So this dude lobs a load of ants in his scanner then scans them for 5 years. What’s the betting he’s single. Still, at least he has his ants (not one of which you can see in this video).

It reminds me of an early version of Sim City set to a soundtrack of obscure Middle Eastern Trance. Actually, that’s sort of what it is. Enjoy.

This post comes from the heart. If you are at all interested in print, independent magazines or free bloody speech then you need to subscribe to this service; it has, quite frankly, changed my life.*

The concept of Stack is to promote independent press by sending subscribers one (or quite often several) independent rags a month. This can range from Eye (RRP £17!) to Little White Lies, Bad Idea, VNA, Anorak, the list is endless. If you’ve heard of these then you’ll know what a good deal this is, if you haven’t then you, child, are the most in need of it.

Strangely though, for me at least, it’s the other ‘free’ magazines you get with the featured title that make it all worthwhile. One example is Manzine, an outspoken reaction to mens magazines written by some of their editors. Reading-on-the-bus-kudos aside, it has helped to reinforce my confidence in the power of a print mag, however home-made - No-one else will own my copy of Manzine, I’ve spilt coffee on it and dog-eared the corners, it’s truly been a journey. I still pick it up months later and it’s as ball-splittingly hilarious as it was the day I got it.

I can’t recommend Stack enough, it’s a bundle of joy landing on your doormat every month, a constant in a world of wars, politics, doom, gloom and digital media. Plus they delivered issue one of our magazine last month, getting them a gold star in my book.

Jonny

*well maybe not changed my life but it’s definitely been the best £40 I’ve spent this year

Can it be true that I hold in my mortal hand an issue of purest AMMO?* With issue three, the cutest little inspiration mag in the planet brings us words and pics from Peskimo, Jam Factory and a favourite of ours Jessica Hische (cue glow of envy due to epic typo-crush) as well as loads of others. You can fit this baby in your back pocket but it’s jam-packed with artists that will make you quiver (ie. Pat Perry - never heard of him before but my is he good…) and is well worth picking up from the AMMO store.

*You’ll be pleased to know that our propensity to shoehorn content into barely-relevant quotes is as yet unabated.

New work from the Blu, now using more and more of the environment in his work. And bloody loads of paint, obv.

My friend Freya is interning at The Museum Of Everything, and after reading her blog I came across this. Sounds like sweet deals.

CALLING THE UNTRAINED, UNINTENTIONAL & UNSEEN CREATORS OF GREATER BRITAIN.
Are you a marginal or self-taught artist? Have you received a divine calling to depict strange new worlds?Are you an artist with a disability, whose creativity has been undeservedly overlooked? Or a collector with a cache of anonymous doodlings?
If this sounds like you The Museum of Everything cordially invites you to submit a work on paper (or anything small and light) to Exhibition #2, to be held on May 14th, 15th & 16th, 2010, as part of No Soul For Sale at London’s Tate Modern.
Exhibition #2 is open to all, non-professional, non - traditional, and non-exhibited artists, living or long gone.To enter simply turn up at the Tate Modern with your artwork where it will be assessed by our esteemed Board of Trustees. Successful works will be displayed in The Turbine Hall and published in a book of the exhibition.
REVEAL YOUR CREATIVITY AT THE TATE MODERN & EXHIBIT AT THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING.

DETAILS:
THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING, EXHIBITION #2
WHERE: Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
WHEN: Friday and Saturday 14th and 15th May, 2010. 10am - midnight Sunday 16th May, 2010. 10am - 6pm
WHAT: For details and guidance: www.musevery.com
TO ASK US A QUESTION: everytate@gmail.com

Get on it people.

To herald the onset of some more spring sunshine, here’s some colourful work by Natsuki Otani, a Tokyo born illustrator living and working in England. Having worked with names like Urban Outfitters and The Times, she’s definitely ‘cut her teeth’ since graduating from Norwich University, and apparently she’s also in the April edition of Computer Arts, which is nice.

I’m a fan especially of the top image, her submission for the cover of the now award-winning Where the Wild Things Are issues of Huck and Little White Lies.

On Saturday night ShellsuitZombie were kindly given three tickets to what would turn out to be one of the more surreal evenings of our social calendar so far this year. Mercy, the same Liverpool and London based agency that creates 12 Angry Zines, held the sixth of its incredibly successful (and oversubscribed) nights with Liverpool-based pop experimentals The Wave Machines at Shoreditch Church - ‘Wave if you’re really there’.

This one, entitled Baptism, featured a host of talent in the fields of spoken word, music and performance, with brilliant (and hilarious) vocal performances from Nathan Jones, Ross Sutherland, Salena Godden and David J, Music from Eugene Mcguinness and the Lizards and of course The Wave Machines and some bizarre performance art from a troupe, one of whom kept putting her head in the font (church, not typographic). Everything combined (as well as a BYOB policy resulting in excessive wine consumption) to create a great atmosphere, helped of course by the Medieval/Palladian style architecture of the church itself (yep damn right, wikifuckingpedia).

Moment of the night had to go to Dave O’Dowda from Table on piano accompanied by a choir which popped up out of nowhere (like in Love actually). All in all a memorable night, please for gods sake go to the next one.

