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These Designers Won an Award with Their Earlybird Entry and You Can, Too: ROLF Spectacles

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C77DA-WonB.jpgROLF-Lead.jpgPhotos by Eder Robert

The Earlybird deadline for the 2014 Core77 Design Awards is only two days away! Save 20% on all entries submitted before 5pm EST on Thursday, January 30.

As the first deadline for this year's program creeps up on us, we've been catching up with some 2013 honorees who took advantage of the Earlybird entry period about their award-winning projects. Yesterday, we spoke to one of the designers behind the Plinko Poetry Machine. This time, we touched base with ROLF Spectacles—a small, family-run business situated in the heart of the Tyrolean Alps in Austria—who submitted a series of glasses handmade from natural materials. Their project was named a Professional Runner Up in the Consumer Products category.

Read on to see how the team has grown professionally since last year's Design Awards:

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Forum Frenzy: Sony 'Join Together' Commercial & 'Be Moved' Campaign

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Most of you (or at least the blue-blooded Americans among you) know that the so-called Mass Transit Super Bowl is just around the corner. Sane New Yorkers such as myself will also be forgoing the trip across the Hudson, where attendees—who are paying at least a G for the privilege—will brave the ebbing but still formidable polar vortex for 3–6 hours, give or take, and will instead be enjoying the spectacle from the comfort and convenience of their homes or local watering holes. Which is a very long way of introducing the topic at hand: television commercials, as much a draw of the big game as the showdown in the Meadowlands itself. Last Friday, of course, marked the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh, its impact foreshadowed by arguably the greatest commercial of all time, Super Bowl or otherwise; 30 years later and Cupertino is quoting an 18th-century poem via a 25-year-old film (Orwell's book, by the way, dates back to 1949).

Meanwhile, the folks at Wieden + Kennedy have recently unveiled their latest work for Sony, including an ad that has attracted a bit of attention on our discussion boards. The "Be Moved" campaign—the de rigueur interactive microsite is the source of the screengrabs at top—is anchored by a 90-second spot called "Join Together," which was met with a mixed response from forumites:

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Literary Leaps: 'Sensory Fiction' Gives Us a Reading Experience We Can Feel (and Hear)

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I have not had the pleasure of watching a movie in 4DX, but the thought of confining myself to a convulsing seat for three hours of scents, liquids and sounds in a pair of uncomfortable glasses doesn't quite sound like my idea of a good time. Thankfully, the whiz kids at MIT Media Lab have come up with a more refined '4D' pastime, at least for those of you who are bibliophiles. Developed for a class called "Science Fiction to Science Fabrication," "Sensory Fiction" is a digitally-augmented book that puts the reader in the protagonist's shoes through a wearable device, adding a touch of excitement to otherwise inert print media.

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"Sensory Fiction's" cover consists of small LEDs that light up in different patterns of ambient illumination representing to the "book's mood." Meanwhile, the wearable device offers vibrations, pressures and temperatures, tracking the plot as it turns, page by page. According to the description, "Changes in the protagonist's emotional or physical state triggers discrete feedback in the wearable, whether by changing the heartbeat rate, creating constriction through air pressure bags, or causing localized temperature fluctuations."

Here it is in action:

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True I.D. Stories #18: This Job Interview's in the Bag

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This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.

Editor: This True I.D. Story comes to us from "Diceman," who landed a killer I.D. job straight out of school—then fell on harder times when the market shifted, and had to go back out on job interviews.


I was on time for my interview at the softgoods company. Five people filed into the room, a mix of junior and senior designers and the company's Design Director. After exchanging pleasantries, we got down to brass tacks and I cracked my book open.

I started off by showing my sketches, which, frankly, are not my strong suit. I hoped to blow past that and get to the things I was good at, modelmaking, CAD and fabrication, but the interview took a left turn. There was some general murmuring about the weak quality of my sketches, which I could handle—design school crits can be brutal and do a good job of fortifying you—but this one junior designer clamped on like a pit bull and just wouldn't let go. He kept going on, and on, and on about my "shitty" sketches; I looked around the room to see if anyone was going to rein this guy in for saying the word "shitty" during a freaking job interview, but all I saw were disappointed eyes looking at my book.

