Has anyone ever told you, ‘do yourself a favor’, only for it to be followed by some lame thing they wanted you to try like a Ketchup Sandwich? Well, this is not one of those times. Do yourself a REAL favor and take a train ride about four hours south of Paris, the first week of any February, to an enchanted little city called Clermont-Ferrand.

There you will find an amazing international short film festival embraced by the locals and attended by film lovers and professionals from all over the world. Dubbed the ‘Cannes of short film festivals’, Clermont Ferrand is the world’s largest and most distinguished short film festival. FIlms are played throughout many locations in the city, including one grand theatre, restaurants are on point, and the sightseeing doesn’t disappoint either. I’ve been there four times and can honestly say it beats a Ketchup Sandwich any day of the week.

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Take quick peek at London-based design studio ROOT and you’ll quickly realize ‘they get it’. Since 1990, founder Martin Root and his team have been getting their hands dirty on everything from film to fashion to print and packaging design, with an aesthetic that’s clean, bold and well researched. These guys now even have a film division called Root Films, with one already in the can titled, SVENGALI [watch below].

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While most of us have the luxury of browsing this site for all things shiny, we might forget there is still a war very much being waged in Afghanistan. Sure there may be an occasional short segment on the nightly newscast about what’s happening thousands of miles away but for the families who stay awake at night wondering if their loved ones are safe on the battlefield, the lines of communication are often nil.

That silence became a lot less deafening when two-time TED Fellowship recipient and award-winning photo-journalist Teru Kuwayama decided to embed himself and a small team of “mobile media operators” with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. Using only an Iphone and social media, the Basetrack team began communicating with the Marines’ loved ones and those interested in real-time news of the war. It started there and got ‘too big, too fast’ where the military abruptly shut down Basetrack, fearing possible breach of security or a military network “going negative” on the Afghanistan campaign. Since then, other military units decided this type of connection was like a form of ‘life support’ to people back in the US and invited Kuwayama back to replicate the project. Kuwayama’s end goal is to re-engage a broader public with the longest war in US history.

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9 out of 10 people who know anything about anything agree that most ‘street art’ derives from either a stencil, screen-print, or large copy machine. Brooklyn artist Cosbe must not have gotten that memo or is working on a very limited budget.

Using chalk, postal labels and a nearly dried up Magnum, Cosbe’s been pecking away at the New York graffiti and street art scene for some time now with his low-fi approach. If you’re looking for images of Marilyn Monroe, war and peace, or children who know more than you, look elsewhere. If you like your art to look like it was created by a human hand, then stomped on with a human foot, look to Cosbe.

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