Favorite JS booksmith/art publisher Viction:ary has a few new titles that you won’t find at your local Barnes & Noble, which are well worth your cash/credit spendage:

• Simply Material is a visual compendium of media to use as your canvas. Can you liberate the art from concrete or harness the awesome potential of epoxy resin?
• Fashion Wonderland sounds like a fairly pretentious theme park, but contents of this book are pretty arresting. Tons of designers have contributed the illustrations and art they take their aesthetic cues from.
• Illustration - Play puts the spotlight on 23 international artists and their unique illo medium. Paper cutting, stitchery, hand knit, fabric piecing, origami, patchwork, and more are represented.
• Type Addicted is a thorough read for the font aficionado; see how real typographical artists slice up the Roman alphabet.

Related: Viction:ary Archive

Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators is the grand mac daddy of this artistic genre. And, like every established society, once a year (for the past 50, at least) they pat themselves on the back, drink champagne, and laugh snootily in the air on what a good job they’ve all done. We imagine. In fact, we’re not really sure what goes on at one of these events, but we do know that the illustrators feted are all exceptionally good. From the political to the absurd, and minimal to ornate, the editorial show focuses exclusively on illustrations commissioned for books, magazines, journals, and online pubs. The exhibition is running until March 23rd, so if you’re in the New York area it’s worth you while to stop at the Museum of Illustration for a look at the class of 2007 (including Brain Stauffer, whom we recently profiled).

Via The I Spot

I remember walking into A Salt and Battery the first year I lived in New York, and having heart palpitations when I discovered that at Easter, they do deep fried Cadbury Créme Eggs. As disgusting as that sounds, you shouldn’t knock it till you’ve tried it. I was transported back to that memory just now, when I was mucking around on the Goo-ology website, and watching a series of disturbed Creme Eggs seeking help for their mental problems and suicidal tendencies. Those eggs managed to escape vats of hot oil, though. Go give Eggs & Ladders a play, watch the brilliant UK ad spots under the ‘Fantasties’ section, and when you can’t stand it anymore, rest assured any Duane Reade or Rite Aid will have at least half a million of them in stock already.

As promised, Information Architects just released the poster version of their super-sexy Web Trend Map 3. For $50 plus shipping, you can have your own map of Web 2.0 on your wall; for free, you can visit their site for downloadable versions appropriate for wallpaper and printing, as well as an interactive variant, updated daily.

R.E.M. didn’t really sing about the world ending in a fashinable way, but Dutch clothes hounds Ontour have come up with an interesting spin on the hipster t-shirt: impending disaster. They descrbe their work as: “a pandemic combination of Bermuda Triangles, Morse codes, S.O.S. Wurms, Tornados, Explosions and UFO Burgers…” UFO Burgers? We dig an aesthetic that incorporates colorful polygons, swirling vortices, and aliens that arrive in meat patties. Besides, wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who said, “This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a Whopper?”