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Ah, how far the mighty have fallen, I thought, reflecting on my last ID job, where I probably made more money than the Design Director did here.

Let me back up a sec and tell you how I got to this GD interview in the first place.

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These Maniacs Cut a Cruise Ship in Half, Then Stretched It Like a Limo

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0balmoral.jpgUhhh, that's a cross-section of a ship

I'm impressed by a shipyard's ability to dry-dock a cruise ship. I'm also impressed by limousine manufacturers being able to cut, stretch and weld a Town Car.

It never occurred to me that these two pieces of manufacturing prowess could be combined, but several years ago, Hamburg-based shipyard Blohm + Voss—who've been plying their trade since 1877—received a commission to "stretch" a cruise liner. Watch and be amazed as they transform the Norwegian Crown into the Balmoral, the latter ship being 90 feet longer than the former:

Just yesterday I was building a photographer's applebox and could not get two pieces of 3/4" plywood to mate properly at the corners. Now I've watched the video above and I feel deep, deep shame.

The video is courtesy of shooting outfit MK Timelapse, by the way.

Via Sploid

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Article 6

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Work for Snap-on Inc.!

Snap-on, Inc., the leading global innovator, manufacturer and marketer of tools, diagnostics and equipment for professional users, is looking for a highly motivated, talented ID student to join their Innovation Group at their world headquarters in Kenosha, WI. As a member of their team, you will have the opportunity to contribute to the development of a wide range of products in various stages of development.

The Ideal candidate should be very hands-on, an enthusiastic team member, plus comfortable and knowledgeable at all stages of the design process. This person must be able to communicate design concepts both visually and verbally, and demonstrate a working knowledge of Industrial Design practices. If you are a junior/senior/graduate who wants to get paid to work with Snap-on, Apply Now.

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Designers & Books and AIGA/NY Present 'Things I Have Learned in my Life So Far,' a Book Signing with Stefan Sagmeister

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Walsh is good and dandy, but it's Sagmeister who is perhaps better suited to share things that he has learned in his life so far. To celebrate the launch of the new edition of his 2008 monograph Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far (Abrams Books, 2013), Designers & Books has teamed up with AIGA/NY for a very special book launch / signing event with all the [virtual] bells and whistles.

Designers & Books Founder Steven Kroeter shared the inspiration behind the Feb 6 in-studio + online book signing.

Most book signings I go to are very enjoyable and terrific social events—but frequently it seems that not too many books are sold. Our thought is that it's very nice to allow fans to connect with authors by providing signed copies. We like the idea of doing something special, to motivate as many people as possible.

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In this case, Stefan very kindly agreed to host the signing in his studio, so his fans will get the chance to meet him there. And not only are we providing a way for those in New York to get signed and personally inscribed copies, but with our new special relationship with Gumroad, we are able to provide signed and personally inscribed copies to anyone in the world that the US Post Office ships to. We think this is a very nice way to create a "next best" personal connection between an author and book fans.

Be sure to also check out ThingsIHaveLearnedinMyLife.com, where Sagmaestros can order a signed copy of the book—which features 48 pages of new aphorisms—via AIGA; those of you in New York can pick up your copy in person at the launch event.

Things I have learned in my life so far.
Sagmeister & Walsh
206 W 23rd Street
New York, NY 10018
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Order (and RSVP) here

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Caleb Charland Turns a Classroom Experiment into Works of Art

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You might remember watching in awe as your grade school science teacher magically lit up an LED with a potato or three. There's not much to it—a natural acid serves as the electrolytic medium between a pair of terminals—but it's certainly a clever way to illustrate the basic principles of batteries and circuits. Now, photographer Caleb Charland is bringing back the science of natural batteries in a series of photos that might just evoke the same sense of wonder as those classroom demos from your childhood.

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Back to Light, features daisy chains of fresh fruit basking in a glow of their power, so to speak. The apples and limes are a little more photogenic than the tubers that traditionally serve as the humble battery, but given his sense of composition, we'd bet that Charland could make potatoes look this good too. Since the long-exposure photographs are illuminated solely by their subject matter to make for a kind of autonomous still life, the light source is paramount; the arrangements are either backlit or clustered around the bulb, huddled together in quasi-ritualistic fashion powering small light sources.

