Matthew Harlan is a Chicago based graphic design and illustrator with a relatively loose and printerly style often anchored by strong geometry. His work includes some excellent silksreened posters.
Fox Harvard is a Florida based photography who is largely self taught. He has an amazing eye for composition and his soft dreamy imagery is oozing with moodiness and style.
Itdrewitself created this timelapse video showing the fires over London after the riots that erupted last week. I have to say that what happened shocked me. I have been thinking of going to England for a week or so this fall just because I enjoyed the time I spent there so much last time I visited. It saddens me to see that the disparity between rich and poor, the uncertainty about the future and the dismal state of the Western economy has inspired the youth to behave so violently. I am surprised something like this hasn’t happened yet in the U.S. Time magazine has already released a cover with the headline ‘The Decline and Fall of Europe”. I hope that isn’t what we are witnessing. I think it’s getting harder to hide the truth that money, economy and trading is all based on a broad assumption of acceptance and agreement in the belief of an orderly system. Intrinsically we all know money has no real value except what value people agree that it has. Maybe the reality is just finally becoming too difficult to uphold and it’s time for a new reality. One thing is for certain the wealth gap has become a real problem and someone has to answer for it. You can fool some people sometime but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
In the meantime, our hearts go out to those that are so angry that they decided to behave in such a manner and our thoughts go equally with those who were injured and robbed. Unfortunately it seems that the anger is once again misdirected and those who should really answer for the current state of affairs are still avoiding justice while we fight amongst ourselves.
Juan Travieso is a young Cuban painter and illustrator with a strange, cubist, psychedelic naturalism to his work that is on trend but still unique. It makes me think a bit of what it might look like if the band MGMT were to paint instead of sing.
“Cezar Berger aka Berje was born in the 90’s, is an illustrator and graphic design student at the Centro Universitário Belas Artes. Inspired by skate culture, DIY, thrash metal, hip hop and the latent violence of life. In his art synthesizes elements in a constant rage state, creating nostalgic compositions and giving new meaning to the signs. Berje creates a repertoire that includes alchemy, black magic, tarot, the new dark age, mayhem and a lot of puke.”
Fun, tongue in cheek and very colorful work from Berje.
Daniel Oeffinger has a bright fun and illustrative body of motion design work as I am sure you can surmise from his reel.
Illustrator Olaf Hajek has a loose, painterly and interpretive style that he crafts to suite the requirements of each project. His work runs through nearly every emotion from light and dreamy to moody and dark.
In a field that is often criticized (and rightly so) as being crass, arrogant and following trends, Wieden Kennedy has long been one of the few agencies that approaches the craft of advertising with maturity, courage and ingenuity. John Jay has been a huge part of their dominance in recent years and his wisdom on this business many of us are engaged in is very much recommended reading. ‘The greatest thing we can offer is to be great listeners’
Mobius is a stop motion piece by Australian environmental design group Eness that was commissioned by the city of Melbourne to take place over two weeks in Federation Square. The result is an optical illusion and a time-lapse of people interacting with the sculpture and moving through Melbourne’s landmark location throughout the day.
Denver’s own Luca Venter has a lush and intimate body of work that focuses on the burgeoning music scene in our fair city. We look forward to seeing more.
I’ve really been enjoying going back through the work of Japanese design giant Tadanori Yokoo and I’m more and more inspired by how much it holds up after 60 years. It’s full of weird, political and often disturbing imagery that reminds you that the world has always been such.
We recently came across the work of Japanese cell animator Mirai Mizue and have been pretty blown away by her body of work. Reminds us a lot of the psychedelic work of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.
“Crystalline”, the new video by Bjork and directed by Michel Gondry is out. There are some cool moments in the piece but I’d have liked to see the stop motion pushed a bit further as well as see Bjork more integrated into environment.
Black Black Hills – “The Celebration” from Blac Ionica on Vimeo.
It’s a celebration bitches! Well this isn’t actually the kind of celebration you might want to be in attendance for. Here is a quote from the creative team involved with directing and producing the video, ‘The Celebration’ is a thematically and emotively dark sounding song. Because of this we wanted to tell a simple but very cinematic and gripping story focusing on the atmosphere of the track without being a literal translation of the lyrics.’ You can catch the rest of the right up here. The video was directed by Blac Ionica.
Pratt graduate Sachin Teng lives in NYC and has some wonderful illustrations in his portfolio that blend a mix of influences, styles and references to modern technological culture that definitely peak the interest in his work. This is some of the best stuff I have seen in the past couple of weeks.
Popshot Magazine has set up a print shop and has stocked up with some nice giclée prints from some excellent artists like Sam Green and My Dead Pony. They are limited to runs of 150 and fairly reasonably priced if you live across the pond.
Safewalls has been releasing some limited edition prints for Cirque du Soleil over the past few months. They have more expensive deluxe prints but also less expensive limited run prints from each artist. There are some great artists involved with the project like Ron English, Miss Van and Tara Mcpherson. The above image is from Ron English’s poster.
Photographer Daniel Shea captures stark, subtley-toned landscapes that present man’s nuanced battle with the industry of his creation. The images are no frills but there is a definite tension bubbling just under the surface.
