Meng Ling’s market search (China)

Meng Ling got his MA degree of graphic design from Australia, he now work as an art director in W+K Shanghai. He decided to go to some flower markets in Shanghai and Hang Zhou during his holiday break and he had checked 12 of the markets.

These are things he found in those lifely and intruguing markets. Black and white cobblestones and corals pieces that form alphabets, and beautifully shaped wood pieces and leaves.

“I was having this in my mind that i wanted to find really unique things but found that what nature offering is more than what we could expect, things that simple enough you could have miss it easily. I didn’t create them I was just very lucky to have found them.”

Tobias Wong 13,138 dice portrait

A portrait of the late artist Tobias Wong, using 13,138 dices had  created by his friend Frederick McSwain in tribute of him, entitled ‘Die’. This art work is part of the BrokenOff BrokenOff exhibition at Gallery R’Pure in NYC in memoriam to the artist during NY Design Week 2011. 

Tobias Wong, the legendary artist who had created controversial art pieces, borrowing forms and ideas from industrial design and luxury objects, which questioned the over-consuming culture sharply. He died last year at the young age of 35, that is 13,138 days he had lived.

The dice giving the message of the randomness of life, and the idea of every decision you make and every step you have taken in your life, defines who you are. It is to be exhibit on the floor to interact with the viewers. 

Book : Kazunari Hattori Graphics

Selected works of Kazunari Hattori, published by IDEA magazine, which is based on the feature article “Kazunari Hattori 100 Page”.

Hattori, the well known designer and art director of the Kewpie Corporation and East Japan Railway Company, also art directed some revolutionery magazines such as Mayonaka, Ryuko Tsushin and Here and There. 

A minimalist style, with focus on composition and type that together make engaging design.

Casualties of War by Dorothy

Dorothy created a series of post-war toy soldiers inspired by real-life scenarios. Many front-line soldiers returning home find it difficult to settle themselves into daily life, suffering depression and often resulting to violence.

Those little brave soldiers turned into an amputee in a wheelchair, a beggar on the street, the bully in a situation depicting domestic violence. Perhaps most shocking of all, one of the models shows a soldier sitting on an armchair about to shoot himself. Harsh but real stories told by tiny little green men familiar to everyone.

Type design by Jose Ernesto Rodriquez

Photocopying whole or part of the human hand, Rodriquez has created alphabet letters and symbols.

A playful and interesting process which explors ways of creating contemporary type design.

Oritsunagumono by Takayuki Hori

Created by Takayuki Hori, Oritsunagumono means folded and connected things in Japanese. It’s a series of the skeletons of eight endangered species which are delicately printed on translucent paper and then folded in an origami animals. 

Life’s worthlessness and fragility represented by delicate but fragile paper folds, origami, which is also a traditional Japanese paper arts, representing those old age animals that are now facing extinction.

Writing Without Words

Stefanie Posavec’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space. The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject.

PopShot Magazine

Popshot is a bi-annual small art publication "intent on hoodwinking poetry back from the clammy hands of tweed jackets and school anthologies". Popshot looks to celebrate the poetry of today and tomorrow with the whimsical arms of illustration wrapped tightly round it. 

"We are of the thought that the future of poetry is even more exciting than the past."

Started on a shoestring budget from the kitchen of an Oxford flat, and despite featuring unknown contributors, no adverts or sponsors within only four issues Popshot became the first UK poetry magazine ever to gain worldwide distribution. 

"I think it came from a deep-rooted love of children’s books", says founder and editor Jacob Denno. "We learn how to appreciate rhythm and meter as children with the plethora of nonsense poetry and hand-me-down children’s rhymes. I’ve always been a massive fan of rhyme but there’s very few people that can pull it off eloquently."

"Do not read this if you need the toilet," advises the 22-year-old editor, Jacob Denno. "Poetry is an art form that needs complete attention."

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