If Shakespeare had created comic books… Perfectly executed humour and fantastic costume design by Jackie Tadeoni and photography by Sacha Goldberger. Well chosen models provide a nice finishing touch.
Tiny slivers are sliced away from a single, oversized sheet of white paper in a zig-zag pattern to reveal portraits of public figures, from Audrey Hepburn to Michael Jackson, in this series of photorealistic portraits by Korean artist Yoo Hyun. There’s no ink, graphite or paint involved – just an X-acto knife to cut out the negative space and tweezers to carefully peel those pieces away.
Take a close look at Hyun’s works and you realize how strikingly simple this process is, working a similar way to pixels. All you’ll see, when examining a small strip of one of these portraits, is a bunch of diagonal white lines. It’s amazing to see how much detail comes through, the portraits somehow revealing nuances in skin and hair texture, when you look at them from farther away.
The trick is in ever-so-slight variations of the thickness of each diagonal line of paper. Even the smallest cut-out can convey a shadow, while uncut areas make highlights pop. Pulling this off requires incredible precision, as a mistake the width of a human hair can affect the final outcome.
These large-scale paper tapestries are more than just two-dimensional cutouts. They are delicate, intricate artworks with a nature-loving flair.
Click Here to Read More »»
An advertising campaign focuses on one artist's unique knack for drawing the most detailed masterpieces in a spiral formation.
Click Here to Read More »»
Row after row of carefully chosen crayons come together into stunning reproductions of Great Depression-era photographs in Christian Faur's portrait series.
Click Here to Read More »»
Pascal Rambaud might be an architect, but that hasn't stopped him from indulging his other passions, like mountaineering and motorsports. Back in the mid-2000s, the latter hobby led him to create an easier way to transport go-karts, which you see here:
That invention, called the DRIV'UP, led to something more complicated that would combine his love of motors with his love of mountains. In 2007 Rambaud began developing a vehicle that was compact, like a go-kart, but which could traverse difficult terrain. Now ready for primetime, he's dubbed it the SWINCAR, and it certainly seems capable of going where other wheeled vehicles cannot:
The electric-powered SWINCAR can run for four hours on a single charge. But perhaps what's most notable about it is its unusual wheels and suspension. When you think of off-roading in a vehicle with that small of a footprint, you probably think of ATVs; those position the rider high up and have their suspension down low, close to the beefy wheels. But the SWINCAR's unique configuration turns this upside down, placing the driver practically at ground level, while moving the mounting points for the suspension far higher, up around where the beltline would be if it was an ordinary car. And the counterintuitively skinny tires seem well-suited to perform the fancy footwork the vehicle is capable of.
Lastly, the SWINCAR boasts a crucial safety feature that your average ATV does not: A rollbar, in case you overestimate the abilities of either the machine or your driving skills.
This is no one-off toy nor vanity project, by the way; Rambaud has partnered with businessman Jerome Arsac and finance/marketing expert Theirry Jammes to form Mécanroc, the company producing and promoting the SWINCAR.
For applications, they foresee uptake by anyone who wants to travel rough terrain without leaving an ecologically-damaging stamp—the electric SWINCAR naturally leaves no emissions and is noiseless—and in addition to those seeking outdoor recreation, the company names both the military and public rescue outfits (think park rangers) as potential target markets.
The company is also seeking distributors, and they reckon the vehicle's unique configuration may help them find some in the existing personal off-road vehicle market. Their "highly differentiated technology [has] no current competitor in the market," they write, and the SWINCAR's unusual design means there's "not [a] conflict with your other product ranges."
While some objects remain in a single state, a table or a shelf, other objects have two or more states, like a folding chair, a door, or even a lamp. These objects must change in some way to make them useful, which is where the NODE collection of lamps falls. Designed by Odd Matter Studio, these lamps don’t have just a switch or a pull to turn them on and off though, they must physically transform to make it happen. The result is a collection of five lamps that double as functional sculptures.
Even when the lamp is not being used, the design remains a sculptural object you can visually enjoy. When it’s time to turn the lamp on, you physically alter its look to by moving one of its components.
The lamps were inspired by the shapes of drawn electrical diagrams, which you can see when you open and close the circuit to switch the lamps on and off.
Traffic lights are supposed to help keep driving orderly, but they often create more tension than they resolve. How do you know that the green light won't turn yellow before it's too late to slow down? BMW thinks it can help. It's the first auto...
Lindstrom Rugs’ latest collection takes inspiration from the psychological world’s beloved testing method we’ve all come across that aims to give insight into our personality and emotional well-being. The Rorschach test’s infamous inkblots exhibited almost perfect bilateral symmetry and eye-catching patterns that are completely unforgettable. Designed by Erik Lindstrom, founder of the company, the Inkblot Collection evokes similar feelings of nostalgia with their own graphic, black, gray, and white rug patterns.
Inkblot #2
Each inkblot pattern was created by hand beginning with the concept all the way through production, from the original ink and water on paper to the artisan weavers in Nepal.
It's around this time of year that we catch the first glimpses of the next batch of remarkable design talent soon to be unleashed on to the world. It's also a time—reminiscing whilst pouring over graduation projects—that we're reminded of our own college-day optimistic naivety. I mean, just look at all these wonderful if wildly impractical design solutions!
If I had a penny for every pedal-powered sustainable power project...I could probably have paid an olympic athlete to demonstrate how unrealistic these propositions can be. Fortunately, students at Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts have done that for us.
