Vintage Japanese Matchbox Art (1920-1940)

  

  

I could click through the hundreds of amazing designs documented in Maraid's Flickr.  No, correction, I've spent literally hours on end browsing through this UK web designer's photos, and I'm not even done yet -- it's hard to stop from clicking the "next page" button here.  

These are some beautiful Japanese matchboxes from the 1920s-1940s from a huge, jaw-dropping Flickr set.  Come to think of it, during those earlier times, matchboxes were truly the most effective form of flyers for bars, clubs, and the nightlife scene.  It's classy, everyone smokes during those days, and it's something that will be kept or held onto as long as there's matches in there.  If you take a look at the covers here, that's exactly what they are.  Advertising for a bar or lounge, sometimes the design looks like an Italian liquor poster, or features a map to show where the venue is.  Either way, I can't believe the quality of the designs for these matchboxes -- another disposable art that can also be amazing.

Reader Submission of the Week -- Design Insane from Athens

Design Insane followed us on Twitter a while back, and like all of our followers, we checked out their site to see if they had cool art.  Lo and behold, here are some cool designs from this Athens-based design studio.  These Greeks became our Reader Submission of the Week without even knowing it.  Moral of the story -- email us your stuff, follow us on Twitter, or fan us on Facebook to get your work featured here!

New Flyer by Alex Donne Johnson

Our good old friend from Bristol, VecorMeldrew aka Alex Donne Johnson recently sent this cool new flyer he did.  Check out his website and also our previous post where we first featured his work.

Frank Chimero's Art Show Poster

A cool poster for an upcoming art show featuring Frank Chimero at the Land Gallery in Portland.  Definitely going to be worth checking out if you're in the area around August.