Hasta La Ideas

Melbourne-based graphic designer offers original art in a minute or less

Perhaps Warhol was the first to open up the art world to the idea of fast art, smashing the notion that the quality of art is parallel to the time spent creating it. Granting more than just a nod to Warhol’s ideology is UK artist, Benjamin Hammond. After years of sketching his colleagues during weekly work meetings, the now Melbourne-based graphic designer began getting requests from friends to provide them with a portrait. Opening up his skill set to a worldwide audience Hammond has just launched One Minute Portraits, a site where he creates portraits in just one minute. Anyone can email him a photo of themself, check out the portrait and then choose to buy the original. “I chose one minute because it’s roughly how long I take to draw a face,” says Hammond, “Saying that, if I’m really into drawing a face and my minute’s up, I may just keep going until it’s done. But normally it shouldn’t take more than a minute.”

The site, which literally just launched, is already gaining popularity with requests coming in from Dubai, London, Amsterdam and San Francisco. And while happy punters can choose to buy their original pic, Hammond does not charge for his one minute of work. “I considered charging but the main concept was born out finding a new consistent motivation to draw, and to hopefully gain attention which would then lead onto other projects,” says Hammond, “I love to draw, but I sometimes need a motivation. Or a thing to draw. Nothing like a good face. To draw I mean.”

Fancy your own one minute masterpiece? Simply email a photo of yourself to faces [at} oneminuteportraits [dot] net or upload an image here.

pimg alt=”introducing_brown.jpg” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/introducing_brown.jpg” width=”468″ height=”311″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pCore77 readers have loved Matt Brown’s “Design Fancy” columns (featuring a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_fancy_carlo_heckman_16035.asp”Carlo Heckman/a, a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/design_fancy_kurt_manchild_16269.asp”Kurt Manchild/a, and a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_fancy_berit_kalmar_16500.asp”Berit Kalmar/a) for awhile, so now we’re making it official! Core77 welcomes Matt as one of our monthly columnists, who will provide fantastic (and fantastical) design fictions and artifacts on a regular basis./p

pMatt Brown is a designer from the Chemical City (Midland, MI) and works at a href=”http://www.ideo.com”IDEO/a in Boston. He studied Industrial Design at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI and got his Masters in Interaction Design from the Ume#229; Institute of Design in Ume#229;, Sweden. You can see Matt’s work on his a href=”http://www.skrov.com/”website/a, and read more on his a href=”http://www.realtomato.blogspot.com/”blog/a./p

pWelcome Matt!/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/introducing_new_core77_columnist_matt_brown_16977.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q7t75tL_LtKV5E3ItKnE4fdgFL8/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q7t75tL_LtKV5E3ItKnE4fdgFL8/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q7t75tL_LtKV5E3ItKnE4fdgFL8/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q7t75tL_LtKV5E3ItKnE4fdgFL8/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p

Exploring the Pop Art, Aboriginal and other influences of London’s quickly-rising fashion designer Holly Fulton

Back in April, we introduced you to Holly Fulton, and the quickly-rising fashion designer’s latest Spring/Summer collection. Following up on her recent successes and newest pieces, we sat down for a conversation with the young clothier to discuss her various influences.

The Edinburgh native took the fashion world by storm when she debuted her A/W 2009 collection at London Fashion Week. Standing out against muted palettes and predictable designs, Fulton’s work was an explosion of color, art deco styling, graphic realization and clashing materials. Her simple, yet sophisticated pieces instantly fueled the idea that fashion is indeed art.

Since then Fulton has grown in popularity, adored and revered by editors, stylists and that oh-so-effortlessly-cool girl on the street. In her own words, “selfish about her design”, Fulton creates pieces that she “would want to wear or think is right at the time” and finds inspiration in, “art deco; pop intense qualities, aboriginal art; jewelery in many forms; collections—I am shocking hoarder and collect many things including 60s clocks, Swedish glass, books of any sort and objects shaped like hands.”

Despite over a decade of design experience (Fulton graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in fashion in 1999), Fulton took her time building her name; carefully creating a business that was sustainable and successful. “The best advice I ever received was that 75% of businesses go bust in the first two years. I was told to sort out production and business first or I’d never make it. That concept terrified me at the time but it was totally true and I always kept it in mind.”

The hard work paid off with Fulton now in control of an award-winning label coveted by British and Italian Vogue as well as numerous fashion icons across the globe. “I’m not so fussed about celebrities being in my clothes,” admits Fulton, “The biggest compliment of all is seeing someone wearing my designs on the street—someone who has bought it off the rack and exhibited a genuine desire to wear it because it appeals to them.” The first time this happened was in 2000 when Fulton spotted someone “in a turquoise coat from my degree collection. It’s etched forever in my memory—those moments give you a true buzz.”

And while Fulton rejoices in the everyday woman donning her items, she’s not so excited about the prospect of them doing in so in high street rip-offs. “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery so at least it shows your work is popular across the board, but I do find it disheartening that high street stores don’t just pay new designers to do something for them and give them a hand, rather than just pinch their designs.”

When she’s not designing Fulton spends her hours drawing, reading “at the moment Keith Haring’s Journal” and listening to Jarvis Cocker. “I don’t really look at blogs. You see too much stuff [on there] saying you are shit and frankly, I’d rather not know—I spent years being not quite me, then when I finally felt comfortable in my own skins, things started to happen.”

Dezeenwire: Jonathan Glancey reviews London’s recently-opened Strata tower, the world’s first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines – Guardian

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/07/diamond-mirror-close.jpg” width=”468″ height=”523″ alt=”diamond-mirror-close.jpg”//div

pa href=”http://www.jakephipps.com/”Jake Phipps/a sent us pics of his newest limited edition design piece, Spectrum, a faceted mirror segmented to recall “the physical attributes of cut diamonds.” Though at first this description sounded a little too precious, we realized that Phipps’ was more interested in reproducing the light scattering effect of cut diamonds through dispersion (creating rainbow colors), scintillation (cutting up light into small bits) and brilliance (delivering it to the eye)./p

blockquoteThis optical dispersion means that as the ambience of the mirror’s environment changes throughout the day, so too does its colour
and lustre, creating an ever changing focal point to a room./blockquote

pA few more shots after the jump./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/07/diamond-mirror-in-room.jpg” width=”468″ height=”482″ alt=”diamond-mirror-in-room.jpg”//diva href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/this_just_inbox_jake_phipps_diamond-imitating_wall_mirror__16975.asp”(more…)/a
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