Tag: inspiration

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inspiration

Video games vs Penguin Classics

Olly Moss (a hugely talented illustrator and graphic designer, which I’ve had the good fortune to recently discover) created these redesigned covers for a number of his favourite video games, inspired by Romek Marber’s classic designs for Penguin Books in the 1960’s. This seemingly unsuited clash of mediums works so well, no doubt aided by the supreme wit and iconic cult references in Olly’s work. He’s als0 redesigned posters for classic films in his “Films in Black and Red” series, which, needless to say, are ace.

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inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Ancient Lights, City Shadows

A collaborative eBook produced as a result of our City As Material: Skyline event, Ancient Lights, City Shadows features mixed media collected on the day and material we were inspired to create after our wander through the city.

Adorning the cover is one of Martin Fidler’s intricate skyline drawings, opposed with an ambiguous photograph of Tower 42, taken from ground level, looking up – once the image is reversed, it resembles surreal train tracks, running into the horizon. Flowing throughout the book are two lines, mapping our elevation over distance and over duration, captured via a iPhone GPS / Altitude app. They stream through notebook scraps and photos, providing a locational narrative – we liked the idea of extending and distorting this digital data into an abstract visual, creating our own man-made skyline for the backdrop of the eBook.

Read Ancient Lights, City Shadows below, using our online bookreader, or download on Diffusion.

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inspiration

Writer App

Instead of featuring a publication today, I’m looking at something which might aid in creating one. Writer, by Information Architects, is an ultra minimal word processing application for Mac and iPad, designed to hold your attention purely on the task at hand – writing. It has no formatting options, one font, one size, and can be set to focus only on the sentence you’re currently working on, fading the rest of the text out, so you “think, spell and write one sentence at a time”. I’ve been using TextEdit recently to compose any creative pieces I’ve been working on (often, handwritten first, then edited in) to avoid distractions, so I can appreciate Writer’s intention. We’ve recently got an iPad 2 in the studio, so I might have a tinker with this – I can imagine it would be useful for writing on the fly during City As Material events or whilst lounging in the studio, free from the dreaded desk and it’s vast, blank screen!

iA Writer for Mac from Oliver Reichenstein on Vimeo.

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inspiration

“Four Twenty” Zine by Alexander McLuckie

Another zine from Holy Ghost, this time from one of its founders, photographer Alexander McLuckie. A 20 page, black and white photography zine, each copy of Four Twenty has a uniquely coloured cover in various vivid shades. Check the image of a bunch of them stacked in a box – a paper rainbow!

Available via the Holy Ghost Shop.

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inspiration

“False Dichotomy” by Junyi Wu

Whilst perusing Etsy for interesting zines, I was taken aback by the amazing False Dictotomy by illustrator Junyi Wu, filled with sombre, yet beautiful black and white artwork, paired with scrawled passages from the work of poet Emily Dickinson. The pen and ink illustrations of flora are set against sparse white backgrounds that highlight their delicate intricacy, occasionally clouded by expressionistic smudges. Junyi describes False Dictotomy as “journal-like” – the handwritten excerpts, complete with mistakes and ink blots, adds to this feel and gives the artwork, despite its still-life subject matter, an emotional intensity that is captivating.

Preview it here, and buy it from her Etsy store.

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inspiration

Bianca Chang paper sculpture video

a few weeks ago Haz posted about the exquisite hand-cut paper sculptures of Bianca Chang – today I came across a video of stopmotion builds of various pieces for a recent paper festival in Sydney:

Bianca Chang – Recent Works, June 2011 from Bianca Chang on Vimeo.

Stop-motion builds and photos of recent works created for Sydney’s A4 Paper Festival 31st May – 5th June presented by the Paper Convention. All photos by Jacob Ring.

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inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Beasts and Super-Beasts

A collection of 36 short stories by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), each an individual eBook, the tales in Beasts and Super-Beasts deal mainly with “the presence or role of an animal and its relationship to the humans in the narrative, acutely dissecting their foibles and pretensions” (an exquisite summary by Giles there). They’re in a similar vein to Aesop’s Fables, albeit shifting the focus from the characteristics of animals as analogies for the noble ways people should behave, to the sharp satire of existing human behavior. First published in 1914, two years before Saki’s death, they can now be freely published, re-printed and read due to the expiration of copyright – generally 70 years after the author’s death in the United Kingdom. In this manner, older texts that might otherwise remain undiscovered by contemporary readers, can be openly enjoyed and shared through modern distribution models and publishing platforms like bookleteer and Diffusion.

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inspiration

“Sculptural Photo Albums”

Courtesy of FastCoDesign, I came across this cleverly designed photo album, a corner of which doubles as a stand, allowing it to balance upright in a striking pose. The unusual, dynamic design of “The Whole Story” encourages people to pick it up and leaf through, physically engaging with snapshot memories of their lives and others. Despite the stonking price tag, it’s designer Debra Folz’s intention is admirable; to change our current cursory engagement with digital photography (albeit the range of interactive iPad / iPhone photo albums and similar gadgets) and the way images are shared – placing them into the hands of friends and family has more emotional resonance than simply e-mailing or posting links, surely?

Check it out here.

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inspiration

Holy Ghost Zine

Unusually for an online zine, Holy Ghost, “a platform for artists across the world to show their work”, have also released three print volumes of art and photography by their various contributors. It’s interesting that a collective that initially started with an online medium (generally chosen as an alternative to print for whatever reasons), decided to go down the paper-based route as well – highlighting the still present value and popularity of printed publications. Holy Ghost also occasionally host work in gallery and project spaces, so it would be fair to say they’ve effectively become curators as well. Unfortunately, it seems the print zines have all sold out, but you can still take a peek at their shop here.

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inspiration

Typographic Paper Sculptures

I bring you another paper based marvel. Bianca Chang has crafted these 3-D paper sculptures of letters, laying subtly different HAND-CUT sheets on top of each other – no laser cutting or 3-D printing here. They have a marvelous depth that draws the eye in and around the texture created by the layering effect, which almost resembles reams of spun yarn – albeit knitted by M.C Escher.