LYL

I’ve been fascinated by the classic pin-up art of Alberto Vargas for ages, and I also dig artists surrounding the same type of image. I’ve also, for many years, been engrossed in hip-hop which seems to have become known as “street culture” and the development of art surrounding it, namely Graffiti.

So when the two worlds collide for me it is amazing… and last Saturday they smashed together to make me happier than a fat kid in a Ben and Jerry’s store.

I was wandering around Antwerp and picked up a magazine in one of the places I visit (too) regularly, one of the best magazine shops I’ve ever found (Magazines are also a huge inspiration to me, and probably most designers, but that’s another post!) “IMS”.

In the magazine, I found the work of a French female Illustrator who fuses these two great styles in a very strong manner. She works out of Paris and is called “Elise Ascoet”, but can also be found all over the net by the name of Lyl, or Lyl9. (Flickr has a bunch of pics of her work too).

If you take your mouse down to clicky-town on the image above you can go to her website and see her stuff for yourself. In short, Brilliant!

Everybody says this style is great and well worth having a look at. Elise, true inspiration is something that feels great when you find it – and this feels amazing.

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Sam Winston… Attention to detail

I was once told – years ago, that all designers are a little bit OCD. In my case it is more than a little true, lord knows I can spend hours sweating over the kerning of a single word in a headline, or checking 6 times that I put crop marks on the last PDF file I put to the printers’… But this guy… This guy brings a new meaning to the old adage, attention to detail.

For example, not content with reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, he remixed it. Took the words, every word, rearranged them into different categories of emotion, and made them look beautiful. It’s quite a stunning example of the length he will go to make things. It’s kind of scary when you see it, cos it simply makes me want to take that straight column of copy I just laid out and make it messy… Beautiful but messy.

It’s incredible to see how far one individual will go to make his or her art, and in this case Sam goes the extra mile, then runs another marathon. Spend some time wondering around the work section of his website and you will come away thinking differently about everything. Take your mouse button to smackdown town over the picture and go to his website.

Everybody says Sam’s work is incredible, and should be admired. Do it.

Stretching your shelf space

Ok, so we often repeat ourselves here, but this is another case of things being better kept simple. Simple is good. So while looking to grab some shelves for the West Wing of the Everybody towers, which houses our extensive library… OK, OK, it’s so I can get the pile of books off my desk, we found this great set of flexible shelves by American Designer Pete Oyler.

His solution is heavy duty elastic bands which are stretched around steel pegs affixed to the wall. Brilliant. Everybody hopes this is available in Europe cos we need somewhere to put all our stuff, Somewhere that isn’t the corner of my desk!

He’s a recent graduate of the Rhode Island school of design, his work is great and would fit in most people’s lives. Bacon table being a great example of cast concrete, lord knows we love concrete! bash the mouse button on the picture above to go to Pete’s site to have a look at his impressive portfolio.

Anyway, as ever, Everybody loves this idea, and is looking forward to what Pete comes up with next!

Bela Bosodi

First in our new batch of inspiration is a whole bunch of stunning photography by a very talented artst called Bela Bosodi. Everybody stumbled upon her work whilst researching editorial photographers for a project we are working on, and it’s fair to say we were taken aback by just how different her style is.

The bold use of colour in the Editorial section and simple shapes contrasting with products is simply stunning. Her editorial work for clients such as Tatler and Elle are so simple that we have to file them in the “why didn’t we think of that” box we keep under the desk in the corner here at Everybody Towers. (The reason we didn’t think of that, is we were too busy trying to do clever things rather than keep it simple, and achieve much more)

Her work is well worth five minutes of anyone’s time and is easy browsing too, so hit up the picture above to go to her online portfolio.

Everybody says, great work Bela, we’re keeping an eye on our female colleagues’ magazines to try to spot more!

Back with more than before!*

*We can’t promise more than before, but we certainly will try.

OK. First rule of blogging is to not apologise for not posting in a while. In our case it’s been ages… but still, we’ve been really busy, and one of our business partners had a baby, so all hands on deck really. So due to emails and a couple of requests we’ve put a few hours aside to post a few things to say hello and remind you who we are. If you’re new to us, hello, if you’re an old reader then, welcome back… it’s good to see you again.

Everybody says enough with the pleasantries, here’s some stuff.