BRUSH WITH FAME

The talk of the town (this town, anyway) has been this week’s issue of the New Yorker with a cover painted by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone, using the Brushes application. David Hockney must be envious.

NUMBER ONE

On June 11, the Type Director’s Club will hold a silent auction to benefit their scholarship fund. On the block will be a series of posters by celebrated designers, in which numbers play a central role.  This one, by Guy Pisk, is my pick for best in show.

FASHION FORWARD

Does this look like a scarf to you?  The French fashion house Hermès thinks so.  For the first time in its history, Hermès has commissioned an Australian artist to design one of its signature silk scarves.  Gloria Petyarre’s painting Bush Medicine Leaf Dreaming is the basis for the scarf design, which will sell for $413 . Petyarre, an aboriginal artist, lives in a remote part of Australia’s Northern Territory.

GOLDEN DAYS

With the demise of Polaroid instant cameras and film this year, those faded, dated shots from the ’60s and ’70s seem suddenly precious. The photographer and film maker Neil Krug was lucky enough to have a beautiful girlfriend, some Polaroid film long past its “use by” date, and his finger on the pulse of nostalgia.  The grainy, golden-hued shots he took of her over the past year have garnered critical praise, a Flickr following, and will soon be documented in a book of more than 200 photos, Pulp Book.

FLOWER GLASS

British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have collaborated with the Italian glassmakers, Venini, to create a line of lantern-inspired, hand-blown glass vases.

AFTER LIFE

One of the most talked about objects at last month’s Milan Furniture Fair wasn’t a chair or table, but a gravestone.  The Hungarian duo of Akos Maurer-Klimes and Péter Kucsera presented Seeyou, a molded concrete slab with a recessed, cross-shaped area that acts as a receptacle for water, leaves, snow or moss. “The natural forces change the look of the object. The water in it reflects the outer world, the mossing gives a beautiful look if nobody cares of it.”  Judging by the press, everyone, it seems, cares for it.

HELPING HANDS

Innovative and moving ad campaign that the Philippines-based agency BBDO Guerrero created for Childhope, an organization that helps children living on the streets.  The donation tins, installed at various sites in Manila, make a direct visual link between donations given and benefits received.

BAGGING RIGHTS

The lowly shopping bag has had it’s high-art moments over the last 3 decades, with everyone from Warhol to Shepherd Fairey offering to emblazon Saks and Bloomingdale’s paper totes with their signature iconography.  This week, Swann Galleries is auctioning off a series of bags from the ’70′s, ’80′s and ’90′s (estimate:  $1,000-1,500). I’d like that soup can one, please.

WALL PAPER

  

The German illustrator, Christoph Niemann has created a visual narrative of the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years go, when he was 18, and living in southwest Germany.

HAWAIIAN PUNCH

Mind-blowing Oahu  wave photos from surfer/photographer  Clark Little.