It’s been a while since I’ve posted here at Vancouver Is Awesome, but I thought it was perhaps time for a recap. 2011 was a big year for Illustrated Vancouver, and late in the year, I hit the 500th post milestone.  Since then, I’ve changed my pace somewhat, and while I won’t be posting every single day, I hope to continue my project as I work towards my original goal of 1,000 posts.

Today’s post on Illustrated Vancouver features studiomoh.com’s best of tumblr tool, supposedly generating my best posts from 2011. However, all systems are susceptible to failure, and of the top 12 images selected, almost half of the images are in fact, inflated due to fake tumblr accounts. And so, as a result, I’ve sorted through the riffraff to bring you a collage recap of what I consider to be my top 20 posts of the year.

This first collage above contains seven of the top twelve posts generated by the best of tumblr tool, as well as two more images which proved popular with the masses:

1. Old Hotel Vancouver by Charles Hepburn Scott
2. A cartoon by Len Norris
3. Giant Checkers in Stanley Park by Franklin (Archie) Arbuckle
4. Seymour fauve by Emil Kerie
5. Vancouver poster by Marisa Seguin
6. Poster for DRAWN at Little Mountain Gallery by Sol Sallee
7. Map of Vancouver by Western Canadian Greyhound Lines
8. A 1930 BCER map of Vancouver by Peter Hugh Page
9. A recent painting by Tom Carter

This second collage contains six more popular posts, two of which are by the same artist, the legendary Rand Holmes. His cover of Wreck Beach from the Georgia Straight is amazing, and his advert for Rohan’s Record Store was a hidden gem which I featured here last year. Clearly, the comic and commercial art aesthetic have a firm grasp of the market!

1. Vancouver Sun Building by Hyuck Lee
2. Wreck Beach by Rand Holmes
3. BC Government Lower Mainland Highway Traffic System by artist unknown
4. Rohans the Record Store by Rand Holmes
5. Brand new Eaton’s Pacific Centre advert by artist unknown
6. Vancouver poster by W. Ellis

This final collage wraps up my recap, with some book art, place-mat art, outsider art, commercial art, and an architectural rendering. Actually, the last image didn’t rank exceptionally high on Tumblr, and I could have substituted it with the Tintin Expo86 poster, but I consider Manfred Stein’s concept drawings of the SkyTrain system to be one of the greatest scoops that Illustrated Vancouver has made! These drawings, perhaps unseen by Vancouverites for more than 25 years, were sent to me from the offices of Architektengruppe U-Bahn in Vienna.

1. Legends of Vancouver the title page by J.E.H. MacDonald
2. White Spot placemat by L.D.
3. Exposing Myself to Explo by Dr. Arthur Nuko
4. Early Hotel Vancouver pamphlet by artist unknown
5. ALRT by Manfred Stein of AGU.at

All in all, a job well done by all the artists involved! Here’s to the arts in this city, past, present, and future! Want more? You can celebrate the most loved Illustrated Vancouver posts by browsing my own “popular” tag which I aim to give to any post that achieves at least 10 likes or reblogs in its first week of existence.