Geisha (芸者?), Geiko (芸子) or Geigi (芸妓) are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance. The word consists of two kanji, 芸 (gei) meaning "art" and 者 (sha) meaning "person" or "doer". The most literal translation of geisha into English would be "artist" or "performing artist". Another name for geisha used in Japan is geiko (芸子)...

Today’s post is all about some of the great work by Ben Heine and his exciting  series titled “Pen Vs Camera”. Ben states  - "Pencil Vs Camera" is nothing but the result of a long graphic exploration and a logic consequence of my artistic evolution. It's a new concept. My primary intention was to create a "battle field" between 2 disciplines: drawing and photography, mixing imagination and reality. The onl...

The concept of good design represents the sum of several elements, all of them realized in a professional manner and then blended together. The final result is beautiful and functional at the same time. From this perspective, it is simple to comprehend that the quality of a design depends on more than just the components on their own. A very important factor that contributes to the overall aspect of a website in...

Japan 日本 is one of my favourite countries. I love the culture, the food and technology. Located in the Pacific Ocean, Japan is an archipelago that comprises 6,852 islands and has the world’s tenth largest population with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area is the largest metropolitan area in the world with over 30 million residents. The characters that make up Japan’s name mean “sun origin” and is ...

The album cover plays an important part in the world of music. It's used as a marketing tool and also an expression of artist intent and over the last 50 years or so the album covers just keep getting more and more creative. In this mixed collection of album covers ranging from The Beatles to Daft Punk you can see some amazing works of art and they clearly they do their job of getting peoples attention. Although...

The 90's isn't the one of those decades that sticks out for memorable design but one thing I do remember from the early 90's is the bright, trippy, euphoric design of UK rave flyers. If you can remember dancing your ass off all night to trippy repetitive beats from DJs like Sasha, Carl Cox and Grooverider whether it be in a club or field then some of these flyers you might recognize from back in the day. Let's...

Liu Bolin a.k.a the 'Invisible Man' is an exceptional artist from Beijing who has the ability to blend in with his surroundings by painting himself to appear almost chameleon-like in his series of work "Hiding in the City". Liu Bolin says that his work his inspired by feeling uncared for and a sense of unnecessary in the world and also as a protest against the Chinese government who shut his studio down in 2005. ...

8th December 2010 - I love animation and I have a vast collection of animation on display on my media shelves at home but on there you won’t find the sugary sweet world of Disney Cinema (apart from Pixar collaborations!) but a huge collection of Japanese anime. I’ve been hooked on anime since I was very young. I think the first experience of anime was Castle in the Sky and Akira. In this post I wanted to show ...

Well over a year ago we featured a very talented digital artist called Davidope in the post Truly Amazing Hypnotic Animations. Davidope (dvdp) is the creative director and founder of the design atelier volll and Fredlig.  He currently lives in Budapest with his Dachshund Susie and loves the danger with drinking 2 litres of Coke and smoking 40 Camels a day! You can find a daily dose of inspiration at his ...

There are some inspiring photographers out there but there are non-more inspiring than the gravity-defying Natsumi Hayashi. Natsumi is a photographer from Tokyo, Japan and can be spotted jumping up and down around the city armed with her SLR and amazing self-timing which capture these truly amazing shots. The photos which are taken at exactly the right moment show Natsumi simply levitating in her...

Continuing on from our previous post Creative 80’s Music Videos here is a superb collection from the 90’s. A decade where I think the music video really came alive.   Aphex Twin – Window Licker Love it or hate it this video by Chris Cunningham and Richard James which mocks the bling of hip-hop videos of old. The video starts with a particular lengthy intro and features a very long limo. The ...

I've always loved fireworks. They paint the dark sky in bright neon colours and can make a huge bang that gets your heart racing. No doubt this year in November I will be standing in the cold on Guy Fawkes Night which is a celebration in my country. I will probably be holding a nice hot chocolate in one hand and a toffee apple in the other going "ooohh" and "ahhh" at the many fireworks being let off into the sky...

If you have been fortunate enough to be using Google+ recently you may have seen one of Trey Ratcliff's stunning photographs being shared in your streams. Trey is best known for his blog StuckinCustoms.com which is the No.1 Travel Photography Blog on the web and had the honour of having the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. Trey's background is in computer science and math, so he brings an...

A logo is a small graphical element that has as main scope the representation of someone/something. This attempt of definition is preferable to the one provided by the Oxford Dictionary or Wikipedia because the main essence is synthesized. It’s simple: you instantly recognize an Apple product after the worldwide notorious logo. In the beginning, nobody figured out the importance of logo and many people consider i...

I love art, I love photography and I love food. What if all these were combined? What are the chances? Well I need look no further because having checked out these truly delicious food landscapes created by the very creative Carl Warner then all my dreams have come true. Carl says that the food landscapes are taken in stages because this is to stop the food from wilting during the process and then put...

You may think you are viewing photos of miniature villages but these are in fact photos of real life. These photographs have been taken using the special art of tilt-shift photography. The effects can be produced by the use of camera movements on small and medium cameras. The name originates from the tilt-shift lens which is normally required to produce this effect optically.  The tilt refers to the rotation of ...

I saw these photos the other day and was totally blown away. I have seen light painting before but these eerie skeletons by the fantastic Helsinki photographer Janne Parviainen are the best I have ever seen. Light painting is a special technique in photography when exposures are made at night or a dark room by moving the camera or a form of hand held light.  In many cases the light source itself does not ...

You may be mistaken for thinking that these are photos taken from the set of one the Lord of the Rings movies but in actual fact these are real examples of living architecture. The bridges you see are from Cherrapunji, India which is one of the wettest places on Earth and are actually made by tree roots. These bridges are very much alive! The amazing War-Khasis tribe in Meghalaya have been harnessing the...

Web design has become more hand tooled, organic and versatile. Classic retro and vintage typography with authentic textures and withered paper backgrounds have helped bring back the grunge web design trend. Grunge gives web design more style and less uniform, there is no structure only worn out and faded graphic elements, these look beautiful and creative. The trend is inspired by the vintage and retro design...

Capturing star trails can be a lengthy process but the end result is definitely worth it. How is it done? Well, it's done when the line of light which is recorded on a photographic medium and a time exposure is made of a star in the night time sky and using a camera on a fixed mount, and the trails are caused by the rotation of the earth during the period of time when the camera's shutter is held...