A Pin-Up Calendar for the New Year (NSFW, maybe)

Some things have been happening. Like, the end of the world did not come and so a new year is upon  us. Also, Fifty Shades of Grey is the bestselling novel ever despite hardly being a novel at all, what with no plot and no sense whatsoever and the heart-wrenchingly bad writing. Also, we’ve been spending hours on stock photography sites for various not-so-exciting projects. We blame today’s entry on all of that.

So, have you ever tried to find a stock photo for an ad of a real estate developer or a mattress seller? It goes something like this: you type in a seemingly neutral term, say “chess” or “chair” and… behold the plethora of barely dressed ladies (I use the term broadly) making sweet sweet love to the chess or chair. Or next to it. Or under it. Sometimes the chair is not even in the picture.

We do a lot of stock searches and every now and then we come upon pictures so horrid they are almost good. For a while we’ve been putting these photos into a special folder called Oddities and finally decided to share the goodness. This is the short story behind our 2013 calendar.

Please, feel warned. What follows after the jump is vulgar and inelegant. But, full disclosure, it was much more fun to work on than the legitimate projects we started from. (Also, none of the photos qualify as actual porn, with all the naughty bits covered, so don’t worry and please don’t flag us.)

Merry!

Merry Christmas (or Holidays, if you’re not into Christmas).
Have a great time with your families and friends.

 

More Posters to Buy

We already posted this week’s design post – just scroll down to the next one – so today we’re pleased to inform that all Iconic Posters, both TV and painters, are available in our store in three sizes, A1, A2 and A3. The rest of Disney posters should be up pretty soon.

Twelves Galore

We didn’t really have time to do it but we figured it’s the last such opportunity so here is a little poster celebrating the alliterative date – only it’s probably called something else when they’re digits, not letters.

For a brief part of yesterday evening we regressed to childhood and potato stamping (only we didn’t do that so much as kids, as a matter of fact), and a little less backwards to the time when we worked with paint in the arts academy, to create three twelves built of many more twelves.

Six old-school potato stamps we made with the expert use of knife.

Our stamps after we used them to print numbers out of numbers with poster paint.

Also, we’re constantly adding new posters to our new store, so please feel free to drop by.

Our Prints on Sale

We are happy to announce that our posters are now becoming available as prints here. The shipping options are much more affordable than we were able to offer from our neck of the woods so we hope those of you who asked for prints will be pleased with this solution.

Right now we have put up a selection of Disney classic posters but early next week selections of Iconic TV Shows and Iconic Painters will also be up. If your favorite poster is not among the initially selected or you wish for a different size, please let us know and we’ll be happy to add it to the store.

Hopefully these will be in time for Christmas presents.

The Magus Poster

With this poster we returned to working with paper. The Magus by renown John Fowles tells a mutlilayered story that we don’t feel competent to describe in detail. So be content with this: a guy visits a Greek island where an older man tries to manipulate him in a sort of experiment, while two twins try to seduce him. Yes, we realize it’s a simplification, just read the book.

In the poster we focused on the magus  who with his God-complex tries to influence and direct other people’s lives. Letters become puppets with the invisible puppeteer holding the strings off-frame. Lighting gives it a very theater-like atmosphere, the motif of theater and acting prominent in the book. It also creates natural shadows and the double letters remind of the twins in the novel, among other things.

For letters we chose Priori by Emigre, for its twist on classic serif letters and its somewhat occult flavor. For Greek atmosphere we picked white on blue, the blue dark enough to add some nocturnal element.

We first cut out the papers letters and fixed them with white threads. Then, the more complicated part came in which we had to fix the letters to a horizontal plane (made of cardboard) above, so that they hung loose and stayed legible. Finally, all we had to do was experiment with lighting until the shadows looked right. All in all, this proved more complicated than cutting carrots.

The behind-the-scenes part didn’t look too elegant, admittedly:

But it’s always satisfactory to overcome the obstacles that come from physical design work. It’s a different feeling to the purely conceptual obstacles you encounter when working solely on the computer.