If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): 2014

Please STOP and read.

The site you are now on serves as an archive of the posts written from 2007-2014. It is still a great resource, and just plain surfing fun, with over 4000 posts and over 82,000 images.

Every post written since April 2014 is located at www.ifitshipitshere.com

Thanks so much,
Laura

Now go check out the new site at www.ifitshipitshere.com

Easter Eye Candy. Art and Pics of Peeps, Bunnies and Modern Versions of The Last Supper.

For years now I have been blogging at this time of year about Easter related art and design. Some of my most comprehensive and popular posts have been sharing modern interpretations of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, Peeps art and products and Everything Bunny. I have since made large Pinterest board compilations of them, so you can view them all without that pesky informative copy, lol.

Enjoy this special animated Easter video that turns the main characters of popular cult TV favorites such as Game Of Thrones, Star Trek, Breaking Bad and The Big Bang Theory into, you guessed it, eggs. Created by Easy Explain Video, a company that creates animated videos for companies and agencies.

Thom Browne's menswear collection for Fall Winter 2014 is both sartorial and satirical, to say the least. Ragged edge plaids, giant fat silhouette suits and autumnal leaf camo face make-up are topped off, literally, by unusual grey flannel and plaid hats and headgear in the shapes of animals. Rabbits as top hats, masks, caps and eyepatches, elephant heads, badger and frog caps, pinstripe bowlers as bears, hunting caps with antlers, driving caps with eyes and cage-like construction. There's even a Bear with a salmon in its mouth as a hat. Designed by Browne, the hats were made with the help of well-known milliner Stephen Jones.

To demonstrate the flexibility of Diesel brand's new Jogg jeans, director Jacob Sutton captured some of the world's hottest dancers on the streets and rooftops of Los Angeles wearing the Jogg Jeans and cut-offs made of Diesel's new hybrid denim: a combination of denim, jersey and 360° stretch.

Just Born, Inc., the makers of Easter Peeps and such candy favorites as Mike and Ikes and Hot Tamales, has teamed up with Mattel's Hot Wheels for a limited edition collection of six super sweet rides. The miniature vintage cars and trucks feature the candy company's products and logos.

Robert Konieczny of KWK Promes, the architecture firm behind The Safe House, a wild fortress-like house with moving walls, continues to integrate unique thinking into their designs.

So, what would be the perfect Easter Egg for Banksy? Definitely one of the Edible Easter Eggs from this collection of Street Art Easter chocolates from Paris-based Jadis et Gourmande.

This freestanding whimsical piece of storage furniture was created by Studio Job for Gufram of Italy, who is known for their playful polyurethane foam furnishings. The armoire or wardrobe cabinet is set with a soft polyurethane foam globe in the center which stays in place whether the doors are open or closed.

Swiss Artist Beat Zoderer is best known for his multi-banded colored metal sculptures which spherical ones resemble rubber band balls, globes and eggs. When Paris based confectioner Pierre Hermé first encountered Zoderer's work, he admired his paintings before discovering the singular power and grace of his metal sculptures. This led Hermé to the idea of paying tribute to the sculptor by freely taking inspiration from it.

At the 2014 IMM Cologne international Furniture Fair DuPont™ Corian® exhibited the concept study for bathroom furnishings, "Modern Nomads", with designs by Paul Flowers, chief designer of Grohe AG. The collection of four pieces combines Corian® Glacier White and Corian® Deep Nocturne with Oak, textiles and chrome details.

You may never get to the The Hotel Metropole in Monte Carlo, so I thought I'd share this lovely pool, art, furniture and outdoor area created for them by fashion designer and icon Karl Lagerfeld with you. The French designer's concept, ODYSSEY, features the hotel's new swimming pool with a stunning fresco-style installation made up of 15 glass panels portraying Ulysses’ journey, gardens and Joël Robuchon’s third restaurant within the hotel.

Studio Badini Createam and Selab teamed up for this collection of three pieces, an armoire (or wardrobe), a two drawer and a three drawer chest from Seletti. The classic furniture pieces are decorated by hand with a pixelated image of a woman's face, melding the traditional with the modern.

"La Piedra" is the name given to this 7,500 sq ft, 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom, stone hilltop home with breathtaking swimming pool that is presently on the market for just under $8 million.

