Wrap magazine For the latest issue of Wrap we were lucky enough to be able to work with the super talented illustrator Alex Walker who created this image, ‘Cosmic Sorbet’, in response to the issues theme of balance. Alex said he made this image with quite a free-form approach to try and capture a sense of visual balance and to make something ‘process-led and fun’. Alex’s artwork is available as a pull-out print/wrapping paper in Wrap issue 11- ‘Balance’, alongside a in-depth interview with him. How to make paper look old by aging it with tea | mevsthehouse.com The idea for this project came while I was searching for a picture for another post. I had written a post about Classical Music for Halloween, and wanted to find the perfect graphic to go with it. I had it pictured in my head (which is how most of my ridiculous projects start)… a stack of old sheet music from one of my recommendations. Well, I couldn’t find anything that came close. So I decided to make my own (and take a picture of it). What you will need: Strong tea or coffee, coldPaper to be agedCookie sheetOvenInstant coffee (optional) How to Age your Paper: You want to print or write anything on your paper BEFORE you age it.Preheat oven to 200°.Place the paper on a cookie sheet (I use an old one)Pour tea/coffee over the paper until the entire sheet is covered, make sure it soaks in on both side.If you want darker spots on the paper, sprinkle instant coffee on the paper and let it sit on the paper. Additional tips: What’s Next? ShareThis
What To Tell the Kids About Guns When I was about eight or nine, I found Clyde M. Narramore’s book How to Tell Your Children About Sex hidden in my dad’s closet. Presumably he had been preparing himself to “have the talk,” but I got to his crib sheet first. I poured over the chapters on “Family Dressing and Undressing,” “Learning from Nature,” and “Experimentation.” Curiously, in light of all the gun control protest today (and I’m a firm supporter) this booklet from 1957 was more egalitarian than most — ”when a boy or GIRL wants a gun.” “Come the day when the settlers on your block have routed the last redskin,” reads the first sentence of the booklet, “when your Backyard Cowboy and his trusty cap pistol have freed the neighborhood of the last rustler [or intruder], your boy — or girl — will want a gun, a real gun, one that shoots. Guns are part of American life and narrative. There are many choice tidbits of wisdom and lore (click on image to make larger).
How To Give Your Photos a Cool Retro Analog Effect Back in the days of analog photography imperfections were part of the job. Colour washes, light leaks, vignettes and blurs were all common problems that appeared during the processing of your film, particularly from cheap cameras such as the Holga, or simply down to human error. While these problems don’t affect digital cameras, we can recreate the cool effects in Photoshop to give our shots that cool lo-fi retro effect. View large scale photograph You don’t have to look far before finding quality examples of old style analog photography. Once you have your photograph of choice, fire up Adobe Photoshop. Add a Curves adjustment layer to begin altering the tones of the image. Change the drop down menu to the Red channel and begin manipulating the curves. Move onto the Green channel, this time increase the green midtones by creating a large flowing bend in the line. Fill a new layer with magenta, then change the blending mode to Soft Light. Download the source file
Win the Business with this Elevator Pitch - Steve W. Martin by Steve W. Martin | 7:00 AM August 22, 2012 Pretend that you are in an elevator at one of your industry’s trade shows. You’re heading down to the lobby when the doors open on the thirtieth floor. You instantly recognize the executive who walks in and quickly glance at his name badge to confirm he is the CEO of the most important account you would like to start working with. So, how did you do? They use truisms: They believe their company’s own marketing pitch, which makes claims that are not considered entirely true by the listener. They describe themselves using buzzwords: They repeat industry buzzwords or, worse yet, use technical buzzwords that are known only within their company. They use fillers: They make too much small talk or ask frivolous questions that reduce their stature to the customer. They demean themselves or the listener: Their statements turn them into mere salespeople, not business problem solvers. Here’s an example of a poor elevator pitch. Hello, Norman.
