Walking the line between beautiful and creepy, these “masks” definitely catch your attention. Designer/artist Frederique Daubal cut up fashion photos from magazines for this “Hide And Seek” series.  I love the use of body language, clothing and hair styling that bring these face plates to life.

They’re intended to address identity and transformation. On a less profound level, I can’t help but imagine them used in a very crazy music video or campaign. (via designboom)

Why eat your food when you can dump it over somebody else’s head. Photographer Meg Wachter does just that in her portrait series “Dumped”. Edible (and sometimes not-so-edible) substances such as cereal, spaghetti-os, raw eggs are the stars of these dynamic images.

I love the expression and the body language of the people combined with the color and texture of the gastronomic item captured in mid-fall. It’s a playful set of photos and what a great idea for a series. It makes me want to start a food fight at the next social gathering.

Thanks to the newly discovered Yay! Monday! for the link.

Lesley (Tomato Paste)

Greg (Tar + feather)

Shira (milk + cereal)

Phillip (coffee)

Erin (velveeta)

corey (spaghetti-os)

Science + culture + caffeine. I was perusing Seed Magazine this morning over my cup of coffee. There was a brief portfolio highlight on Richard Barnes’ photographs. It’s not a new story, but thought it was still worth posting just because the photos are THAT cool and I love it when art meets science.

At first when you look at the stark black and white images you think they could be vector art or photoshopped compositions. But they’re actually photographs of flocks of starlings flying over the suburbs of Rome. He spent two years capturing their complex flight patterns on film.

The result is beautiful. It’s amazing to see these intricate patterns created not by one bird but by hundreds, all moving like one superorganism. There is no leader, but yet they’re perfectly coordinated. The study of this behavior is the impetus for STARFLAG, a group of ornithologists, physicists, biologist, and economists in Europe who believe it will shed light into the group/herding behaviors in humans. There’s a great article and multimedia piece in last year’s New York Times.

I have a huge weakness for single concept projects that involve many visions. I was just exposed to two great ones.

Christina Black sent me this link to a project from Jacob Trollback. He asked his designers to create a personal animated piece illustrating their last thoughts before sleeping. Six designers, six different styles + short narratives. I particularly like the first one by Tetsuro. It’s a mood piece where subliminal visuals show the fleeting thoughts that flash through your mind while you’re drifting off.

Another recent group project is “Exploring the Lost ‘Art’ of the Film Poster”. Firecracker Rudy Jaimes told me about this art exhibit celebrating 70 years of film. Forty designers were asked to create their own interpretation of a film poster from the past. A full-on illustrator remix of the classics. It’s interesting to see the different uses of typography and design. Of course the real challenge would have been to redesign the less-than-classic Leonard Part 6.

I love the concept behind this photo series, wherewedowhatwedo. Your own work station can indirectly tell an outsider so much about you as far as likes/dislikes, hobbies/toy fetishes, sane layout/insane mess. Now you can show your idiosyncrasies to the world. You can post an image of what your creative space looks like — where the magic happens — and then link it to what you create in that space: your online portfolio. It’s voyeuristically fun to browse where other people get their design on. (thanks to the serif.)

Here’s my little space. It’s missing the laptop that’s usually on there as well as several mugs of coffee….

I know I’ve already mentioned several photo-a-day series, but Barry Choi sent me a link to this personal project profiled on Mental Floss; wow.

Jamie Livingston, a photographer and filmmaker, took a polaroid photo every single day, starting when he was a student in 1979 up until he died of cancer at 41 on October 25, 1997. He called it “Photo of the Day” and for 18 years religiously used his Polaroid SX-70 camera to capture these unassuming, unposed, ordinary memories that eventually became the narrative to the last half of his life.

The fact that they’re all polaroids makes it that much more intimate, one snapshot that isn’t altered, a real moment frozen in time. Some of the images are really beautiful; but more importantly as you browse through the days/the years they slowly reveal his love of music, his budding career in film, evidence of the times through news broadcasts, what he liked to eat, who he was in love with, great friendships, and how he dealt with his illness in the end.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the simple story through the series of casual moments. The snapshots take on even more meaning when you get to the last few frames that show him getting married and dying two days later. The Mental Floss post is worth reading, he puts the entire project into perspective and gives it the narrative it deserves.

After Livingston died, there was a public exhibit and website launched using the photos called JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence. The exhibit opened at Bard College (where Livingston started the series as a student) and included every Polaroid he snapped. It took up a 7 x 120 foot space. It’s very surreal to look at that wall and recognize that almost half of a lifetime is represented there.