All images Emile Kozak

Emile Kozac is a prolific creative type.

He photographs strange, absences, landscapes where the captured flies fleetingly by and then disappears. He documents normal things that through the lens become strange, even extraordinary.

he Barcena based Dane also creates amazing graphic work, identities, corporate logis and typography — all shot through with this same minimalist edge that beguiles and intrigues.

Here is a little selection of Emile’s work that has, almost by accident, the road into it.

Bravo Emile. Keep up the good stuff…

In our current bout of obsession with all things vannish and practical we stumbled this morning across yet more beautiful graphic goodness focussed on the split screen microbus.

Nothing really to say about this apart from how gobsmackingly stylish these things remain, even though we still get a feeling of undeniable chutzpah every time we street past an old combi crawling along the slow lane at forty miles per hour.

Imagine how long it must take to get from, say, Sunderland to Cornwall in one of these babies. Still, if you’re not in a hurry, there couldn’t be much more of a rakish way to cruise that crawler.

image: Amelie Lengrand

Of all the many and various creative car brands, Alfa Romeo is one of the most appealing to true automotive aesthetes.

The inhouse art departments of the company itself has commissioned many lovely bits of graphic art, which has prettily populated their marketing and signage over the years.

Amongst all the privately generated pieces of art that feature cars, a huge proportion have focused on the cloverleaf brand.

So, it came as no surpise when we stumbled on an extensive collection for sale in various formats this morning.

This list is well worth checking out if you’re in the lucky position of having an Alfa Garage to decorate this winter.

Go here to view the full selection.

http://www.artofbrands.com/wo_en/alfaromeo/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Two of our obsessions come together this week at Coventry’s Transport Museum in the lovely looking exhibition Wheels & Waves.

Bringing together surf and car culture in the home of the British industry is an inspired decision — because the two have been intertwined since the very beginning.

The simple, green and serene (ish) pastime of surfing has always been faced with the conundrum of how you get to the beach and how you manage to sustain yourself while you’re there.

Hence the profileration of surf wagons of all shapes and sizes that now clog up the coastal arteries of this and other surfing nations.

And as a group of people surfers are amazingly able to create a culture around the everyday objects they use.

Not only are the surfboards themselves made into fetish objects, the cars surfers use to load, stash and live are created as totems to their lifestyle too.

Curator of the exhibition Pete Robinson has worked with the museum to fuse the material together in what looks like a refreshing take on the the place of cars in our lives.

Expected to see the totemic split screen Kombi — but going back to huge Chevy woodies, Morris Travellers and all sorts of lesser-known rides that have played a part in creating surf culture on wheels.

Add music, film, artwork and other good stuff and there’s a little bit of beautiful beach culture parked up in the West Midlands, helping us all to get through the winter.

image: Magneto Photography

Sometimes the way a car is presented graphically transcends the quality of the car itself.

Depending on your perspective, this is either the human genius of marketing — or evidence of how stupid we are as a breed.

Whichever your personal perspective, you can’t help but enjoy these lovely graphic representations of NSU’s super-compact family car, which, in its various manifestations, was the ubiquitous German runabout between 1957 and 1973.

The quirky little gem had a number of brain-fathers. The racy TTS version was penned by Scaglione, and looked incredibly appealing in a left-field, Joe 90 kind of way.

When you think of how the German economy came to dominate Europe in the years– this little motor helped motor the country out of the ruins.

If Issigonis’s Mini was the totem of England’s sixties swing, then surely the The Prince deserves a bit of recognition

Andy Jenkins draws bikes and cars nicely. But the other four wheeled vehicles he is interested in are skateboards. He was, after all the Art Director and founder member of Girl Skateboards.

Andy also digs the print medium, his self-published zine Bend having been a lead player in the cult of the underground print publication.

We caught up with Andy recently when these lovely little illustrations went on sale for a snip.

Skate versus Bikes/Cars: what’s the relationship?
Here in Los Angeles, it’s simple. If you skate, you drive/ride. There’s no other way to get around unless you’re bumming rides.

What do you ride/drive?
I drive a hybrid… the powers that be here have all the nice cars. I used to commute on a Triumph Thruxton for a few years until I sold it to a coworker.

LA or San Francisco?
San Pedro! Get on the 110 freeway and head south from LA.

Dirtbike or Roadbike?
I love motocross and raced it for a few years. So I have an inclination towards dirt. BUT, I loved my Thruxton as well.

Print or Digi?
Both. Print if it’s good, i.e. well designed and written. I tend to be a little more lenient about design if it’s online.

