ONE AND ONLY

Argentinian designer Juan Pablo Cambariere assigns a lofty rating to NYC.

NAKED TRUTH

 

Beginning with the guerilla tactics of groups like ACT UP, artists and designers have countered public and political coyness about AIDS and HIV with provocative, even startling disease awareness campaigns. Case in point: this 2009 anti discrimination poster by the Italian art director Andrea Castelletti.

YOUNGSTERS

 

Still racy after all these years is the 1968 film poster for Romeo and Juliet, in which the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli dared to use actors close in age to Shakespeare’s young lovers–Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, 17 and 15, respectively.

HOT SHOT

 

This is awfully pretty, this wide-angle, beach-invoking La Sardina-St. Tropez camera from Lomography.

HEAT STROKE

Fiery special effects from Wordboner.

WIND POWER

19th Century, American-made weather vanes made an unexpectedly elegant appearance on postage stamps issued by the U.S. Postal service earlier this year.

PEAS AND QUIET

This is an incredibly lucid photo of early summer peas (looking suspiciously like a pair of fat, green caterpillars) by Mary Jo Hoffman.

FILTERED

Instagram may or may not be worth a billion dollars, but for those of us inclined to see the world in graphic detail, it may very well have proved itself to be priceless. Here, and at Society 6, a selection of recent images, in print form.

 

CONCRETE LESSONS

Any presumptions about concrete being the ugly stepchild of expressive architecture will surely be dispelled by these ravishing images from Architectonic, a recent exhibition that graphically displayed its breathtakingly imaginative possibilities as building material.

 

X-ACTING

Andrew Miller’s Brand Spirit project re-examines the fundamental forms of famous brand-named objects by dousing them in a generic coat of white paint. To that end, then, the grace and elegance of a standard X-Acto knife is newly impressive.