minimal posters

inspired by other designers such as olly moss and the like, i decided to try my hand at minimal posters, my initial concept was for a jurrasic park poster but as it turns out that was my least favourite one, needless to say i wont be posting that image just yet, but here are the four others that i came up with. this is the first time ive posted any of my own work on here and i dont want it to be the last so let me know what you think but be nice.

and now for my personal favourite

whats my name

recently ive seen a couple of these images crop up at various places on the internets and thought they where brilliant. created by a collective who go by the name dorothy, they describe themselves as a group of like minded individuals working on unlike minded ideas. 

they've created a series of paintings of famous logos but removed the type to leave just iconic graphic forms. its interesting to note how much a logo is implanted in our brain that we can still read the logo without there being any text. check out these, we'll start with one that's very dear to me

its also interesting to note, in only one of these paintings the graphic element represents the main product of the company, the rest of them show the undeniable power of a strong brand and / or strong marketing or both. i mean come on, a red star with a white stroke on a green square and all of a sudden you think beer, its kinda crazy when you think about it. 

how many can you recognise?

i highly recommend you visit dorothy here, they have some amazing stuff on their site.

forget your towel

if your lucky enough to be in brisbane, australia in the near future, make sure you stop by the museum of modern art for a visual treat, this is brilliant.

this is the fake pool by argentinian artist leandro erlich, known for creating illusion like installations this beauty was conceived roughly 12 years ago and has been doing the rounds at various galleries all over the world since 2001, i have no idea how i have only just heard about it!

here's a link to leandros website where there is some incredible work, please check it out

noma bar visual awesomeness

i was recently bought two books for my birthday, one that i had seen and expressed an interest in and one that i hadn't even heard of, these books where by a graphic designer by the name of noma bar, now i had only seen very brief section of one of the books and didn't really know what to expect, what i got was like someone turning on a light and punching me in the face, the two books where "negative space" and "guess who", both of these books are just incredible.

 

i haven't been able to find out that much information about noma, except that he was born in israel in 1973 and has worked for some incredible and very notable clients, such as time out london, bbc, the observer and wallpaper to name a few, he has published over 550 illustrations, illustrated over 60 magazine covers and released the two aforementioned books (thank you wikipedia).  now that we have covered some background, i can try a show you some of the visual delights that completely blew my mind when i first opened these books.

 

nomas use of negative space and related items is incredible, its just a completely different way of looking at things, i wonder if this is how he sees real life, as incredibly clever but beautifully simple illustrations. the above images are from the "guess who" book, where he create portraits of famous people, each one instantly recognisable and created using images that epitomise their fame.

these images have all been taking from the book "negative space" which is the book i origiinally saw and wanted, but i could never have imagined how brilliant these two books are. negative space shows you an entirely different way of looking at things, you notice more elements each time you look at it, and it still blows my mind. even down to the cover, you see the dog, then you see the cat and then you see the mouse, brilliant.

i cannot recommend these two books enough

heres a link to buy negative space, you should be able to get them both in a bundle displayed on this page but i dont know how to link to that.

heres a link to the artica.com profile for noma

if you have any other information on noma, please let me know

as an extra bonus, heres one of my favourite illustrations

 

the skeletons of dead media

you may recall i once posted about an erika iris simmons set on flickr called ghost in the machine, which used old tapes to create amazing portraits of famous people, you can see the post here, well it seems erika isn't the only one to find amazing uses for old cassettes. an atlanta based, chicago born artist by the name of brian dettmer has taken old cassettes and given them a new lease of death, so to speak. check these out.

without using any glue or other materials, brian melts and moulds these old cassettes using only his hands and a few other tools, taking this dead form of media and sculpting it into literal skeletons. apparently inspired by seeing a dead bird whilst walking down the street one day, he stated "here was this thing that used to live, it used to fly around and play a vital role, and now it is dead and all that remains is the solid material", brian took this idea linking the life of the cassette to that of the animals and created this series of skeletons.

following on from the animal skeletons, brian created 12 skulls which lead to perhaps the most impressive skeleton he created, a the full human skeleton created using over 180 tapes 

this are all incredible, this attention to detail is brilliant and all created from only old cassette tapes, my mind is completely blown, it makes you look at the things surrounding you now, what will become of them, what will they become. 

you can find out more about brian at his website here

bench press advertising

check this out for thinking outside the box, an ad agency in aukland called ddb have literally been stamping advertisements onto members of the public, altering benches to make them press an advertisement for a clothing chain, superette, into the bare legs of people who sit on them, it reads "short shorts on sale superette", brilliant

four icon challenge

stumbling around the vast interwebs a couple of days ago i came across these beauties created by kyle tezak a visual designer from wisconsin. kyle set himself a challenge to create several four icon image sets to sum up some of his favourite movies, books or historical events, here are some of these brilliantly imaginative icon sets.

and my personal favourite

you can get to kyles website here where you can see the four icon challenge and also buy some screen printed versions

and heres his twitter