Daily

If there’s one thing that definitely flies in today’s fashion world it a touch of the ridiculous (Thom Brown’s maniacal headgear hardly looking out of place on the catwalk in Paris). So we’re pretty sure that Kathleen Kye will fit right in – her menswear makes good use of dramatic silhouettes and is full of visual punnery. The Korean designer likes to poke fun at commercial chic and calls “fun-loving” her design ethos. With three catwalk collections already under her belt and ready-to-wear line just released, she’s well on her way to spreading her feel-good fashion to the masses. (Read more)

With only four days to go until the start of London Fashion Week we can’t get clothes off the brain. 2012, as we know, is quite a special year for our fair city, and the British Fashion Council have taken this on board to create the International Fashion Showcase – a celebration of the games’ “values of international respect, excellence, equality and friendship”. Starting Friday, 19 cultural institutions and embassies across London will host the works of over 80 emerging international designers. We’ve scoured the bunch and each day this week we’ll be bringing you a closer look at one designer we think is doing something different.

In the post BAFTA glow – with the great and good of showbusiness either polishing the famous statuettes along with their egos or telling any entertainment hack that it’s the Oscars that really count – three cheers for Eda Akaltun. The terrifically-talented Turkish-born, London-based illustrator landed the much sought-after commission to represent the five best film nominations (Drive, The Artist, The Help, The Descendants and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and create the tickets for British film’s big night. With elegant restraint she has managed to capture the spirit of each movie with confidence, style and poise. Bravo Eda! (Read more)

We aren’t the only ones with a window at Selfridges – the company’s current Bright Young Things effort is a storefront showcase of new British design talent. I was particularly taken with the work of the ingenious Oliver Ruuger, whose terrifying accessories are everything the fetishistic evil sorceress in me wanted to wear on a Friday night out. A trip to his website informed me of his unusual approach to editorials – choosing this fabulously bearded gentleman (who looks an amazing amount like) as the model for his hand-crafted creations is a bold move. Mr. Ruuger, I might just love you. (Read more)

Who doesn’t like a stunt to give them a good wake up on a Monday morning? Well luckily for you the new Cults record comes with this ace little video from Isaiah Seret with a few beauties – extreme falls, first degree burns and more! Happy Monday sports fans – watch the video here (Via the always excellent Pitchfork)

“It’s all about emotions with records. Emotions and memories.” So says Tom, the owner of the last record shop in the Teesside area of north-east England about this final bastion of all things vinyl, and the same sentence could apply to Jeanie Finlay’s documentary itself. Sound It Out is a film about music that’s not really about music at all, drawn out with wit, intimacy and care. To mark the film’s DVD release, we spoke to Jeanie about how it came about and why Teesside is like "an irritating family member”… (Read more)

Grant Orchard is an award winning director at the design and animation-based Studio AKA, whose short film A Morning Stroll is nominated for a Bafta tonight. Best of luck to him! In our own little way we’ll celebrate this brilliant artist by giving him the chance to share five of his favorite books with you, dear readers. And may I say, it’s a delightful mix of the artistic and the odd (illustration and ping-pong both get a nod). Pure goodness and wisdom from a tirelessly brilliant creator. Read on! (Read more)

When some things become to much, we turn to other things for relief. And that’s why Things is here – to alleviate any leftover hummidy drummidy of your long workin’ week. Yup, it’s Saturday morning and time for your regular dose of wonderful things that remind you of all the fun that’s being had in the world. Our mail gets better every week and once again it was a tough draw – but we’re confident that the line-up we’ve got is more than enough to slake your appetite for all things innovative, original and lovely. (Read more)

Next week is Valentine’s Day and so to get you in a frisky mood, The Weekender has generously agreed to share some of its romance tips. 1. A sexy surprise is rarely appropriate on the bus. 2. NOTHING says commitment like a parsnip soup. 3. “Gosh” is an odd word to use in the bedroom. You’re all welcome. On to business… (Read more)

“I was born and raised in Oregon, living in the suburbs and developing nicely as a loud nerd who drew dragons.” So begins Cari Vander Yacht’s online biography and to be fair, her website gets even better from there. You might know we’re suckers for a good GIF and the Amsterdam-based art director pushed every one of our buttons with these simple, silly animations using old photos. Just be warned – does feature old people snogging…

In every Wes Anderson there is a slow motion scene – FACT – and the best part about the internet is that these facts can be taken on board and ran with. So, if you’re not into montages or funny internet videos look away now (and don’t bother talking to me again). Otherwise, sit back and witness the unholy matrimony of the king of indie cinema and the lord of the slow-mo rap video, Ja Rule. Found via Buzzfeed

Last week we excitingly featured Le Creative Sweatshop’s Jelly and Light. Stylish and well-composed, the images were also surprisingly still. We all know that’s not how jelly naturally behaves. Jelly’s the most erratic of all food stuffs, especially – especially! – when it’s being blown to smithereens by powerful explosives. Ryan Hopkinson, with the help of jelly mongers Bompas and Parr, recently documented the wonderfully ethereal moments at which jelly erupts, and has created a series of images meant, the photographer says, to prompt us all into questioning what exactly it is at the end of our spoons (Read more)

