Jimena Azpeitia

Have you ever wanted to see the actual line where art meets graphic design? Ana Strumpf will be standing there, holding stacks of her magazine cover designs.

Brazilian-born Strumpf is not only a graphic designer and illustrator, but also a product designer and interior designer. You can sum it up in three words… She loves design.

Strumpf is maybe most known for these “Re.Cover” works. She takes the covers of magazines and illustrates her magic, making already beautiful photography even better.

The project started as a doodling hobby while she conducted Skype meetings. After posting them on Instagram, some friends in Sao Paulo took notice and invited her to exhibit them in a gallery. The rest is history…

Her objective is to “recreate, revisit and recompose”. She considers it a playful way to re-signify publications in a time where the printed press is in a bit of a crisis.

After living in New York for a few years, she is back at home in Brazil. For now, her studio is in her eclectically-designed apartment, where she enjoys spending time with her twins.

To see more of her work you can visit her website.

Detroit was once a thriving metropolis and the heart of the world's car manufacturing economy. In recent decades, the city has suffered a major economic and demographic decline and local crime rates are among the highest in the United States. Since its demise, the art and design world has sought to save the Michigan city by bringing the local community together to celebrate its people and heritage.

In her ongoing series Wandering In Place, Seattle-based American photographer Jennifer Garza-Cuen explores ideas of place, cultural memory, and inheritance. With her focus on Detroit, she wanted to document a sense of what the city and its people have been through.

She explains: "I am particularly interested in Detroit because it is a place that has experienced an active form of extreme erasure, of transience and of loss that has embedded itself on the psyche of those that live there and those that pass through.

"Decadence and erasure evokes a very specific pathos and Detroit's has reverberated around the globe as a kind of symbolic foreshadowing of the imminent end of an American Empire. That said; this is an ongoing project in which my intention is to engage the complexity of Detroit as a lived space, as well as its supposed fall from grace."

Via Behance | All images courtesy of Jennifer Garza-Cuen

When artist Stuart Haygarth was commissioned to create a permanent artwork for the University College London Hospitals' new UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre in 2012, he decided to walk along more than 450 miles of England's coastline to collect manmade objects that had washed ashore and then arrange them into a giant, hanging installation for the new facility.

Speaking of his inspiration behind the artwork entitled Strand, Stuart explains: "At some point, cancer will affect most of us – either directly or indirectly through people we know. It has become one of our biggest fears. Dealing with the disease is both a mental and physical journey and throws the diagnosed into the unknown. Therefore, the starting point of the sculpture was a personal physical and mental journey. My practice generally revolves around collections of found objects, which tell a story."

Starting from where the River Thames meets the North Sea at Graves End to the furthest point on the south coast, which is Lands End – the objects he found on route showed fragments of people's lives. Balls of various sizes, old lighters, shoes, combs and children's toys were later categorised by colour and then brought together for the final piece.

Stuart added: "I would imagine being diagnosed with cancer creates an explosion of emotions and might engender many mental and emotional reactions including confusion, a sense of chaos, yet also strength and determination.

"From the collected objects I created a visual explosion of colour and form, yet one that through the precise arrangement and installation of the objects also radiates calm and control. The objects at the core of the sculpture are white and gradually the objects turn to yellow, orange and red until the outer pieces are black. The mass of objects are suspended from a platform on a series of fine metal cables giving the impression that the explosion is frozen in time. The beautiful shock of ordered colour works in harmony with the neutral clean colours of the hospital interior."

All images courtesy of Stuart Haygarth

LA-based artist Michelle Kingdom continues to impress with her masterful command of thread and needle. Her stitched tableaus and landscapes depict individuals caught in the middle of intriguing yet ambiguous situations like something out of a dream, with characters lost in worlds out of their control or in the process of searching for meaning. She shares about her process:

Decidedly miniature in scale, the scenes are densely embroidered into compressed compositions. While the work acknowledges the luster and lineage inherent in needlework, I use thread as a sketching tool in order to simultaneously honor and undermine this tradition. Beauty parallels melancholy, as conventional stitches acquiesce to the fragile and expressive.