The project is not only intriguing for highlighting the unusual use of fruit in an energy-giving sense, but also for fueling our curiosity about just how many citruses it would take to sustain household lights.

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These Designers Won an Award with Their Earlybird Entry and You Can, Too: JACK by Springtime

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You've still got one day to submit your Earlybird entry to the Core77 Design Awards—but hurry, you have just over 24 hours to take advantage of the 20% discount, which ends tomorrow, January 30, at 5pm EST. In the meantime, we've been getting up to speed with a few familiar faces who may well have been in the position you're in now, wrapping up their entries. They've clearly made the right decision, as several of our past Earlybirds were Notables, Runners Up and, as we see below, even Winners.

Over the past two days, we've talked to as many 2013 program honorees, Plinko Poetry Machine and ROLF Spectacles to see what they've been up to since they were recognized by the Awards back in June. This time, the design team at Springtime tells us about their motorized scooter, JACK, which was the professional winner in the Transportation category last year.

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Woodpeckers' X-Mat Assembly System

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As we saw with the Hungarian dude making cutting boards, when you need to crank out the same item thousands of times, you'll make a jig to speed your work. And if you've got a workbench like Ron Paulk's, you'll use the dog holes to clamp stop-blocks, straightedges and fixtures. But Woodpeckers Inc., the Ohio-based manufacturer of small-run woodworking tools, is betting that there's a class of craftspeople who haven't gotten to bench dogs yet. For them they've created the X-Mat Assembly System.

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The X-Mat is a simple 12”×12” square made of chemical-resistant resin and gridded up with X-shaped sockets. By interlocking multiple X-mats and dropping in a bunch of Woodpeckers' accessories—L-Supports, box clamps, anchors and painting fingers—the idea is that you can quickly create temporary jig set-ups for assembly. My first thought was "Who would buy this?" but after watching the video, I must admit there are a lot of times I could've used something like this:

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Nano-Generators Harvest Energy from Footsteps, Give New Meaning to Powerwalking

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Last month, I attended a dinner party where one of the guests wore his Google Glass at the table and throughout the entire evening. Many of us silently teased him, but wearable computers, a.k.a. wearables, are here to stay. And they are now showing up beyond just the geeky, early adopters.

But the limiting factor with wearables is power. How do we carry long-life batteries that won't break our backs? So far, the options look bleak.

Scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology, however, have landed on a promising solution. We've heard of powering gadgets with our own movement before (think of the bike that powers a headlight) but this solution gives us more for less.

The team was able to capture energy from a new kind of nano-generator backpack that converts one's walking movement into electricity. The contraption is based on something called the triboelectric effect. Simply put, this is the electricity generated when two objects of opposing charge come together and then separate. It's the same principle behind static electricity shocks.

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Tori Sugimura's Miniature Shoji Screens Hide Power

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After spotting the photo below (which is one of those endlessly, shamelessly Pinterested-shots with no attribution, making tracking down the original creator impossible), Nagoya-based Tori Sugimura figured he'd try making a traditional Japanese version.

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After successfully learning to craft his tiny power-outlet-covering sliding shoji screen doors, he caught the attention of a Japanese television show; the original clip is here, for Japanese speakers. Interest in Sugimura's wares subsequently exploded, and they're for sale on his Tori Craft website.

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In One London Neighborhood, 'Armadillos' Boost Cycling Uptake by 40 to 50%

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Here in NYC, it's against the law to block bike lanes with your car. Then again it's also against the law to murder people, and we haven't quite got a hold on that one either. Ironically, the place I most often see the bike lane law skirted is down by the NYC Supreme Court Building, which has "The True Adminstration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government" inscribed in its cornice; the opposite side of the street is a dangerous obstacle course of double-parked vehicles completely blocking the bike lane.

One solution for preventing cars from entering bike lanes is the Armadillo, a design put forth by bicycle infrastructure company Cyclehoop. Made from 100% recycled PVC and covered in reflective stripes, these cat-sized lumps are spaced such that cyclists can enter or exit lanes mid-stream as needed, and are large enough to serve as a deterrent to driving a car over (though emergency services vehicles can of course traverse them in a pinch).

