Running the numbers...

Plastic Bottles, 2007
60x120"

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.
Chris Jordan is an artist thats looking at the statistics of consumption and putting them in a visual format thats engaging and makes you realise how much we really do use. It really makes you think about what we're doing to the planet and the sheer enormity of our consumer habits. They seem to be a lot more striking in person as well. The canvases being massive and overbearing. All of this rings home the message.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=?view=XXX_09NNN/

Eboy...

Eboy is one of the leaders in pixal art, one of my favourite designers.


http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/index.php

Crap Hound 7...

Crap hound is a magazine that basicly uses loads of stolen images/clipart to make up composite layouts and mosiacs. Its a style that works really well, suprisingly. If someone said to you, here this is a comic made of clipart, you'd probably laugh in their face, but not so with crap hound! It shows that by remixing old images something new and cool can be made. Theres nothing new under the sun...

http://readingfrenzy.com/shoppe/magazines_and_zines/284/

Classic book modification...

Hollowed out books are almost a cliche but done well its always a suprisingly useful way of hiding stuff. I like how professional these are, you can't tell from the outside that theres anything amiss. This is the first and most obvious modification of a book, but is a launching pad to seeing a book differently, something i want to focus on in this current project.

http://www.secretstoragebooks.com/

Cigarette box books...

Tankbooks, "tales to take your breath away" these are classic novels packaged in cigarrette boxes. These are really cool. Cigarette packets are iconic and i love anything that twists the tradional use of something is good in my book. Practically i dont know how well these will work, as a cigarette box is pretty small for a novel. This seems to be one of those conceptial "cool" bits of design with no real practical widescale use, but need to exist to keep the design world fresh. The covers lend themselves quite well to the scale though, and anyone seeing them would unlikely guess it contained a book until close inspection.

Obey Giant

Shepard Fairey, the man behind Obey Giant is a bit of a hero of mine. Ive loved his stuff for years and i tend to horde anything i can find by him. I just agree with his philosphy of taking back urban space, and "the medium is the message". In his words-

" The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. the first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The Obey Campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisement or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalising the viewer's perception and attention to detail."

His work is usually screen printed, and as such uses few colours. this adds to the impact of his pieces as the red, black and white create a strong colour field when lots of posters are put together in the same spot. The whole campaign is obviously inspired by propaganda, such as russian communist propaganda, and from the book and film 1984. Dystopian future literature is another of my loves so it all works out nicely.

Pencil Sculptures by Jennifer Maestre

Jennifer Maestre creates amazing sculptures out of the end of coloured pencils. The pencils take a very organic form when put together in this way. Reminds me a lot of an alien world type of formation. The cross between alien and something as mundane as a pencil is brilliant, and this work has reminded me to keep on looking at things differently, not always going with the expected use of something.

http://www.jennifermaestre.com/pencil_show.html

On The Road Of Knives...

On the road of knives is a collabrative project between Zak Smith, Shawn Cheng and Nicholas Di Genova. They are all amazing illustrators, and on the road of knives is basicly them drawing different monsters to fight each other or as the website says

"this is how it works: Zak draws something. Shawn draws something that will fight it. Zak draws his thing fighting back. Shawn draws his thing fighting back and maybe tripping over a statue. Then maybe Zak's thing kills Shawn's with the statue's head. Then Shawn draws a new thing. Zak's surviving thing attacks it. And so on. Zak and Shawn got things started, and now Nick has joined the fray. Though not exactly an exquisite corpse, it will be exquisite, and there will be many corpses."

I love the style of all 3 and the styles are different enough that each monster is completely different to the next, while the dark line drawing style unites the pieces together. Its a fun project, something you might do yourself with your mates when bored, but taken to a completely differerent cool level by the quality of the artwork. I would love any of the frames up on my wall, the quality throughout is outstanding.
The only quibble i have is as a set its hard to understand exactly whats going on, but thats mainly because it was drawn as a series of epic pieces, not as a flowing comic strip.

http://www.roadofknives.com/redux/01-10.shtml#001

internet was closed...

love this tshirt from threadless, its a cute message that shines light on our computer culture. Im not too fond of the green colour, but its appropriate to the "get outside" message.