-
New York City is one of those places, like London, where there are just too many people and at any point you may suddenly be engulfed by a mass of tourists, commuters and others about their daily business. This is when Amani Willett takes the opportunity to capture the dynamics of your average crowd, revealing a world of outrage, frustration and solemn expressions. Amani believes “the beauty of a photograph is that it can compel us to re-examine seemingly mundane scenes and events of everyday life.” With compositions you wouldn’t think would work, touché Amani.
-
Can you recall your final hours before the D&AD deadline? Were your sweating, shaking hands clutching a blunt scalpel in a last, desperate attempt to get that binder as perfect as possible? Horrible. Scott Carthy and Ben Pender on the other hand were probably two pints deep at the SU at this point, laughing about their absolute triumph of a film.
-
Advertisement
-
Poor balance and an inability to wear beanies convincingly has always kept me from skateboarding. As a naive teenager I once pinched a friend’s deck for all of five minutes before planting my chin on tarmac and giving up the idea of ollies and kick flips forever (I’ve still got the lingo though, am I right!?). Still, there’s a part of me that’s painfully aware that I missed out on some good vibes by forgoing skateboarding in my formative years and these images from Richard Gilligan rub salt in that smarting wound.
-
Nothing intrigues us more than a crazy criminal, and the same can be said for Sean Lewis, whose intricate illustrations are of the dark humour variety. Hailing from Toronto, Sean won the gold medal at The Ontario College of Art and Design for these drawings of dangerous outlaws and that is no surprise. Whether they depict Andreas Yates who suffered from dementia and, under a warped religious vision, drowned her children in the tub or John Torrio, a well-known Italian mobster in New York City, these richly coloured illustrations infuse just the right amount of monstrous and darn right beguiling.
-
I could try and explain this to you using some wacky It’s Nice That jargon, but to be honest the blurb beneath Tom Jobbins incredible mixed-media video sums it up better than I ever could. “In 1977 NASA sent a Golden Record into space. It encapsulated the greatest achievements of humanity, and included photographs of its species. One of these photos is of Larry, he hopes this will propel him to
the status of Earth Ambassador. This is Larry’s intergalactic story of life and love.” And what a story! Tom is seriously good at animation, so to combine this talent with the tale of humans catapulting a golden record of their achievements into the stratosphere is a winning combo. Definitely worth a watch! -
Jacopo Servitano, a graphic designer from Germany, has designed these brilliant posters and flyers for Rome-based party promotors Beat Up! Striking to say the least, these colourful graphics have a wide range of inspiration, from art deco to geometry. Jacopo also likes to play with symmetry in his illustrations, adding a subtle simplicity to the designs. With promotional posters like these, you’ll be hitting up Beat Up!‘s parties all the time – looks like I’m coming to Rome!
-
It’s not very often that grown women and men alike can be reduced to tears with a few select lines of heartfelt prose, rarer still that that prose should develop into a superbly illustrated graphic novel, the contents of which are by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. But Anders Nilsen has managed to create such a work; a rare beast of autobiographic narrative that’s both deeply tragic and wonderfully life-affirming.
-
They say that girl power died when the Spice Girls’ Viva Forever was cancelled due to bad ticket sales , but nuh uh! Ryan Kenny smashes up anti-girl power theories with his trusty camera that basically turns every girl it fires a shot at into a hilarious, roll-up smoking, rock diving, water fight starting, firework lighting girl.
-
Adam Avery popped into our lives via email last week with his portfolio absolutely brimming with fantastic editorial illustrations. Adam’s work is made up of the magic combination of clever ideas delivered with a really strong style that he must have been working on for a while. The friendly, colourful nature of the work is like a commissioner’s dream, and has brought him jobs such as editorials for The Guardian and some striking imagery for Earthday 2013. There’s nothing available in his online shop at the moment which is a bit of shame, but let’s hope he makes some t-shirts, prints and postcards asap so we can spend our hard-earned cash on it immediately.
-
Set up by Korean photographer Ji Yeo, The Beauty documents the increasing importance of self improvement in Korea specifically women, who are falling pray to the ideal image personified by the media. These portraits bare all the scars, bruises and pain these women have to go through to make themselves “beautiful”. In a world where looks are more important than personality, the sombre attitude of these women sitting in their hotel rooms shows the powerful influence of the media and whether the individuals wanted to have it or not.
-
Santtu Mustonen’s visuals for Tsto’s 2011 Flow Festival identity were an absolute belter, his organic forms lending an element of tangible excitement to the event’s print and digital collateral. Two years on he’s back with more, for the 2013 instalment, and they’re looking just as slick as before. This time Santtu seems to be drawing inspiration from plant life, creating vibrant flora with his trademark combination of painterly skill and digital software. The colours exploding from these images are an intense visual treat with just the right amount of modern psychedelia to be perfect for Helsinki’s biggest music festival. Also, it’s del worth taking a look at his recent work for Zeit Magazin; similarly brilliant stuff!
-
As a religious Radio 4 listener I’m constantly troubled by the appearance of The Archers twice daily, interrupting the station’s otherwise exciting range of shows. When the theme music starts I’m quick to switch the volume off, but I’ve often wished for a more literal way to put a cork in my least favourite radio drama (nobody cares what’s going on down on that bloody farm).
-
Who said that the only way to get your music out was through the internet? Whoever it was obviously didn’t speak to Kanye West, who this weekend, ‘premiered’ his single New Slaves onto 66 different public buildings across the globe. Bystanders from Brooklyn to Sydney gawped at an oversized, front-on depiction of one of the most powerful men in music for the duration of his latest single – and the raw, personal effect has led to a ripple of individual anecdotes being spread internet-wide. Smart.
-
Still not accustomed to the new-look Weekender? Finding it hard to navigate the choppy waters of loosely art and design-related nonsense? What’s wrong with you? It’s really quite simple! You see we start with six articles you DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT MISS THIS WEEK, follow it up with a look at the week’s physical, through-the-letterbox post and then launch ourselves whole-heartedly into the novelty dregs of the beautiful internet. Think of it as the weekend supplement of your favourite newspaper except without any recipes for celeriac and kale breakfast bars or sentimental adverts for expensive watches. It’s the cat’s pyjamas! (If you still don’t get it there’s really no hope for you).
-
Before you think this is some snide, acidic response to the reams and reams of girls doing selfies on Tumblr, it’s not. It’s the new project of nice man and illustrator Jon Burgerman. We don’t know much about his selection process, but he’s basically just taken classic Tumblr shots of girls, with Harry Styles, with a handbag, doing a mirror shot, wearing an ironic jumper etc. etc. and he’s drawn them in luminous, fun colours. Once he’s selected a girl and drawn her portrait he then puts it back on to Tumblr to create a cycle of internet content. It’s so great, isn’t it, the internet, it’s just full of good stuff like this.
-
It’s competition time again kids and the good folks over at One Word Brief are offering you the chance to have your creative talents showcased in a beautiful book. Whether you’re a photographer, designer, illustrator or film-maker, One Word Brief want to see your creative responses to a single word – in this instance ‘Be’. Your ideas can be as left-field and unusual as you like as long as they’re completely original and show off the best of your abilities.
-
You’re probably thinking; “Does graphic design really have the ability to make me drool?” The answer is yes, yes it does. And this is currently due to Somewhere Else, a Singaporean graphic design studio and their rebranding for Foodology; a restaurant made up of nine different food stations so the idea was to create a flexible identity that can morph to fit their multi-faceted personality. Full of simple, effective graphics tied together with a traditional stamp symbol, and finished off with touch of vintage – this is tasty graphic design in its most literal form.