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Today is the Last Day to Save 20% on Your Core77 Design Awards Submission

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The time has come: It's your last chance to enter the Core77 Design Awards and snag a 20% submission discount. Enter your design before 5pm EST on Thursday, January 30th and get in on the money-saving action. Don't worry procrastinators, you've still got until March 20th to get your entry in.

If you've started to submit your project but need an extra kick of motivation, read up on what three Earlybird honorees (Plinko Poetry Machine, ROLF Spectacles and JACK) have been up to since winning in 2013. They did it and so can you.

Get more information and enter here.

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Work in Asolo, Italy as a Senior Product Apparel Designer for Alpinestars

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Work for ALPINESTARS!

Alpinestars, a leading manufacturer in high performance and protective apparel for motorsports, has a career opportunity for an enthusiastic, creative and sports-minded person, as a Senior Product Apparel Designer in Asolo, Italy. Alpinestars has been creating innovative motocross gear since 1963 and they want you to help them continue to give riders a competitive edge.

You'll need 5+ years of related experience, a proven track record for designing innovative technical products and collections and a thorough understanding of the research, analysis and design cycles. If you want to jump on board and help drive the creation of these products from start to finish, Apply Now.

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Safety First: Pentagram Cleverly Absolves ACME in a Design Fiction Starring Wile E. Coyote

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With additional reporting by Erika Rae Owen

In 1990, Ian Frazier published a fiction piece in the New Yorker, casting an antagonistic yet universally beloved Looney Tune as the plaintiff of a court case against a corporate entity for its seemingly nonexistent QC standards. No doubt you are already familiar with the laundry list of complaints enumerated in Coyote vs. ACME. Time and again, we took pleasure in witnessing the episodic pratfalls of the pathetic Mr. Coyote (given name Wile), as the nefarious ne'er-do-well nearly obliterated himself on multiple occasions in his attempts to assassinate his long-standing rival, the Road Runner. Each and every time, a dangerous piece of equipment would malfunction at the worst possible moment with suspiciously predictable consistency, rendering the aggrieved as a veritable case study in schadenfreude.

The suit alleges that ACME is at fault, but new evidence suggests otherwise.

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Glitches aside, the various instruments of death and gravity-defying wearables employed by Mr. Coyote in the cartoon are much more than mere stretches of the imagination—they are, in fact, prime examples of design fiction. We just didn't realize it until a designer from Pentagram took a stab at bringing the cartoon to life in a new way for their annual Christmas card.

Unlike the fictional plaintiff, designer Daniel Weil succeeds in his efforts: From the iconic spherical bomb to the more obscure Burmese Tiger Trap, these concepts may be more utilitarian than his previously-seen "Clock for Architects," but the inner workings of the five ACME products are certainly no less considered.

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To Animate Is to Illustrate

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Content sponsored by Adobe
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It's impossible to separate the art of animation from the art of illustration. Just ask Dan Covert and Andre Andreev of Dress Code, the award-winning design agency specializing in motion graphics, video production and stop-motion animation. Since establishing Dress Code in 2007, Dan and Andre have worked across nearly all creative disciplines, from web and print to video and animation. These days, the studio focuses exclusively on motion graphics and live action video and has been busy turning out great work for clients such as Herman Miller, Martha Stewart and Nike, to name only a few. No matter the project, outstanding illustration has been—and continues to be—the constant, whether the team is drawing by hand, in a sketchbook or on a computer.

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For the Dress Code team, the first step in any motion graphics project is to determine the style of animation, which ultimately depends on the client's goals. For inspiration, the team turns to every tool they have on hand, including perusing old design books and searching online for ideas in blogs and on Pinterest, Tumblr and Vimeo. Also helpful are the obsessively categorized folders on the company's servers. Eventually, all the input comes together to help the team identify a style to best communicate a concept.

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Free, Online Lego! Courtesy of Google

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Most of us who like building things loved Legos as a kid. There were just a few gripes: Inevitably you'd build something and run out of a particularly-sized piece, or you wished for different colors, or two pieces would become stuck together so badly that scientists at CERN couldn't separate them.