(The two good photos are © Tamsin Isaacs, the grainy ones are © Ellies crappy iPhone camera.)

Michael Willis is an illustrator with some really nice editorial work under his belt for several magazines that I haven’t heard of (cue self-flagellatory slap on the wrist) and a few that I definitely have (idN, Beautiful/Decay etc.). Bold use of clashing colours and geometric shapes mark Michael as a name to look out for in the future. Nice one bruv.

Mercy, a forward-thinking London/Scouse design and creative agency, has started a project this year to release an E-Zine every month along the theme of the classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men. Issue 2 (based on the central character McArdle, for those interested) features such heavyweights as illustrator Si Scott and Megapoet Luke Wright (read his contribution here) - definitely something to keep up-to-date with, especially if they keep pulling names like these out of the bag.

ps. on the subject of Mercy, keep eyes peeled for their other stuff and events.

Living in or around Nottingham? Love Screenprinting? Then you’re gonna love cheesy peas Screen fiends, a screenprinting event being held by Nottingham Trent Design students. Thing is (and sorry guys for being so crap) it’s in 2 days!

Anyway, find a crappy old tee, bring it along and get a one-off design that will rival any of the wang* that the Shoreditch kids are rocking currently. Find out all the deets here.

*wang = mildly derogatory term (not as rude as wank).

Nick had one of those ideas that everyone wishes they had had themselves - and boy has he run with it. Some elegant sculpture here that makes me - not inherently an ‘OMG-I-JUST-GOTTA-BUY-THIS-LAMP’ kind of person - want to buy ten of them, have them all face into a white wall (that I currently don’t own) and pretend my room is like the one in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’ (those pesky monkeys!).

The only thing more impressive is the list of blogs he’s been featured on, a list that doesn’t include us. So I apologise if everyone’s seen this stuff a million times on fffffffound and other ‘user-curated-image-bookmarking-sites‘ [said in a robot voice] but sod it, it’s pretty and we like.

Cracking mixed media portraits using old floppys from Nick Gentry. His official blurb is that his focus has been to explore how technological advancement is affecting society. Each floppy disk used in the paintings has a history and story of its own. It represents the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, where objects are created, used and disposed of quicker than ever. To challenge this notion, as these personal artefacts of life are cast aside, the obsolete are now given new life and a renewed purpose by using them as a medium for art.

Nanami Cowdroy is an Australian artist, with Japanese and European roots.  She has created these beautifully detailed and expressive drawings in mixed media, and is now exhibiting around the world.  For me, the inky style adds depth and movement to her subjects, and many of her creations provide a fresh take on traditional Japanese imagery.

**Warning product design bias!!**

The open-ended student project brief can lead to incredible innovations.  The unconstrained mind can come up with quirky ideas like the screw-in coffin or the moneypad, but getting there can be the most stressful and time consuming process.  Also, each project you take on is an investment in your own future, your portfolio has to stand out if you want to get your paws on an ever-more-elusive job, so you can’t mess it up!  This is why many students use competitions as a source for ideas.  Clued-up lecturers often use the briefs set by our mates at D&AD as part of their teaching.  Mine did not, but a friend recommended it, and it made a really fresh, relevant, well-rounded final year project: you have to set some of your own boundaries, read up on the area, establish your target market and so on, and you can make it as technical as you like.  It beats those tired ”pill dispenser for the elderly” briefs, and if you are a finalist then that looks great on the CV.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but for those who are not aware of this excellent source of creative briefs and inspiration (as well as prestige and prizes for the winners), here are some interesting links:

• Contest Watchers (those tie-wearing shapes above) is a blog that aggregates professional and student design, visual arts and music competitions from around the world, keeps an eye on entry deadlines, and bigs up the winners to a growing audience (via psfk)
• The Design Council’s events and competitions directory is quite good, despite the baffling and hideous website.
• Dexigner is an awesome design industry news resource, and also has a feed of competitions with deadline info.
• Core77 is another design resource, good for news as well as job hunting and portfolio hosting.  They often run 1-hour design challenges which are a great way to show off your skills to the design community in a short time period.

There’s a huge product design bias in these links, if you have a moment, please comment with other resources from your field.

Good luck in those competitions!

Tree:Mix is a platform for designers and illustrators to show of their creative skills to the world through a variety of collaborative projects. We posted a while back about ‘Rip Rip, the project where people illustrate halves of a magazine page‘. Well this idea - started by recent design grad James Robert Fox - pushes that even further.

In ‘Digital:Mix’ one person does an illustration in either Photoshop or Illustrator and submits the artwork file to the website. This artwork can then be downloaded by anyone to embellish/improve with the only rule being a link to the existing piece. There is also ‘Scanner:Mix’ which caters for the hand-drawn technophobic illustration style by not allowing any computer trickery.

Both options are free for anyone to have a go at and the idea is brilliantly simple - in fact hopefully SSZ will have a pop at one over the christmas hols (if we can see over our collective bellies post-turkey that is). Then anyone can rate each mix and view them all in the provided gallery, or use the forum to chat to the artists.

Honestly, this site has everything a christmas-holiday thumb-twiddling aunt-avoiding wine-infused image-maker could ever need. Get yourself there, download the files and have a go. Your new Xbox can wait.