Quit in Style

A strange website that I came across claims to be an award ceremony promoting the art of quitting. It calls for the general public to send in 'crazy inventive' ways of quitting their dead-end jobs. The winner will be given the chance to 'quit in style' in real life.
I don't know what the aim of this project is or who is funding it but its worth checking out some of the better entries so far such as the one below

or if you are thinking about quitting your job and won't be needing any references
pick up a few ideas from www.quitinstyle.com


The Finger from Gomez on Vimeo.

Epuron ad

They say genius is close to madness- this ad appears to be one of those things then turns out to be the other. I don't want to spoil it because I think its totally inspired, so just watch it.

Flight of the Conchords

It's hard to describe Flight of the Conchords since they have pretty much invented a musical genre. At the very least they have carved out a niche best described as 'comedy-folk music' (think Tenacious D with a more acoustic sound).
Their songs tell bizarre and funny stories and they perform them around the world.
I came across one of their gig posters, as a visual statement it sums Flight of the Conchords up nicely. I particularly like the unusual choice of colours and the simplified line art style. This is just one of many impressive illustrations from the portfollio of tyler stout, it is also an excuse for me to post a clip of a conchord show below- enjoy!

The Small Stakes

The Small Stakes is a small design studio. It mainly produces gig posters and promotional material for various bands. A couple of their posters really caught my eye purely because of the 'restrained' design. (Assuming that anyone reading this is also studying graphics) Like me you may find that the most difficult part of creating a design is deciding what doesn't need to be there. I think it takes a certain amount of confidence in your own skills to keep a design really simple. Partly because you fear that a 'simple' design might not reflect all the effort you put into designing it. The people at Small Stakes are obviously not lacking in confidence since most of there work is simplified to the max. I have to admit not all of it appeals to my tastes. I think some of their stuff is a bit too arty- almost pretentious. However the examples above are visually striking. The subtle design successfully generates intrigue which suggests, that at least sometimes simple is best.

Pixel Art

You might think pixel art is a little out of date but you can't deny its intricate details are fun to look at. I recently dabbled in pixels for an illustration I'm working on and I quickly realized two things.
1. Pixel art is ridiculously time consuming, more so than any other digital work I have done before
2. The kings of this art form are without doubt 'Eboy'.
Eboy is a collective of three German guys who are all expert with pixels. A cityscape like the example above typically takes them 6 to 8 weeks working full time. But why does it take so long? because everything you see is created by filling individual pixels with colour- about the size of this dot --> .

With this in mind- fuck knows how they made the advert below!



take a look at some more of Eboy's work here

Sarah Graham

These may look like photographs (which is what I thought, when I first saw one of them yesterday in a Manchester Gallery) but they are in fact paintings. Talented artist Sarah Graham uses a macro lens to capture the minute detail of objects which form the foundation of her artwork. What I find most impressive is her ability to recreate the 'depth of field', giving her paintings a 'photographed' look. She says she is' entirely motivated by colour', which explains her subject matter of toys and sweets. Every colour and detail is painstakingly recreated in oil paint on canvas, each one takes a month on average to complete.Sarah’s painting are in high demand, A print of the 3ft by 3ft chupa chup will set you back around £400. Having seen some of her work in the flesh I think this price tag is justified, there is something strangely appealing about seeing a rubber duck blown up to 100 times its normal size!You can see some more of Sarah Grahams work here


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A small update on this post- I saw some more of Sarah's paintings in an art shop in Leeds the other day and apparently her work is a worth while investment. According to the shop assistant prints of the rubber duck are extremely sort after and now cost around £800- a 200% increase in less than a year.
They also had one of her slightly more expensive original paintings on the wall, entitled 'Gnome with Apples' seen here- this one will cost you £13,000!

Another interesting note is that the Kaiser Chiefs have asked Sarah to do their next album cover, apparently its not the next one but the one after that, so we will have to wait and see!