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Finding it hard to care much about life these days? Let this round-up selection of life-affirmingly creative links and projects bring you back to your old, happy self. Okay, so “life-affirmingly creative” is maybe an exaggeration, but it’s Friday and everyone exaggerates on Friday! Like your mate Craig who said he had fifteen pints that time. He didn’t, Craig’s a liar. Sort your shit life out, Craig.
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Well a very good day to you all. As we wind down to the extended bank holiday weekend we thought we’d throw a podcast your way as you’ve got a three-day weekend in which to enjoy it (perhaps more than once) and think over the news we’ve bestowed upon you. In a radical twist of events your usual host (the silky-voiced Rob Alderson) had to be in New York for the week so we’ve changed things up a bit (not much) with exciting results!
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Fake Paper is a one-(wo)man band multi-disciplinary studio run by graphic designer and illustrator Chloé Desvenain. With a lengthy portfolio, there isn’t anything fake about the quality of Chloé’s work (see what I did there?) . Taken from a variety of projects of illustration, a bunch of identities and posters for a variety of events – Chloé shows us she has a variety of wonderful styles, from simple but effective pictograms to frenzied, colourful illustrations. Really love the new identity developed for Rewrite Magazine, which you can check the rest of it on her site here.
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German Photography paper Der Greif has generated a hard-won reputation for itself over the course of only six issues. Within its pages sit an impressive range of photographers, from the established to the up-and-coming, who all produce exceptional work. But producing a newspaper was never Der Greif’s sole intention and they’ve recently realised the next stage of their ambitious plans and moved into the world of book publishing.
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Six months on from featuring this lovely chap on our site, Alex Gibbs has hopped across the world to do a residency in China, where he has been given a room in The China Academy of Art situated in Hangzhou. He tells us he leads a simple life producing work on unlikely material like newspapers, hotel pads and greaseproof paper. Away from sexual exploitation and other dark things we showed you last year, he has progressed to colour popping scenes of Chinese life.
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“What the heck is going on here!?” is almost definitely what you’re thinking right now. And you’d be right to question your eyes. Devon McFarland’s hastily-composed felt-tip and gouache mashups are pretty bizarre. At first glance (as well as second, third and fourth) it appears as though Devon’s handed some of his sketchbooks to a toddler to furiously colour in; a toddler with great taste in complementary colours and an extremely over-developed sense of humour. Whatever his actual technique may be we love the wilful exuberance of Devon’s work; the angry gnomes and aggressive pieces of fruit – and though we can’t really work out what’s going on either, we honest to God don’t care. It’s great stuff.
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French photographer and graphic designer Alban Grosdidier has decided to submerse his subjects in water for his metaphoric series Drowning. These guys are holding their composure pretty well seeing as there is definitely a claustrophobic feel about them. Not just wanting to get people in the bath, he explains to Galo Magazine what the project means:
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When you’re walking along and you see a pigeon nibbling at some weave-strewn chicken in the gutter, or when you’re watching someone dressed in a Pikachu costume being sick at a party, or browsing the gift section of a provincial corner store, you may be unwittingly witnessing things that Jamie Lee Curtis Taete manages to actually capture with his lens. Most of us pass by these tawdry, depressing sights without a second thought, but it takes someone like him to record it for the good of civilisation.
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As an institute specialising in modern and contemporary American art it seems essential that The Whitney Museum should have an identity that reflects its contemporaneous status, and with plans to expand into a second Manhattan site in 2015 that need seems even more urgent. The Whitney have realised this and have just commissioned Experimental Jetset to revamp and rebrand this established and respected institution, imbuing it with a sense of fun and experimentation that better represents the artists on display. The Whitney’s new logo mark, a malleable ‘W’, is a bold, confident symbol that can be reimagined and reinterpreted to suit the museum’s diverse needs. There’s not many institutions that would embrace such a fluid identity but it’s testament to The Whtney’s ambition that they’ve opted for something so bold.
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To conclude our speaker profiles for Here 2013 we present to you multi-award-winning international stage and costume designer Es Devlin. Her stunning work spans a number of genres: from film and TV to music, dance and theatre.
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We Cross The Line have already demonstrated that they’re more than capable of producing engaging short documentaries but now the small team of Belgian and Italian film-makers have branched out into new territory, producing their first ever music video. Uncomfortable follows a similar recipe to their documentary work – find someone who’s naturally interesting and point the camera at them – and manages to match the music incredibly well. So prepare to meet Emiliano, a Michael Jackson impersonator from Rome who honours the King of Pop on the city’s streets on a daily basis, albeit with a cheeky little belly that’s more akin to another King.
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This week we were all talking about Tim Peake being the first UK astronaut to visit the space station out in…outer space, so in honour of his bravery we decided to make our monthly playlist SPACE themed! Not necessarily all relating to outer space, some of these songs hark back to the feeling of being in a teenage bedroom, getting out and about in the great outdoors or even just being in your trusty old house. Apart from Holly, our intern, she chose Modjo’s “Lady (Hear me Tonight)” because that would be what she’d want to hear if she was flying through space on her own. Fair enough. Here it is!
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She’s back! Gracia Lam, born in Hong Kong and now living in Canada, has updated her portfolio with some delights. Still in her brilliant style we loved so much last year, you cannot deny Gracia is consistently hitting the nail on the head. Her portfolio is brimming with impressive clients like The New Yorker and Random House, and she has won a bunch of awards too. Simple with surprising depth, her illustrations are colourful yet do not detract from the brief given – it definitely seems like no challenge is too big for Gracia.
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It’s not abnormal to enjoy exhibitions, after all, thats the idea but when you come across a show that blows your mind to smithereens – now that’s uncommon. This is how I felt when I attended Michael Landy’s “Saints Alive” at the National Gallery. Armed only with the knowledge that Michael had “constructed robotic saints that move around,” I had no idea what to expect.
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British music festivals take note, this is the second excellent identity for a Scandinavian festival we’ve featured this week.THIS WEEK. Those Finns and Norwegians are having a blinder. The first came from Santtu Mustonen and Flow festival and this one arrived direct from Non-Format, who have produced a selection of anthropomorphic robotic faces for this year’s Only Connect Festival of Sound, this year themed around Machine Dreams. The illustration and design work is all top notch and we must confess we’re excited by the programme, which looks like a covetable piece of print in its own right. Come on Glastonbury, you know what to do; that little ring of dancing men won’t cut it forever.
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Not often does a video simultaneously make James Cartwright admit feeling that he’d rather be a girl than a boy (finally) and also make me genuinely want to participate in competitive sport – but this one did. This was released a few months back, but because I only ever witnessed it in the five seconds before a YouTube clip until I could skip, it meant it was never watched in full. The first time I actually did, I watched it three times in a row.
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Ahoy there students! We’ve got another announcement for you. You know how just there other day we launched our Represent-sponsored The Graduates 2013? In all the excitement you probably thought we’d forgotten about Student of The Month didn’t you? But we haven’t – not at all – and in the relentless fashion of one of our favourite monthly features it’s back for May 2013. As ever, the deadline is tight (you’ve got until next Tuesday, May 28) but we’ve got every faith in you, so get sending in your work!
