No doubt a many of you will be familiar with Dave Egger’s Super Hero Supplies store in NYC and similarly his Pirate Store in San Fransico. Following on from their successes state-side, Egger along with a number of other talent dedicated individuals, encouraged by many well known writers have brought the concept to the UK opening Monster Supply Store late last year in Hackney Street, London.

Essentially created as a space to educate and inspire children to get lost in their imagination and discover the writing in all forms, the front of the store is stocked with all kinds of monster curios to excite even little ones and allow us older ones to rekindle with our inner child.

Branding and packaging design has been beautifully crafted by We Made This all chocked full of witty bits of copy that will have you leaving the store a little lighter in the pocket but with a gleaming wild smile from the innocence of childhood.

Just don’t make the mistake that we did and turn up during the week as they’re only open Saturday and Sunday 11am—5pm.

It seems that there’s quite a trend for slick art direction and motion design from the Spanish based agencies and studio Toch is no exception as shown in this latest showreel.

Similar to other visual bookmarking apps but far more swiss-like and refined in its design, Designinspiration gives the likes of FFFOUND! a run for its money in terms of UI design as well as a being rich pot of visual stimuli.

The kind folks at Designspiration have given us 3 free invites to the join the site for you lucky guides. In order to have chance to grab one, post a link to your portfolio in the comments below (multiple folios allowed) and we’ll review all the links submitted in the next 7 days (finishing on Wednesday 9th February at 23:59) and chose the 3 links we think are most inspiring and contact the lucky winners by email from the corresponding sites.

For those keen to know a little more on the background of Designspiration, Shelby White of Wanken studio (the brains behind the whole project) details the making of Designspiration including the whole process and design decisions that were taken to create and site and set itself apart from the crowd which makes for an insightful read.

Little White Lies, blends two loves, design and cinema. Every month is a visual delight with the latest issue focusing on Black Swan delivers the goods like always.

To show just how much sweat and blood goes into producing LWL, with the help of Archer’s Mark, they’ve put together two months of work into 1min 55seconds of footage.

If you haven’t seen the current issues then it comes highly recommended.

Humorous, rude boy illustrations from Cambridge School of Art alumni, James Clapham.

The lucky winner is James Taylor.

Congratulations to James Taylor for winning a bunch of Visual Aid goodies including a Visual Aid bag, a copy of both books (Visual Aid 1 & Visual Aid 2), a colouring book (with a pack of pencils), 3 x ‘Know It All’ Coffee Mugs and 3 x ‘Kitchen Companion’ Tea Towel’s. Commiserations to everyone else who entered, but you can still buy your own from the Visual Aid Shop.

Remember to keep checking back for more competitions and give aways in the future.

Huge thanks to all the folks at Visual Aid Publishing for donating all of the prizes and for getting in touch with us about running this competition. That goes for the rest of our readers as well. If you’re interested in working with us perhaps by kindly donating competition prizes then get in touch with us via Twitter, Facebook or email at submissions@formfiftyfive.com and set the subject line with Competitions & Giveaways.

Thanks for all your support folks.

Glenn enviously mentioned this exhibition the other day on Twitter, but today the 10 hot young MA grads-to-be dropped by to say hello and give us a copy of their press pack. Laced with innuendo their promo viral (which you can see on their site 10collective.com) sets the tone for the included flyer and booklet-cum-poster (no pun intended) by describing a bit about each of the 10 exhibiting girls through questions relating to ‘doing it’.

The show is on at the trendy Rag Factory just off Brick Lane (16 Heneage Street E1 5LJ), running from 17-19th December 2010 (Friday 12:00-21:00, Saturday 10:00-21:00 and Sunday 10:00-18:00) with the P.V. on Thursday 16th December 2010 from 18:00-21:00. If you’re in the London area try and pop along and see the show at some point before it closes on Saturday. Like always if you see us on Thursday why not say Hello!

In the meantime if you can’t wait to see some hot design action then have a butchers at the obligatory blog.

Employing an unusual way of illustrating, Peter Crawley’s work is created through continuous pieces of thread sewn directly onto paper to create very graphic and geometric images. It’s no surprise that some of his best pieces of work are of logotypes and buildings as the simplicity and line work the thread creates lends itself beautifully to plan-like architectural drawings.

We’ve teamed up with Visual Aid again this year to offer you a booty of Visual Aid prizes. Since we last caught up with Visual Aid they’ve been busy fact finding once again creating a plethora of new merchandise for you to buy from colouring books to tea towels.

We’re giving one lucky reader the chance to win special Visual Aid bag, a copy of both books (Visual Aid 1 & Visual Aid 2), a colouring book (with a pack of pencils), 3 x ‘Know It All’ Coffee Mugs and 3 x ‘Kitchen Companion’ Tea Towel’s.

For your chance to win answer the following question correctly.

Which animal lives the longest?

A. An elephant.

B. A parrot.

Send your answers to win@formfiftyfive.com. Don’t forget to include your full name, postal address if you win and a contact number. The competition closes at 11:59 GMT on 19th December 2010. We’ll pick a name out at random entry from email submissions shortly after closing date and announce the winner on FormFiftyFive. The lucky winner will be contacted once they’ve been picked out of the entries ahead of announcing the winner on the site. If we’re unable to get in contact with the 1st choice and receive a response within 3 days then the 2nd choice will be contacted and so on. The competition is open to UK residents only, and only one entry per person.

However if you can’t stand the thought of not winning any of the prizes though you can buy them direct from the Visual Aid Shop.

Best of luck.

Being a self-proclaimed knitter for the majority of my life, as soon as we see the technique used in visual communications I’m always intrigued. TBWA Brussels, Olivier Babinet and Lovo Film have used the technique in this advert for Natural Gas to capture the warmth created from gas in a visual way to great effect. Surprisingly, using yarn based fabrics to lends itself well to stop motion as shown in the Making of (below), each pieces is knitted in it’s final size and shape and then slowly it’s unravelled back to a single thread and the animation is played in reverse.

Quite reminiscent of PES’s work, the choice to knit everything evokes a real sense of homeliness and warmth just what is needed on a cold winter’s day like we’ve been having recently. By far the best bit has to be the shower head streaming water i-cords.