Russian artist Roman Booteen modifies coins with incredible engravings and feats of mechanical engineering. This coin features a beating heart. Other exquisite examples of his work are below. He also customizes Zippo lighters.
(via Kottke)
View this post on Instagram#hobonickel #goldinlay #morgandollar #engraved #engravedcoin #hobonickel #hobonickels
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Uno's Greta Grotesk is a free font based on Greta Thunberg's hand-lettered signs. Read the rest
Bryony Dalefield pasted up the London Review of Books in the early 1980s. In this video she shows how she did it back in the the good old days of rubber cement and X-Acto knives.
I laid out the first issue of bOING bOING in 1987 this way.
Image: YouTube
In the early 1980s, Susan Kare joined Apple Computer to design fonts and user interface graphics. A legend of pixel art, Kare created the look of the original Macintosh, from the Chicago typeface to the Trash Can to the Happy Mac icon. She's currently creative director at Pinterest. David Kindy profiles Kare in Smithsonian:
Read the restPioneering designer Susan Kare was taught by her mother how to do counted-thread embroidery, which gave her the basic knowledge she needed to create the first icons for the Apple Macintosh 35 years ago.
“It just so happened that I had small black and white grids to work with,” she says. “The process reminded me of working needlepoint, knitting patterns or mosaics. I was lucky to have had a mother who enjoyed crafts..."
Designing the icons proved to be more of a challenge (than the typefaces). Reproducing artwork on those primitive CRT surfaces, which used a bit-mapped matrix system with points of light, or pixels, to display data, was a designer’s nightmare.
However, the friend who recommended Kare for the job—-Andy Hertzfeld, then lead software architect for Macintosh-—had an idea. Since the matrix was essentially a grid, he suggested Kare get the smallest graph paper she could find. She then blocked out a 32-by-32 square and began coloring in squares to create the graphics...
After leaving Apple in 1986, Kare became creative director for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs at the short-lived NeXT, Inc., an influential computer startup that was eventually acquired by Apple. She founded her own eponymous design firm in 1989, which created graphic designs for hundreds of clients, including Autodesk, Facebook, Fossil, General Magic, IBM, Microsoft and PayPal.
Film editor Andrew Saladino of the Royal Ocean Film Society analyzes the exquisitely engineered airships in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Read the rest
In Hong Kong, a boycott has begun of skateboard lifestyle brand Vans after the company pulled the above design from their annual Vans Custom Culture competition. In the contest, the public is invited to submit their designs in competition for a cash prize and having their shoe design manufactured. This particular design is themed around the current anti-government protests in Hong Kong and it was apparently doing quite well in the competition. From CNN:
Read the restThe design, attributed to a Canada-based user named Naomiso, features a red bauhinia, the flower on Hong Kong's flag, and one of the yellow umbrellas synonymous with the city's 2014 pro-democracy protests. Illustrations on the sneaker's side depict a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks, goggles and hard hats.
On Saturday, with over a week of voting still to go, the submission was removed from the competition website. In a statement posted on Facebook in Chinese and English, the brand said that "a small number of artistic submissions have been removed ... to uphold the purpose of Custom Culture."
"As a brand that is open to everyone, we have never taken a political position and therefore review designs to ensure they are in line with our company's long-held values of respect and tolerance, as well as with our clearly communicated guidelines for this competition," the statement said, without referring specifically to the protest-themed design.
The statement drew condemnation on social media from Hong Kong protest supporters, where a number of posts were accompanied by the hashtag #boycottVans.
Gavin and Alice Munro are serious about sustainability. On a two-acre field in England's Midlands, they're growing trees that are trained into forming the shape of furniture, including chairs. Read the rest
In 1969, visionary designers Charles and Ray Eames directed this cinematic ballet of more than 100 spinning tops from around the world. The score is by famed Hollywood composer Elmer Bernstein (The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, Airplane!, etc.). From the Eames Office:
Tops had its genesis in an earlier film produced for the Stars of Jazz television program in 1957. The Eameses decided to make a longer, color version in 1966, which they worked on in spare moments between other projects.
The film is a celebration of the ancient art and craft of top-making and spinning. One hundred and twenty-three tops spin to the accompaniment of a score by Elmer Bernstein. Using close-up, live-action photography, the film shows tops, old and new, from various countries, including China, Japan, India, the United States, France, and England.
Charles’s fascination with spinning tops went back to his childhood; in this film he found a perfect vehicle for demonstrating their beauty in motion and for making visual points about the universality of tops, the physics of motion (MIT physics professor, Philip Morrison, often showed the film to students and colleagues), and the intimate relationship between toys and science.
(via Aeon) Read the rest
Cyril Borovsky purchased a 16-foot wide strip of property in Toronto. Then he built a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, four-story house. Borovsky says his design approach could be used to turn parking spaces into homes. You could also buy Borovsky's house for $3 million.
More here: 154 Hamilton Street
And other impressively slender Toronto homes: "Three buyers who found narrow plots of prime real estate and made it work" (Toronto Life)
Enjoy this beautiful song "Everyone Hides" from Wilco's forthcoming 11th album, Ode To Joy, out on October 4.
