Agate Design - Design Blog Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Have you been to the magazine section in Barnes & Noble recently? Or Borders? Or even the gas station down the street where they still ask for my i.d. even though I'm obviously in my thirties at least? Magazines are everywhere. It's ridiculous. If I was an alien race plotting a silent invasion of our planet, I wouldn't choose to be a transforming car, or bury myself underground thousands of years in the past until Tom Cruise happens to be there when I awake from my slumber. No, I'd disguise myself and my minions as magazines of all shapes and sizes, watching and waiting as unsuspecting humans everywhere paid for me, took me home to read my alien propaganda and left me in every room in the house. Then, assuming my paper cohorts and I had planned in advance how to do something more threatening than just stun you with multiple exclamation marks, we'd make our move and eliminate the human race. So this hasn't really answered my own question. Why a blog about magazines? Because I don't believe that enough credit is given to the significance of a reader's choice of magazine, and I'd like to explore the reasons behind those choices, from dedicated, enthusiast-mag readers to random purchases in the gas station at 2:13am. What keeps readers reading? What defines a successful magazine beyond advertising sales? Is there always a market for more titles or are there already too many? And above all else, how many are there that are actually worth giving your valuable time and money to?

J'ai découvert de très belles appliques design fabriquées par Scenedo. J'ai été séduit par la forme tout à fait originale de ce produit. L'éclairage est fourni par des lampes halogène basse tension 20 W, le socle est en acier laqué et le robinet chromé. La taille est 20x20 cm.

Ces appliques existent de plusieurs couleurs et il faut compter 252€ la pièce.

5 artists who have somehow produced the smallest art you'll struggle to see...

1. willard wigan (website)

using a hair plucked from a dead fly as a brush, birmingham willard wigan paints miniscule sculptures he has carved from grains of rice and sugar. each 'brushstroke' is applied between heartbeats and he has said that the pulse in one of his fingers can ruin his work.

below is the titanic on a pin.

earlier this year a 70-piece collection he sold was insured by the new owner for £11.2million.

2. jin yin hua (website)

the slim photo above is of a 1/2 inch strand of black human hair. on it has been painted the portraits of 42 u.s. presidents. the top portrait can be seen below - click on it for a larger version which is magnified x 1'000'000.

the artist, jin yin hua from china, has painstakingly created over 100 micro-paintings and carvings during the past 10 years.

3. ee jin teo

to ee jin teo, a piece of micro-art on a grain of rice must seem cumbersome. he decided to go a few steps further and created what he calls 'quantum art' by reproducing william blake's 'ancient of days' out of nanocrystals (really really small stuff). 'this photoluminescent version of Blake's painting was created in porous silicon by focused helium beam writing and subsequent electrochemical etching in hydrofluoric acid'. by the way, 1µm is 1'000th of a millimetre.

4. mykola syadristy (website)

unbelievably, the tube in which the rose above is contained is actually a hollowed out human hair, also polished inside and out. the diameter of the rose itself is a hefty 0.05mm. below is another piece by the ukrainian. the gold mosquito sculpture is life-size.

5. eduard ghazaryan

85 year old ghazaryan is a micro-sculptor with over 600 pieces to his name, one being the world's smallest working violin (above). the body of the 7mm violin is sculpted from gold, the fiddle from a hair, and it actually works. when challenged by conductor ohan duryan, eduard responded by playing aram khachaturyan’s 'dance' with duryan’s orchestra.

the violin in the piece below, seen in a needle's eye, is even smaller and carved from a golden powder granule.

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

Dicono che sia l'anno dell'albero di natale al contrario... a me sembra tutt'altro.

With a motto that boasts, "Web Designers are the new Rock Stars," Design Charts is an amazing website that offers an enormous amount of talented online portfolios and wonderfully talented web designers. Design Charts ranks websites each week and changes the rank each and every week, lending a very competitive atmosphere for those who strive to blow minds with their web design talents. Plenty of links to see, so get crackin'!

*Thanks M.P., should've posted this a long time ago!

باز هم مجله اسمشینگ((smashing لیستی از بهترین آیکونها رو برای زیبا کردن دسکتاپ و برای طراحی قالب صفحات وب آماده کرده ، امیدوارم که ایرانیها هم از این آیکونها و ایده های این مجله استفاده کنند و قالب های قشنگی رو درست کنند!

Many people who view The Big Chase may notice from time to time, that I post articles titled "carnivals." I felt it might be necessary to take a moment to explain exactly what a blog carnival was. For those who are involved in blogging, they are most likely familiar with the term and the practice, as it is a helpful means to increase traffic to your blog. A blog carnival acts somewhat similar to an online magazine. You have the option of either creating your own carnival (like I did), or submitting links to your own blog posts to a carnival that falls under the correct category.

For example: I have created the Art & Design Carnival, which gladly asks for any blog posts relating to the world of design. Blog users can submit as many posts pertaining to that field as they wish. The creator of the carnival then sets the date that they will post the blog carnival article on their site. If any of you out there are interested in this, head to BlogCarnival.com. For those of you who feel like submitting design posts to my blog carnival, do so here. Welcome to the wild world of blog carnivals ladies and gentlemen.