Review of the Year: Here's the penultimate instalment of the top 100!

Date
31 December 2013

Teenage years might be little more than a series of impassioned hobbies, angry Nirvana anthems and clumsy snogs to some, but the penultimate instalment of our top 100 means more than that to us. It’s packed full of art and design greatness! We’re like the advent calendar that you get to enjoy ten chocolate reindeer at a time! Without further ado, then, here are ten more metaphorical cardboard doors for you to rip off, you lucky sons of guns…

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Seetal Solanki: Textile Design

Seetal Solanki first wandered serenely into our digital life back in April, when her impressive client list and incredible nuanced textile design proved her to be a very skilled new arrival. She’s since made her presence known in our print one, too, with her art direction for new magazine Alvar. AND she wrote a piece for our last issue of Printed Pages about her love for her headphones.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/seetal-solanki

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Mrs James Ward Thorne: Miniature Houses

Look at this incredible house! And then look at it again, with the knowledge that it is actually a miniature replica made at the scale of one inch to one foot, and try not to let your mouth flop open in awe. Created by Narcissa Ward Thorne (more commonly known as Mrs James Ward Thorne) during the 1920s and 1930s, they’re a staggering reminder of how much you can do with how little photography, and a welcome entry in the top 100!
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/mrs-james-ward-thorne

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Maya Fuhr: Garbage Girls

If you think about possessions as a giant web of reference that you choose to surround yourself with, these photographs of girls living in unbelievably messy bedrooms seem less like filthy, lazy adolescents and more like culturally rich, informed examples of adolescent curation. Ultimately you can call them what you like, we love these photographs and seeing as they were the 18th most viewed thing on the site this year, it seems that you do too!
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/maya-fuhr

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Dominic Owen: Untitled (Detail)

The ultra talented Peckham-based Dominic Owen gifted us with hip hop, atheism and funny beaked people in the form of his vector-based illustration this year, and was duly repaid work for clients including Wrap magazine, YCN and Nike, not to mention being crowned the grand old number 17 on the most read articles of the year (which I’m sure is number one in his list of achievements).
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration-dominic-owen

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Skip Hursh: Off Screen 2 (detail)

Behold the fruits of animator and designer Skip Hursh’s personal projects; a series of large-scale brush and ink drawings created for a group show called Off Screen II. Big, colourful, abstract and playful, he ticked a bunch of boxes in 2013. We’re holding out to see him cross off some more next year.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/skip-hursh

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Delaney Allen

There’s no shame in admitting it _ we bloody love a visual illusion, which explains why we became so obsessed with photographer Delaney Allen’s work this year. Galaxies made from glitter on cloth, cream spillages transformed into cascading waterfalls; nothing is safe from transformation by his lens, and you’ll have a hard time believing he took this pictures on his kitchen table.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/delaney-allen

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Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton: Typewriter Drawings

This is potentially one of the most charming projects of this year. Good friends Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton took to sending each other pictures made by untraditional use of a typewriter, never expecting that their collection would end up so extensive or so funny that they’d share it with the rest of the world. Check out the post to see the results (fingernails and toenails get my vote).
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/typewriter-drawings

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Joan Cornellà: Hoppity

Filthy, funny, crude and rude – what’s not to love about Joan Cornellà’s hilarious work? Complete with impeccably drawn syringes, tampons, pink bears and poos it is an acquired taste – one that fortunately we have, and seeing as it reached the glittering number 13 on our top 100 articles list, you lot must have too.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/beautifully-crude-rude-and-lewd-comics-from-joan-cornella

John Lewis divided the nation like Marmite this year with their annual Christmas ad, this time a (sickeningly?) sweet skit about a bear woken from hibernation to enjoy Christmas with his friend the hare. Think what you like about the ad, it’s hard to watch it in the same way once you’ve seen this “making of” clip by Elliot Dear and Yves Geleyn of Blinkink/Hornet, who were responsible for the animation. The pain-staking stop motion process is incredibly impressive to watch.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/making-of-bear-and-hare

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Edward Monaghan: Poster

The super Edward Monaghan lit up our previously gloomy lives this summer when he was one of 12 winners in our Graduates 2013 competition. He’s since had an 10-page spread in the Winter issue of Printed Pages and risen to dazzling new heights with his illustration. One to keep an eye on in 2014!
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/the-graduates-2013-edward-monaghan

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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