For only $1,626 (that’s about £822 in old money), David Horvitz will travel to a small Okinawan island called Iriomote and send you an envelope filled with star sand. It doesn’t take a financial genius to realise this is nothing but a solid gold investment. Thanks to Frances for the tip over at the Facebook group.
Over the course of seven years It’s Nice That has been providing creative inspiration on a daily basis through our website, our publications and our events programme. But never ones to rest on our laurels, we are always reviewing what we do and how we do it. This is where you (hopefully!) come in. As part of our ongoing development of the It’s Nice That platforms, we’re super-keen to find out a bit more about who you are and find out what you like about the website, what you don’t and what you might like to see in the future. This way we can move It’s Nice That forward with plans that put our readers front and centre.
If ever the high and the low brow were to come together in the project of my dreams, it would look like this series by James Kerr, AKA Scorpion Dagger. The artist and frighteningly capable GIF wizard has struck an absolute goldmine with his website devoted to Renaissance artworks reworked into outrageously funny GIFs. In case you’re not persuaded, this isn’t the equivalent of an Oprah hairflick or Barack Obama looking at a fly; these GIFs have narratives, they have beginnings, middles and ends, they have multiple settings and jokes and punchlines and they are almost too good to be true.
There’s a day for for everything now; and last week we all celebrated World Emoji Day didn’t we? What do you mean you didn’t know? Seems pretty remiss of you if you don’t mind me saying. Anyway luckily the excellent folk over at Funny Or Die were much more on the ball than some people we won’t name and they marked the momentous occasion with a ridiculously silly blog of Rejected Emojis. With the help of Jesse Benjamin, Avery Monsen and Darryl Gudmundson, they compiled a Tumblr of offerings which ranged from the surreal to the sinister, the bizarre to the almost-could-be-true. That sad clown will haunt my dreams.
It’s common for people to imagine that they see faces made out of the shapes and folds of everyday objects: It seems to be a human trait that we like to see ourselves in the world around us. We look up at the clouds and imagine that we see the outlines of faces and body parts, and at night we convince ourselves that a rumpled item of clothing thrown over a chair is really a sinister grinning figure.
Well, this is terrifying. Internet-loving artist Mario Santamaria has taken advantage of Google’s scheme to take the world into art galleries and ornate buildings all over the world by collecting screenshots of moments where the Google camera catches its own reflection in a mirror. Ghostly figures interact with the camera in some shots, and in others the machinery is draped with a weird silver cloth – first prize goes to the person who can identify what this cloth actually does. For me this is the best Google-related blog since Jon Rafman’s 9 Eyes and is hopefully a new dawn for simple, spine-tingling projects that linger with you just a smidge longer than you’d like.
Webcomics are another medium to emerge from the digital sphere, and a very interesting one at that; Bird’s Eye China is just another example of how funny, accessible and scathing they can be. The Tumblr blog is made up of screenshots from Baidu maps, a kind of Chinese online mapping service not dissimilar to Google Maps, but brilliantly, looks just like SimCity.
“The sun is always rising somewhere; breakfast is always just about to happen. Dinner time in Dakar is breakfast time in Brisbane. And in the background of breakfast is radio, soundtrack to a billion bowls of cereal or congee, shakshuka or api, porridge or changua.” Well, we certainly couldn’t have put that any better ourselves. Global Breakfast Radio arrived in my inbox courtesy of ex-It’s Nice That writer Bryony Quinn. The concept is simple and immediately engrossing: a live radio that streams breakfast shows from around the world as and when they happen. In their own words, “it’s the equivalent of a plane flying west with the sunrise, constantly tracking the chatter and music of people across the planet.”
Creative briefs come in all shapes and sizes, but opportunities to create work for one of the most popular and ubiquitous brands in there world don’t come round very often. That’s what makes this one so exciting, with our friends over at Talenthouse on the hunt for artists, designers, filmmakers and animators to create artwork for Spotify’s new #nowfeeling campaign which is built on the way music inspires and informs our relationships with the world, and each other.
The amount of games out there is fairly mind-boggling and there are new ones flooding the market all the time. In the face of this kind of overload what’s needed are curators; people who know what they’re talking about, who can be trusted and who have great taste. Step forward then Cowboy Picks, a new archive of “inspiring game design” put together by the fine folks behind interaction design agency Hover Studio and animation production company Animade.
It’s a universally acknowledged truth that the week back to work after a long weekend drags like no other, so with that in mind, we’re bringing you some light entertainment to break up your Thursday afternoon and while away the hours until Friday hits.
The average Beyoncé fan’s repertoire is fairly complete, as far as these things go; on top of the extensive merchandise and the dedicated online community (the Beyhive) there are bookmarked folders full to the brim with Tumblrs and fan-sites and even a dedicated Soundboard. What they don’t have, however, is an art gallery full of the one woman superstar’s family portraits. Or they didn’t, at least. They do now.
Few brands have a stronger association with brilliant British design than Jaguar and so the chance to customise its latest model is a pretty spectacular one. But at next month’s Clerkenwell Design Week one creative will get that opportunity, with the final piece becoming one of the centrepieces of the much-respected design festival.
Three instalments in and we’re still enthused by The Guardian’s street view series, in which a Google Street View specialist takes iconic images and recreates them using everybody’s favourite maps service. This time around they’ve recreated classic album artworks through the service, hunting down the original locations of such covers as The Beatles’ Abbey Road, Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. It’s a super-fun project, and a true testament to their specialist’s dedication! I wonder how many hours you’d have to spend staring at your computer screen before you start to visualise that tiny orange man hovering above the pavement as you walk down the road…