You can explore more of Kingdom’s work on her Tumblr and Instagram. (via Lustik)

The National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest is currently taking submissions, with entries for the prestigious competition accepted until May 27, 2016. Here we were able to share some of the spectacular early submissions, images that range from lonely snow covered hills to jam-packed metropolises without room for green space. The grand prize winner of the contest will receive a seven-day Polar Bear Safari for two in Churchill, Canada. (via The Atlantic and This Isn’t Happiness)

This fun table designed by Juno Jeon adds an unexpected twist to one of the most common pieces of furniture: a simple drawer. Covered with a dense grid of scale-like plates the drawer appears to bristle as you open it, flipping each consecutive set of scales to the reverse side. The “Pull Me to Life” table was designed as part of Jeon’s “Movement” series where he imagined what reactions different pieces of furniture in his house might have if they were living creatures. You can see more of the designer’s furniture concepts on Designboom.

New York City in the 1970s was a wild and dangerous place. After peaking in population in 1950, the city began to feel the effects of large-scale migration to the suburbs, a downturn in industry and commerce as businesses left for cheaper places, an increase in crime and social disorder, and an upturn in its welfare burden – all of which led to a fiscal crisis that pushed the city on the verge of complete collapse.

Photographer Leland Bobbé, a native New Yorker, was there to witness and document the decade, wandering the Big Apple's streets to capture the local characters, along everywhere from Chinatown and Beekman Street to Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

Speaking of his vintage series, he said he sometimes misses the grit, the danger and the edge: "The city was on the verge of going bankrupt, there was a major blackout, the Son of Sam murders, and the South Bronx looked like a war zone. Before gentrification, neighbourhoods had distinct personalities. Times Square with its prostitutes and peep shows was not a playground for Middle America as it is today and down on the Lower East Side there wasn’t a Gap, a Starbucks or a condo to be found; it had CBGB’s and alcoholics on the street – The Bowery being the end of the line for many."

Some of his shots were taken shooting from the hip with a 28mm lens, to avoid detection. Others were taken with a zoom telephoto lens. Leland added: "With this group of photographs my intention was to capture the grit and personality of a unique period in New York City history. Long live The Ramones!"

Now, Leland's classic street photographs have been accepted into the permanent collection at the Museum of The City of New York where you'll be able to see his work on display. Discover more about Leland at lelandbobbe.com.

It's difficult to imagine the sheer amount of bacteria that we're exposed to each and every day. And when it comes to thinking about it, the majority of us are probably of the impression that it's not worth it.

One photographer however has made bacteria his business, documenting the germs that await the commuters of the New York City subway. In Subvisual Subway, Craig Ward explores the invisible world that exists on the handrails and seats of busy trains. And strangely, the results are rather beautiful.

Ward explains: "Over the summer of 2015, I rode the trains of each of New York City's twenty-two subway lines, collecting bacterial samples from hand rails, seats and other high traffic surfaces in an attempt to create an unconventional series of portraits of the city’s complex eco-system and a snapshot of the city at large.

"The samples were taken using sterilised sponges that had been pre-cut into the letter or number of the subway line from which the sample was to be taken - A, C, 1, 6 etc. The swabs were then pressed into pre-poured agar plates – their circular shape echoing the graphic language of the subway – incubated for up to a week in a Brooklyn workshop, and photographed at various stages of development before being safely neutralised and disposed of.

"The resulting images are a portrait of the complex microcosm that each of us contribute to and are a part of, and serve as an excellent visual analogy for diversity of the city at large. They hopefully also serve as a reminder that in a place that can make you feel extremely small, there are countless billions of smaller inhabitants."

For those interested in the contents of the petri dishes, Ward has broken down the different types of bacteria here. Who knew that germs could be so pretty?

In his amusing portrait series Bubbleissimo, conceptual photographer Mindo Cikanavicius explores our current obsession with facial hair by adorning different types of gentlemen with temporary bubbled beards and moustaches. His intention is to imply that beards are impermanent – a trend, if you will, and something that could disappear at any time.

