Challenges like this are set often by many individuals who want to push themselves to be greater, think differently, do something for themselves or simply follow through and commit to something.
Two years ago, world renowned pianist, Ludovico Einaudi, was surrounded by ice in the Arctic, as he performed on a floating platform this amazing piece called “Elegy for the Arctic.” I remembered then and even now when I listen how the goosebumps run up my arms and down my legs. The way he plays is so moving, and combine that with the scenery, makes this even an even more meaningful experience.
Heather Hansen puts her body into it, literally. She’s found a way to combine her love of dance and fine art, using her arms, legs and some beautifully choreographed dance postures and poses to create each drawing. The charcoal slowly and evenly drags on the paper underneath – in symmetrical patterns – as she fluidly changes positions from front to back, side to side, around and behind until her body finishes the overall design. Continue reading
Sometimes two heads are definitely better than one. In this case, those heads belong to this talented and dynamic duo: David and Sissy Hobizal. They’ve managed to strike a balance between married life and work, and in this project, they have really mastered it to give Imandra its own heartbeat. In the span of three months, this dynamic duo concepted everything from the logo to business cards, presentation templates, a product launch video, white paper templates, etc. for AI (Aesthetic Integration), a London-based financial technology startup.
Not only is this designer experimenting across the gamut with creating a very tactile approach to typography, but she has carefully cut out each of the numerous layers to also enhance the overall experience of interacting with her artwork. This is so you can touch it, watch it move, distort, undulate, manipulate – right before your eyes. It really is quite genius how well this whole series turned out.
Filmed by Spotas and created by Tadao Cern, “Blow Job” has received great acclaim, for it captures the hilarity in watching all of these volunteers step in front of the camera only to be hit by 340mph of wind in their faces. In slow motion playback, you’re seeing their faces open up, sum, ripple as these gusts of wind hit their faces, frame by frame. Continue reading
Filthy Luker teams up with Red Stripe to create this fun and exciting street art project of Space Invaders. He’s taken normal elements seen everyday on the streets (street furniture, road signs, construction barriers) and with some behind-the-scenes electronic rigs, he’s been able to successfully create a fully interactive experience – where the people of Manchester can – with the press of a button – play Space Invaders on the streets with each other. The orange construction barriers each look like a Space Invader, so when someone presses the button, the lights (behind the objects) display a gigantic game on the side of this building in the city. So much fun!!!!!
Before I looked up more information this artist, I’ll admit I was completely enthralled as each frame unfurled. It wasn’t so much that this was about another love story, but more so it was the style he used to let the story unveil that was so captivating to watch. Both characters, brought to life each frame through this impressive and expressive sketchbook style to a song that evokes just as much emotion as the overlapping, gyrating pencil strokes. Of the multitude of videos and sites I’ve browsed over the years, I keep coming back to this video. Let me conclude by saying beautiful is an understatement. Thank you, Ryan, for creating this piece.
Oh, and the music is: “World Spins Madly On” by The Weepies. There. Done. 🙂
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Here’s a peek at the “making of” video for this… very interesting!
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And if you’re still wanting more information, you should probably know Ryan has a long history of success behind him – as an animator, animatic artist, storyboard artist and concept artist. Most recently, he has worked as a storybook artist for the new Avengers movie. Before that, he worked on: Thundercats, Where The Wild Things Are, Ironman 2, Spider-man 2, Spider-man 3, Power Puff Girls The movie, to name a few. Here are a couple of examples to see his work.
This 28-year-old artist, Sagaki Keita, was born in 1984 and lives and works out of his hometown in Tokyo. His intensely layered pen and ink illustrations consist of millions of expressive doodles that are so freely released on paper – yet he carries with each a pure intent of creating a fine art piece when complete. The numerous myriad of these playful characters which are comprised of individual pen strokes and overlapping lines… these whimsical elements fill in the gaps or they are layered on top of each other to in the end make up shading on a cheekbone or create the shadows of muscle tones. Just absolutely brilliant – the technique! To see more of his work, click here.
Johnson Banks is the firm that took on this request from a suggestion made from their client, Ravensbourne. The request was to see if they’d take their 3D prototyping skills to the next level and create a 3D expression of the current alphabet. Each letterform is showcased in a different expression of itself – repeated, stacked, rotated, scaled, skewed, while still maintaining parts of its recognizable shape. Not only that, but each font or typeface they used – whether they chose to use the lowercase or uppercase letterform – each detail in these 3D constructions was carefully considered and reflected in the description as well. This is Arkitypo: The Final Alphabet.
Take for instance the letter “H” for a moment…
Helvetica
Originally designed in 1957 as Neue Haas Grotesk, its 1960 version was renamed Helvetica. Given that its name was based on ‘Helvetia’ (Latin for Switzerland) it was no surprise that it became the vanguard of the Swiss style, and the typeface of choice for corporations across the world for the last fifty years.
Now, having read that – look again at their approach. They incorporated the letterform that’s made up of all of these recognized names who use “Helvetica” as their chosen typeface for branding the company. (Nestle, Blaupunkt, Basf, Target, Kawasaki and more…)
Let’s look at the letter “C” now…
Courier
Courier was originally commissioned for 1950s IBM typewriters, but soon became the standard font throughout the then-emerging industry. As a nod to the torturous days of jammed machinery, this ‘C’ is built from a small forest of typewriter keys.
This being a little more literal in its translation is still quite clever in its expression. The execution of these typewriter keys, overlapping, stacked, rotated… they create interesting angles and shadows upon one another. They mimic the true shape of the letter, while tying back to the history of the font. Impressive interpretation!
Here’s what they created for the letter “I”
Industria
Originally designed for The Face in 1984 by Neville Brody, Industria was released publically as a font in 1989. It has a mechanical structure of straight strokes, rounded corners and square inner spaces that refer back to Art Deco and design pioneers such as Ladislav Sutnar.
This could be a sculpture I’d feature in my living room! To take a letter, observe its rigid form and then create a piece that not only adds movement… this piece also ties back to its Art Deco movement with this ultra thin case used in this industrial interpretation.
The result can be seen in this video – which shows 360 degree renders of each letter sculpture.
greetings fellow earthlings... 