Photoshop vintage effect Back in October I took this photo, in front of our house. A cool scene, bright colors and a double rainbow. After seeing this picture on my Flickr page, I received an e-mail from Marco who asked me about the post process of this image. Now here is my answer… Choose your image carefully First of all I need to mention that some pictures are better suitable than others. Add contrast and saturation Place the image in a separate layer. Adjust curves Add another adjustement layer. Select Green from the Channel dropdown menu and adjust the curve as shown in the image above. Now select Blue from the Channel dropdown menu and adjust the curve as shown in the image above. Add Vignette effect Select the layer with your photo and go to the Filter menu and select "Convert for Smart Filters". Now go to the Filter menu and select Distort > Lens Correction. Add some Colorisation Your photo should look pretty dramatic right now with a lot of contrast. The final touch Before and after Here is another example:
Your Future Robotic Hand Will Be Able To Detect Everything From Abnormal Breast Lumps To Enlarged Lymph Nodes Bring together two engineers and a Harvard Medical School student, expose them for 10 weeks to lofty ideas about changing the world from people like X Prize Founder Peter Diamandis and futurist Ray Kurzweil, ask them to create a team project that could positively impact 1 billion people in 10 years, and what do you get? Med Sensation, a project spun out of Singularity University’s graduate studies program that aims to make your checkups at the doctor’s office more robotic. The Med Sensation glove, now in its second iteration, is outfitted with sensors that can detect vibrations, sound, and temperature--and it features an accelerometer and a buzzer system for items that require immediate attention. "If you apply too much pressure on the examined tissue, then the buzzer goes on," explains team member Elishai Ezra. The third version will come with micro-ultrasounds on the glove fingertips.
How To Make a Vintage / Retro Picture Tutorial I have had quite a few people asking about how I do my retro photos. This is a quick and very easy tutorial that should help those who want to learn the art of taking a photo, and making it an old fashion vintage picture. Well, I for one like the style, and I hope this helps those who wish to try it out. Preview here the final result.
Spokes | Eclectic Pedicab Rides Mayor to Londoners: Don’t Jump Update: This ad campaign is, thankfully, a spoof. The London Underground has had rashes of suicides on the tracks. Deep tube stations have “anti-suicide pits” or “suicide pits” or “dead man’s trenches” beneath the track that enables responders to help prevent death when a passenger falls or jumps in front of a train. London Underground has a “Therapy Unit” to deal with drivers’ post-traumatic stress, resulting from someone jumping under their train. Now there is an advertising campaign designed to thwart suicides. Whether the approach works or not, only time will tell. .
How Tony Hsieh Pivoted Zappos Into A $1.2 Billion Amazon Acquisition Zappos.com launched in 1999 with a plan like that of many dot-coms birthed in the tech bubble: to be an online shoe company without ever touching a shoe. Customers would order footwear on its website, it would transmit the orders to vendors, and vendors would ship them from their own warehouses. “On paper, it was a great idea,” CEO Tony Hsieh says. But in practice, it wasn't. "As an e-commerce company, we should have considered warehousing to be our core competency from the beginning," Hsieh wrote in his book, Delivering Happiness. By 2003, 75% of sales came from its warehouse’s stock. And he bet it on his frontline agents, investing money that normally would have been spent on advertising. It worked. Hsieh never used the term “pivot” to describe his change in strategy.
When Illustrators Wanted to be Bob Peak The 1950s and ’60s were a time when most wanna-be illustrators wanted to be Bob Peak. It was also the moment when illustration was at a crossroads. Would it continue to merely serve or illuminate a text, or would it say something more? Since the emerging editorial themes (war, peace, race, etc.) were more socially and metaphorically charged, the substance and style of illustration could no longer be entirely realistic. Certain levels of abstraction were filtered into the American illustration vocabulary, and by the mid-’60s, illustration was made of varied dialects—representing retro to futuristic with various substrata in between. Peak was a bridge between the representational and the conceptual, between the Rockwellians and Magritte-ians. A tectonic shift was pushing illustration from the dominant visual medium to a subsidiary one. Peak also developed identities for films in posters for My Fair Lady, Camelot, Star Trek, Apocalypse Now, In Like Flint, Modesty Blaise, and Rollerball. .