Lübeck, Germany

All things tangible (with a surface) bear a tactile texture… here’s 100 free textures captured by photographers around the world for Smashing Magazine—check them out… you might just like them.

Berlin, Germany

In the “a picture’s worth a thousand words” department, Niemann’s your man…

New York, New York

Check out the diverse oevre of prolific Korean ex-pat creator Ji Lee here.

(Thanks for the link, Gediminas.)

Brussels, Belgium

Type is where you find it (if you have an eye for it, that is)… like this lovely pebble alphabet of Clotilde Olyff’s, found here.

Long Island City, New York

…as seen through the eyes of Luba Lukova. More of her strikingly effective work here…

Kyoto, Japan

Although we live in a WYSIWYG world in which “seeing is believing,” as a species, we’re actually quite easily fooled… which I quite enjoy. I’ve posted before (here) about the illusionary work of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. (Warning: his site “contains some works of ‘anomalous motion illusion,’ which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick [e.g. epileptic seizures, which can happen if the brain can’t handle conflicting information from your two eyes]). Check out Akiyoshi’s latest visual illusions (along with lucid explanations of the related phenomena) here.

Images: the Rotating Snakes above appear to move in a circular fashion, though this is actually a still image; the Runway on the right appears to tilt from the vertical more than the one on the left, even though both are identical; similarly, the horizontally aligned rows of Chromosomes appear to tilt (though the lines are parallel). So don’t believe everything you see…

Paris, France

Sometimes you just don’t need captions. René Maltête (1930-2000) was a French “illustrative photographer,” poet, non-conformist, and pacifist who learned his craft in the école de la rue and practiced with a penchant for humor and a keen understanding of “the human condition.”

(Thanks to Guy Schockaert for introducing René to me).

Melbourne, Australia

Well, well, well… my crazy old friend Mimmo Cozzolino broke radio silence today with the launch of a wicked new website, here. I first met Mimmo in Sydney a decade ago (the 1999 Icograda/ICSID/IFI World Congress), bent elbows with him a few times in shadowy bars after that, and then crossed paths (in the same building) for a period of time during my stint as Designer in Residence in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University in Melbourne. Of course I’d known of Mimmo long before I first met him—by dent of his seminal historic work on the book Symbols of Australia (which I later drew from liberally in the feature piece I wrote on design in Oz for Communication Arts magazine a few years back, 2.5 MB PDF here).

My recommendation? Visit Mimmo’s new site for an eclectic and inspirational experience (and to better understand the select images above) and to see what can happen when a talented career designer switches over to art photographer.

Good to know you’re still kicking it, mate! Cheers!

Winnipeg, Canada

Some people have asked about the booklet Top Climbing Knots that I wrote and illustrated for the Alpine Club of Canada in 2007. Intended as a primer to aid skill development (and as a handy pocket-sized refresher for occasional climbers), the booklet covers the Figure-8, Water Knot, Double Fisherman’s, Clove Hitch, Münter Hitch, Prussik, and Klemheist. Copies can be purchased from the Manitoba Section of the ACC, or contact me directly.

Berlin, Germany

John Heartfield (Helmut Herzfeld) was a German artist whose politically charged photomontages were banned in his home country during the Nazi regime (John changed his name in part as a way to protest the rabid nationalism and anti-British sentiment of World War I)—during the Weimar period he became a member of the Berlin Dada group. He was rediscovered in the German Democratic Republic in the late 1950s… since then his activism and work has influenced generations of artists and graphic designers.

Image: The cross was not heavy enough; collage.