<![CDATA[eboy: “godfathers of pixel”.]]>I’m a huge fan of all throw-back art and design inspired by the dawn of the computer age. Anything that looks like it rolled off the multi-pronged wheels of a 1986 dot matrix printer… that’s my shit. Anything inspired by when “Apple” was called “Macintosh”… my shit too. But my fave nostalgia trick of all is pixelation.

You know what I mean: it’s 1989, you’re in the basement wired on Orange Crush and playing Super Mario. The real Super Mario… that’s the 8-bit Super Mario. The Super Mario where, if it didn’t load (which was often), all you needed to do was blow on the cartridge until you were blue. Often, a good 20-25 puffs were needed to really get that fucker clean. Then, just to be sure, pound that cartridge in as hard as you can. Yeah son.

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My fave pixel artists are German collective EbOY. Artists Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr create stuff so awesome I literally freak out a bit over every they do. It’s all just perfect: the eye-wincing colour, the boxiness, those perfect microscopically zig-zagged lines. I. Love. Them. Above, see their latest poster, “Buildings”, which as we speak is being lovingly rolled into a packing tube by efficient German packer-people and shipped to me and I can’t wait. I got it at their online store, and so should you.

I’d like to say I’m the only one that’s caught on; both to how rad EbOY is and to the whole pixellation deal, but I’m definitely just one of many. Besides having a design-cult following around the world, EbOY has worked for heavy-hitters like Adidas, Coca Cola, Nike, Lacoste, MTV, Rolling Stone, and Paul Smith, just to name a few. Clearly not a bad résumé they’ve got going on.

As if that isn’t enough, they also create a whole line of toys for kidrobot called Peecol. Don’t even get me started on those, that’s a whole other post. Their other stuff includes a series of posters of world-famous cities in all their pixellated glory (“Tokyo” features the city being ravaged by a gigantic pink robot called Tokio Robotto), gift wrap, tons of tee shirts, event installations, and a book of their work. It’s almost too much to take. Almost.

Plus, I love how awesome random yet purposefully inspired it all is. For an example of their brilliance, check out “Einstein’s Swiss Patent Office”, with some clear influences from nothing less than the greatest invention of all time… LEGO®.

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If that’s not enough, then how about “Einstein’s Lab”, complete with Mastadon…

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