An illustrated parable to growing as an artist by IdaEva.
So true, and applies all the same to any ability to create something.
art, creativity, life and pop culture in a blog blender read more »
Archives for category: Creativity
Bloom like an artist
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Cranking
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Merlin Mann tells a moving and personal story about creativity, priorities and life.
Sometimes the cranking made something special that will be really useful to people who badly need the comfort and help. But, a staggering amount of the time, my cranking has produced joyless and unemotional bullshit that couldn’t comfort, help, or please anyone. Especially my editor. Who is awesome. There’s no point in doing anything if it doesn’t eventually please my editor. Who is awesome.
The story of Z. Vex effects pedals
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Z. Vex creates handmade and painted guitar effects pedals, a business that started as a hobby.
Vex: “My first Z.Vex pedal was an improvement on an Apollo Fuzz-Wah fuzz, which was the Octane. I showed it to Nate at Willie’s American Guitars in St. Paul and he immediately ordered three. I hadn’t planned on going into business, it just happened by accident. I started making a living within about two months after the pedal company started. A meager living, but a living. I believe my apartment was about $300 a month.”
Arcade Fire closed their Coachella set with the anthemic “Wake Up,” adding some crowd interaction with a couple hundred glow in the dark, multi-colored beach balls.
Fade
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Fade is an addicting Flash game, where you guide a llama, hurdling over cliffs and shrubbery as it picks up speed to see the world in perfect color. See, the game starts in black and white, and as the llama picks up speed, somewhere around 35mph, the world begins to turn to color. You earn points for distance traveled to spend on skill power ups to go even farther. Also, there are achievements, if you need that sort of thing to validate your gaming experience.
Record player wedding invite
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Graphic designer Kelli Anderson creates a wedding invitation for her friends Mike and Karen that forms a papercraft record player.
The resulting booklet is comprised of a cover, two inner pages, a letterpressed band (with instructions and a tear-off RSVP postcard), and a flexdisc on a screwpost. The recipient bends the second page of the booklet back to create a tented “arm.” With the needle placed, they then carefully spin the flexidisc at 45 RPM (ish) to hear the song.
Graph Racers
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I guess I’m a little late to this, but Graph Racers is a pretty nifty concept. Take some graph paper, make a course, get at least 2 players, each with their own colored marker and have them race around the graph paper track.
How to steal like an artist
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I nodded my head all the way through Austin Kleon’s “How to steal like an artist.”
Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of previous ideas.
If there’s one takeaway for self-described non-creative people, it is that. Synthesize, combine, mash up what you already know, and then you’ll come away with something unique.
Framing pixels
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A member of Chase Jarvis’ team writes up how they mounted iPads for an art installation:
The challenges: iPads are designed to be interactive, to move between apps. How do you keep people from messing with them, checking their email, pointing them at un-savory sites, or worse yet walking away with them entirely?
Slice a frame from a movie, stitch ‘em together, you’d get something that resembles a bar code. A bar code that illustrates the color palate of the film. Here’s Singin’ in The Rain.
Prints are for sale, too.