We’re not sure if there is any concrete connection between bike and skate culture.

Both share the fixation on rolling through the landscape, but, of course, with vastly different emphasis.

But in California — that melting plot of all things faddish and nex gen — there is now and then something unlikely peeps through the cultural meniscus — something that fuses what was always so seperate.

This pleasant little video records a snippet of a day in the life of a skateboarder and Harley rider.

An interesting little muse on the beauty of metalflaked hogs and skating through that distinctive Californian light.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you find yourself on a road trip through the middle of Europe this summer and you tire of the usual rammed autoroutes and toll charges, it might make sense to do a little detour to the beautiful Swiss town of Basel to hoover up some high-end car culture.

The Museum Tinguely, has gathered together a collection of work from over 80 artists: from Italian futurist Giacomo Balla through American photographer Robert Frank and pop-art legend Andy Warhol.

The breadth and depth of the sort of material on show at the Tinguely helps hammer home what we’ve always known. There’s much more to your motor than simply getting from A to B.…

http://www.tinguely.ch

Artist Shawn Dickenson was born and raised near the coast of Los Angeles and spent most of his childhood surfing and drawing cartoons. Eventually he studied art at the Antelope Valley college before pursuing a career as a cartoonist. He got his start as an artist in the custom culture scene of Southern California when he drew an underground comic book series called Untamed Highway. UH was filled with images from the 50’s-60’s kustom scenes: cars, tikis, pin-ups, etc. and his drawing style quickly caught the eye of car enthusiasts, tiki collectors, bands and more.

Suddenly he was doing commissioned and freelance artwork for custom culture guys as well as surf, garage, rockabilly & punk bands, radio stations and more.

His work has appeared in various art and custom culture magazines, on bands’ t-shirts, album covers, gig fliers, even various comic book projects for unruly garage and surf bands like The Hexxers and The Ghastly Ones.

He’s recently been doing cartoon art as paintings and has been featured in art galleries, like Kustom Lane Australia (where I had my very first art exhibition), and Gasoline Gallery California.

Current projects include my new comic series, Schitzles Der Cat, about a German rock ‘n’ roll cat obsessed with hot rods, guitars, dangerous women, ratwursts & bier!

Q: Who are your artistic inspirations?
A: My characters are inspired by cartoons from the 1930’s (the craziest era for cartoons)…especially animated cartoons by Dave Fleischer, Bob Clampett, and Tex Avery. All other imagery and situations in my art is inspired by the 1950’s-1960’s (the craziest era for cars, bikes, art, music, etc.). I’m especially into art by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Rick Griffin, Basil Wolverton, Jack Davis, and Harvey Kurtzman.

Q: What is it about the car and bike culture of the 1950s that interests you?
A: Mostly that it is technically an ART culture that began in the 1950’s, yet is still one of the very few art scenes that has been able to maintain it’s pure roots throughout the years, even through the 60’s & 70’s and still goes on even today. It’s a genuine scene, man!

Q: V8 or V twin?
A: That is a tough choice! But: V8.

Q:What’s your daily drive?
A: My daily drive is always to CREATE and SHARE. As an artist, I try to stay on a constant path to learn and create new things. As a cartoonist, I’m always trying to use those tools I’ve learned to entertain and make people happy.

Q: Chuck Berry or Gene Vincent?
A: Another tough choice…but gotta say Chuck Berry.

Q: LA or San Francisco?
A: Los Angeles. I was Born and raised in southern California — land of hot rods, surf culture and the golden age of Hollywood cartoons!

More of Shawn’s work can be seen here:
http://shawn-dickinson.blogspot.com/

We’re unashamed fetishists of automotive design and spend an unhealthy time online and at various car events sifting through the voluminous back catalogue of a century of car culture. Our mission, dear reader, is to dig out some choice pieces car and bike-related graphic art for your enjoyment.

Now we could be accused of retro-fetishism, but hasn’t digital design lessened the impact of that lovely handwrought feel of pre-nineties car design?

Design ateliers in the automotive industry, which used to reek of woodbine and turps and were populated by talented chaps in collar-and-tie, have been transformed into feintly humming temples to the genius of Steve Jobs — where nary a long lunch can be tolerated.

Sure, digital design has made the graphic medium easily accessible and much more convenient — and many of the highest examples of car pennery we’ll be presenting to you have been in fact created on a computer — but it doesn’t lessen the tactile, aesthetically appealing feel of design materials that existed before the ubiquity of the pixel.

Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.