Hasta La Ideas

In tune with their motto “Celebrate Originality”, Adidas Originals will launch the first Urban Art Guide for the iPhone on March 20th showcasing some of the finest street art around. The selected works will be frequently updated by Adidas’ editorial staff. The Urban Art Guide can be purchased free of charge via the iTunes App Store starting on March 20th.

via FormatMag:

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We’re way late on this one, so forgive us if you have seen this before. Artist Chris Cobb took it upon himself to re-organize 20,000 books by color at the Adobe Book Shop in San Francisco. The results are stunning.

Adobe Book Shop in San Francisco has agreed to allow it’s estimated 20,000 books to be be reclassified by color. Shifting from red to orange to yellow to green, the books will follow the color spectrum continuously, changing Adobe from a neighborhood bookshop into a magical library—but only for one week.

via DesignYouTrust:
Photo Source:

We’ve been long-time fans of the talented Yellena James. Her richly textured works feature intricate details that take their cue from nature. She’s already been featured on RM more than once. We knew an interview with one of our favorite artists was way overdue. Many thanks to Yellena for sharing her time with us!

REUBENMILLER: Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yellena James: I was born in Sarajevo. I went to art school there for a couple of years during the civil war. When I was 18, I moved to the States and went to UCF for my graphic design/painting degree. Besides exhibits and taking care of my Etsy shop, I also do a lot of freelance illustration work. I recently moved to Portland, OR and I love it here. When I’m not in my studio working or checking out my favorite design blogs, I’m usually tooling around town visiting galleries, eating good food, hanging out with new friends. I love to travel too, whenever I can.  Having shows around the country is a great excuse to visit new places.

(Continue reading for complete interview.)

RM: What mediums do you use for creating your art?

YJ: I love using pens, markers and other inks on paper. I also love to paint with acrylics. For that, I prefer a wood panel over a canvas for the amount of control it gives me over the strokes.

RM: What is your main source of inspiration?

YJ: I’m inspired by so many things that it’s hard for me to pin point one main source of inspiration. I’m definitely intrigued by microscopic worlds. I love discovering strange new life forms, plants, fungi, undersea aliens, etc. They spark my imagination and often inspire me to invent my own flora and fauna. I try to create new shapes based on what I imagine to exist within the unseen world around us, and attempt to suggest movements in my designs that we’re not accustom to seeing in our everyday lives, to sort-of pass that spark of inspiration on to others as they complete the movements within their own minds.

Also, moss. I’m inspired by moss.

RM: Who do you think most influenced your work?

YJ: I love the flow, complexity and perspective play in the work of Julie Mehretu or Matthew Ritchie. I’m also drawn to the beautifully dark worlds of Jeff Soto and the colorful, microscopic landscapes of Jacob Magraw. The biggest influence, as far as my own work, is probably Mother Nature… the parts she tries to hide.

RM: Do you work in any other medium?

YJ: I have a Gocco printer that I absolutely adore. Every time I lift the screen, it’s like a little zen moment. I also have a old letterpress that I am planning to incorporate into my limited edition prints and other paper goods. I have a slight obsession with anything letterpressed and I was so happy when my husband found one for me for my birthday last year.

RM: Please describe your thought process in developing a piece.

YJ: My drawings or paintings are never planned in advance. I simply just start with one element and keep building on it and around it. I never use any references or sketches. The fact that I don’t know where the piece is going to end or what it will look like when it’s finished is very liberating to me. Throughout the process I think about balance and composition and how to connect all the elements into one entity. Although the artwork starts very freely, the end result often appears very controlled and calculated.

RM: Where is your work exhibited and sold?

YJ: I’m currently at the Grass Hut in Portland and working on some group shows for the Giant Robot in NY and SF.  I’m also hoping for a solo exhibit at GR2 in LA sometime this year, but no date yet. I have a small show coming up in Seattle (at Velouria) in April, a Kokeshi doll I’m working on for the JANM, and I will have my first UK solo show this fall at the Here Shop Gallery in Bristol. There are others, but this is what comes to mind first. The best way to keep track is through my website, www.yellena.com/blog. I don’t do a lot of "blogging" but I try to keep the posts current as far as what I’m working on and where I’ll be. Of course, for affordable prints and more, visit www.yellena.etsy.com.

RM: What’s next on the horizon?

YJ: Lots of shows this year. I am also planning to expand my creations in a variety of ways, including some designs for clothing and various paper products. I’m eagerly anticipating the release of my new K2 snowboard and some patterns I did for Nike/ACG apparel to come out sometime this year as well.  Mostly, I’m just looking forward to creating some fresh new images and embracing any opportunities that may come as a result.

RM: Wishing you the best of luck in everything, Yellena!

FUEL keep a sketchbook. They put funny things like this in it

A new book reveals the scribbles and sketches contained in the most personal of a designer’s possessions: their notebook…

Spread from a sketchbook belonging to illustrator Serge Bloch

A visual communications title like CR tends to focus on the finished article: the work that
made it into production. Often as interesting, though, are the workings-out that precede the final outcome: the sketches and drawings and ideas in development (as we featured in our November 07 Work In Progress issue).

Various sketchbook pages by Pablo Amargo

For the majority of creative people, the sketchbook is where such ideas take shape. In a new book published by Laurence King, Richard Brereton has gathered together a whole range of pages from such sketchbooks, belonging to a selection of illustrators and designers.

It’s most definitely an intriguing prospect as it offers a glimpse into a private world of unresolved ideas, pre-formed jottings and the obsessions of many a creative. The sketchbook, as Brereton writes in his introduction, can be “a visual diary” or “simply a place to play”.

Two pages from one of Henrik Delehag’s 2003 sketchbooks

CR Creative Future, Paul M Dreibholz, uses his sketchbook for typographic experimentation

Of course, the way in which an artist uses his or her sketchbook denotes the kind of work on show in the book. So while Lauren Simkin Berke and Serge Bloch offer up a range of charming workings-out (which, in Bloch’s case, were towards a commissioned job), Pablo Amargo fills his pages with considered collages and Renato Alarcão displays a series of watercolours that he, apparently, often completes in 20-minute sessions.

Sketchbooks by Hiro Kurata

Flo Heiss draws everybody’s favourite narky ornithologist, Bill Oddie

For Peter Saville, the experience of recording things in a notebook is more self-analytical. “The work one does for others is less personal and rarely emotional or biographical,” he says in the text accompanying his work. “My notebooks have one subject: what is my work and what is the point of it?”

Work by Henrik Delehag (see above)

While the work included here is, essentially, the private made public, this insight only jars when the work is displayed as a piece of Art in its own right, devoid from its context within a sketchbook.

Most, fortunately, have been photographed as is and this makes for a much more interesting (and more appropriate) examination of the creative process. When that happens, Sketchbooks offers glimpses of a fair few unseen treasures.

Sketchbooks is published by Laurence King; £19.95. This review features on the books page of the March issue of CR

By way of a summation of the array of ideas at his disposal, Adam and Joe’s BBC3 profile of artist Nobumichi Tosa and his Meiwa Denki organisation is well worth a look. Tosa just performed at the Design Indaba and, via a series of videos, went through many of his Nonsense Machines that have delighted audiences all over the world. While his singing robots (who have working vocal cords made of rubber) were actually quite moving, one of my favourite pieces would have to be his “machine for moving a dead fish”. Yep, that’s really all it does. But then, it does do it very well indeed.