Underwater Dogs

Underwater Dogs
Seth Casteel

Just scrolling through the internet I stumbled across the photographer Seth Casteel and his Underwater Dog photography and I instantly fell for it. The photos are so unique and I have never seen anything like it before.

I looked into how he creates the image and it is an underwater camera with a fish eye lens, which is how he achieves the strange curves and shapes, enhancing the dogs faces and other feature. The shoots take place in well lit pools and he uses tennis balls to throw into the pool to make the dogs drive after them.

I love how the dogs look different to how you would ever see them on land some of them look so bizarre, with the wide eyes and mouths. I do find some of them a little scary with the sharp teeth even though I know they are not being vicious it still looks intimidating. The shapes that the waves and the bubbles created from them entering the water but also them breathing give the photos a surreal feeling the dogs look like completely different creatures. 

Great Design Blogs - 1 Design Per Day.com

Great Design Blogs

1 Design Per Day.com

1designperday.com has been one of my favourite design blogs for almost five years now. I find that it never fails to inspire me or help me out if I need to get focused again. It was first recommended to me in high school by my Graphic Design teacher and since then I use it both to inspire and inform my work but I also just love to look on it, the website is full to bursting with fun, cool, new ideas as well as the more serious design ideas.

http://www.1designperday.com/

Here are some of the more recent post that have been posted over summer...

Fold out greeting cards that aren't what they seem.

 Sushi Socks

Coffee Cup That Goes From Happy To Mad With A Simple Twist

Thoughtful Hands - Please Don't Graffiti

Please Don't Graffiti

Signs to discourage young people not to graffiti property written in Graffiti, the sign maybe even directing them to somewhere where they can like graffiti walls. Just so long as it isn't on property. Maybe having it written in well done graffiti might connect with them better.

Thoughful Hands -1 Year of Notes

1 Years worth of Notes

I think it would be a really fun idea if you collected notes that were left to people for a year, could be just simple things like shopping lists or don't forget to take the bins out. Little stuff like that. I think reading back over them would be fun and interesting and you never know what might be found.

Foam- Photography Museum Amsterdam

FOAM

Photography Museum Amsterdam

I visited the Photography Museum in Amsterdam which mainly had two temporary exhibitions on at the time when I visited, Larry Clark - Tulsa & Teenage Lust and Don't Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next.

Larry Clark - Tulsa & Teenage Lust

These particular works of his consisted of nudity, sex, violence or the impression of violence and drugs around teenagers in the 80's. Some images were shocking and originally we were not sure if they were set up by Larry Clark or if they were real. We read into the background of his work and in more detail of his photographs and discovered that they were real. It was so surreal the photographs were so raw and harsh especially as the majority of the subjects were only teenagers. The essence of drug use and the scale in which the drug use seemed so present was scary.

All the photographs were in black and white, which made some of them kind of beautiful with the raw harsh openness of the image, it really helped express that you were actually seeing somebodies life.

Don't Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next.

The other exhibition was very different, Don't Stop Now was fun, bold, playful and experimental. A lot of it was photographs worked over with design software, screen prnting, drawing and paints. Sometimes the playful element was placed onto the model before the photograph was taken. 

Daniel Sannwald                                                                     

Untitled, 2008                                                                     

The element I most enjoyed about this exhibition is the experimental playfulness with the photographs and colour and the different ways to display the images. It comes across as so fun and care free.

Ruvan Wijesooriya

Grid print (Annabelle), NYC, 2012

This image was one of my favourites as the grid print made it stand out from the others, I also just really love the simplicity of the black and white and how the lighting has struck her  and captured her so classically.

Max Little Design Discovery

Max Little 

Whilst scrolling through my instagram I came across some typography that caught my eye. It was on a page called @typecally which promotes typography that they like and people send to them. So I looked into this typography that stopped my scrolling and found it was created by a guy called Max Little. Upon googling him I discovered that he does lots of typography mostly creating his own fonts. This is the one that initially caught my eye, he calls it Divert Typeface.

Initially I really loved the way that the font curved and the was each letter is made up of continuous line, there is something really beautiful about continuous lines and the way they flow. But then I read what it was saying and I found it amusing how Max Little had made each word be true. Up was up and Down was below Up. Left was left and Right was right. I also loved how the four dots  for each word centralized it all the word also creating a continuous line making them easier to read.

These are the Divert typeface in capitals and lowercase.The layering of the lowercase over each other makes the font seem fun and playful and the two different colours just work so well together on the dark grey background.

As I enjoyed his Divert Typeface so much I just had to look into some of his other work in more detail, there was other typefaces that he had created and although I liked them I didn't enjoy them as much as the first one I came across. However there were two single typography pieces that I did really like. Never Grow Up was one of them, the way he has created the type fits in with the phase so perfectly, type made out of building blocks. Using both positive and negative space is both clever but could also be representing the inconsistency of a child and how sometimes they get letters the wrong way round instead they would flit between positive and negative space.

The other typography piece that I really like was Some rules are made to be broken I did origionally skim past this one but then I saw that there was a video too and when I watched it it brought the whole typography together.

http://vimeo.com/87173490 

Again the visual matches up perfectly with the phase and I really love stuff that does that, it is sort of satisfying as everything just clicks together and works.

Polystyrene Design Discovery

For the majority of August this summer I have spent my time travelling around parts Europe in which I had the opportunity to see countries and places that I had never seen before. Places including getting to see galleries and exhibitions, but also street art and sculptures which we stumbled upon along the way.

Amsterdam was where I came across this 3D piece of street art made out of polystyrene which had been carved out to have different levels and depths to her hair and face. It caught my eye as it was very different to other street art it was surrounded by, this lady is pale and grey which ordinarily would fade into the background,  compared to all the bright, colourful, bold street art she was surrounded with. But she caught my eye for being different, dull coloured polystyrene stuck to a wall, very understated yet I found her to be captivating. 

I am unaware if the artist intent was to make her look like the Mona Lisa, but after watching her for a while i found her to resemble her. For me I think it is because of her tightly closed lips and the way her hair falls.