One of my favorite things about this city are the random sightings of the gigantic paintings & ads that adorn the sides of buildings. Spotted this blatantly obvious one last night walking to the 6 train on Spring Street.
If you know me, you know that I’m not exactly the most fashionable person. My style is very Midwestern-meets-wannabe-urban. One day I’ll be wearing flip flops, jeans and a Red Wings hoodie, and the next I’ll be in a sleeveless blouse, slacks and ballet flats. I think the most expensive pair of shoes I own are a $99 pair of flats from Banana Republic— which I didn’t even have to pay for. On the other hand, my most trendy/fashionable shoes are a pair of $30, 5″ strappy heels by Alice + Olivia from Payless. My most expensive pair of jeans come from Express, and the only labels I have on my shirt are JCrew and Express. But that’s only 10% of my wardrobe. The rest consists of cheap finds from JCPenney, Charlotte Russe, H&M, etc. Bottom line: my wardrobe is a wreck.
So I’m not really one to critique fashion by any means, but I love looking at pretty clothes just as much as the next [average] girl. I’m just very picky and don’t find the majority of the fashion world even remotely appealing.
That being said, I just stumbled across some thesis projects for students in the fashion program at Parsons. Out of the five or six that I saw, only one caught my eye in a good way. The rest kind of looked like someone gave a hipster a glue gun and some leftover fabric and let them run wild.
Her name is Tara LaTour Lindemeier, and from the looks of it, she specializes in wedding apparel. As a recent grad, I really hope she breaks into the industry full force very soon. I mean, she even has a very fashion-designer-ish name! But I could be completely wrong, what do I know about fashion? See her designs for yourself at TaraLaTour.com. Weddingchicks.com also did a lovely writeup showcasing her work, and you can check out her blog that documents her senior thesis project throughout the year.
I just discovered thedieline.com for some awesome packaging design. I’m one of those people who will always choose the product with the coolest packaging.
What’s this? A photograph with all of the color levels dropped down except for blue? Nope! It’s a hand-drawn, incredibly detailed illustration using a BIC PEN! Seriously! The smooth shading is amazing for a pen!
Juan Francisco Casas “uses up to four 14p ballpoint pens” to create these drawings that measure up to 10ft high. Check out 25 of his drawings at boredpanda.com. Truly incredible. Brings back memories of my horrible pen drawings from college.
To celebrate Pac Man’s 30th anniversary, Google put up their coolest logo design I’ve seen so far! I thought the Pac Man graphic was cool, but then I pressed “Insert Coin” which actually let me PLAY the game, and then it became awesome!
Artist Jay Shells surveyed 100 people to find the top 10 behavioral pet peeves of subway riders. Then he made up some posters to hang around NYC, listing these pet peeves sort of as 10 Commandments. As a subway-rider myself, I can strongly agree to most, if not all of these. Although I have yet to see someone clipping their nails on the train (and hopefully I never do!) Click here to check out the entire set of posters. And keep an eye out on your way home from work, even though I’m sure the MTA has trashed them all by now.
Midtown Manhattan- specifically Times Square/Herald Square areas- are undergoing lots of changes lately. Last summer we saw some streets close entirely to vehicular traffic, allowing pedestrians to stop and hang out in the middle of Times Square. Now they’re looking for a New York City artist to design some temporary art for multiple locations throughout Times Square. Apparently these designs would stand in place of a larger reconstruction plan set to begin in 2012.
Oh, did I mention that the winning artist gets $15,000? You might want to check out the website if you’re interested. But here’s a brief description pulled directly from the site:
The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City invites eligible artists, designers, organizations, and non-profits living or operating within the City to propose temporary design solutions to renew the surface treatments at all five plazas and smaller ancillary spaces located on Broadway from 47th to 42nd streets. These temporary surface treatments will enhance the plazas while a long-term capital reconstruction project is initiated for the Bowtie beginning in 2012 in partnership with the Department of Design and Construction.
The final selected design shall be translated into a surface treatment by a contractor selected by the New York City Department of Transportation. The selected artist shall be awarded a design fee in the amount of $15,000 to be funded by the Mayor’s Fund.
The design is expected to be installed by mid-July. The temporary treatment will remain in place for approximately eight months and will be monitored and maintained by the Times Square Alliance. The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, April 16, 2010. Questions and answers will be posted to this website. Details on how to submit questions are contained in the RFP.
In the current trend of mustaches, this is pretty funny!
San Francisco in Jell-O; as seen from Alcatraz Island
Liz Hickok is an artist who creates miniature cityscapes out of Jell-O, lights them from different angles, and then photographs them for display. It’s so bizarre seeing her San Francisco set compared to the 550+ photos I just took of San Francisco last week. Check out her website for more photos of San Francisco and other cities- including some of a gelatin White House.
It’s too bad the Jell-O deteriorates so quickly. I’d like to see someone eat an entire city made out of Jell-O. Maybe New York? I can only hope that Liz simulated a 7.0 earthquake before demolishing this sculpture. I wonder how the Jell-O city would stand up?
Not really a fan of Valentines Day; but these are admittedly cute. Especially the CSS one.
A blog about advertising & my general enthusiasm for life
