A stock photograph should be 1) cheap 2) royalty-free 3) usable

Check this photo out…

Photographers description

A husband reads his paper as the rain pours down on him from a leaky roof. The wife glares back at him for his lack of concern. There is no digital enhancement on this photo.

My thoughts…

Firstly WTF! Seriously W.T.F! Who in gods name would use this picture? Where would you use it? How would you use it??? The ‘photographer’ entitled this photo ‘Kitchen Rain’. Do people search for such an image? Oh I’m looking for a photo of a kitchen where in it’s raining!!!

“A husband reads his paper as the rain pours down on him from a leaky roof”
Does rain ‘pour’ down from a ‘leaky roof’? No! It drips!

“The wife glares back at him for his lack of concern”
No way is that his wife. She looks way too young, and may I say, way out of his league. She has an umbrella up inside, now that’s asking for the gods to come down hard on her, it’s bad luck! Plus, you can tell it’s not raining where she’s standing, and why doesn’t she do something?

“There is no digital enhancement on this photo”
I can believe that!

Downloads

This photo has had over 400 downloads – WTF!

Rating

Checkout these ratings of this photo:

WTF WTF WTF!

WTF!

I just don’t get it, I really don’t, I’m lost.

What was that? You want to download it? …… grrrr fine! Here >

Here’s the challenge, the image of the frog on the right isn’t coloured in. The trick here is to use the Magenta shape on the left to colour the frog in, only, we need the frog to appear GREEN!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Stare at the Magenta shape on the left for 60 seconds
2. Then stare across at the frog on the right.
3. Voila!

Click on the image below to view an enlarged version as this makes this experiment easier to complete.

This is a simple experiment to show the phenomena called Qualia.

Also Magenta isn’t a colour.

Several million dollars, and almost half a year later the new Pepsi logo was finished by the fine designers at the Arnell Group.

Time to mock

Personally we think they have failed in their attempt at a “Quantum Leap” in their new logo and branding for the drinks industry, so we feel it just deserving that we gather this funny collection from around the web to indeed ‘mock them’.

Pepsi logo blow at life

Copyright: Lawrence Yang

Alice in Pepsi land

Psilocybe

Pacman

Credit: All illustrations and Pepsi logo copyright to their respective owners.

My agency 9xb recently moved premises and required a full refit. Part of the existing setup was a rather blank white wall with a red fire alarm top center of it. This area was to be the reception wall that clients and guests would see when entering the building so we decided to go crazy and generate some artwork to fill the space and brighten the room up. The simplest thing to do would be to paint it, but we’re not like that here, we don’t mind taking risks and thinking outside the box.

Before the refit started we took a couple of shots of the wall from different angles and mocked up a few ideas.

Options whittled down

Option 1: Millions of sheep

An illustration of hundreds of sheep with one cheeky-chappy chilling out.

Option 1: Millions of sheep – closeup

Option 2: Crazy phychodelic sheep

Seriously bright, seriously mental.

And the winner is…

The crazy phychodelic sheep of course!

Another angle mocked up

The final file ended up being 1.4gb in size, measuring 3.5m by 2.2m. Sheep image from istockphoto, printed out and an industrial high res scan created, merging a phychodelic rainbow as a Photoshop Smart-Object then sent to printers who came a week later to fix it to the wall. I’ll get a real photo uploaded asap.

Previous digital art for 9xb

View 9xb digital art post here

Archive44.com is a fun little project I decided to do on the spur of the moment. It’s basically an archive of over 900 front pages of newspapers from all over the world on the day Barack Obama, the first black African American, became President of the United States of America. When you put over 900 front pages together you really get a sense of scale and importance this day was.

Long tail search seems to be my greatest search phrase referrer via search engines. Phrases like ‘thomas jefferson with crayon lines’, ‘digital design principles explained’, ‘how to create a motivational posters with photoshop’. Some are bizarre, some are unexplainable but what about the short ones? Like SEO, Bogey, Viagra, Frog! Comment below the shortest search phrase a user has typed into a search engine and stumbled upon your lovely website… and include a link!

We’ll start with ours, boring indeed but one non the less:

“ART”

Adobe revealed their new ‘traditionally themed’ Photoshop interface this week at their annual AdobeExpo. The drastic redesign has come after months of highly publicised campaigning by angry Anti-Adobe protesters who state that their current interface is “harming our planet”, and “is turning our young generation into mindless web2.0 obsessed vombies”.

A spokesman from Adobe said “This new redesign will revolutionise the way we design in the future. The new sophisticated layout and intuitive panels will help modern designers leave the world of Web2.0 behind and thrust the web into a new place, a place where animated GIFs will live happily with PNG’s and Serif fonts.”

Bill Bates, leader of the Anti-Adobe interface movement said… “It’s about time! I’ve always been a fan of Adobe in the past but when their new interface was released in 2002 I knew this would cast dark shadows over the traditional design era. Web 2.0 on the web is a direct result of that interface so we knew it had to go!”

He continued…

“Next is Microsoft 8′s new interface, it just sucks, and if left to spread amongst our unprepared nation we’ll all turn into f***……” *Interview cut short.

Let us know your thoughts, can this new interface really eradicate Web 2.0 from the web? Can this new interface really improve the quality of designs. And most importantly, would you pay £1,250.00 for the luxury?

Click to enlarge

Credit:Advertising Agency: Bates141
Creative Director: Hendra Lesmono
Art Directors: Irawandhani Kamarga, Andreas Junus
Copywriter: Darrick Subrata
Photographer: Anton Ismael
Published: August 2008

In a messed up world what would happen if Cadbury merged with Nestle. Even better, what would the packaging look like if you merged them… well! If you like please share this with your friends

Original source found by readers so we can now give full credit to the source.

Genius!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Bokeh is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.

How to make that cardboard hood to assist you in making your own custom bokeh when shooting images. More info here >

DIY bokeh from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.