Recently in Inspiration Category

LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 3

LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 3

Beginning this month, SPD is introducing Look, an ongoing series that will highlight the images that are inspiring, piquing, and stirring up conversation in various magazines' photography departments. Think of it as an ever-changing moodboard. First up: GQ's photography department, led by Dora Somosi.

See what they're looking at after the jump...
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LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 2

LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 2

Beginning this month, SPD is introducing Look, an ongoing series that will highlight the images that are inspiring, piquing, and stirring up conversation in various magazines' photography departments. Think of it as an ever-changing moodboard. First up: GQ's photography department, led by Dora Somosi.

See what they're looking at after the jump...
MORE
LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 1

LOOK: What's Inspiring the GQ Photo Department, Part 1

Beginning this month, SPD is introducing Look, an ongoing series that will highlight the images that are inspiring, piquing, and stirring up conversation in various magazines' photography departments. Think of it as an ever-changing moodboard. First up: GQ's photography department, led by Dora Somosi.

See what they're looking at after the jump...
MORE
Fall Roundup

Fall Roundup

After a busy month with SPD and AI-AP events, I thought I'd post a few more bits of inspiration I caught in NYC this fall, after the jump...

And on a travel note, yours truly is escaping the 37 degrees and heading down south this week to Art Basel 2008 in Miami, if anyone is going hit me up...I might have another few passes coming to select events. Or if you just want to chat about our precarious state of existence over the best Cubano you've ever had, holler. /// HJ
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Sarah Garcea: Graphic Images

Sarah Garcea: Graphic Images

I love love love the opening sequence for Dexter on Showtime. The new season just started up and while watching the other day, I was like, I do not tire of this opening. I really like the graphic quality of the images, how you don't entirely know what it is at first and then it all makes sense. I lean towards very graphic images in my work so this really speaks to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgo57OBKFOA
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Spaceship Earth 1

Spaceship Earth 1

Hello from the Great White North. The land of the gentle red maple leaf. The "We-Walk-Quietly-While-You-Carry-A-Big-Stick" country. Dusting off my layman's French and giving Quebecois a go, on this brisk 32 degree night I'm actually writing about something still in NYC: Starting With The Universe at the Whitney, a retrospective of the "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist" Buckminster Fuller. Go if you can, the show closes Sunday.

Though kind of campy in its mid-century magazine and film documentation, the show is well-placed right now, when green and alternative energies are at the top of our concerns, (if not completely trendy). Fuller believed, (like Charles and Ray Eames), in bringing the best design to the most amount of people; but he may have gone further by imagining, drafting and producing homes, transport, communities, etc. all in the hope of a responsible and conserving utopia...not an inaccessible, exclusive dream, but a probable, actual, doable reality.
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All Over The Map

All Over The Map

"Excuse me, where is Orchid Street? A waifish young lass asked me in the Lower East Side the other day. "You mean Orchard Street," as I pointed her to midtown. Feeling the end of summer doldrums and the only one not in the Cramptons this weekend, I filtered through the milling droves of tourists and became literal: I'll make beloved Labor Day all about work. (boo hoo shut up and get to work.)

Wondering why fantastic minds could come up with a cab mapper in real time, map the most famous voyages in history, map your interactive friend wheel, map all the public restrooms in the city, I thought, can't why not put the tourists into their correct place too? Color code them and give them some parameters so we can co-exist. For instance, If you are native, you are 100% cyan, majenta, yellow or black: you know where you are going. If you are a gawker, walkabout, or dawdler you recede to a noncommittal mauve, ochre or khaki. And if you slowly stroll hand in hand, or display any kind of p.d.a. in the middle of a thoroughfare you are not worthy of so much as a tint, but immediately become a target for the Street Wars.
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AC/DC's Elegant Form

AC/DC's Elegant Form

Here's what a composition from AC/DC's "Back in Black" looks like at The Shape of Song.

Visit the site to view a selection of songs or add your own MIDI file to the repertoire to see its musical form.

I'm thinking about asking them to consider a limited edition frame-able poster of "99 luftballoons".





Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers

"Um I'd like one ticket for, Beautiful Losers." I went warily to this documentary last night, thinking it was going to be another rags-to-riches story of a hip art clique, complete with footage of the cool parties you could never get into. But okay, I'll go see it...heck Shepard Fairey is in it.

I've seen films on the cultural significance of graffiti and the skate culture, those of disenchanted youth angry at the world, this one is more about the behind the scenes creative process and collective energy of a group of witty DIY artstars. Shot in NYC, LA and SF in the mid '90s, it covers their rise from a tiny gallery to international corporate campaigns, then ends on a surprisingly touching moment. The film slowly shows that they aren't just well-funded hacks lazing around the Lower East Side, but reveals how their unity propels them and how each is simply, driven. (a plump Harmony Korine says in the end, its almost a "duty".)
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Olympic Typography Skills (in 1968)

Olympic Typography Skills (in 1968)

I don't know about you, but I've caught this Olympic fever; the more I watch, the more I find myself picking out the ubiquitous "Beijing 2008" Olympic logo on everything (I mean everything). I can't help but think to myself, "only in the digital age." Right?

Then this morning I came across this "Mexico 68" logo.
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"Knocks My Socks Off"

This might not seem original to the photo world. But I've been really getting into the stock site Photoshelter.com. It's really made looking through collections of stock imagery more interesting, actually refreshing. The site has 37,000 photographers around the world uploading their images everyday. So it's a great place for me to find fresh and most importantly contemporary images. Also a good place to find photographers for assignment. (More of Leslie's thoughts on stock photography, and the finer details of photo editing at Time, at Rob Haggart's blog, APhotoEditor.com. --Ed.)
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"Here's a list of things currently sitting on or under my coffee table"

Magazines
Huge (Japan), Summer 2008
Popeye (Japan), July 2008
Monocle (GB), May 2007 and Aug 2008
Studio Voice (Japan), July 2008
Transworld Skateboarding, Aug 2008
W, July 2008
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"I Raved About It To My Magazine Store Clerk."

I hate to say it but I have been ogling the latest issue of Bon Appétit. It was the cover that got me! I wanted to eat up that ice cream cone right there in the magazine store. I raved about it to my local magazine store clerk. Asking him how many people have bought it? Who is buying it? Does he like the cover? (Magazine clerks know their covers!) Bon Appétit has exquisite typography, the structure is inviting and the photography is slick and tangible.

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