Design

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Design

Color-Changing Dyes Illuminate Iconic Internet Acronyms and Popular Phrases

Traditional calligraphy styles get an update with Seb Lester‘s series of contemporary words and phrases pulled from popular memes and classic web acronyms. Words like “chill” are slowly hand drawn in colorful inks which slowly change their hue and increase in sparkle as they dry on the page. Lester studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins in London and now works in East Sussex as an artist and graphic designer. The calligrapher has amassed a large online following for his daily twists on the ancient form, which you can follow on Facebook and Instagram. Make sure to watch with the sound on, as the scratching of the pen nib on paper is just as engaging as his shimmering strokes. (via Colossal Submissions)

Design

Inventor Simone Giertz Converted Her Tesla Into… a Truckla

Famed inventor Simone Giertz (previously) is most well-known for her devices that attempt to complete basic tasks in a comically dysfunctional manner. However, after Giertz purchased a Tesla sedan she set out to make the vehicle more functional. Because she uses lots of large supplies and tools to construct her quirky robotic machines, Giertz found that the open design of a truck bed and racks would be better suited to her lifestyle than a segmented sedan. Instead of buying a different vehicle, she transformed her Tesla into a custom truck that she has dubbed the “Truckla”.

You can watch the behind-the-scenes process video above, as well as Giertz’s parody ad for her invented vehicle (below), the tagline for which is “available nowhere”. See more of the San Francisco-based inventor’s videos, including one where she turned a piece of her radiation treatment into a lamp, on YouTube and Twitter.

Design

Empowering Messages and Site-Specific City Names Grown from Salt Crystals and Succulents by Danielle Evans

Columbus, Ohio-based typographer Danielle Evans uses her studio as a garden and lab. Previously she has planted hundreds of shrubs and succulents to spell messages of kindness, and grown text-shaped crystals as an ode to poet Nayyirah Waheed’s book of poems titled Salt. Recently while in Reykjavik, the designer arranged ice lettering around the city and the southern Golden Circle as a way to experiment with typography and the variables in Iceland’s topography. You can see more of Evans’s experiments with paper, lemons, dirt, jello, and more on her website, Instagram, and Behance.

Design Food

An Everyday Ritual Becomes a Zoological Tour with a Japanese Company’s Animal Tea Bags

Japanese tea company Ocean Tea Bag elevates an everyday ritual into an animal adventure. Intricate tea bag designs range from giant squids and otters to red pandas and cephalopods. Layers, folds, and perforations help to create the details of each creature’s body, which also doubles as a pouch for the tea blend inside. The company was created by Takahashi Shota and launched its first product, a dolphin design, with a crowdfunding campaign in 2015. Since then, Shota has added a vast menagerie of animals to the product line. Luckily, the company started accepting overseas orders just a few weeks ago. Sets of individual animals/flavors and variety packs are available on the Ocean Tea Bag website.

Art Design

Geometric Dresses and Headpieces Created Entirely From Strands of Spaghetti

French interior designer and visual artist Alice Pegna is attracted to unusual or surprising materials, often using objects outside of their intended purpose. For her project Ex Nihilo, Pegna designed an entire series of geometric dresses and headpieces formed from pieces of uncooked spaghetti. “Spaghetti is basically reserved for cooking, and in the collective imagery it appears fragile. These two reasons pushed me to want to use it,” she explains in her artist statement about the project. “On the other hand I like its features. It has a certain flexibility due to its finesse, while remaining rigid and easy to split.”

Pegna starts each design by forming polygons, which create architectural details while also increasing the strength of the combined pieces. Each sculptural garment is intended to add to the human body, changing the way we see it by obscuring it as little as possible. This is clear in the way that Pegna displays her creations with minimal mannequins and matte backgrounds. The designer and artist wants to highlight the objects on the body while creating a sense of emotion with added effects of light and smoke.

Design

Performative Rubber Garments by Fredrik Tjærandsen Deflate into Fashionable Skirts and Dresses on the Runway

Photo: Niall McInerney

This week, you’ve most likely seen larger-than-life balloon garments deflating across your Instagram feed. Despite watching time and time again, I don’t seem to get bored with observing the models effortlessly emerge from the top shortly before yanking the rubber object down around their shoulders or waist. The inflated clothing items were designed by Fredrik Tjærandsen, a Norwegian designer who recently won the L’Oreal Professionel Young Talent Award for his 2019 BFA fashion presentation at Central Saint Martins in London. Not only are the dresses performative, they are also rewearable. After the bubble has gone flat, it can either be reinflated or simply worn as a deflated dress.

Initially Tjærandsen wanted to study sculpture during his BFA. His pieces, which he refers to as “bubbles,” reflect this initial interest in sculpture, and additionally have a conceptually tie to his childhood. “I was inspired by my own early childhood memories. I wanted to recreate the fogginess and the ‘mist’ of the memories themselves,” Tjærandsen told Vogue. “The inflated bubbles are about being able to wear an unclear memory. When the bubble emerges onto the catwalk, it’s the dream. The deflation of the bubble visualizes the moment when we realize we have a consciousness.”

You can take a peek at more of Tjærandsen’s rubbery designs on Instagram.

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A post shared by FREDRIK TJÆRANDSEN (@fredriktjaerandsen) on Jun 2, 2019 at 11:06am PDT

Photo, R: Niall McInerney

 

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Art Design Photography

Everyday Objects Manually Transformed Into Functional Film Cameras

It’s not uncommon to see, in any situation from a museum to a public park to see both amateur and professional photographers capturing moments using technology ranging from sleek smartphones to cumbersome lenses. Less common is the sight of a photographer shooting with a loaf of bread, mannequin, or shed.

U.K.-based artist Brendan Barry painstakingly transforms these banal materials into film cameras, which result in surprisingly beautiful photographs. Barry explores a variety of camera styles including pinhole, 35mm, and ultra large format. In a statement on his website, the artist explains that he uses “the mechanics of photography as a tool for exploration and collaboration,” often traveling to work with different communities and particularly with young people. Barry is the founder and director of Positive Light Projects, a non-profit that works with diverse audiences and emerging photographers to help empower their practice. He also teaches at the Exeter School of Art.

You can see more of Barry’s work on his website, where he documents the process of building his cameras. The artist also shares many of the resulting photographs from his collaborative cameras on Instagram.