A History Of The Title Sequence from jurjen versteeg on Vimeo.
Jurjen Versteeg is a young Dutch creative designer based in Rotterdam. Focusing on motion graphic design, animation and visual effects for film, television and web, with a main interest in title design.
An illustration created for UPPERCASE issue #10 by Jeff Rogers.
Artful portraits capturing the personality of man’s best friend and other animals
National Geographic-style exotic animals poised in their natural habitat these are not. Carli Davidson aims her lens at domesticated pets and zoo animals, capturing personalities rather than wild, untamed animal behavior. Based in Portland, Oregon, she’s internationally recognized for her work as a fine art pet photographer with her often humorous and consistently honest portraits.
Davidson’s portfolio is every animal-lover’s dream with both editorial and studio series ranging from the colorful “Dogs and Cats” collection to charming photos from the “Oregon Zoo.” These include a triumphant pic of Conrad the polar bear licking a cream cheese cake off a window on his 25th birthday and a recently-hatched tiny turtle posed on top of a hundred dollar bill for scale.
Another “aw”-inducing series, the “Handicapped Pet project” proves with levity that “your pet is beautiful no matter how many limbs it has”—like Ramen Noodle, an adorable pup who lost both his arms in two separate accidents. In his case, Davidson demonstrates Ramen Noodle’s resilience with images of him standing tall on his remaining hind legs, as well as carefree action shots of him running around in his wheelchair. (Also on Cool Hunting: I Heart Tripods)
Apart from capturing humorous quirks in the off-moments when pets’ eyes go cross or tongues flop lazily from snouts, Davidson depicts their owners in “People & Pets.” Through artful posing, Davidson’s photographs—like a yawning puppy cupped in gentle, tattooed hands and a white-feathered parrot perched so it’s profile blends with its owner’s bright blue eyes —reflect the character of both individuals, as well as the bond between them.
While Davidson’s work is generally lighthearted, she shows the dark side of animal life too. Her graphic series, “Bison Butchering,” follows the process of meat trading from pasture to slaughterhouse. She also sheds light on veterinary work with her visual photos of “Animal Surgery.” This includes the philanthropic work performed by the Oregon Zoo veterinarians who invite blind students for a hands-on experience of their operating rooms.
Visit Davidson’s website to peruse her various photographic studies—including the irresistible series “Shake,” which features stills of various wide-eyed pooches shaking it out with flappy cheeks, windblown tufts of fur and airborne wads of drool. Contact her directly to snag exclusive prints.
via Zeutch.
All photography by Carli Davidson
View more images at JeremyriadI recently came across the pencil sculptures of artist Bob Ban Breda. Alas, I missed his most recent exhibition that was in San Francisco, but more googling resulted in closer views of Bob’s work and his inspiring collections. Visit SF Electric Works for more great images.
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winning Economist {via Bob Ban Breda}
A new paper-based building block kit brings creativity back to playtime
The founder of five businesses devoted to art and commerce, ReadyMade‘s Grace Hawthorne is close to realizing another creative idea—a series of toys called Paper Punk. With 12 days left of her Kickstarter campaign, Hawthorne is just a few dollars short of her goal to raise $15,000 for Paper Punk production. Inspired by the level of excitement people exude when working with their hands, the industrious publisher and professor hopes Paper Punk will empower both kids and adults to exercise their creative mind with this little DIY design toy.
Packed flat, with a few folds the paper kits transform into 3D geometric blocks, which you can then use to build toys spanning snakes to birthday cakes. Starting with just a handful of designs called Singles, Hawthorne aims to expand this simple concept to include free shapes online, a sturdier version for small kids and a charitable component for public school art programs.
Each of the three initial kits—Pup, Bot and Ride—come with a set of “punch-n-build” shapes, a plethora of stickers and adhesives, straightforward instructions and a reusable folder to store all of the fun. The DIY toys will retail for $19, but Kickstarter pledges of $20 or more will get you a kit and help make Hawthorne’s project possible.
Check out the full scope of Paper Punks and make a pledge online at Kickstarter.
Photographer Skye Parrot’s path from political science to indie magazine publisher
As the daughter of an art photographer, it never occurred to Skye Parrott to take up
photography as a career herself. Though she grew up around cameras, Parrott thought she was going to major in political science. “I thought I was going to law school.”
Instead, Parrott went to Paris. After a few internships and a stint as managing editor at Self Service magazine, her
outlook changed and she began working as Nan Goldin’s Paris studio manager. The legendary
chronicler of New York subculture acted as both an artistic and a business mentor to
Parrott. After two years of running her studio in Paris, Parrott moved back to the United
States and managed Goldin’s New York studio while launching her own career.
“Having the chance to work with someone that influential was amazing,” Parrott says. “It changed my work a lot, and helped me find my own voice.” Following the advice of an ex who encouraged her to work through her own influences to get “what’s yours,” she explains that how she “really needed to just do
my version of Nan Goldin again and again until I got to the other side.”
The other side happens to be an astoundingly successful artistic and commercial career
back in Parrott’s hometown of New York—”the center of everything,” as she says. In addition to campaigns for the likes of A.P.C., Nike and Pamela Love, she’s shot editorial work for almost every edition of Vogue as well as for Lula and other European publications.
Her photo exhibition “First Love, Last Rites” opened last year to widespread acclaim. A documentation of the year that she spent struggling with two damaged love affairs—one with a boy, one with heroin—the wistful series deals with misplaced yearning and the subjectivity of memory.
