Cover of Dante’s Inferno by Nicole Peterson

Nicole Peterson, a recent graphic design graduate from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, designed these book covers for Dante’s Divine Comedy. “I wanted to create a set of covers that didn’t use images from the [Hieronymus] Bosch Hell painting, or any images of Dante and Virgil that are normally found on covers for the Divine Comedy,” writes Peterson on her Flickr page. “I was inspired by Dante’s use of mathematics and architecture in describing Hell, Heaven and Purgatory [and] employed simple geometric shapes and color to represent these places, while still keeping the design simple and allowing the reader to use their imagination when reading these vivid poems.” Click through to see how the design was carried through to Purgatory and Paradise…

Ha – only joking. While Banksy is a relative newcomer to the graffiti scene, Blek le Rat has been stencilling, pasting and daubing his way around the world for nearly thirty years. But the perception of Banksy as the pioneer of street art is certainly the one favoured by the media and the art world. As a result, Banksy’s artistic reputation – no doubt helped by his anonymity – has been elevated to near mythical status. While Blek’s reputation, at least beyond the world of street art, is far less well known, a new book of his work looks certain to bring his art to a wider audience and throw up a few more questions on just how influential he’s been.

Penguin Books has commissioned Shepard Fairey of Obey to create two new book covers - for two George Orwell classics: Animal Farm and 1984.

If you thought the doodling of illustrator Jon Burgerman was just confined to two dimensions, then think again. His first series of multi-coloured sculptural pieces can be seen in a new exhibition at the Concrete Hermit Gallery in London. Pop Idle opened last week and follows on from Burgerman’s shows at the ROJO Artspaces in Barcelona and Milan.

Artist and illustrator Jonathan Farr spent much of last year perched on various balconies and fire escapes at some of London’s landmark buildings – in order to draw city scenes using various implements from dipping ink pens to charcoals and acrylic paint…

T-shirt featuring a QR code. Snap it with a internet-enabled camera phone and be taken to
the wearer’s website of choice

Quick Response Codes (those square pixellated barcodes that, when scanned by a camera phone, bring up information or link to a particular website) have moved into the world of bespoke fashion. Emma Cott, a Munich-based clothing label has launched a new collection of t-shirts enabling users of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace to take their profiles to the street, sporting an abstract code design on their chest. Visitors to emmacott.com can generate their own QR code (that links directly to the website of their choosing) and add it to their choice of t-shirt. It’s self-promotion made very simple.