Come get lost in Lottie’s dreams…or are they nightmares? The surreal splendor of her half-asleep, half-awake imagery leaves the viewer full of questions. Every one of her pictures is an unfinished sentence – she keeps us suspended in anticipation, awaiting a resolution (which she cleverly never offers). With theatrical compositions to match that of any set-designer and an uncompromising eye for detail, this Guildford-born photographer just keeps geting better and better. (Read more)

Running in conjunction with the Stockholm Design Week is a beautiful fete called the Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair, and we were lucky enough to hear from four students at Beckmans College of Design who were keen to show us their latest project for the event: Never Mind the Object. It’s a heady assignment that questions our function-based relationship with objects – why do we only appreciate them when they have a purpose? They’ve made three little promo films to introduce the collection which are so good they could almost stand alone. Click through to see them all plus some excellent furniture, of course. (Read more)

Helmut Smits describes himself as a multi-disciplinary visual artist and embraces the full vagueness of this term – not limiting himself to one medium means he’s constantly changing things up, working on a myriad of varying scale projects from furniture and product design to conceptual sculptures and public installations. Since he was last posted, he’s come up with a whole heap of new stuff – as per usual clever observations, commentaries, visual puns, trickery and experiments which not only disrupt our assumptions of objects but assign them new meanings. We caught up with him to talk process. (Read more)

For some of you, Bjorn will need no introduction. You may recognise him from NoBrow’s Gods and Monsters , and I am led to believe he is quite a prominent figure in Bristol’s thriving illustration community. Whether he means to or not, Norway-born Bjorn’s descriptions of his drawings on his website make him sound like the friendliest, nonchalantly-incredible man on the planet, which is odd considering his unbelievably beautiful illustration – you’d forgive him for being arrogant on account of such wonderful skills. (Read more)

From the smug vantage point of the early 21st Century, it’s easy to forget that not that long ago the threat of nuclear destruction was a part of everyday life. These radiation monitoring chats were mostly developed in the 1950s and 1960s and are beautiful examples of how to render complex calculations in a meaningful and readable way. Collected together on the Oak Ridge Associated Universities website they are haunting historical record of a time when the fear of a nuclear holocaust was a humdrum part of our grandparents’ lives. (Read more)

Bülb Grafix (from the excellent team behind Bülb Comix) is made up of French creative duo Mathieu Christe and Nicolas Robel, and they’ve just updated their site. It’s filled with projects that go beneath the high-quality design and into some really great content like visual compendiums and typographic offerings to the marvellous, Designs-of-the-Year-nominated, Photo-Lettering plus, of course, comics! (Read more)

Flicking through the portfolio of Jonathan Burton has the same visceral pleasure as biting into a perfectly ripe peach. Throughout his decade-long evolution as an illustrator he’s aged his craft until achieving perfect maturity – works which blend realism and imagination with studied care. A series of covers for Kingsley Amis is a particular standout – purple moonlight, pallid complexion and carousel-colourful dresses populate this world of ladies and gentlemen, children and cigarettes. Seriously nice stuff. (Read more)

You know that mess of blood and guts and tubes and nodules and organs and other science stuff that makes up our innards? Well American artist Lisa Nilsson has a lovely way of describing it – as “the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body” – and she has has an even more lovely way of capturing it, by quilling Japanese Mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. When we came across her amazingly detailed Tissue Series last week we had to find out more, so we reached out across the water… (Read more)

Last Thursday James Bridle, We all Need Words, and Paul Lewis set the bar very high with an engaging evening of talks tackling varying forms of communication. Cheered by beers, we sat back within the comfy confines of the Ultralounge in Selfridges – recently transformed into an Aladdin’s Cave of bookish delights – to discover more about journalism, branding and publishing. (Read more)

Not to be confused with the Julia Roberts rom-com Eat Pray Love, this small design studio is churning out some brilliant work for high-end brands such as Cacharel, Alexander McQueen and Chloe. Their work is focused around art-directing brand identities to a very high standard – and they really went to town on the launch of the Chloe perfume. They ended up creating a seductive apartment based on the scent to lure in the press for the launch. Fantastic! (Read more)

There’s two things we love about this Swedish design studio currently exhibiting their new line at Stockholm Design Week. Firstly, the clever wordplay in their name, a lovely linguistic trick that has the aded benefit of also making sense. Secondly their Bento line of chairs and tables, combining the “playfulness of mechanical toys and the functionality of Japanese lunch boxes.” Simple, striking design that is assembled with a super straightforward belt-buckle type mechanism, avoiding the flat-pack nightmare of lost screws and strained relationships. (Read more)

Oh my giddy aunt this is terrific. The video for the new Kindness single Gee Up begins as an enjoyably lo-fi if fairly straightforward music video, and then, two minutes in, everything changes. We cut to mockumentary style behind-the-scenes footage casting the band members and some of their hangers-on in wonderfully ridiculous lights. It’s not just clever and funny, it’s also a brave move for a music video to abandon the music half-way through. As an artistic gift, this truly is an act of Kindness.