Presented at Salone del Mobile 2014 in Milan is this unusual and beautiful new collection of water faucets for the bath or kitchen. A collaboration between Axor and designer Philippe Starck for Hansgrohe, the Axor Starck V collection serves the technical function of a faucet and combines it with the visual experience of watching water form a swirling vortex and "free-fall" into the washbasin.

A look at the new Fall/ Winter 2014 Ready-To-Wear Women's collection from irreverent fashion designer Gareth Pugh. It's a bit of "Snow-Babies-Meets-The-Kitchen-Drawer" (you know, the one that holds plastic wrap and foil?) but it's truly unique and there's something beautifully clean and elegant about the structured pieces of white and cream.

Ingo Maurer always has such imaginative ideas when it comes to lighting at witnessed by such unique designs as his LED wallpaper and his stunning butterfly lamps.

EGOFACTO is one brand with 7 unique perfumes, all beautifully bottled with real crystal caps and polished metal pendants on ribbons.

Chunlong Sun, a photographer and digital retoucher from Beijing, China had some fun with this little personal project. A series of images featuring world-renowned dictators clutching plushies gives them a tender side we all wish they truly had. The juxtaposition between the face of evil and a cuddly stuffed animal makes these serious portraits instantly humorous.

Artist Dean 'Zeus' Coleman likes to create unusual fish tanks* as well as compelling 3D Graffiti sculptures and other wonderful fine art. His latest is the Lovefish, a tank made of heated and curved glass pieces that literally spell out the word LOVE.

Art director turned commercial photographer Grace Chon specializes in animals, lifestyle and celebrities with their pets. Grace, who confesses to having dressed her dogs in ridiculous clothes for years, turned into a baby-hat fanatic once she gave birth to her son Jasper. It wasn't long before she realized that, not only do the hats look cute on her adorable child, but they looked pretty darn sweet on her shy rescue dog Zoey as well.

Designer Antonio Brasko's project, Brandalism, is a study on the influence of street art and graffiti in the fashion world. Through the use of brand marks (logos and logotypes), iconic colors, and spray cans, Brandalism seeks to reintroduce the ideology of vandalism, branding and fashion from an experimental design perspective.

United Nude collaborates with fashion designer Iris Van Herpen for their wildest shoes yet. This is Van Herpen's 9th consecutive collaboration with the brand and this is the first time that two, instead of just one, designs that graced the runway are being offered by United Nude.

Created by former Google employee, Pierre Lebeau, it looks like a Roomba on steroids and acts like a mobile projection theater, security camera, concert hall, internet and wireless game console all in one. It’s like having your own little Robot that provides you with Google services, streaming entertainment, gaming apps, web-cam and more - it's a Keecker.

Since the middle ages ice hockey has been played with round pucks. Until now. Inspired by the free forms of the Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto and a small reminder that not everything has to be as we’re used to, the Nordic Society for Invention & Discovery (NSID) and Iittala collaborated to create the first non-round hockey puck in the history of mankind, the Aalto puck.

At this year's Baselworld, the annual horology show, Graff unseated Hublot as having the world's most expensive watch.

Designer, illustrator and 3D Artist, Tomislav Zvonaric (aka DevianTom) of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has conceived an homage to the Apple brand by designing the Apple iCup.

Dear Celine Dion... just kidding. But clearly I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd because I don't know many -if any- parents who can spoil their kids with products like these. Baby furniture and accessories company Suommo, who I first introduced you to in 2010 with their modern white baby furnishings, is now touting themselves as 'luxury for baby' with fewer products, but far fancier ones- all designed by Ximo Talamantes.

I thought this would be the perfect post for the first of April, a day when most people are punking, pranking, and just plain joking, because this artwork is pretty hard to believe. But it's for real.

A new print, online and transit campaign by Atlanta ad agency Lawler Ballard Van Durand for the National Peanut Board combines the people photography of Chris Crisman with botanical illustrations by Wendy Hollender and Rose Pellicano.

Harikrishan Panicker and Deepti Nair, who both hail from India, go by the duo artist name of Hari & Deepti. Together they create small and large diorama artworks made of intricately cut layered paper lit by LED lights.

