In the hours after

Why hand-drawn is the new black

There’s been an interesting trend recently in print and advertising work in particular away from the perfect symmetry and airbrushed cleanliness of vector art and back towards a looser form of hand-drawn illustration. I see it everywhere, from the middle pages of highbrow pop culture publications to the style sections of local broadsheets. And yet, it’s unexpected, especially so soon after the wave of vector art which swamped the print world just a few years back. Read more

The inside word on illustration from Frank Stockton

New York illustrator Frank Stockton is one of those artists who, when you stumble across his work, you can’t help but stop and marvel (and on occasion, tear the page right and tack it on the wall). Stockton’s incredible draughtsmanship, coupled with a powerful knack for innovative, graphic storytelling, has resulted in an impressive body of work. Having already been published in magazines such as Esquire, The New Yorker, GQ and Penthouse, just to name a few, Stockton is already making a big name for himself within the industry. We spoke to him recently. Read more

Autumn Whitehurst

A perennial favourite, Autumn Whitehurst creates seamless vector pieces that shimmer with lustful beauty. We asked her how reflective her illustration aesthetic is of her lifestyle aesthetic: ‘My illustrations are much more streamlined than my lifestyle aesthetic. I grew up in a family of magpies and must be genetically predisposed to collecting things I don’t need. I’ll need to move into a bigger space soon or I’ll have to start throwing things out because the visual stimulation in my house is nearly suffocating. If you’ve seen the movie Max, and remember Max Earnst’s house, that would be quite close to my ideal. But I would love to remix that with the aesthetic of those old French colonial homes in Vietnam and then I’d be quite content. How it would be possible, I have no idea’. Read more

Milk and Honey necklace by Stephanie Simek

Milk and honey, an indubitable pair. In this necklace by Stephanie Simek, a golden honeycomb beeswax pendant is encased in plastic and hangs from an oxidized sterling silver chain. The links are interwoven with a milk protein-based fiber. We have it for sale in our online store.

Malcolm Middleton’s Secret Playlist

Malcolm Middleton (ex-Arab Strap) has just released his fifth solo album, Waxing Gibbous, composed from years worth of scribbles in notebooks, which were ‘chiseled and connived into being songs’. We checked in with him to get his words n the music that inspired the new recrding. He started with The Auteurs song, Lenny Valentino [listen below]: ‘I must have missed this band the first time around, but since reading Luke Haines’ autobiography, I am hooked. Anyone who can write about their own life and come across so badly gets the thumbs up from me!’ Read the rest of Malcolm Middleton’s Secret Playlist.

A Pig by any other name is Zebra

Don’t be fooled by the cunning disguise. This, my friends, is a pig, a swine, in the truest sense of the word. It’s been painted to look like a zebra, partly because of the bad press pigs have gotten lately, and partly for a Halloween parade in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. Apparently it lives in the area and is walked in the long shadows of the night, as whispered about and mythologized as the Yeti, Bigfoot and Paris Hilton’s brain. [photo via Fort Green PUPS photostream]