Sipho Mabona, a young artist currently residing in Switzerland, was commissioned by ad agency Nordpol+ Hamburg to design and create the origami models for this stunning five-minute video.

The corporate movie tells the story of the Japanese sports brand ASICS. It won a Grand Prix at the Eurobest, gold at the New York festival, gold at the London International Awards, silver at the Clio in Miami and two-times bronze at ADC Germany.

Sipho has a wonderful Flickr set of origami designs — worth a look — and here are just a few of my favourites.

The “Baby Fugu” is inflatable, seen in motion here on Vimeo.

My hat’s off to you, Sipho. Reminiscent of Peter Callesen’s fragile magic.

Visit Mabona Origami for more.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Focus on art: Peter Callesen (14)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)
• Focus on art: Octavio Ocampo (41)
• Focus on art: Julian Beever (26)

The alphabet in light writing, found on Nir Tober’s Flickr page. If light writing is your thing, check out this previous post of mine, with some light writing YouTube videos.

The hairy Futura typeface, found on Behance, courtesy of Reset Blog.

Human crafted typeface, found on Hijack Your Life and courtesy of Brand Flakes for Breakfast.

Type in the sky alphabet, from looking up through the gaps in buildings, found on Slanted and courtesy of Noisy Decent Graphics.

Eine’s East End of London shopfront shutter letters, found on Dave Gorman’s Flickr pages.

Sign language alphabet, created from match books (larger version of the sign language alphabet). Found on C71123, after a lot of “folding, gluing, and holding until dry.”

The Alphabet Photo Gallery by Abba Richman at pbase.com. A four month project with fantastic results.

Inspired by Abba Richman’s collection, prior to this, Thomas Fredriksen created his own alphabet photo collection on pbase.com.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• abc…xyz F*?! off (2)
• Entry-level DSLR recommendations (51)
• Five days in Dubai (14)
• Hatch Show Print (17)

Andrew Lipson has a talent. He merges his LEGO skills with some of my favourite works of art. You can view larger images of Escher’s ‘Waterfall’ by clicking on the image (above), where Andrew also gives a little insight into the LEGO creation.

The waterfall itself was about an evening’s work. I started by writing some C code to model a gradually widening parabolic arch with random variations for the spray (hacked from the code I use for my mathematical Lego sculptures) and then gradually modified it by hand until I liked the look of the result.

Good thing Andrew knows what he’s talking about.

Above is Escher’s ‘Ascending and Descending’ piece. Click on the image for larger photos and more info on the project.

No camera tricks, but the picture has to be taken from exactly the right place, and the final photograph was slightly distorted to emphasise the perspective effect.

This is actually the second time I’ve featured Andrew’s LEGO. The previous blog post, showing Escher’s ‘Relativity’ lithograph, can be seen here: Escher loves LEGO? Much respect to Andrew Lipson for his devotion to LEGO.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Escher loves LEGO? (11)
• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• The alphabet, but not as we know it… (54)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)

Light-drawing and light-writing is getting a fair bit of attention lately. Take these two commercials (below) for Sprint (also seen on Marc Schiller’s blog). Quite creative don’t you think?

They remind me of Toben Seymour’s music video for the song Jubilee by the Willowz (shown below).

I’ve been seeing more and more light-drawing over the past month or so, and you can see some excellent photographs by scrolling down on Lichtfaktor’s MySpace page.

Lichtfaktor gives the following tips on how to draw with light using your camera:

To get the best results you need a tripod.
The exposure should be around 10-30 sec. or longer if needed.
Stay in front of the camera and do your writing.
Set the camera to about iso100, and close your aperture as much as possible. This prevents over-exposure. If there is still too much light you might have to use a nd-filter.

Aaron at milienzo recently published another interesting article drawing attention to Lichtfaktor’s Flickr set.

If you’re liking what you see, there’s a cool urban light-writing hip hop video over at Wooster Collective. For drum and bass fans I’d recommend giving this light writing video a few minutes of your time.

Oh, and have you seen the Drag and Draw project from Philips? Now you can actually encourage your kids to draw on walls! I’m liking the innovation.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the weekend.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Focus on art: Icaro Doria (21)
• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• The alphabet, but not as we know it… (54)
• How to effectively advertise musicians (15)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)

Dan Havel and Dean Ruck scultpurally altered two buildings in the Montrose neighbourhood of Houston, Texas.

Here’s an excerpt from the art league press release, written before the project started:

Havel and Ruck will create a large funnel-like vortex beginning from the west wall adjacent to Montrose Blvd. The exterior skin of the houses will be peeled off and used to create the narrowing spiral as it progresses eastward through the small central hallway connecting the two buildings and exiting through a small hole into an adjacent courtyard.

For anyone wishing to view the installation, you’re out of luck. It’s been demolished. Hopefully these pictures are a small consolation.

