George Lois

• Posted by Will 2 September 2010

It’s fair to say I probably wasn’t as familiar with George Lois’ work as maybe I should have been. Among a plethora of big jobs he was responsible for the ‘I Want My MTV’ campaign as well as the initial advertising campaign for Tommy Hilfiger but what you’ll probably best know George Lois for are some of the 92 covers he designed for Esquire Magazine, including these two iconic images pictured here.

Zut Alors

• Posted by Bryony 2 September 2010

This ambiguous little link was attached to an email I received this week from Zut Alors in New York. I won’t say much more about what happens when you click it other than stick with it because it’s sort of brilliant. Their website is a covertly overt (or vice versa) place where the work is as surprising and varied as it is playful. ”! is for!”.

World Basketball Festival: Make Something Workshops

• Posted by Will 1 September 2010

Just over two weeks ago, Nike, Converse and the Jordan brand launched the inaugural World Basketball Festival in New York. The creativity went well beyond the basketball court though and saw the most recent series of the Make Something workshops take place.

Started in 2008 the The Make Something Workshops bring in some of the world’s best artists and designers working today and gives local teenagers a once in a lifetime opportunity to participate and learn from them. We caught up with founder Aaron Rose to find out more. (Read more)

It's Nice That Issue #4

• Posted by Will 1 September 2010

It fills us with immense pleasure to announce that our fourth printed publication, Issue #4 is now available to pre-order. Full details are listed on our dedicated Issue #4 page.

We can reveal that we have interviews with the likes of Nick Knight, Neville Brody and Miranda July as well as features by Adam Buxton and Sara de Bondt among others. The work section is brimming with top work and to continue the trend with previous issues, all orders placed in the next month (before midnight on 30 September) will receive a special screenprint from James Jarvis, commissioned especially for the issue.

Márton Koppány

• Guest posted by Steven Fowler 1 September 2010

Márton Koppány has been producing work of immense quality in the field of visual poetry for over thirty years. His work is led by a suspicion and engagement with the limits of language and verbal expression, and maintains a incisiveness that always attracts me. There’s really great work coming out of Europe at the moment, there is a renaissance in visual poetry and he is at the forefront.

Inventory Studio Updates

• Posted by Alex 1 September 2010

Fantastic website re-jig from Londoners Inventory Studio. A scary amount of work being down by these two, very talented young guys and well worth a good chunk of your time this morning. I’m sure they’ll be many envious eyes at various design studios the world over this morning.

Kim Høltermand

• Posted by Bryony 1 September 2010

Nice and fresh update from Kim Høltermand and his rather beautiful portfolio. Reminiscent of sci-fi and fantasy landscapes, his new series Tuve includes a collection of brilliantly captured rocks that hang suspended in an air-water ether like satellites.

The Artist Is Present—Portraits

• Posted by Alex M 31 August 2010

Earlier this year, performance artist Marina Abramović did surprising things to people by doing nothing much at all. And while she sat in a chair in a MoMA gallery, sometimes staring, sometimes not, Marco Anelli went about photographing everybody who visited, creating a body of work hugely appealing in the way it captures human variety, both physical and emotional. (Read more)

Ragnhildur Jóhanns

• Guest posted by Steven Fowler 31 August 2010

Ragnhildur Jóhanns is a unique craftswoman, and a really exciting poetic presence emerging from Iceland. She creates poem objects, pure concrete poems, that is literally fashioning books out of her work and embodying the text. A really gifted and vital approach to poetry.

Lissie Weather

• Posted by Alex 31 August 2010

My weekly music video has been a little delayed this week due to the bank holiday weekend, but to make up for it I’ve got a corker. American singer/songwriter Lissie’s new track, Cuckoo, has been masterminded by creative directors Phil Clandillon and Steve Milbourne in the form of an interactive music video, which is controlled by live weather data.

The video uses the Google Maps API, a live weather feed and (optional) HTML5 geo-location, was shot in-camera with no post production and looks pretty sparkling. We were exctied to know more, so we grabbed Phil for a little chat. (Read more)

Chris Milk: The Wilderness Downtown

• Posted by Will 31 August 2010

This has been doing the rounds on social networking sites as well as many of the popular design and music blogs over the last 24 hours and rightly so. Written and directed by Chris Milk The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive, data-driven Chrome Experiment using HTML5 video, audio, and canvas. More than that it is a stunning example of a viral campaign that is engaging beyond 30 seconds and actually surprises you. It’ll take no more than five minutes out of your day but I guarantee you’ll be talking about it for the rest of the week.

Bob Cobbing

• Guest posted by Steven Fowler 30 August 2010

Cobbing is one of the greatest British poets of the twentieth century and without his work, concrete and avant garde poetry as it is today would not be wholly possible. I have always been indelibly drawn to the humour in his poetry, how it accompanies his verbal sophistication and irrepressible energy. He achieves what so much smarmy mainstream poetry cannot – a true sense of Britishness, the banality, the irony, the fugue of England.

Aakash Nihalani: Updates

• Posted by Will 30 August 2010

One of our favourite New York street artists Aakash Nihalani has updated his site with some new works including Starecse I, Around from earlier this year situated in Brooklym (pictured). Since I last checked his site he has installed as far a field as Delhi and Vienna as well as getting magkinetic.com up and running featuring three series of digital artworks. Well worth a check.