He explains: "The inspiration came from observing how beards reached their popularity in recent years. Beards are everywhere, they are on your face. Dudes go crazy with grooming them and some are even getting beard implants. I do like beards, I used to have one many years ago before it was considered cool.

"I wanted to look at beards and moustaches and society's obsession with it, in a humorous way and create a project that was simultaneously entertaining. Offering heroic portraits of men with bubble beards. I chose bubbles because they're temporary, like a trend, they pop when they reach their end. Also, bubbles are fragile, like us men can be fragile – whether we're bearded or not.

"Soap bubbles are also a childish substance. When a little boy is wanting to look grown-up, he plays with a soap beard in the bath to reflect the subconscious transition from boyhood to manhood."

Specialising in portraits, still life and fashion photography, Mindo is based in New York City and is available for commissions. Find out more via www.mindo-c.com.

If you've not yet had the chance to grace the streets of New York, then get those flights booked, grab your camera and head over to the city that never sleeps. Follow in the footsteps of Canadian photographer Shaquel Munroe who recently visited the Big Apple and added these beautiful street portraits to his growing portfolio.

Wandering the many streets, Munroe has a knack for spotting the unusual – whether it be architecture or people at nighttime or during daylight hours; he really captures the pace and energy of everything this fine metropolis has to offer. From the Lower East Side to Midtown and Tribeca to Chelsea... From street level to being right up in the clouds... Munroe devours it all.

Working as a freelancer and specialising in creative photography, the Toronto-based creative discovered a passion for taking pictures back in 2013, using only his smartphone. It wasn't until the following year that he purchased his first camera and started to teach himself how to use it. In 2015, he upgraded to professional camera equipment and has been continuing to learn and grow ever since. He remarked: "Photography has become a huge part of my life. I always strive to get the best quality out of whatever I’m attached to and I try to demonstrate that though my photos."

If you love the style of Munroe's photography, then check out his website at shaqvel.com. Not surprisingly, he's incredibly popular on Instagram where he shares beautiful street photography, not just in New York and Toronto, but from cities all over the world. Check him out!

Winner, Julian Rad / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

There are quite a few annual wildlife and nature photography awards these days, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with them all, but if there’s room for just one more distinction, I suppose it’s the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Founded this year by wildlife photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks, the competition is open to anyone with outrageous and weird photos animals doing, well, funny stuff. Collected here are some of the winners and highlights of the 2015 competition, you can see more here. (via Photojojo, My Modern Met)

Silver Runner Up, William Richardson / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Alison Buttigieg / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Charlie Davidson / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Graham McGeorge / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Julie Hunt / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Marc Mol / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Tony Dilger / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Highly Commended, Yuzuru Masuda / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

With just a few strokes of his calligraphy pen, illustrator Andrew Fox creates everything from animals and insects to people and robots—figures that seem bristling with personality despite their simplicity. We explored Fox’s work here on Colossal last year, and if you’re tempted to try these yourself he’s since published a book: Learn to Draw Calligraphy Animals. You can see more of his work over on Behance and Society6.

The winners and honorable mentions of the 2015 National Geographic Photography Competition have just been announced, and as usual it’s an astonishing collection of brilliant images captured around the world from the streets of Iran to the skies above Spain. The grand prize winner is “DIRT” by Australian photographer James Smart who photographed a dusty tornado as it just barely misses a house in Colorado. We’ve gathered our favorites here, but to see a few more honorable mentions and explore tens of thousands of submissions, head over to National Geographic.

Typically focusing on obsolete or decrepit architectural structures, photographer Chris Payne's most recent project, Textiles, documents the aesthetics of the colorfully-hued American textile industry. His photographs showcase the bright runs of yarn and thread as the materials makes their way through the hyper-organized machinery, appearing digitally altered in their extreme hot pinks, vibrant reds, and electric blues.

Payne began photographing the factories and mills in America’s Northeast in 2010. The images are not just snapshots of the industry, but photographs that sometimes took months to catch. Due to the machinery’s continuous run and his inability to halt production, Payne had to wait until the perfect moment when the right color would appear, or the parts of the machinery would perfectly align. Payne also features the workers within his documentation of the diminishing domestic industry, explaining that their inclusion is proof that labor and craftsmanship is still valued in our current economy.

