Review of The Year 2013: Moving on with 80 down to 71 of this year's top 100

Date
25 December 2013

As we reach the 70s, there’s a true geographical smorgasbord for you to feast on, taking in Seoul and South Africa, Scandinavia and the States alongside an advert for a quintessentially British foodstuff. What unites these disparate projects is of course their excellence and their places in our top 100 articles of the year.

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Jaemin Lee: Paper S, a documentary book for Style Share

Seoul’s graphic design scene has been a rich place to mine talent for some time, and this year was no different with the exceptional discovery of Jamein Lee. With effortless integration of illustrated elements, we hope you like Jamein too!
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/graphic-design-jaemin-lee

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Bela Borsodi: Document magazine

New York-based photographer Bela Borsodi is a master of the weird and wonderful, and this shot for Document magazine underlined these credentials once again.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/bela-borsodi-document-magazine-shoot

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The New Yorker: Front page December 16 2013

The sad passing of Nelson Mandlea earlier this month put the pressure on editorial designers to find the right way to memorialise him on their front pages. Our round-up of some of the best shows how well they did.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/nelson-mandela-covers

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Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen: Eyes as Big as Plates

This image would certainly be in my top five pictures to have appeared on the site in 2013. We know that Karoline and Riitta’s work is special, but this folkloric-inpsired shoot of Pohjois-Karjala’s senior citizens exceeded all expectations.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/eyes-as-big-as-plates

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Kevin Okafor: Mana

Kevin Okafor’s amazingly hyper realistic drawings were a huge viral hit across the internet this year. But for our article we discovered a treasure trove of process documentation over on his blog and sought to reveal a little of how the magic comes together.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/kevin-okafor

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Nadav Kander: Michael Curled Away

As one of the most significant photographers working today, Nadav Kander’s solo show of nudes was always going to attract attention. But anyone who saw it will testify to the unerring brilliance of the ghostly white subjects on stark black backgrounds. One of the series was the centre spread for our summer issue of Printed Pages.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/nadav-kander-bodies

Bizarrely this advert hit the headlines after hundreds of complaints that it was somehow making light of animal cruelty. adam&eve/DBB should actually have been feted for such an original, clever and communicative spot.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/advertising-new-marmite-ad-is-brilliant-and-hilarious-just-as-it-should-be

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David Gómez: Iris

It’s hipstery, sure, but David Gomez’ portraits of some quite staggeringly beautiful people represent the very top end of this kind of photography. Put simply, he makes it look much easier than it is.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/david-gomez

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Detroiturbex: Pep band makes their way through a crowd

Both the established narrative of Detroit’s decline and the overlaying of old and new photographs are creative tropes which border on the cliched, but this project overcame those issues with aplomb. Much more than ruin porn, they manage to evoke the energy and vibrancy of this school now fallen into disrepair.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/detroit-high-school-collages

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Public Domain Review: Great Tower For London catalogue

I’d never come across Public Domain Review before but it exploded into my life with this brilliant look at the designs submitted for a new tower for London to rival its Parisian counterpart. Olden days people were weird.
www.itsnicethat.com/articles/public-domain-review-great-tower-for-london

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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