Let the Wookie Win! These great hoops from tumblr artist Chelsea Bloxsom are the perfect mix of kitch, geek and craft, all with a Star Wars creatures twist. You can order custom versions of these hoops from her on her Etsy page Love and a Sandwich, where she has a load of other cool creations… with an extra serving of fuzzy monsters. [Read more...]
Jeremy Kool, a graphic artist from Melbourne, Australia designed these characters digitally to look like paper-crafted origami. They will be the stars of his upcoming interactive storybook called The Paper Fox. [Read more...]
Just what hides below the fuzzy skin of our beloved teddy bears? Is it just as soft and cuddly as their outsides, something more sinister or maybe something more realistic? Felt sculptor Stephanie Metz has gone a long way towards showing us the answer with her Teddy Bear Natural History, creating fuzzy and entertainingly lifelike examples of the toys innards. I’ve never been there, but is this how all Build-a-Bears start out? [Read more...]
How did you grow up? Was it with copious amounts of toys to occupy your time, like a Gameboy, a GI Joe, or Barbie? Did you always have the newest gadgets on the market? If you answered yes to those questions, you probably grew up in the U.S. and can say you contributed to 26.8% of the world’s toy market… a market which generates a revenue worth more than the movie and music industry combined. In some cases, movie action figures actually profited more than the very films on which they were based. [Read more...]
While everyone else uses the weather as small talk, one design agency decided to turn the topic into an artistic data visualization. CLEVER°FRANKE, a design agency located in the Netherlands, used a year’s worth of weather pattern data and visualized it. What they found were interesting patterns in something we all experience the effects of every day, but which we don’t usually notice. If someone didn’t take the time to visualize it, we would never see these interesting patterns. [Read more...]
Like a peppered moth on a tree or a grasshopper in a field, camouflage evolved early on to protect certain creatures from their predators. Humans have adopted this method of blending in for military and hunting gear and now Peruvian photographer Cecilia Paredes is using it to create beautiful self portraits. [Read more...]
What do you get when you give a bowl of fruit salad to a guy with OCD? This would be Ursus Wehrli’s interpretation. The Swiss comedian and artist began his career of visually tidying up a few years ago. He noticed a messy pile of red squares in American Artist Donald Baechler’s abstract art and was inspired to recreate the image with the squares stacked up neatly. This comedic alteration of modern art lead to many others which he compiled in his first book Tidying Up Art. [Read more...]
At a glance, it would appear that these incredibly realistic animal portraits were painted using rich hues of sepia paint, but in actuality they were etched into the wooden canvas with fire. This technique, known as pyrography, involves scorching a natural surface (maple wood in this case) using a heated tip or wire. [Read more...]
Sometimes the smallest gestures can turn a frown upside down. Brooklyn-based street artist, photographer, and actress Katie Sokoler was inspired by a song called “Mr. Blue” by Catherine Feeny to spread a little love throughout her neighborhood. [Read more...]
Just what exactly makes a company “good,” especially when that company is an advertising agency? Leo Burnett, founder of the eponymous ad agency, had a pretty good handle on the answer to that question back in 1967 when he made his retirement speech titled “When to take my name off the door.” Now, on the 75th anniversary of the firms beginning, a Brazilian design studio has made a stylish retro animation to celebrate the executive behind such iconic advertising campaigns as the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man. If you’re addicted to watching Mad Men like so many others, this fellow is the real deal. [Read more...]