There's a common misconception that our bodies—if tasked with doing so—could produce the power that our increasingly consuming lives demand. Any engineer worth their salt will tell you that this is pure fallacy—the conversion from human to appliance being absolutely abysmal. Sure we can wind up a radio or keep those mini-screens on those gym bikes going but we quickly hit our limit when the energy demands get higher—anything involving heating for example.
By means of demonstrating this inconvenient truth, Robert Förstemann took on the challenge of heating a single slice of toast in a 700 Watt toaster with the incredible strength of his 74cm diameter thighs. Setting out at a steady 50km/h Förstemann battles with maintaining pace to keep the toaster going—the power required equivalent to climbing a 40 degree incline.
Managing to keep the toaster going for just long enough to give the bread a slight golden brown, Förstemann crashed out exhausted from the excursion —an important lesson in energy usage (I'll never look at my toaster the same way again!). If Förstemann's meaty limbs can't cook a slice of bread what chance do the rest of us have!
Design students: beware the human-powered fallacy!
Sometimes a product just stops you in your tracks. That’s what happened to me with this concrete cloud-shaped toilet paper holder. THIS THING IS AWESOME.
That was the original pitch for Google's Facebook rival, Google+, a refrain hammered over and over by the social network's chief architect, Vic Gundotra, in meetings with the company's top brass
Gundotra, described by colleagues we spoke with as charismatic and politically-savvy, eventually persuaded Larry Page, the Google cofounder who returned as CEO at the beginning of 2011 after a decade behind the scenes, to turn the company upside down for this cause.
"Vic was just this constant bug in Larry's ear: 'Facebook is going to kill us. Facebook is going to kill us,'" says a former Google executive. "I am pretty sure Vic managed to frighten Larry into action. And voila: Google+ was born." Read more...
Walking through narrow chaotic alleys dwarfed by soaring towers, few would estimate the age of Yemen's city of Shibam at nearly 1,700 years. Located in Yemen's central Hadhramaut district, Shibam has roots in the pre-Islamic period, and evidence of construction dating from the 9th century.
Shibam is known as the first city on earth with a vertical masterplan. A protected UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, the city is home to densely packed buildings ranging from four to eight storeys, beginning in 300 AD but now mostly built after 1532. Thanks to a fortified ring wall, the city has survived nearly two thousand years despite its precarious position adjacent to the wadi floodplain.
Enter the ancient walled world of Shibam after the break
Landysh, in-house artist for the language learning company Lingvistov has created a wonderful series of adorable on-point illustrations that express the value of sleep to those of us who would much rather take a nap than take a hike.
f you love the sight of your bed and pillows, if you can fall asleep anywhere and at any time of the day, if you consider sleeping your hobby, if you reserve weekends for sleeping only, then these doodles are for you! Call it beauty sleep, nap, snoozing, slumber, siesta, whatever you want, sleep is your one and only true love. It just makes everything right again. It makes you forget about problems at work, your ex, stress and disappointments of the day. It is undeniably a blessing. Lingvistov has put together a few doodles about the things only those who love sleep can really understand.
Last fall, Tesla introduced an optional, semiautonomous "autopilot" mode on its Model S. Equipped with ultrasonic radar, the system can sense and avoid obstacles, other vehicles and even pedestrians. Hell, the thing even changes lanes for you with...
The kodkod is the smallest wildcat—smaller, even, than the average house cat. It’s a tiny, Andean pocket panther that takes tree-dwelling to a whole new level.
Photographer Phoo Chan was shooting in Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont, California, recently when he spotted hawks doing food exchanges in midair. The photo above is a 5-shot composite showing a male Northern Harrier passing a small bird it caught to one of its three offspring.
Here’s a crop of the image (you can see a higher-res shot here):
Coyote Hills
Chan also captured this photo of a male Northern Harrier dropping a freshly caught squirrel to one of its mates:
The photo was shot using a Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon 600mm on a 2x teleconverter. The effective focal length was 1920mm, which “too much of a reach when the subjects are too close,” Chan says.
He writes that male Northern Harriers can have as many as five mates at once, and since the males are the main bread- meat-winners in the “families,” they’re constantly busy trying to provide for their mates and offspring.
Rooftopping photographers have gotten a lot of attention and notoriety in recent days for climbing to extremely high points in cities and shooting photos while often teetering on the edge. It turns out photographers were already pulling similar stunts nearly a century ago.
The picture above (by an unknown photographer) shows a photographer taking a picture of New York City streets while standing high above on the corner of a skyscraper. It was taken sometime in the mid-1920s.
Update: Here’s a 1905 photo of a photographer sitting high above Fifth Avenue:
Update: As photographer Bob Cooley points out in the comments below, multiple sources on the Internet suggest that all three of these photos show photographer Charles C. Ebbets, who was known for these types of stunts.
Traffic lights are supposed to help keep driving orderly, but they often create more tension than they resolve. How do you know that the green light won't turn yellow before it's too late to slow down? BMW thinks it can help. It's the first auto...
Design students: beware the human-powered fallacy! 
© Flickr CC user Will De Freitas
Last fall, Tesla introduced an optional, semiautonomous "autopilot" mode on its Model S. Equipped with ultrasonic radar, the system can sense and avoid obstacles, other vehicles and even pedestrians. Hell, the thing even changes lanes for you with...