“Over the past five years, I have gained access to an industry that continues to thrive, albeit on a much smaller scale, and for the most part, out of public view,” said Payne. “Many mills are doing quite well, having modernized to stay competitive, while others have survived by catering to niche markets that value the ‘genuine article’ produced on the original, vintage equipment. I view my work as a celebration of American manufacturing—not a eulogy.

Trained as an architect, Payne typically shoots architectural structures using large format documentation to capture America’s industrial landscape. Past projects have included exploring America’s asylums and an uninhabited island named North Brother Island in New York City’s East River. Payne’s Asylum series will appear at Benrubi Gallery February 11, 2016 and run through March 26, 2016. (via Huffington Post)

 

The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard Art Museums is different than many other departments of its kind—its visible to the public. The public can witness conservators at work as well as view 2,500 pigment samples placed in tincture bottles and housed behind tall glass cabinets. The samples are reminiscent of medicine bottles—the concentrated material’s purpose to help doctor paintings rather than physical maladies.

The Forbes pigment collection was started by its namesake—Straus Center founder and former Fogg Art Museum Director Edward Forbes who began the collection at the turn of the 20th century. Forbes would collect his samples from his travels all over the world, bringing back pigments from excavated sites at Pompeii to rare lapis lazuli found in Afghanistan.

Forbes’ interest in pigments and preservation started with his purchase of the 14-century Madonna and Child with Saints, which he bought in 1899 and noticed that the painting was quickly deteriorating. Harvard Art Museums research curator Francesca Bewer remarks in her book A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America, 1900-1950 that he then began a passionate exploration into the process of how paintings were made. This interest led to collecting the materials needed for the preservation of fine artworks alongside his own collection of early Italian paintings.

“Every time he traveled he would bring things back with him,” Senior conservation scientist Narayan Khandekar told WBUR. “And these are Japanese pigments and binding media that were collected in the 1930s. And we have one of our prized possessions, this ball of ‘Indian yellow,’ which is made from the urine of cows fed only on mango leaves.”

The production of Indian Yellow has ceased because of its harmful effects on cows, but ancient pigments are not the only focus of the collection which stopped amassing samples after World War II. Recently however, the collection has begun to collect contemporary pigments that have come into the market over the last 70 years including modern and synthetic pigments.

If you can’t make it to the floor-to-ceiling display of pigments in Cambridge, you can see an electronic directory of these materials through the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Conservation & Art Materials Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO) database here. (via Hyperallergic)

Turkish photographer and digital artist Aydın Büyüktaş turns the streets of Istanbul upside down in these warped cityscapes that appear to curve infinitely upward and outward toward the skies. While it’s tempting to draw parallels with stunning visuals from the 2010 movie Inception, the artist says his true inspiration is taken from the 1884 satirical novella Flatland that depicts a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures. In this series, also titled Flatland, Büyüktaş photographed canals, bazaars, skate parks, and bridges with the aid of a drone and then digitally stitched them together as dramatically inverted spaces without a visible horizon. You can see more of his gravity-defying work on Instagram. All images courtesy the artist. (via Designboom)

Danish designer Marie Hesseldahl makes it easy to get light where you need it with the SNAP LAMP. The lamp offers a flexible lighting solution with its clamp base that lets you attach it to any surface that ranges from 8-40mm thick. Its simple shape reflects her Scandinavian roots and its attached clamp is integrated into the design for ease.

The shade rotates in two directions so it can be focused where you need light the most. The lamp is outfitted with LED technology and a dimmer function.

Huzi Design has launched their latest collection that transforms the classic wooden building block. Cosmos adds a surprising twist to their fun, space-inspired blocks with built-in magnets that join the pieces together.

The interchangeable pieces can be assembled in any way to build rockets, satellites, or any other space-inspired form. Each piece is outfitted with patented neodymium magnets so they pop up and snap together when close.

The collection includes 28 wood pieces with 58 connections which results in a limitless amount of possibilities.

Cosmos is available on Kickstarter until December 16th, so jump in on the aerospace action.