Thanks to Aaron Tang at Design Verb for showcasing this installation.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Octavio Ocampo (41)
• Focus on art: Julian Beever (26)
• Focus on art: Icaro Doria (21)

General’s Family

Octavio was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, on the 28th of February 1943. He showed his skills as an artist and sculptor from an early age and studied at the renowned San Carlos art school in Mexico (now a museum).

Family of Birds

The longer one looks at his work, the more that is revealed. Faces come into focus at a distance and metamorphose into something else entirely in close up. Flowers become faces, mountains speak to each other, and mourners over a coffin become the face of Christ. His works are full of symbolism, endlessly fascinating, each revealing a new facet, different to each viewer.

From a short Octavio Ocampo biography at questionmark.net

Sunlight’s Kiss

Visions of Quixote

To view more visit this gallery of Octavio Ocampo’s fine art.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)
• Focus on art: Julian Beever (26)
• Focus on art: Icaro Doria (21)

Artists make their money in a variety of different ways, and I can’t think of any more interesting than these anamorphic pavement (or sidewalk) chalk drawings.

Anamorphosis is:

a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image.

Julian Beever, a.k.a the Pavement Picasso, is an English chalk artist who has been creating drawings on pavements since the mid-1990s.

The illusion (above) of the Politicians Meeting Their End was drawn outside The Bank of England and was commissioned by Channel 4’s Midnight Special for the night of the 1997 General Election (here in the UK).

Babyfood (above)

The drawing Babyfood (above) seen from the wrong side.

Self-Portrait Of The Artist With Liquid Refreshment (above).

Julian Beever’s Higherford Mill installation

Julian took up residence at Higherford Mill, Barrowford, for four days in March 2007. He created his floor artwork whilst chatting to visitors and the above timelapse video was produced to showcase the process.

View more of Julian Beever’s pavement drawings here at his website.

I think the work is fascinating, and really enjoy seeing art forms that are different from the norm. Artists such as Julian and Escher, who loves LEGO don’t you know?

Thanks to Tara at Graphic Design Blog for reminding me of Julian’s excellent chalk drawings. Quite a few others out there are big fans too.

Who are the artists that stand out for you?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)
• Focus on art: Octavio Ocampo (41)
• Focus on art: Icaro Doria (21)

If you haven’t heard, there’s a unique project happening right now, here in Scotland. It’s called The Graffiti Project and the idea is simple…

Take the vibrant and often transient art form of Brazilian graffiti out of its predominantly urban context and apply it to the ancient and permanent walls of an historic rural castle in Scotland.

Four of the worlds’ top graffiti artists have been commissioned to paint Kelburn Castle with vibrant colours.

The project involves the artists and organisers living together in the Castle for approximately one month. New ideas are being explored and shared, from both sides of the equator, resulting in a one-off, giant piece of collaborative art.

History of Kelburn Castle

Kelburn is thought to be the oldest castle in Scotland to have been continuously inhabited by the same family. Orginally the family name was de Boyville but this changed over the years to Boyle. The de Boyvilles from Caen in Normandy came over to Britain with William the Conqueror in 1066 and the present branch of the family settled in Kelburn in 1140.

Nobody knows for certain when a stone building was first constructed on the site, but the original Norman Keep, designed for defence rather than comfort, was probably built by 1200. The original Norman Keep is now enclosed within a grander castle, completed in 1581 by the then Laird, David Boyle, at a time when the family was emerging from relative obscurity and beginning to wield some influence within the local community.

The present tenth Earl of Glasgow and his wife, Isabel, started Kelburn Country Centre in 1977, opening most of Kelburn’s grounds and gardens to the public and introducing new attractions.

Here’s a short video, showing the first week of timelapse footage for the project:

Fancy a trip?

I think it’s quite a novel way to catch peoples’ imagination and I’m hoping to head across for a look at the finished product. Kelburn Castle is 35 miles west of Glasgow, and overlooks the sea.

You can visit The Graffiti Project website here or take a look at the history of Kelburn Castle on the Kelburn Castle website.

Do you think it’s brightens the surroundings or spoils the historic castle?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• From Scotland to Northern Ireland (34)
• The alphabet, but not as we know it… (54)
• Escher in LEGO (14)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Musical typography with Citizen Cope (15)
• All I need is a little timelapse (5)
• 7 creative music videos (23)
• How to use typography in music videos (10)
• Viagra is 10 (15)

How creative do you think you can be with Red Bull cans?

There’s a competition open to one and all from Red Bull The Art Of Can, with the winners having their work of art showcased in Philadelphia later this year.

Thanks to David Carlson for flagging this one. According to David’s article the first prize is an experience at Art Basel Miami Beach. Nice.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• The origami of Sipho Mabona (19)
• The alphabet, but not as we know it… (54)
• Escher in LEGO (14)
• Light drawing and light writing (31)
• Focus on art: Dan Havel, Dean Ruck (22)