Parrot reflects that one of the best aspects about First Love was that it mixed her personal and commercial work styles. “I like pictures that are found, rather than
made, and that have an emotion. Even if it’s a staged moment, it’s a true moment. Even though I work with digital cameras, I don’t like digital to look digital. There’s definitely a nostalgia to my aesthetic.”
One of Parrott’s most exciting ongoing projects is the bi-annual arts, fashion and
culture magazine Dossier, which she founded with a childhood friend. “We
thought we were going to a ‘zine. But once we started putting out the call for
contributions, we started getting this amazing content. There was no way we could put it
out in newsprint with 500 printed copies,” Parrott said.
Some of that content included Zac Posen’s first-ever styled story—Posen is an old schoolmate of Dossier’s co-founder and editor Katherine Krause—and an
unpublished portfolio by the photographer David Armstrong, whom Parrott met while she
was working for Goldin. “We grew up in New York, which helped,” she says. “We
reached out to anyone amazing that we knew for the first issue, because we didn’t know
if there would ever be a second one.” They funded the magazine with contributions from
friends and family, and set it loose. “A lot of people were very generous when we hadn’t
done anything. They had faith that whatever we were going to make would be cool.”
Now on its seventh issue, Dossier—which means “file” in French—gives its widely varied contributors a space in which to exercise absolute creative freedom. In
order to keep that freedom, the magazine’s small staff keeps their day jobs and work for
free out of Parrott’s house. And in the fall, they’ll work around the magazine’s newest,
and smallest, staff member. “I’m not as busy as I used to be. I was excited to finish
up ‘First Love, Last Rites’ and get to work on another creative project, but then I got
pregnant,” Parrott explains. “That’s totally the definition of a personal project.”
Photography duo capture fashion’s poetic moments with animated GIFs
Whether showing how to drop your pants or adding creepy slow-lidded blinks, animated GIFs perhaps come the closest to capturing the true essence of a moment—what photographic technology has often struggled to achieve since the first recorded image. NYC-based innovators Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg poetically attempt just that with their forward-thinking fashion photography that they’ve dubbed “cinemagraphs.”
Teaming up with high-fashion names such as Tiffany’s and Christian Louboutin, Jamie and Kevin have created a whole new style of art for digital ads. The images sometimes lean towards the slightly fantastical—the shimmer on a pair of glitter-covered heels or the shadowy flicker of a film. Theirs is a perfect world that somehow collided with ours, creating sensations like the idealized ripple of a silk skirt that may not exist in reality but ought to.
The beauty of their vision lies in its simplicity. Movements are so subtle (a model’s hair blows in the wind, the gentle jostle of the subway, the flash of a passing car) as to not always be apparent at first glance, but closer scrutiny rewards you with these isolate moments of delight.
“There’s something magical about a still photograph,” Jamie explains, calling them “a captured moment in time—that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.” To see more cinemagraphs, check out Jamie’s Tumblr.
FriendsWithYou celebrates the High Line’s latest addition with an immersive playground for kids and adults alike
To celebrate the glorious beginning of summer and the much-anticipated opening of phase two of the High Line, New York City’s acclaimed elevated park, AOL teamed up with FriendsWithYou to create “Rainbow City,” an interactive sculptural installation. The 16,000 square-foot outdoor space is filled with colorful inflatable artworks designed to “spread magic, luck, and friendship” as a playful destination for adults and kids alike. The blow-up playground will also host a series of educational programs for children intended to develop creativity in an artistic environment.
In addition to the towering inflatable guests, you will find the Rainbow City pop-up shop, aptly-named Boxer. Designed by NYC firm Hollwich Kushner, a mutli-disciplinary group specializing in architecture, design, urban development, branding and digital media. Named for its particular size, Boxer is just 8’x8’x6′ and opens horizontally down the center to unveil an unassuming retail space, which peddles t-shirts, stickers, coloring books and many other wonderful wares.
Complementing the area underneath the High Line’s current terminus at 30th Street and 10th Avenue is a Tom Colicchio-crafted beer garden serving site-specific beer from Brooklyn Brewery and an assortment of food trucks including the Kelvin Natural Slush Company.
Harness iOS music-making potential with new interface pedals
New Signal Process made a splash in the digital music scene last year with their BreakOut pedal, allowing musicians to interface their instruments directly with the plethora of iPad and iPhone apps. This week they dropped two new pedals which deliver even more options to digital music masters.
The BreakOut Stomp was birthed in response to guitarists and bassists badgering NSP with product suggestions. Fusing the concept for the original device with a classic stompbox, the new model incorporates an easily foot-toggled switch which allows it to seamlessly integrate with a pedal board. Indistinguishable from any high-grade audio pedal from your local music shop, the difference is the ability to access innumerable effects—limited only by how comprehensive of an app collection you have.
The second edition to the line, the BreakOut Stereo, was created with masters of digital harmony in mind, specifically DJs and producers. Two separate stereo outputs make it easily adaptable to almost any situation, providing the most possibilities for interfacing with systems on the road or in an at home studio. Interfacing with Apple devices gives you access to all the features bundled up in your mobile-friendly synth and drum machine apps, essentially giving you limitless music making potential on the go.
Both pedals sell from the New Signal Process store; the Stereo runs $135 and the Stomp $155.
I love seeing how UPPERCASE magazine inspires creativity in others. Katrina of PuglyPixel is offering up these free downloads of beautiful hexagon patterns inspired by the magazine’s colour palette. If you haven’t visited PuglyPixel, be prepared to spend some quality hours looking at eye candy and learning a whole lot about blogging, web design, digital art, photoshop… Is it a great resource!
If you want even more, she offers premium access to special downloads and “blog bling” as she calls it. It’s an innovative way to earn a living as a designer. Kudos!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