Steven Fowler

• Posted by Alex 30 August 2010

This week’s guest post is a bit of an unusual one for It’s Nice That. Instead of plucking someone from the design world, we turn this week to poet Steven Fowler. An advocate of concrete poetry, which is verse in “the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.” (Thanks Wikipedia) As an authority on the subject and respected pensmith, we’re excited about a week full of words.

Things

• Posted by Bryony 28 August 2010

For your weekly helping of Things we have an unintentional homage to all things hand drawn… (Read more)

Sac Magique

• Posted by Bryony 27 August 2010

The best sort of weird coming out in the illustrative powers of Sac Magique. From the real and imagined characters and beasts that populate his work, I can only bring to your attention all the lovely details and special use of colour – it’s up to you to make sense of it. Have fun!

Derek Boshier

• Guest posted by Rose Blake 27 August 2010

Derek became known as a 60’s pop artist, and has been prolific ever since. I think that his paintings and ink drawings are so inspiring. He also sends the most amazing hand drawn letters to his friends, in beautiful envelopes covered in his drawings. These would make a brilliant book.

Judith Seng

• Posted by Will 27 August 2010

Nice work from Berlin based artist and designer Judith Seng. Her Trift (pictured) and Rise projects both aim to “explore the idea of perfect, high-gloss surfaces by creating and destroying them within the same object. Each form and surface derives from the individual size, characteristics and gradual transformations over time of the underlying tree-log.”

Simen Johan

• Posted by Alex 27 August 2010

Poor rat. Poor, poor rat. Chances are you have no idea what I’m talking about, because the pictured photograph by Sinem Johan is so wonderfully abstract that you hadn’t even noticed that this was two snakes fighting over a furry feast. I thought it was some kind of odd cow’s tail at first, but I digress, you can find the shot in the Swedes 2007-2009 collection.

Maxence Cyrin

• Posted by Alex M 26 August 2010

The focus of Maxence Cyrin’s work is twofold. First he creates piano equivalents of (semi) contemporary pop songs before setting the arrangements to scenes taken from classic/cult films. The results are wonderful re-interpretations, not only of the music, but also of its original visual accompaniment. Featured is Cyrin’s cover of The Pixies’ Where Is My Mind, set to various scenes taken from The Mysterious Lady, a silent film starring Greta Garbo, first released in 1928.

Robyn Hitchcock

• Guest posted by Rose Blake 26 August 2010

Robyn Hitchcock is a neighbour of my mum and dads. I always see him on Chiswick high road wearing purple coudroy trousers, a green checked shirt and round sunglasses. Apart from that, his music is amazing. Start listening to the album ‘Fegmania’ by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, and ‘Underwater Moonlight’ by The Soft Boys soon as you can. He also puts on amazing secret concerts at the Three Kings in Clerkenwell.

Josef Schulz

• Posted by Will 26 August 2010

Wow. Josef Schulz has got some stunning work. Predominantly architectural and landscape photography the Polish photographer is now based in Düsseldorf and his Sign Out series (pictured) from last year is a particular favourite. Found via FormFiftyFive.

Özant Kamaci

• Posted by Alex 26 August 2010

This is a stone cold classic. Toronto resident and Central St.Martins graduate Özant Kamaci (not to dumb it down) takes photos of planes as they slip behind trees on the landscape. “Planes behind trees as individual objects are familiar and common, but when combined and interrelated, the viewer moves to a new space to behold the unexpected.” You can say that again.

Drzach & Suchy

• Posted by Bryony 25 August 2010

Thru Religion (pictured) is a piece from Drzach & Suchy’s newest project, Shadow Clouds. The seemingly random ‘cloud’ of shadowy elements, depending on the angle of illumination, will allow a shape or letter to be cast as either the source of light or the cloud itself moves. It’s instant gratification each time the image emerges, very pleasing and intricate.

Mike Redmond

• Guest posted by Rose Blake 25 August 2010

Mike is in my year at the RCA. We are working on a book together at the moment, about the lives of two schoolchildren. His drawings and ideas are strange and intense.

Richard Mosse

• Posted by Will 25 August 2010

Irish photographer Richard Mosse hasn’t had the most straightforward journey to becoming a photographer but it seems to be paying dividend as his portfolio is bursting at the seems with stunning shots.

Born in Dublin, he grew up in County Kilkenny before studying a BA in English Literature and a Masters in Cultural Studies from the London Consortium. Upon completion he pursued a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Goldsmiths before finally earning an MFA in Photography from Yale University School of Art. Pictured is 707 Damascus, from January 2008 and the series The Fall.

Everynone: Words

• Posted by Alex 25 August 2010

Everynone are a production studio split across New York and L.A, and their film Words (to accompany Radiolab’s Words episode) has been viewed by more people that you could possibly imagine. I’d guess that a piece of moving image with over 100,000 views on Vimeo was employing some kind of shock tactics or clever ‘viral’ trick, but no. It’s just a wonderful visual word association game.

David Byrne

• Guest posted by Rose Blake 24 August 2010

David Byrne’s journal is the most interesting thing on the internet, he is a great writer. He also releases a themed radio playlist every month, which is unpretentious and inspiring.

It's Nice That Shop

• Posted by Will 24 August 2010

We’ve added a few new products to the It’s Nice That Shop including more of the fantastic Print Liberation T-shirts and the second issue of Australian design magazine Process Journal. Other additions including MVSICA, a new limited CD project from Fine Art Recordings and Demelza Hill’s latest innovative product, Pint of Light, an ivory candle in the style of a traditional pint jug.