The Romper is Your New Overlord.

Jezebel has an awesome section of their site called Today In Catalogs where they go through recent catalogs, pointing out how ridiculous they are. Everything from photography setups to the lifestyles they're trying to sell, to the clothes themselves.
Gems about Urban Outfitters clothing like "The Romper Is Ubiquitous. The Romper Is Happening. The Romper Is Your New Overlord. Bow down to The Romper" couldn't be more hilarious and true! (from the article "5 Fugly Things Urban Outfitters Wants You To Wear This Spring")

Today in browsing the catalog comedy, I found an article called Catalog Fantasies: The Life Your Life Could Be Like which outlines Jezebel's views of the type of lifestyles certain popular catalogs are trying to sell you/make you think you live in.

Another gem describing Urban Outfitters:
"You go to rock shows in your romper. Your apartment is full of flimsy furniture and unfunny coffee table books, but you don't care because you are always a little drunk, and you look beautiful all the time even though you never wash your hair. You let people write shit on your wall. Your boyfriend's t-shirt has a Midwestern state on it, and yours has a bird turning into a roller skate, and sometimes you trade and nobody notices."

So go browse Today In Catalogs and have a laugh about the culture you love to make fun of, while walking around in your pre-ripped $150 boyfriend jeans and "authentic" bohemian moccasins.

Lil' Inappropriate Golden Books

Pixar artist, Josh Cooley, is creating a compilation of his adult versions of Golden Books, called Movies R Fun. The book will have illustrations of famous movie scenes that are definitely not kid-friendly. Pretty clever, I say.

Via SlashFilm

Motivation Proclaimations

For some time now, in the back of my mind, crammed between my wit and hunger synapses, the words "mind over muffin" have echoed faintly. A simple diet mantra, reminding myself to think "do i really need the muffin (or cupcake, or nachos, or cheese), and all its carb-y goodness/badness? or are my eyes bigger than my stomach?" Ranting briefly with Steph a few weeks ago about all the unholy food temptations we try to avoid in order to be summer wardrobe-ready, I mentioned my muffin mantra and we realized i need to create a series of motivational diet graphics. And so, here are my first 3. Now, lets see if I'm motivated enough to come up with some more! Now that my beloved tv season has come to its yearly summer break, perhaps I will have some time, and space in my brain for things other than hot doctors and feuding housewives.

Blowing through the jasmine in my mind

I found this image of a ranunculus (my new favorite flower right now) on DesignSponge today, and I instantly wanted summer. So I put together a color board with this lovely take on complementary colors blue and orange - which i usually hate together! Now this little collage has resulted in the song Summer Breeze being stuck in my head. Oh how I'd love to be laying on a polka-dotted blanket in a warm breezy field, eating creamsicles.

Book Covers

I'm not much of a reader. We all know that. But when I do buy a book I do tend to judge them by their covers. Here's the portfolio of designer Elizabeth Ackerman Valins, who used to create beautiful editorial layouts for Martha Stewart Living, but also has an impressive collection of book cover designs. I appreciate her variety of styles and unique type design.