San Francisco-based interactive design firm, 17FEET, revealed their first designer toy at Phoenix’s Resin Collective group toy show. When I caught up with 17FEET last December, the Feeters were still in the prototype stage, but now the tiny trio is ready. Loosely modeled on Kidrobot’s Dunnys and DIY figures, they chose the shape of a giraffe (which measures 17 feet, the combined height of the firm’s directors) and worked with Patch Together to realize it in resin. Although the three figures are a first for each designer (Brandon Herring, Malea Gadhoury and Lisi Howell), they’re not sticking their necks out for no reason: When you buy your toys through Food for Feeters, all proceeds go to the San Francisco food bank. A donation of $25 gets you a mystery Feeter; $60 for the set of three. Each design is limited to 100 pieces. For every $1 donated, the SF food bank distributes $9 worth of nutritious food to more than 132,000 local people in need. The Feeters are available now online and at select designer toy stores. Toys that do good. We like that.

Nike Brazil’s newest campaign idea, entitled “V Project,” tasked nine people from the worlds of fashion, skate and art to create their vision of victory. One of them, artist and skate photographer Flavio Samelo (who’s part of the ever-productive Baglione collective), tapped into the period when he was in a coma for a year and had to learn to walk again after coming out of it. It was an experience that he made tangible through a mix of concrete and photographs (video here). Over the next few weeks, the works will circulate through the windows of various stores that carry Nike in Sao Paulo, including Surface to Air and Maze Skate Shop (which recently underwent a nice renovation that incorporates rails and concrete just like you find at the skate park), and will be put on the website of a new Nike-sponsored magazine called Project Gudi.

You know what we like? When the names of people we love (Jesse Hora) start winding up next to names of artists we worship (Si Scott; Alex Trochut; Hellovon). Not that we would expect any less of the designers, illustrators and artists we brag on so thoroughly. But still, every time it happens we feel like one of our kids just knocked out the class bully (see also: brimming with pride and high-fiving all around).

Jesse Hora (Dot Com), fresh off of the much cooed over Some Type of Wonderful (a project also shaped by the aforementioned Si Scott, etc.), took some time to fill us in on the distance he's traveled since '06.

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Over the past four years a variety of talented artists at The People Like Us Collective have created some pretty solid shirt designs. We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but their reign of tee supremacy is abruptly coming to an end. While they’ll continue to produce quality iPod cases, Jeremy Somers and company have announced that after Christmas they will be closing up their T-shirt store for good. On the positive side, the Aussie-based top shop is commemorating the occasion by cutting prices in half in efforts to move those final stashes of stock. So hurry up and help them go bye-bye with a bang before all of those tasty duds disappear.

The first time I met Ray Young Chu he talked a lot of shit about my eyebrows.

This threw me initially, but once the topic of conversation turned to ice cream, then back to eyebrows (a friend's this time), then to PBR, I figured that Chu wasn't really talking shit, he was just full of shit — the really, really weird kind that helps people make amazing art.

It's been just over a year since Ray slammed my facial features, but in that short time he's made some serious headway. Read on as Ray slows down long enough for us to catch up.

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According to some, the streets are at a crossroads. Not long ago, the art covering the bricks and blank spaces of the city was more likely to get you in trouble than in Christie's, but today's take leans more towards halos than handcuffs. This shift can partially be attributed to the quality of today's work (and the hype that surrounds it) but also, strangely enough, to the financial opportunities that have arisen within graffiti. No matter the game, the rules change when money and fame join the party — and they've certainly started to party with street art.

In order to suss out if these fears had a foundation, we decided to take a sit with Doodles, a 20-year-old out of the Bay Area who we consider a member of the ‘new school' of street artists. He also happens to be in school, adding another interesting element to our interview. Say hello to the future of graf art, readers — it's looking good.

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Streetwear is so hype right now. Thanks to sites like High Snobiety, Honeyee — and jeez, even this one — wild graphics and even wilder collabs have become as venerated as the celebrities that like to be spotted in them.

But what's brand to do when bold prints and bright colors, once considered so daring and original, start weaving their way into the mainstream? If you're Daniel Pierre and Kareem Blair, creators of respected streetwear line Lemar and Dauley, that question has one answer: Stay the hell ahead of everyone else.

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When someone like you is in need of a sweet new T-shirt design you can always count on People Like Us. No, not us. You know JS.com is always good for it, but we’re referring to our buddy Jeremy Somers. His label has recently released three hot new designs for the summer swelter (although technically it’s winter where he lives). Their fresh looks come courtesy a trio of talented artists including Somers (Beautiful Squid), Swiss artist At-elier (Lovecraft), and Paris’s Théo Gènnitsakis (God’s Explosion).

If a party at a car wash sounds like the perfect method to cool down during the West Coast’s forecasted heat wave, check out Sam Spiegel’s (a.k.a. hot music producer Squeak E. Clean, a.k.a. half of the NASA DJ duo) big throwdown called SUDS rolling through various Southland car washes starting this Friday at the Hollywood Car Wash before it heads up to San Fran. While there won’t be any wet T-shirt contests going on (I can hear the collective sigh right now), a mysterious “car wash ride” is promised. Spiegel will man the wheels of steel, while Girl Skateboards pro team members put on a demo and people get their hair done for free by an on-site göt2b hair salon. Aaron Rose, curator extraordinaire of Beautiful Losers, will participate with art installations as well. And there’s talk of go-go dancers in body paint. Sounds like this event is meant to make you sweat, so bringing a water balloon or 20 is probably a good idea. Hit the site to RSVP for this free party.

