This is making the rounds on Facebook right now — if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s a collection of amazing street art from 2011, curated by Street Art Utopia. Their site’s tagline is We declare the world as our canvas, which just makes me happy. And so grateful that these folks are out there forcing us to look at the world differently.

Here are a few of my favorites, but really — go look at them all. You won’t be sorry.

(Thanks for the link, Bo!)

Minnesota’s nickname, The Land of 10,000 Lakes, is no exaggeration: there are actually 11,842 lakes in the state. In fact, the name Minnesota comes from a Dakota word for “sky-tinted water.” So you can imagine what sort of undertaking it might be to create a logo for each and every lake in Minnesota. Yet Nicole Meyer is doing just that. And to showcase her work, she has launched Branding 10,000 Lakes. It looks like she’s done about 80 so far. And they’re all gorgeous, ranging from conceptual (like King Lake, above), to vintage (like Gull Lake, below), to just plain nice typography. I love her use of backgrounds to enhance the different logos.

Here are some of my favorites. But they are all so great, you really should check them all out.

Which ones are your favorites?

Have you ever lived in Manhattan? I have. And as much as I loved it there, one of the things that can be challenging is the sheer number of people — and their habits — you have to interact with every time you walk around. The lack of courtesy you might encounter on a 2 minute walk to the deli is astounding. Well artist Jay Shells has launched a guerilla art project that addresses just that — street etiquette. The signs are now popping up all around Manhattan. In addition to the fantastic “Pay Attention While Walking” sign he had a few others addressing some of the pet peeves bound to eat away at New Yorkers.

I hope this is an ongoing project. Do you have pet peeves that could benefit from some well-placed signage?

(Found at The Daily What.)

I’ve spent the better part of this morning staring at and playing with this site. I Am Not An Artist is a big ole page of animated gifs, or, as it says on the site, “An Animated GIF Paranoia about Nonstop Design Workers.”

Commissioned by ELISAVA School of Design in Barcelona, and designed by Soon in Tokyo, the base 56 animated gifs were directed by Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper. But the fun part is you can add your own animation to the tapestry with their handy, built-in, GIF Generator. Go have fun!

I love it when someone takes “old technology” and makes it look new, don’t you?

(Thanks for the tip, Photojojo!)

I love love love these camera lens coffee mugs from Photojojo. They’ve had the Canon lens for a while, but they just added my beloved Nikon to their offerings. It would make my morning coffee so much more interesting.

(Thanks Darren Rowse.)

Drooling over the tiny precision of these hand carved pencil leads by Dalton Ghetti. I think the P is my favorite. And the contrast of the beat up stubby pencils? If they weren’t so stunning they would be adorable.

See more here — be sure to click through the gallery

(Thanks Adam! Via The Telegraph)

Brilliant. Now you can turn your iphone into a mix tape. It even comes with its own plastic case (that doubles as a stand) so you can even make a snazzy magazine collage tape cover! Suddenly, you’re no longer listening to Broken Bells and Phoenix, but instead, Nirvana, with The Pixies on the flip side, natch.

And wouldn’t this be a perfect desk-mate for your mix tape USB hub? You could be starting a retro-volution!

Buy yours here.

From Art at Heart. Thanks Adam.

Love love these new bathroom supplies from Target. They look like candy.

I think my day would kick off quite happy if my bathroom were filled with these, don’t you?

(You can try Target online, but I couldn’t find them there. Might just have to go to the store. Darn.)

I was looking for dog pictures the other day and wandered over to DaFont, my favorite free font website. Found the dogs I needed, and also found this: Freak Animals dingbat font. How fantastic are these? Wouldn’t they look great printed large and framed in a group?

Created by the apparently awesome Rodrigo German.