Well folks, the future is here. Google has teamed up with Lego to release Build with Chrome, a free, browser-based version of Lego! (Works in Firefox and Chrome, I've not tried Safari.) You select whatever sized-piece you want and drop it into your construction with mouseclicks. It's 3D, so you can rotate the build platform by dragging. You can change colors at will. And in the tutorials at least, the supply of pieces is unlimited.

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Now I know that a large part of Lego's appeal is the tactility, and the empowering feeling a child gets from constructing something with their grubby little mitts. But at least your pops isn't going to step on one of these in the living room, accidentally teaching you, at perhaps too tender an age, words like "#*$&%@!!!"

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Bedroom Storage: Making the Most of the Under-Bed Space

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I'm Jeri Dansky, and I've been a professional organizer since November 2004. I help people whose clutter is driving them crazy—and I help the mostly organized do even better. I work with clients to de-clutter and organize their offices, closets, garages, entryways, kitchens and more. I've been blogging since 2006, often focusing on interesting products that address various organizing challenges. When other organizers are looking for products to help their clients—products that go beyond the basics of plastic bins and such—I'm often the person they ask for help. So while I'm not a designer myself, I've been interested in design (especially as it relates to organizing) for many years, and I'm very appreciative of the great work I often see.

In this new column for Core77, I'll be using my experience to show you cool, inspirational stuff on the storage/organization front each week.

If you're designing a bed for urban customers—or anyone with a small home—every bit of extra storage helps. So instead of wasting the space under the bed (or leaving customers to find boxes or baskets that fit underneath), you may want to incorporate under-bed storage into your design. There are two basic ways such storage can be done: with drawers or shelves along the base, or with a platform that lifts up to provide storage underneath.

Beds with drawers

My house was built in the 1960s, which mean the bedrooms are small, and a queen- or king-sized bed takes up most of the floorspace. So I'm glad my bed has a base with built-in drawers, but I'm delighted to see designers creating much nicer products than what I've got.

The lovely bed shown above—part of the LAX Series from MASHstudios—has something you seldom see: wheels on the drawers. It has four of these rolling drawers on each side.

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I spoke to the brand manager at MASHstudios about this design, and learned that most people ask about those wheels, because it's such an unusual approach; most storage beds use normal drawer slides, with the associated hardware. But this was an aesthetic choice the company made; for the LAX Series, it specifically tries to use "as little hardware as possible" and to avoid things like visible mounted tracks. The wheels are made of polyurethane (or something similar), and shouldn't damage most floors; the company has not heard of any such damage problems.

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Some people may prefer to have fewer but larger drawers. This Knickerbocker bed from Wonk can be ordered with one or two drawers on each side; if you go with one drawer, it can be either the size shown above, or larger. Providing that level of customization is a nice touch, so customers can get the storage that works best for them.

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Video Game Art Archive: Your Favorite Digital Distractions' Pixelated Wall Art, All on One Convenient Tumblr Page

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VideoGameArt-SamaraiShodown.jpgMural from Samurai Shodown 3 / All images from the Video Game Art Archive Tumblr

It wasn't until somewhat recently that video games started popping up in conversations centered around art and design. MoMA kicked the debate off by buying 14 video games for their permanent collection in 2012—including Pac-Man, Tetris and the more recent Portal. Since then, the "controversy" has raged on in regards to whether or not we should reference our favorite digital games in the same proverbial breath as Monet or Van Gogh. (Pixels, brushstrokes—same thing?)

DonkeyKong-Comp2.jpgTwo pieces of art from Donkey Kong 64

All deliberations and opinions aside, a savvy Tumblr user out there has put their formidable search and destroy distribute skills to use, collect a colorful collection of pixelated pieces for all to enjoy. We're not talking about the beautiful screenshots of your latest build on Minecraft—these are the very paintings and murals that show up on the walls of your digital world.

VideoGameArt-AvoidTheNoid.jpgMural from Avoid the Noid

VideoGameArt-TMNT.jpgA cityscape piece from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (NES/Dos)

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