garygilliland:

Who knew dead flies were funny? Apparently Swedish photographer Magnus Muhr did because he has started to make cartoons using dead flies as the protagonists.

MUHR PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve always been captivated by the sea and images of it are a source of constant joy. So I was delighted to discover the exhibition The Sea: LS Lowry & Maggi Hambling at the The Lowry.

As someone who only knows Lowry as a painter of “matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs” I was amazed by his peopleless seascapes. I was equally taken with the work of his 21st century successor Maggi Hambling, painter and creator of the controversial Scallop in Suffolk.

In this BBC slideshow you can see their work and hear Hambling talk about her work.

In this interview, Maggi talks about her processes for painting the sea, and the effect of Lowry’s work on her.

LS Lowry & Maggi Hambling: The Sea from Rob Martin on Vimeo.

I’ve mentioned Daniel Eatock’s creative manifesto before. His presentation at AIGA gives you the opportunity to see the man himself talk about his work and see how his manifesto plays out in his work.

Daniel Eatock — AIGA | the professional association for design

Alan Fletcher was graphic designer who described himself as a visual jackdaw but in his book The Art of Looking Sideways he proved that he was no jackdaw but a very discerning observer and collector.

The book is a collection of facts, thoughts, quotes and images which cover almost every subject imaginable. This might sound vague but when the table of contents covers the areas below it seems reasonable to say everything.

culture; tools; creativity; wit; improvisation; colour; dreaming; ideas; synchronicity; mutation; learning; noise; paradigms; automaton; intelligence; brain; mind; senses; thinking; problems; chance; imagination; visualizing; alphabet; seeing; places; perception; stereotypes; value; illusion; paradox; figure ground; symmetry; reflections; pattern; camouflage; economy; proportion; composition; leys & lines; aesthetics; taste; style; perfection; meanings; symbols; numbers; typography; skill; perspective; space-time; figuring; language; rhetoric; design; process; copying; words; imaging; picture play; wordplay; handedness; pictograms; scripts; letters; identity; names; signatures; insignia; trademarks; writing;

At about 500 pages it’s physically impressive and the care that has been taken with its design is a reflection on the quality of Fletcher’s other work. Without inspiring content this would be meaningless but in this case the content is better than the presentation.

To describe it as the best bathroom book I’ve read sounds like an insult but this isn’t a book to read in long sessions but one that’s best enjoyed in small bursts so that you have time to absorb and consider what you’ve read. Ignore the pretentious language and comments about designers in the Amazon reviews, it’s a book for anyone who wants to be inspired. Over time it will become a source of enjoyment and creativity which you will turn to time and time again.

Below are just a few snippets of the literally dozens of fascinating items in the book.

"the unlike is joined together and from differences results the most beautiful harmony" Heraclitus

"…apparently unrelated things become interesting when you start fitting them together…" John Kowenhoven Mathematician

Imagination is the active ingredient of thinking. Imagination jumps from present facts to future possibilities. Imagination forms the mental pictures of things not present. Imagination conceives of situations not yet in existence. Imagination conjures up correspondences and analogies

"what is now proved was once only imagined" William Blake

"simple is better than complicated. quiet is better than noisy. what is close at hand is better than what has to be sought" Dieter Rams

A Wombat is not only an Australian marsupial but also an acronym for Waste Of Money, Brains and Time

"There is nothing more difficult to take in, more perilous to conduct, more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things because the innovator will have for enemies all who have done well under the old conditions and luke warm defenders who do well under the new" Machiavelli

Eero Saarinen got the idea for the design of the Kennedy TWA Terminal when after eating grapefruit for breakfast he turned the grapefruit over and squeezed it with one hand to form the indentations.

" you have to give a letter of the alphabet the dignity it deserves. this becomes clear when you don’t know the language. think of Arabic or Chinese. It is beautiful by itself, an art apart." Franco Maria Ricci

There 37 letters in the alphabet. 26 lower case and 11 capitals that don’t resemble their lowercase pairs. A,B,D,E,G,H,LN,Q,R,T.

Seeing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at an exhibition, a man approached Picasso (who happened to be at the exhibition) and asked why he didn’t paint people the way they looked. "Well, how do they look?" asked Picasso. The man took a photograph of his wife from his wallet and handed it over. Picasso looked at it, then handing it back said "She is small, isn’t she. And flat too"

"A metaphor is a leap that unites two worlds" Garcia Lorca

An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications

"no object can be tied down to any one sort of reality; a stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like, just as this file in my hand can be metamorphosed into a shoehorn or a spoon, according to the way in which I use it. The first time this phenomenon struck me was in the trenches during the First World War when my batman turned a bucket into a brazier by poking a few holes in it with his bayonet and filling it with coke. for me this commonplace incident had a poetic significance: I began to see things in a new way" Georges Braque

A scientist, an engineer and a designer were arguing about the height of a church steeple. As luck would have it a man walked by with a barometer and joined the debate. To resolve the argument he challenged them to solve the problem using barometer. The scientist measured the barometric pressure on the ground and then at the top of the steeple and calculated the height using the difference. The engineer dismissed this method as too cumbersome and took the barometer to the top of the steeple and drop it and worked out the height by timing the fall. The designer popped into the church and offered the barometer to the verger in exchange for a look at the plans. The simplest route to solution is usually the best.

The sea squirt roams around looking for rock, when it finds one it sticks to it for the rest of its life and since it no longer needs its brain, it eats it.

An antique three legged stool was made that way so it could stand on uneven floors. Simple no further development required

Marty Neumeier "Problem + fresh perspective X intuition = concept" e.g. Gutenberg could not figure out how to simultaneously press a large number of letter seals onto a single sheet of paper. At a wine festival he examined a wine press and suddenly realised that a wine press with a few alterations, plus letter seals would result in the printing press.”

“No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing.”

Edgar Degas

Seems like a pretty good description of the creative elements in any field. Only after the hard work of studying and cogitating on the problem, will the blinding flash of inspiration come.

Quote via QI.com

I was trying to find out more about the artist (Ilana Yahav) behind the Twinings Lady Grey advert and I came across this video of artist Kseniya Simonova who won Ukraine’s Got Talent. Using just a light box covered with sand and awesome skills Kseniya manages to depict the Ukraine’s experiences during World War Two.

I don’t know what to admire more the artistry, the skill, the planning or the emotion conveyed using such a simple medium. In any case watch it and be amazed.