Lucy Engelman is imagining a world where nature and built structures collide. Her body of work is peppered with hybrids of all sorts: giraffe-lighthouses, fox-sailboats and other fantastic beasts. Her delivery —in ink, crayon and soft watercolor washes— is nostalgic and richly beautiful. The whole site is hand written; not one typed word to be found.

Via Design*Sponge.

Armadillos emulate the Wright borthers

Geese ready to create traffic havoc

Nicole Meyer is on a quest to redeem the common conception of the lake logo. “Lake logos have a tendency to be, well, fairly ugly”, says the designer. She is posting one logo a day on her site, with her sights set on branding Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes by the end of 27 years.

Although Meyer’s use of typography is outstanding, I was fairly taken with the simplest, most iconic ones. Which I think are the toughest to get right. Some of my favorites below.

Via LogoDesignLove.

PINE MOUNTAIN LAKE

KING LAKE

LAKE FIFTEEN

Just what is it that you love exactly?

There seems to be a string of tofu lovers out there being denied the right to express their feelings on their license plates. It’s a great visual communication case study: given the limited space in a vanity plate, we try to say more in fewer characters and let the people figure it out.

In this case, the latest request of this sort, the authorities say you can read too much out of this particular plate. Depending where your mind inserts the spaces I LV TOFU becomes I LV TO F U.

Well, at least it is still all about love!

PS. This seems to be OK in California…