Five years ago, who would have thought that what started as an offbeat visual culture weblog would turn into a full-fledged (but still and always free) cosmopolitan online magazine? After just half of a decade, WebUrbanist now has over five hundred thousand feed and email subscribers, not to mention over a million monthly visitors.

The constant curiosity of authors (including Delana, Marc, Stephanie and Steve,, with Kurt as executive editor) and ongoing diligence of developers (Jeff and Mike) has been crucial, of course. Still, at the end of the day, it would all come to nothing without you, the readers, RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook fans and Pinterest friends supporting these efforts. Your ongoing help sharing our stories with friends via email, blog posts, StumbleUpon and Reddit has been essential in building WebUrbanist’s audience and is much appreciated.

Much has happened over this long-yet-short period of time, including multiple major redesigns of the publication, from the underlying code to numerous iterations its layout and logo. We hope this ongoing evolution seems fitting, though, since the core topics we cover – architecture, art, design, travel and technology – all revolve around creative exploration, iteration and (re)invention.

For anyone new to the site – or at least its latest redesign – we recently re-categorized every single article in the archives. Each individual past post can now be found under exactly one of five main sections (per the paragraph above) as well as one of twenty-five subcategories , linked in various ways on every page, including via a new drop-down menu on the sidebar. We hope this helps make the ever-larger annals more accessible to new and existing readers alike. Thanks again for your patronage – now onto the next five years!

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of your favorite websites? According to Jeff Lam and Josephine Yatar, there is a whole unseen world of activity happening behind every web page – you just have to know where to look for it.

(all images via: Back of a Webpage)

Lam and Yatar’s project is called Back of a Webpage, and it does just what it says on the tin: shows you exactly what goes on on the other side of the webpages you waste time surfing on.

The secrets revealed by these intrepid adventurers are sometimes surprising and sometimes completely predictable. The back of YouTube, of course, looks exactly like the back of a television. Flickr’s backside shows off the distinctive photo paper backing of the various photographs on the front page.

Twitter’s back area serves as a break room for the distinctive blue birds which spend their free time drinking, smoking, playing Guitar Hero and – of course – checking for Twitter updates on their iPhones.

And of course, Apple’s back end looks just like the backside of any other Apple device. According to the creators, the project was the result of late-night delirium – which, as most creative people know, is the perfect breeding ground for awesome new ideas. They vowed to think a new thought every day, starting with envisioning what websites look like from the other side.

As far as internet memes go, there have been some pretty bizarre ones over the years. But the Nyan Cat has to be right up there with the most head-scratchingly weird of them. What started out as a cute little video on YouTube has now taken over the whole interwebs with its addictive yet intolerable music and hilariously cute 8-bit style. Who would have thought that a cat with a Pop-Tart body flying on a rainbow set to annoying music would be so attractive to so many people?

The latest incarnation of the odd Pop-Tart cat meme is NyanIt.com, a site that lets you plug in any URL and watch tiny Nyan Cats fly across the page. Let them go long enough and they’ll reproduce and grow bigger, eventually taking over your entire screen so that you can’t see anything else. Finding homework boring? Plug in the URL of the research material you’re studying, then challenge yourself to read a whole page before ridiculous rainbow-riding (or rainbow-farting, depending on who you ask) kitties fill up your monitor. You can try clicking them to make them go away, but they’ll only think you want to play and start growing even faster.

The meme was started way back in April of 2011 (ancient history in Internet time) by prguitarman, the guy behind LOL-COMICS. He drew a funny picture of a cat with a Pop-Tart body and a rainbow coming out of its bottom. YouTube user saraj00n set the cat to music and posted it for the world to share. Since then, it’s taken off in an insane way. In addition to the original and the screen-cluttering example above, there are tons of other bits of web silliness that take the eternally happy Nyan Cat to whole new heights.

If you happen to be in the mood for meme overload, try using NyanIt on the Nyan.Cat website…and then add in some Fale and some Bacon for good measure. The awesome combination is part breakfast food, part zippy music and part vaguely insulting comment. All together, the memes make for some interesting viewing – or at least an amusing way to waste a bit of time.

If the Hamster Dance and the crazy eHarmony Cat Lady had a baby (and then fed it nothing but Pop-Tarts and speed), it would look and sound like the Nyan Cat. In fact, the guys behind the Songify This app put the eHarmony Cat Lady’s kitty-centric rant to music and invited the lovable Nyan Cat to make a cameo in the video.

Of course, the citizens of the internet can never do things by halves – so there are endless variations on the Nyan Cat theme. There’s the real-life Nyan Cat, the Mexican Nyan Cat, SpeedyNyan, and the Americ-Nyan Cat, among countless other remixes, mashups and variations. Some of the most notable Nyan Cat videos are the ones that are looped over and over and over to run for hours. They aren’t for the faint of heart, however. Most humans will lose consciousness long before they can listen to that song for more than a few minutes at a time.

If you’re feeling brave, though, head on over to Nyan.cat to see how long you can nyan – then tweet your score to show off to your friends. Only the extra-brave will dare to add the additional layer of nyan with NyanIt.com.

Not everyone is a huge fan of the rainbow-riding kitty, as evidenced by the kids in this video. The majority of the reactions seem to be negative, but maybe the kids just aren’t giving Nyan Cat a fair shake. Give him long enough and he’ll burrow his way into your brain until you hear the “Nyan Nyan” song in your sleep. Maybe if they played the Nyan Cat: Lost in Space game they might develop some affection for the little cat.

