Dark Roasted Blend has posted another of their “retro-future” illustration selections, this one featuring wonderfully over-the-top Japanese illustrations for magazines, toy and model boxes and advertisements from the 1930’s through the 1960’s.

Most of the images are linked to larger versions.

They’ve also tossed in a 1980’s advertisement for Canon that features Katsuhiro Otomo’s characters from Akira using the latest camera while flying on their jet scooter (images above, bottom).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fly my bubble-topped hovercar down a climate-controlled jetway to an appointment in a domed city.

In his wonderful typographical (and topographical) portrait of Steven Paul Jobs, designer and artist Dylan Roscover defined Jobs’ face and hand in words taken from the “Here’s to the crazy ones…” Apple ads, in typefaces associated with Apple graphic design.

The ads, part of Apple’s famous “Think Different” campaign created by the Los Angeles offices of the TBWA/Chiat/Day agency in 1997, seem particularly appropriate in their description of the dreamers, misfits and rebels who changed the world because they were crazy enough to think they could; that they could make or do things that were, in Jobs’ words, “Insanely Great”.

Here is a link to a version not aired at the time, narrated by Jobs (via Daring Fireball).

In addition to the current landscape of human/tecnology interaction and the redefinition of how business should use and value design (and do business in general), not to mention the nascent revolution in publishing, personal computing and media communication that is known as the iPad, Jobs left us with a number of thought provoking quotes.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
— Steve Jobs

[Addendum: A personal note: Steve Jobs’ life was extended because he received a liver transplant. Willam Saletan has written an excellent short article for Slate magazine titled: Help the Next Steve Jobs, If you want to honor Steve Jobs, do what somebody did for him: donate your organs.

If you’re confused or have questions about organ donation, get the answers. Every signed donor card changes the numbers — makes the odds better that someone, maybe you or someone you care about, will get a second chance at life.

I call this a personal note because I’m here writing Lines and Colors today by virtue of someone’s similar thoughtfulness and generosity. I was fortunate to receive a kidney transplant almost 20 years ago. Here is an educational interactive for which I did illustration and animation on Gift of a Lifetime (click on “Understanding Donation”).
— Charley]