Shinola and WorkOf partnered with 34 of the best independent NYC- and LA-based design studios to create one-of-a-kind holiday ornaments and decorations for an auction to benefit MOCAD, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Each of the pieces are like mini representations of the brands themselves giving you an opportunity to own an original while helping a great cause. You can bid on any of the 34 pieces up for grabs at Paddle8 until December 17th, 2015.

If proof were still needed that sustainability isn’t all about hemp trousers and Ecover, Moth Collective has once again made an animation about saving the rainforests that manages to be beautiful, educational and wonderfully non-preachy. Their newest work in that area is called Forest 500, and shows how much rainforest destruction could be prevented if top companies transformed how they work. It promotes the Forest 500 deforestation agency, which looks at how these corporate powers, investors and governments are doing in terms of their efforts to be sustainable. While the styling is cute, it manages to avoid being too heavy on tweeness, and is lifted by superb textures and character design.

Read more

When travel company Kuoni France approached London-based French illustrator Malika Favre to help decorate its new travel brochure for 2016, she applied her usual unmistakable style – a sprinkling of bold minimalism with a striking use of positive and negative space and colour.

The illustrations almost hark back to the style of the early 20th century travel posters, which would promise all kinds of delights up and down the UK and across the world. But Favre's typical nod to what is described as "Pop Art meets OpArt" – gives the artworks a more modern slant, full of dreamy colours and satisfying shapes and lines.

As one of the UK's most sought after graphic artists, Favre's clients include The New Yorker, Vogue, BAFTA, Sephora and Penguin Books, amongst many others. Discover more of her deliciously satisfying work over at malikafavre.com.

Via This Isn't Happiness

Artist and designer Kelli Anderson just released her latest book This Book is a Camera, a pop-up book that turns into a fully functional pinhole camera. The book acts as a simple educational tool to help explain how photography worked before we all had camera phones in our pockets. Anderson points out that making a simple camera obscura really isn’t too difficult and provides instructions on how you can make one yourself.

This Book is a Camera comes complete with a starter pack of B/W Ilford photo paper and instructions on how to use the camera to take photos. You’ll still need to pick up some developer fluid and have a dark room to develop photos in. Stay tuned for Anderson’s forthcoming This Book is a Planetarium from Chronicle Books. (via Quipsologies)

Example photograph taken with This Book is a Camera

Example photograph taken with This Book is a Camera

Just days before the start of the UN COP21 Climate Conference held in Paris and during the French state of emergency following terrorist attacks earlier this November, 600 posters were covertly distributed and hung within the city. The posters were not taped to poles or distributed in public grounds, but secured behind glass at bus stops around the city. The large-scale posters were advertisement replacements, fake corporate ads designed by 82 artists across 19 countries to satirize messaging found throughout the Parisian streets.

Organized by the Brandalism project, the citywide sweep is meant to challenge the corporate takeover of the Paris climate talks, forming ads that target the link between corporations’ advertising with consumerism, global warming, and fossil fuel consumption. The posters reference many of the climate talks’ corporate sponsors including Air France, Dow Chemicals, GDF Suez (Engie). Many of the Photoshopped images use the same branding and voice as the original advertisement, forcing the audience to take a deeper look at the content of the hundreds of posters dotting their daily commute.

“By sponsoring the climate talks, major polluters such as Air France and GDF-Suez-Engie can promote themselves as part of the solution – when actually they are part of the problem,” said Brandalism’s Joe Elan.

Escif, Jimmy Cauty, Neta Harari, Bansky-collaborator Paul Insect, and Kennard Phillips were just a few of the dozens of artists who created posters for the Parisian installation. You can see many more of the 600 posters created to challenge the UN COP21 Climate Conference over on Street Art News and Brandlism’s own website here.

What is a designer? A miserable pile of fonts! Well, we know they’re a lot more than that. And Creative Market is even more expert in dissecting the life of your common, garden variety designer. That’s why they made some snazzy charts! Apparently, coffee and Helvetica are an integral part of design life. I believe that you input caffeine and fonts come through some end or the other.