The album is also available in a limited-edition vinyl box set designed by my Grammy-winning pal Lawrence Azerrad who co-produced the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition with Tim Daly and me. Check out the specs on this extravagant and exquisite objet d' art:
Exclusively available through the Wilco store, the Ode to Joy Deluxe Vinyl Box Set features a limited edition hand-numbered slipcased pop-up art book which includes:
• Ode To Joy LP on 180 gram vinyl • LP jacket and inserts exclusive to this edition • A 22-page clothbound hardcover embossed book printed on 100 point archival paper. The book features collages and unique hand assembled paper constructions that animate and reveal album lyrics including pages engineered with pull out die cut pockets, spinning wheels, paper doors, and unfolding gatefold spreads. • Autographed by the band.
Produced in Chicago, IL with six color printing, metallic inks and collages designed by Wilco’s long-time collaborator Lawrence Azerrad, the limited edition Ode To Joy art book is a rare archive of this work.
Designer Jose Garcia at Zoca Studio Inc. used a familiar Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) map to showcase the Fillmore's 50 upcoming fall concerts. Ironically, you can't take BART directly to this historic San Francisco music venue. Still, it's a really neat design.
Here's the real BART System Map for comparison:
Speaking of Fillmore and its posters, if a show sells out ahead of time, they'll hand you a cool, artist-created poster for free on the way out as a gift. These posters are uniquely sized, usually at 13" X 19", and stores carry special frames to display them. My first one was from 1995 for the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood show. It was my first introduction to the work of mosaic pop artist, Jason Mecier, who created the original art in pasta and beans.
images via The Fillmore and BART Read the rest
augmented-ui is a stylesheet (a javascript library is in beta testing) that lets you apply cyberpunk styles to your web designs. Just include it in your HTML and tweak your CSS classes and ids, and you're off to the cyber-races.
High Tech, Low Effort
augmented-ui is just CSS.
Futuristic, cyberpunk-inspired UI shaping for any element Add the "augmented-ui" attribute to equip the augs, and a few CSS settings for each one to make it feel just right
Namespaced to avoid crossing wires.
All custom properties begin with "--aug-" Selectors only use the "augmented-ui" attribute
Automatic fallbacks and feature detection.
Full support with v1.1.0+ has a global user reach of ~91%! Great automatic fallback for older browsers (+ ~3.5% global reach). More details below!
Use augmented-ui in any project, for free.
Free :: BSD 2-Clause License
Basically, a "get 45 degree corners without going completely insane" CSS framework with a killer pitch. Read the rest
I'm thrilled to report the release of The Family Acid: California, the book I published with Timothy Daly, my Ozma Records partner and co-producer of the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition. Limited to just 1,500 clothbound copies, it's a far-out photo album from a very unconventional family.
For more than 50 years, photographer Roger Steffens has explored the electric arteries of the counterculture, embracing mind-expanding experiences, deep social connection, and unadulterated fun at every turn. After serving in Vietnam at the end of the 1960s, Steffens immersed himself in California’s vibrant bohemia. Since then, with his wife Mary and children Kate and Devon, he has sought out the eccentric, the outlandish, and the transcendent. Just as often, it finds him, grinning, a camera in one hand and a joint in the other. Steffens took the spectacular snapshots in this new collection between 1968 and 2015 during his family's freewheeling adventures throughout the visionary state they call home.
Steffens is an intrepid explorer of the fringe but he’s also a family man. He met his wife Mary under a lunar eclipse in a pygmy forest in Mendocino, California while on LSD. Soon after, they conjured up a daughter, Kate, and son, Devon. Family vacations took the foursome up and down the West Coast, from the gritty glam of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip to reggae festivals in Humboldt, fiery protests in Berkeley to the ancient redwoods of Big Sur and the wilds of Death Valley. Along the way, they’d rendezvous with likeminded freaks, artists, musicians, and writers, from Bob Marley and Timothy Leary to actor John Ritter and war photographer Tim Page, the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now. Read the rest
From the far-out folks at Flavor Paper comes Cannabliss, a subtly psychedelic scratch-and-sniff wallpaper that smells like weed. They write:
We have nailed a very pleasant yet dank scent that is made from true flowering hemp terpenes to ensure we’re keeping it real. CBD for your eyes and ol factory. Dope.
As Alex writes at Weird Universe, "Most of the people who will buy this already have rooms that smell like marijuana." Read the rest
Earlier this month, I was in Washington DC during the Smithsonian's festivities around the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first human moon landing. As you likely saw, UK-based creative studio 59 Productions and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum collaborated on an astonishing audiovisual experience centered around a lifesize Saturn V rocket projected onto the Washington Monument. Read the rest
Over at CNN, fantastically creative and influential Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is CNN Style's latest "guest editor." Along with commissioning a series of articles "exploring the theme of identity," he wrote his own insightful and inspiring essay about his life as an artist. From CNN:
Read the restAs a child, looking at paintings was absolutely boring. One standout memory was when, around the age of 8, I had to wait in line for three hours with my family, just to see the Spanish artist Francisco Goya's painting at a museum in Tokyo. The work depicted Titan Cronus (or Saturn) eating his own children. The image was haunting and kept me up for many nights after. I think this profound experience, or trauma, formed the basis for my act of painting to this day. It taught me that if my work doesn't move people and induce a "wow!" then it's all for nothing.
Once I started grade school however, reading manga and watching TV anime became more important to me. No longer forced by my parents to go look at paintings, I became obsessed with "Ultraman," robot anime and sport-themed manga about boxing and baseball. I believe these experiences have a lot to do with how I now make films and animations, alongside paintings and sculptures....
In seventh grade, I fell into a hole in the ground and broke my skull and some bones in my right hand. I couldn't go to school for a month and subsequently failed to catch up academically.
