I visited Japan in November 2011 for the exclusive purpose of urban exploration on Hashima Island. The island, completely abandoned since 1974, sits in the southwest coast of Japan in the East China Sea. Only a few people have been able to access the island for the purposes of urban exploration photography. We were fortunate to be the only people to ever get 8 hours of uninterrupted access to the island.
“Hashima Island, commonly called Gunkanjima or Gunkanshima (軍艦島; meaning Battleship Island), is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself.
The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island’s most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it.” ~wikipedia
I #coverflipped one of my favourite YA books: Heist Society by Ally Carter. Feat a cheeky bit of Kandinsky (appropriate).
This is great. Inspired by Maureen Johnson, designers all over the Internet are imagining what the covers of novels written by women might look like had they been written by men and vice versa.
This cover flipping is a great reminder of the deep-rooted sexism in the publishing industry.
I would add that male authors rarely get awesome Kandinsky-ish, abstract covers either. (And when they do, the books rarely sell well.) It was a huge struggle, for instance, to get enough support for the minimalist, abstract cover The Fault in Our Stars ended up getting, because so much market research and anecdotal evidence indicates that such covers fail to attract readers. I believed in “treating the novel as if it were a genuinely good novel,” as I said over and over, but ultimately it happened not because of me but because 1. Rodrigo Corral is a very famous cover designer, 2. my publisher Julie Strauss-Gabel would not accept anything else, and 3. the head of sales, Felicia Frazier, had faith in Julie’s vision for the book. That’s a fortunate and rare combination.
Other cool cover flips can be found here.
Hidden Architecture
As part of an advertising campaign for the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, Saatchi & Saatchi Russia put together a creative team to assemble the deep, labyrinthine roots of some iconic buildings; the shoulders of giants that all current architecture stands atop of. You can see many more WIP shots over at Design You Trust
Artists: Behance
This is fucking with my head.
THIS IS AMAZING
Iceberg buildings. 0.o
stalkingdeerwithadeathfrisbee:
PRESS PLAY AND PLACE YOUR CURSOR ON IT
IT’S NOT EVEN A VIDEO HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK
AWSOME
(Source: animations-swf-arena)
World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned Places
Italian product manager and web designer Francesco Mugnai recently added a collection of images to his blog touting some of the most beautiful images of abandoned spots and modern ruins that he’d ever seen. The images Mugnai has captured come from empty castles, shuttered power plants, and dilapidated churches around the world. From a sunken yacht in Antarctica to a forever-closed amusement park in Japan, these images all make up a sort of anti-phoenix; rather than rising as new from the ashes, these husks remain preserved in decomposition, forcing viewers to confront the strange beauty of ruination.