(images via: Technabob, Nyan-Cat, Nyan-Cat, Geeks Are Sexy)

As with many internet memes, this one has made its way into the meatspace world as well. Nyan Cat cupcakes, scarves, toys, jewelry and art are plentiful, varied and full of awesome. Even though Nyan Cat seems to be everywhere these days, it’s entirely likely that you’ll find yourself missing the smiling cat face one day soon. When that happens, sneak over to your co-workers’ desks while they’re at lunch and use NyanIt to add some nyan to their home pages. They’ll thank you one day.

(Above Designs, Clockwise from Upper Left via:  Pinoy Athena, iKnod, Mukhtar & Bloc)

Much of what we feature on WebUrbanist is the culmination of an artistic or designer process, but it is worth seeing that sometimes pieces of the process itself is as creative, compelling and eye-catching  as the final product. Webist Publishing (WebUrbanist & WebEcoist) is currently engaged in a remarkable design contest, of which the end result will be brand new logos for both sites!

As exciting as this is, the various submissions to 99designs (like the simple-but-evolved series of designs by sixsixsix above) are equally or more so – they show an extremely impressive range of unique logo design work – even if only one can win in the end. See some of the best below and if you like their work, remember: you too can run a 99designs competition for a logo or other designer needs (and crowd-sourcing is so chic!).

One approach has been to create a separate-but-integrated iconography – identity through a symbol that is either directly or indirectly tied into the text of the design. In some instances, the more graphic-oriented portions are similar in scale and tone but different in color, details and other features while being similar in overall font and style – straight versus curved, rectilinear versus circular and so forth. The first pair above was produced by jminig and the second set was created by bobot.

The kinds of designs discussed in the previous paragraph raise an important core question about iconography, symbols and text. Some designers tackled potential approaches head on with variants of each type – such as the above design sets by adbas in which the more graphic portions are either explicitly isolated or entirely integrated as letters.

Some ideas showed a particularly artistic approach, combined with a creative use of negative space. While they may be a bit too casual in some cases for these particular sites, they illustrate a great variety of design personalities in practice. In order, the above were designed by DemonAce, Pistacho and Asiku.

One of the most ingenious proposals using negative space (as well as positive) has been presented in two forms by KingFelix – a more horizontal continuous-text version and a stacked-on-top variant. One of the neatest aspects of this particular design is the way it uses similar overall strategies but differing details to define the logos through similarity as well as difference.

There are many ways that designs can evolve over time, as some of the aforementioned designs have already illustrated. In some cases, the process is not necessarily linear from ‘worse’ to ‘better’ per say – meaning: both the first and final product can be engaging in different ways, sometimes through simplicity on the one side and complexity on the other. JawsofSteel created these in sequence, but each is worthy of praise in its own right.

Last but certainly not least is the work of Marius Jivoin – the same talented individual who created the unique logo design you see on Gaijtz. His work manages to be a great combination of creative and professional – it is not overly artsy, but is also not stuck in the overly-corporate mode typical of many logo designers (who are, to be fair, used to working on more corporate projects).

Graffiti art is a big part of the urban voice. It has become its own art form and developed its own subculture. But there are big risks involved in urban graffiti, and not all of us are willing to take those risks. If you love the look of graffiti art and lettering but don’t want to deface property or risk legal troubles, an online graffiti creator can safely satisfy your artistic impulse. Or if you’re looking for a product that’s uniquely yours, you can use a tutorial to create your own graffiti in Photoshop.

Draw Here

Draw Here lets you tag online while you’re visiting a web page, so you can leave your mark all over your favorite sites. When you create a masterpiece, you can choose to save it and share it with other users. And if you own a website, you can add a Draw Here button to invite visitors to scrawl all over your pages.

Graffiti Creator

Graffiti Creator is one of the most fun online graffiti creators we’ve found. You choose your font, type in a message, and choose from several effects to enhance your graffiti. Customize your colors, and then you’ve got your very own graffiti creation. If you’re up for a challenge, join the current months battle: submit a graffiti piece of the selected word and compete against other artists. While you’re there, be sure to stop by the gallery to check out pictures of real-life graffiti.

Photoshop Graffiti

You can create plenty of awesome things with Photoshop, including realistic-looking graffiti. This tutorial from PS masters Photoshoptalent (part 2 here) will guide you through adding a graffiti tag to an existing photo. As the narrator says, you can brag to your friends that you’re anti-establishment without actually going through the trouble of doing any real graffiti.

This tutorial doesn’t put the graffiti tag into a photo; rather, it just helps you draw a cool tag with the help of some special brushes and simple techniques. Then you’re free to put it onto your website, make a desktop wallpaper out of it, or whatever you like.

This tutorial gives step-by-step instructions to create realistic-looking graffiti that  you can insert into your existing photos. It even includes details such as fading the lettering so that it looks like it’s been on the wall for a while. Once you’re a master graffiti maker, you can draw on pictures of your own house, landmarks and historic sites with no guilt or danger.

Graffiti Playdo

Graffiti Playdo lets you create awesome graffiti with other people who are online at the same time. Much like the chat rooms of yesteryear, several people are in each room. Every person gets a turn to paint, and when you’re done you’ve got a collaborative public art project that you helped create without ever leaving your desk chair.

ZeWall

Playing with ZeWall feels almost like you’re really there. The applet lets you paint on pictures of real backgrounds with a variety of brushes. Paint brick walls, plaster walls, trees, trains, trucks and more without ever worrying about getting caught. The best pieces are compiled into massive virtual frescoes that visitors can peruse.

Graffiti Studio (LRPD Vandalsquad)

This game gives you the thrill of painting in different locations and hiding to avoid getting caught. Create your masterpieces on trains, but be careful of the Vandal Squad, who will come after you from time to time. Hide to avoid them until they’re gone, then carry on with your virtual vandalism. You can choose to download the game or play online.