If we can trust what Wikipedia has to say on the matter, people born in the Chinese Year of the Monkey have it made. They are smart, quick witted, inventive problem-solvers, and they come with a side of sharp-shooting, horribly unfair skills– like the ability to absorb conversations happening around them, even while they themselves are heavily engaged in another.

Eric Chan, also known as eepmon, is a young, Ontario-based new media artist with enough experience under his belt to make much more seasoned designers quiver. He is also an enthusiastic member of that lucky Zodiac sign– and from what we can tell, should be, as he fills in its outlines to an intimidating degree.

Read up as we talk with Eric about his bright future, his studious (and very recent) past, and the exciting things that have been bridging his path from day to day.

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Not just drum and bass…and not just music. Dublab, the Los Angeles based DJ collective, has run their Web radio site for seven years, reaching an international community of 300,000 musicians, disc jockeys, artists, and a couple of people who just like records. Their goal: to spin out a well-edited selection of streaming music and visual media to compliment it. At the center of the site are the “labrats,” guys with handles like Daedelus, Frosty, and our favorite, The Gaslamp Killer. They podcast, compile playlists, and generally keep things from getting stale. It’s inspired Web radio, because while the site offers a mix of dance floor fare — from trance to house and all points in between — as well as a fair share of indie rockers, they also give their collaborators the freedom to select some truly bizarre cuts…and not Weird Al bizarre.

Matt W. Moore knows the remedy to day job doldrums. An ex-agency man turned big-time web designer, Matt has never renounced his personal creative pursuits for his job – a sacrifice that today's creative types find themselves depressingly prone to.

From his early days in advertising to his current responsibilities (keeping the Burton website sparkly fresh), Matt has been filling his downtime with personal side projects that feed his soul as much as his bank account. His versatile career experiences — as gallery artist, pre-press designer, editorial illustrator, art director, and curator, to name a few — have given him the experience he needs for side projects like Wallspankers, a sticky extension of Matt's graffiti past, and the B/W Bangers, Matt's very own saving grace.

So what is the remedy? It's one part introspection; one part creativity; one part confidence –- and a little dose of self–publishing.

Joshspear.com: For a period you lived the increasingly common double life of an ad man by day/artist by night. What finally inspired you to start MWM Graphics?

Matt W. Moore: I actually started MWM Graphics while I was in college. I would side hustle logos, concert posters, editorial illustrations, anything that I thought would be exciting and help me grow as a designer. I caught an awesome break during my last year of school and started to work at an agency in Portland, Maine called The VIA Group. I later moved into an Art Director position there and worked on some fun accounts, all the while doing personal work and freelance in my free time. Now I work as a web designer at Burton Snowboards, and stay busy with all sorts of personal projects. The “double life” has been my style all along. I hope to one day break away and devote all of my time and energy towards my studio and making art. READ MORE…

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.

Talk about cutting edge; it’s rare to find a graphic designer who goes one step beyond the tablet-and-pen rigamarole, but the Brazilian Carlo Giovani and his team of illustrators and graphic designers gladly pull out the scissors and paper for commissions they receive from clients like Havianas and The New York Times. They tap into their collective creative art and technical skill to design colorful paper cutouts, which then get cut out along the dotted lines, folded along the solid and turned into animals and people that comprise the simple settings they produce (also check out the “Motion” section of their site to see some of the paper works in stop-mo animation), resulting in a wondrous, dynamic — and moreover, eye-catching — advertisement. Papercuts sure beat carpal tunnel.

Not too long ago, we told you about the design competition Cut&Paste, a timed tournament currently cruising through 11 international cities. Last week, Cut&Paste found its way to NYC, where eight local designers were pitted against one another in an edge-of-your-seat battle for first place. We scored big time when we landed an interview with the future winner of the competition. We then scored even bigger-time when time (and talent) placed the gold medal in the hands of a certain Mate Steinforth. Not only had we (Dan Steckenberg) previously posted on some of Mate’s awesome work, but our collective drool actually drowned Dan’s computer, leaving us with a sort of slimy metal spitwad.

…OK, maybe not. But needless to say we were impressed. And with good reason; Mate has one hell of a background leading up to his current ‘07 Cut&Paste victory. A traveler, a computer nerd, an ardent user of emoticons, Mate has earned his position among the design elite with all the work and fervor that one would expect from a guy of his caliber.

Mate currently works for PSYOP, a New York production company that will turn reading this interview into a 45-minute affair (given you click on that link). I say that truly hoping you do click on over, because watching every single one of their brilliant productions just added about that much time to writing this interview, and it was totally worth it. However, if you’d rather invest your time in 100% pure Mate, you can always check out his portfolio at mateuniverse, the site where he keeps a running collection of both personal projects and work he’s done for PSYOP.

In closing (and beginning), I’d like to remind you that Cut&Paste judges its contestants on three things: Originality, Technique, and Overall Dopeness. As you can tell from the posted pictures of Mate’s winning design (more of which can be found here), we are clearly dealing with a man who eats dope for breakfast (and by that I clearly mean “dope” in its context as the noun form of dopeness, not as in “Mate eats pot every morning”). So, read on knowing that you are in the internet presence of a man who can probably teach you a thing or two, who is also incredibly nice, and who — BOOYAH! — just won Cut&Paste NYC.

Joshspear.com: Tell us about Demoscene. How did this throw you into graphic design?

Mate Steinforth: In 1985, when I was 9 years old, I got my first computer, which was pretty early for my generation. So I was interested in technology from an early age on. This naturally led to using the computer as a tool for making images. In my teen years I became active in the computer art subculture called Demoscene. READ MORE…