottom of any of them. If you have any suggestions for a list, feel free to hit us up at feedback at josh spear dot com. If you’re staying in today (instead of braving the malls and stores), we salute your intelligence. If not, try not to get arrested. Happy holidays!

People Like Us, the Australian tee company headed by Spear Collective’s very own Jeremy Somers, just released their Summer 08 line of tees and iPod protectors, and after a little browsing, we’ve decided to use the following word to explain our feelings succinctly: askdlgjaig. Final verdict: the tees are rad, as usual, but it’s the iPod covers (which have expanded in form to protect the full line of iPod products, including iPod Touch) that are getting us tongue tied. Artists like Matei Apostolescu (pictured), Chuck Anderson (who we write frequently about), and Jeremy Somers himself contributed to the new designs, and as far as we can tell, there’s no better way to keep your iPods safely churning out the tunes. Browse the tees and covers here.

We’ve written — animatedly — about Chicago’s new Threadless store, and about the gallery that the store contains. We’ve also written quite enthusiastically about Chuck Anderson’s, aka Nopattern’s, luscious designs and illustrations. Though it’s hard (especially at this point in our lives) to admit to peeing our pants, we will say that animated enthusiasm is a bit of an understatement when it comes to our excitement over the following tidbit of information: Chuck Anderson will be featured at the Threadless Gallery’s first show, opening this Friday, November 9th, from 7-9 pm. That sentence should be said in outside voices for a few reasons, but especially because Mr. Anderson will be showing a collection of brand new work at the gallery, and because this opening will mark his very first solo show. Congratulations to both Threadless for their new gallery and Chuck for filling it — we wish we could be there!

We always love to write about Chicago artist and our long-time pal Chuck Anderson (mainly because posting pics of his sparkly prints make our site look so pretty), so here’s to the man for sending another awesome heads-up our way. Chuck has updated his site with this newbie as well as two reprints (Places You Can’t Imagine, and Godlike, if you’re curious), prices of which range from $35-65. No Pattern, the site whence your prints will come, is also serving a tasty New Era hat (as well as the book and shirts we’ve written of before) so if you want to cover your walls, your head, your brains and your body in one fly swoop, Chuck’s gotcha covered.

My pal Chuck just dropped me a line to let me know that he launched a brand new site (same great work, new layout) as well as a couple of new prints and finally the addition of some t-shirts to his online store. The shirts go for $24.00 and are hand printed on super-duper soft cotton. Guess what? Chuck doesn’t know this, but I’m going to give away some of his early stock to get things moving. Lets say… 4 shirts, 2 yellow and 2 black to the first people that can tell me where Chuck is going for his honeymoon (congrats) next week. Go ahead, comment away.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of the inaugural line of iPod-protecting Styles from People Like Us for sometime now, and it looks like they’re finally here. Jeremy Somers, a member of the Spear Collective and head of People Like Us has been working hard, and it looks like — once again — the Aussie didn’t disappoint. With so many iPod protectors on the market, do we really need more? I think so, because Styles aren’t your ordinary boring skins, and are not only made from non-destructive vinyl adhesive for protection, but also boast original art from a slew of some of our favorites– Chuck Anderson, Hejz, and Electric Heat (’Bad Horsey’ design shown above), to name a few. They’re available in an impressively wide selection of designs for most of the iPod and iPod Nano chassis for about $15 USD.

In a clever marketing ploy, PepsiCo has been reaching out to the DIY/design/art/fashion communities by offering “design your own” contests for cans of Pepsi, and now, 16-oz aluminum bottles of Mountain Dew. Visitors on Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art site can try their hand at designing a custom label (or submit an image they cooked up at home), share their results, view labels designed by other users, and (of course) vote for their favorites. As these things go, the site is actually pretty well done although the label design tool is a bit wonky. I won’t bother sharing my creation with you (let’s just say it was less than good) but I bet those of you well-versed in Illustrator and such could make a run at the $10,000 grand prize. The winner will be determined by a panel of judges, made up of some top-notch talent, such as Chicago’s very own Chuck Anderson. Here’s the best part: for each artist on the panel, you can view their label design, an artwork gallery, and a homemade video. The videos alone are worth checking out for a rare glimpse into their studio space, creative process, and daily lives. The deadline for submissions is June 30th, so get cracking… and should you want to share your winnings, well, I could use some help with my credit card payments.

Chuck Anderson sure does redesign his site often (I think he nailed it with a nice design this time)– luckily for his fans it seems like every time he launches a new iteration of his site, he introduces a new print for sale. This one, playfully titled “Places You Can’t Imagine I” is extra large, 3×2 FT, in an edition of 125, signed and numbered for $50.