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  Work / Graphic Design

  Okuyama Taiki became interested in design while running a free bookshop in Tokyo

  Okuyama Taiki is a Japanese graphic designer incorporating a sense of liveliness and fun into his creative practice. While running a novelty book store in Tokyo that was free (a rather foreign concept over here) Okuyama became interested in the values of exchange that led to a career in design. The book store became a place “to share new values, form new communities and create new creations”, explains Okuyama. This attitude translates over to his designs that frequently take on multiple meanings in their visual communication. Okuyama’s projects depend on what is peaking the designer’s interests at that time, recently delving into the disciplines of art, music and agriculture. 

  Jyni Ong — 16 November 2018

Jyni Ong — 16 November 2018

• Work / Digital

  Jenny Jiao Hsia’s game designs are as delightfully weird as they are weirdly delightful

  “I think I’ve always wanted to make games more than I’ve wanted to play them," says games designer Jenny Jiao Hsia. "Growing up, I watched my dad and younger brother play a lot of Guild Wars and Age of Mythology together. Their pastime drove my mom nuts: sometimes she would threaten to break their computers because they would stay up late to play the game. So that’s how I saw video games for a long time – as a waste of time.”

  Josh Baines — 16 November 2018
• News / Art

  David Hockney auction makes a bigger splash and sets record for a living artist

  David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is a nice painting. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that it is a really nice painting. It is also the most valuable artwork made by a living artist, having been sold for a staggering $90.3m at a sale in New York last night (15 November).

  Josh Baines — 16 November 2018
• Work / Photography

  Congo Tales offers an alternative to fear-based environmental messaging

  The world’s second largest rainforest, second only to the Amazon, is the Congo Basin. Known to ecologists as “the world’s second lung”, the Congo Basin stretches across 500 million acres, spanning six nations, and is home to some of the most biodiverse species today. Congo Tales, a new book published by Random House, raises awareness around the ecological importance that this African rainforest provides. 

  Jyni Ong — 16 November 2018
• News / Art

  Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans bags the 2018 Hepworth Prize for sculpture

  A low and mournful hum is the noise we make most mornings upon waking. It is also the sound that prize-winning Welsh multidisciplinary Cerith Wyn Evans’ prize-winning Composition For 37 Flutes has been described as producing.

  Josh Baines — 16 November 2018
• Work / Photography

  Cornelius de Bill Baboul’s latest project is “like Baudelaire in the age of McDonalds”

  Cornelius de Bill Baboul’s latest project sees the Berlin-based artist ask and answer a simple question. What, he wondered, would happen if you let white flowers sit and stew in half-filled bottles of the sort of lurid energy drinks that men with seriously swollen arms clutch to their heavily-developed chests at the gym?

  Josh Baines — 14 November 2018
• Work / Photography

  Luke Boland communicates industrialisation through his expansive photographs

  Imagining photographer Luke Boland perched atop gigantic and populated environments with his camera in hand is a nice image. Viewers can easily imagine this – not that he features in the photographs himself – but because of the vast expanse captured in his photographs and the numerous locations his work sees him journey to. From Nevada’s Hoover Dam to Hong Kong’s residential area of Lai King, Luke’s photographs show us the world at face value but also communicate how it logistically functions. Though his lens, the photographer manages to encompass manufacturing, shipping, energy, housing and how populations generally spend their time day-to-day.

  Lucy Bourton — 16 November 2018
• Work / Art

  “The beauty of abstraction”: Christoph Niemann on his new mural for a Berlin train station

  Illustrator and artist Christoph Niemann was in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee yesterday afternoon unveiling a colourful tiled mural in a pedestrian tunnel. Two 40-metre works run along the walls of the tunnel, which leads into the local train station, and depict scenes from Wannsee’s past and present.

  Matt Alagiah — 15 November 2018
• Regulars / Nicer Tuesdays

  David Lane talks us through his art direction for Robyn’s newly released record

  David Lane is an art director known for multiple magazine titles such as Freize and The Gourmand which he co-founded. But other than these publications taking up David’s time, his studio Lane & Associates also looks after the art direction (which even he admits “is a broad term”) for advertising campaigns from high fashion brands to musicians too. David Lane is very busy.

  It's Nice That — 16 November 2018
• Features / Graphic Design

  Combining thoughtful design and big business: an interview with Made Thought

  For Ben Parker and Paul Austin, the founders of London-based design agency Made Thought, a brand should consider its identity as the “current coat you’re putting on”. In turn, Made Thought’s process of creating an identity is akin to designing a tailored winter coat.

  Lucy Bourton — 12 November 2018

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Christmas Adverts 2018

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