Tree of Light, unlit and lit:

Spirit of the Forest (lit and unlit):

The Protector (lit and unlit):

Spacedust:

Fire Wolves and the Lone Warrior:

When Life Gives You Lemons (left) and Where I Belong (right):

when life gives you lemons and where I belong IIHIH

The Light in the Forest:

Utopia:

The Golden Stag (left) and Uncharted Waters (right):

the golden stag and uncharted waters IIHIH

When The Dust Settles:

Moonlight Drowns Out All But The Brightest Stars:

moonlight drown out all but the brightest stars IIHIH

The Protector 3 (and detail):

The Illuminated One (also shown cropped at the top of this post):

Artworks as they appear in Galleries:

About the artists:
Hari & Deepti are an artist couple currently based out of Denver, Colorado.

Hari (whose full name is Harikrishnan Panicker) is a trained graphic designer and illustrator. He was born and raised in Mumbai, India where he was the senior designer for MTV Networks India and has designed for brands like MTV India, VH1 India, Nickelodeon & Comedy Central. Apart from designing for these brands, he is also an established illustrator and has designed album covers for musicians like Dualist Inquiry and has been invited to design a cover for Rolling Stone India for their annual – Art as Cover Edition. He loves to collect and customize vinyl toys, is obsessed with drawing monsters, loves to screen print & secretly aspires to be in space some day. He fell in love with paper cut art after seeing Balinese shadow puppets and has since been experimenting with paper and light.

Deepti Nair is a certified geek and is usually seen designing complex systems for a leading Telecom company as an Interaction Designer. “My day job helps me keep sane and makes me appreciate the time and opportunity I get to create art a lot more” says Deepti. She is a trained artist and prefers staying away from the computer to create or assist in her art. She believes that art has to be felt and experienced. She specializes in working with paper cut, acrylic and loves sculpting with clay.

Hari & Deepti moved to Denver from India and carried with them a Pandora box full of stories and imagination that they bring to life through their intricate paper cut light boxes and paper clay sculptures. They have always been drawn towards the imaginative aspect of story telling and seek inspiration from them. Stories have so many shades and depth in them, and paper as a medium has the exact qualities to reflect and interpret them. They believe that “Paper is brutal in its simplicity as a medium. It demands the attention of the artist while it provides the softness they need to mold it in to something beautiful. It is playful, light, colorless and colorful. It is minimal and intricate. It reflects light, creates depth and illusions in a way that it takes the artist through a journey with limitless possibilities.”

They started experimenting with paper cut shadow boxes in 2010 with hand painted watercolor paper which was then cut and assembled in a wooden box to create a diorama, with years of practice their art became more intricate and minimal at the same time. They started experimenting with lights and simplified their pieces by losing the colored aspect of the paper. They have since then evolved to add their own style of paper cut art incorporating back-lit light boxes using flexible LED strip lights.

“What amazes us about the paper cut light boxes is the dichotomy of the piece in its lit and unlit state, the contrast is so stark that it has this mystical effect on the viewers.”

They are constantly evolving their art with more complex representation of stories and aspects, like reflections in the water.

See more of their work here

images and info courtesy of The Black Book

Kit Kat's Tribute To Lego

Kit Kat continues to engage people and set social media sites abuzz with their fun guerilla marketing projects. Their latest is a tribute to Lego. They created their own unofficial Lego Kit Kat kit, if you will, to encourage people to "Build Their Own Break"- a play on the candy's long time tagline. The boxed set is numbered 27325 and has been named #LEGOKITKAT.

Yesterday, they sent the following press release to Lego brick fans and sites:

Here at KIT KAT we are huge fans of LEGO. Because nobody is better at building a great break than LEGO, except for us maybe. So during one of our occupational breaks we came up with the idea of a KIT KAT entirely made of LEGO bricks.

We call the result simply #LegoKITKAT and it comes with a lot of authentic details: the KIT KAT logo, a red wrapper, four chocolate fingers, layers of wafer and even a snapping sound when you break it! And even though we don´t really expect #LegoKITKAT to hit the shops anytime soon, we gave it a stylish box anyway. But the best bit about it: everyone can build his very own perfect break from it. Introducing Lego KIT KAT with more than 1 million in 1 breaks.

Go build your own break – A tribute to Lego. Have a break, have a Lego KIT KAT.

all images courtesy of Kit Kat

Credits:
Advertising Agency: JWT Group Germany, Frankfurt, Germany
Executive Creative Director: Mark Karatas
Copywriter: Carsten Bug
Junior Copywriter: Haiko Hörnig
Art Director: Kathrin Waschek
Junior Art Directors: Andreas Villing, Oliver Wohlfarth
Packaging Design: Heike Konsek
Account Manager: Alexander Hempel
Production: Fabian Schrader