games

Posts tagged
with games

Design

Practice Your Stroke with Alphaputt, a Playful Typographic Mini Golf Course

Typography meets tee time in Alphaputt, an iOS game with a lot of character. The digital mini golf course is the project of Sennep Games and can be played in two iterations: spell out a word and putt around the individual holes or swing through the entire alphabet from A to Z. From a zippy rollercoaster and sushi restaurant to a turntable and UFO landing site, each letter features a uniquely designed green complete with distractions and attempts to thwart your progress.

Since its release, the game has garnered multiple awards and recognition from industry giants, including the Apple App Store, The FWA, and the Webby Awards. Alphaputt is available for iPhone and iPad, although we found gameplay easier on the larger screen.

 

Art Design

Play Your Next Round of Cards with a Deck Featuring Kehinde Wiley’s Signature Portraits

Games of poker or solitaire have a little more flair with artist-designed decks by Kehinde Wiley (previously). Gracing four 54-card packs are Wiley’s vividly rendered portraits of Black people, all of which subvert portraiture traditions of Western art history as they highlight subjects of the African diaspora. While fragments of the vibrant botanical backdrops adorn the cards’ faces, the reverse depicts the full works, including the artist’s 2012 painting of model Dacia Carter and “A Portrait of a Young Gentleman,” which reinterprets Thomas Gainsborough’s iconic “Blue Boy” by placing a Sengalese surfer at its center.

Two sets are available in Wiley’s shop, and the MoMA Design Store carries the other two. Proceeds from all decks go toward the artist’s residency program, Black Rock Senegal.

 

Art Colossal

Putt Around the Playable Artworks of ‘Par Excellence Redux: The Back 9,’ Now Open at Elmhurst Art Museum

The Back 9 of Par Excellence Redux, an artist-designed miniature golf course, is now open at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Curated by Colossal’s founder and editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson as part of an open call, the exhibition of playable artworks pays homage to the incredibly popular Par Excellence, which opened in 1988 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Back 9, which runs through January 2, 2022, includes artists Wesley Baker, KT Duffy, Eve Fineman, Joshua Kirsch, Annalee Koehn, Vincent Lotesto, Joshua Lowe, Jim Merz, David Quednau, Donna Piacenza, and Liam Wilson & Anna Gershon. This round features a wide array of designs like a mirrored room in which the green spreads out into infinity, a community garden in waiting, and Koehn’s fortune-telling piece first shown 33 years ago in the initial exhibition.

Chicago sculptor Michael O’Brien conceived of the original Par Excellence, which opened to lines down the block and subsequently sold out daily. It was recognized nationally in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune, among others, and went on tour throughout Illinois before returning to Chicago as a rebranded commercial project called ArtGolf, which was located at 1800 N. Clybourn in Lincoln Park on the site that’s now occupied by Goose Island Brewery.

Book a tee time to play the second half of the course, and remember that Colossal Members get 25% off.

 

Art Colossal

Take a Swing Around ‘Par Excellence Redux,’ a Mini Golf Course of Playable Artworks at Elmhurst Art Museum

Now open at the Elmhurst Art Museum is Par Excellence Redux, a miniature golf course featuring a widely varied collection of playable artworks. Curated by Colossal’s founder and editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson as part of an open call, the two-part course pays homage to the wildly popular Par Excellence that opened in 1988 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The designs range from a challenging optical illusion to a maze-like castle with the potential for a hole-in-one to Annalee Koehn’s fortune-telling piece first shown 33 years ago in the initial exhibition.

Chicago sculptor Michael O’Brien conceived of the original Par Excellence, which opened to lines down the block and subsequently sold out daily. It was recognized nationally in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune, among others, and went on tour throughout Illinois before returning to Chicago as a rebranded commercial project called ArtGolf, which was located at 1800 N. Clybourn in Lincoln Park on the site that’s now occupied by Goose Island Brewery. Although artist-designed golf courses are shown at a variety of Midwest museums—you can see versions at the Walker Art Center, The Sheldon, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—Par Excellence is widely regarded as the first.

The Front 9, which runs through September 26, features artists Julie Cowan, Current Projects, Andrea Jablonski & Stolatis Inc., Annalee Koehn, Latent Design, Jesse Meredith, Gautam Rao, Robin Schwartzman & Tom Loftus (aka A Couple of Putts), and the museum’s Teen Art Council. Open October 13, 2021, to January 2, 2022, The Back 9  shows work from artists Wesley Baker, KT Duffy, Eve Fineman, Joshua Kirsch, Annalee Koehn, Vincent Lotesto, Joshua Lowe, Jim Merz, David Quednau, and Liam Wilson & Anna Gershon.

Try your hand at the first nine holes by heading over to Elmhurst’s site to book a tee time, and remember that Colossal Members get 25% off.

 

Art Design Illustration

Shantell Martin Designs Two Decks of Playing Cards with Her Signature Black-and-White Drawings

The Whitney Museum and luxury playing-card company Theory11 are teaming up on a series of artist-designed decks, and their first edition deals in British artist Shantell Martin (previously). Titled “LINE,” the same combination of Martin’s signature patchwork drawings and affirmational messages inscribe the dual deck, which is available in both a black and a white version. The line drawings are mostly monochromatic with the exception of bursts of color on the joker and face cards, which feature mirrored characters encircled by words like “wisdom” and “joy.”

Each deck is printed on FSC-certified paper with vegetable inks and starch laminates, and the cards are canvas textured and blind embossed. Both the black and white versions launched yesterday and are available from Theory11 and the Whitney Shop. You also might enjoy UNO’s sold-out collaboration with Nina Chanel Abney and this revolutionary deck from Studio LO. (via Artnet)

 

Design History

A Sleek Deck of Cards by Studio LO Honors 12 Black Figures Who’ve Revolutionized History

Kansas City, Missouri-based designer Kearra Johnson of Studio LO describes her standard 54-card deck as anything but traditional: it’s revolutionary. On one side of each playing card is a raised fist, a symbol that’s synonymous with the fight against oppression around the globe. But on the K, Q, and J of all four suits are portraits of ground-breaking Black icons who have profoundly impacted history, from Michelle Obama and Thurgood Marshall to Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. “I wanted to go with the powerful figures we’ve all learned about growing up,” Johnson tells Colossal. “The ones who drove change, and the ones who we are familiar with, but also ones who aren’t as traditional as others. Those features range from Oprah Winfrey to the man with the dream, MLK Jr.”

The concept for the Revolution Card Deck was born out of a class project while the now 22-year-old designer was a student at the University of Missouri. She created a few physical decks after a professor asked to purchase some as gifts, a request that spurred Johnson to print more. Since the project was featured on both CNN and NPR, she’s sold hundreds of decks, which will remain a fixture of Studio LO’s inventory and are now available in the Colossal Shop. You also can follow Johnson’s activism-focused designs on Instagram.