Now, if you’re still hungry for designer life, how about you check out this post on designer life problems here? It’s a hoot.

More info: creativemarket.com (h/t: designtaxi)

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French photographer and director Romain Laurent (previously here and here) started making portrait-based GIFs as a way to produce work outside his commercial jobs, a spontaneous project that would encourage him to produce consistently for himself rather than clients. Each GIF is simple in its concept—a snap of the finger, a twist of the hand—yet is elegant in its composition of muted colors and subjects often centered squarely in the frame. Although GIFs often incorporate the whole subject, Laurent’s work highlights one or two specific movements, isolating gestures rather than animating the whole image.

Laurent studied product design at the National School of Applied Arts in Paris before realizing photography was his medium of choice. Laurent nows works in New York City and has collaborated with clients such as Reebok, Hermes, Lacoste, Nissan, Google, and GQ. You can see more of his inventive portraits on his Tumblr, and access his GIFs directly on his Giphy page here.

Thousands of pigments fill glass vials below the slatted wood ceilings of the new concept Pigment, an art supply laboratory and store that just opened in Tokyo by company Warehouse TERRADA. The store design was created by architect Kengo Kuma, utilizing bamboo and large open spaces to create a sense of unity with the outdoors and spark the imagination of those who enter.

In recent years fewer artists have turned to more traditional methods of art making, diminishing the number of successors to these older forms. Pigment aims to provide hard-to-find tools for the preservation of older paintings while also inspiring the latest generation of artists to incorporate these older materials into newer works. In addition to selling brushes, pigments, special glues, and papers (some used in Japanese painting since the Meiji period), the store will also provide workshops by both art professors and manufacturers of the supplies housed in-store.

If you can’t make it to Japan to experience the space in person, you can browse Pigment’s large supply of pigments and rare materials on their online store here. (via Designboom)

This stand of bent pine trees known as the Crooked Forest is easily one of the strangest places in Central Europe. Located outside of Nowe Czarnowo, West Pomerania, Poland, the nearly 400 trees are widely agreed to have been shaped by human hands sometime in the 1930s, but for what purposes is still up for debate. Each tree is bent near the base at 90 degrees, a form that could possibly be helpful in boat or furniture making. Strangely enough, every tree is bent in exactly the same direction: due North. A quick search online reveals a host of conspiracy theories ranging from witchcraft to energy fields.

Whatever the reason, we’re glad photographer Kilian Schönberger (previously) stopped by to capture these photos. You can see more from the series on Behance.

Update: Thank you all for your many, many suggestions about the trees. We’ve heard everything from floods to furniture to fire. There still doesn’t seem to be a consensus.

Amsterdam-based illustrator Stefan Glerum has a distinct style that is recognised and respected across the world, and his work is inspired by early 20th Century movements such as Art Deco, Bauhaus, Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism, which he combines with popular themes, executed in a hand drawn style reminiscent of the clear line.

His latest project revolved around creating illustrations for two stained glass facades reaching up to 60 feet for a new residential project in Amsterdam by housing corporation Ymere. The complex is designed by Heren 5 Architects, the stained glass is fabricated by Atelier Schmit.

The stained glass windows show the history of the area where the housing complex is situated. The design of both windows (with a factory chimney as their centre point) references the old Oostergasfabriek (a 19th century gas factory) which was a prominent feature in this part of Amsterdam. After the factory lost its function in the beginning of the twentieth century, the area was used for different purposes.

Via Beautiful Decay | Exterior photos by Luuk Kramer, interior photos by Niels Gerson Lohman

Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home! It’s the most exciting part of the day… well, for this toddler and dog duo. 

As YouTuber Natalie G’s husband arrived home after a hard day’s work, he was greeted like royalty by his biggest fans, and it’s just about the cutest welcoming we’ve ever seen. As the baby jumps up and down, the dog starts to get even more excited and before we know it, we’re watching a full-on welcome home dance party for Dad!

Who knows just how more excited these two got when Daddy got out of the car, walked up the garden path and actually opened the door, but I have a feeling it was an explosion of happiness.

The post Daddy’s home… and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to this toddler and dog appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.