“Marcus Beck and Simon Macro are Freshwest, a design firm based in Pembrokeshire West Wales, which embraces both experimental and functional design and is driven by their desire to realize ideas. Having know each other since their childhood days and sharing the same design ideals Marcus and Simon combined to establish Freshwest in 2005.

You can see their fun for design in their newly designed ‘Pool Table’. It’s an unexpected change of the game of billiards into a small body of standing water. The Table is formed out of 50mm of thick blue acrylic that distorts light, giving the illusion of an actual swimming pool. A stainless steel base provides support for the tabletop with a miniature diving board at the edge. This very basic piece of furniture was recreated in a playful way and one might like to take a swim after having a coffee. They state ‘Playing with scale, the miniature diving board seems to transform the solid surface of the acrylic into the serenity of still water’.”

via: iGNANT

“These photographs that appear to capture red-hot cracks in the Earth’s surface weren’t taken in Hawaii or Indonesia, but rather in the studio of artist Eszter Burghardt who uses wool and colored lights to create miniature natural landscapes including volcanoes, glaciers, fjords, and rivers.”

via: Colossal

“Creative company and intervention artist Carmichael Collective of minneapolis, Minnesota, USA has created ‘Urban Plant Tags’. The series of magnified nursery style plant tags are outfitted with descriptions of the required care systems for the necessary sidewalk fixtures planted in the ground. In the artist’s project, common tools provided to the public by local and federal governments such as lamp posts, benches, mailboxes, or cautionary signs for drivers have been given markers indicating how to keep each object alive.” 

via: Designboom

“The outdoor library entitled Bookyardwas built by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini for the Belgian art festival TRACK: A Contemporary City Conversation in Ghent. Visitors are invited to peruse the stacks and are free to take any book they find for a small donation at a designated box. Hopefully they empty the shelves before it rains.”

via: Colossal

“Artists/designers Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla of Milan-based firm Carnovsky have translated their RGB (red, green, blue) wallpaper to silk, creating a collection of three scarves. ‘Rosone’, ‘Jungla’ and ‘Bestiario’ are wearable art pieces which add the element of transparency and movement to the impressions. The three limited edition scarves (99 copies and three artist proofs), are pure silk peau d’ange and are printed and made in Italy. Each copy of the collection is numbered and signed. The patterns themselves combine the primary colors, resulting in an intricate yet disorienting image. If closely examined, or with the aid of a colored filter, the layers reveal a graphic composition of the animal kingdom.”

via: Designboom

“Murmure is a four person creative agency based out of Caen, France who are doing some really interesting work. One thing that caught my eye from their website was these concrete business cards they created for themselves. More and more frequently business cards seem to be a byproduct of the past, so it’s almost like a tongue-in-cheek joke that they’d make a business card of what’s nearly stone. I also think it’s pretty great that each one comes in it’s own tiny box. If I were handed one of these business cards I would never forget about Murmure, but I’d also proudly display their card on a shelf.”

The Fox is Black

via: The Fox is Black

“This amazing panoramic photograph (known as a stereographic projection) was recently captured by Greek photographer Chris Kotsiopoloulos during a mammoth 30-hour photo shoot in Sounio, Greece. The image is comprised of hundreds of photographs shot from daytime to nighttime that have been digitally stitched together to represent an entire rotation of the Earth.”

via: Colossal

“Israel-based product designer Hilla Shamia has always been interested with the imperfections within controlled products. On show during Milan Design Week 2012, ‘wood casting’ is made from a whole tree trunk that enabled shamia to preserve the natural form of the piece while still having distinct boundaries in its creation. The square shape allows a sense of artificiality while leaving the memory of the material. Molten aluminum is poured directly onto the wooden the surface which burns the exterior. The plank is then cut lengthwise and inserted with a frame to define its final structure.”

Designboom

via: Designboom

These illustrations by French artist Julien Pacaud are too amazing not to post. I’ve selected a few of my favourites for your enjoyment.

via: iGNANT

The image shown above is taken from a new series called Misunderstanding Focus, which exists as a collaboration between book and paper artist Ryuta Iida and artist Yoshihisa Tanaka called Nerhol.

“The numerous portraits are actually different, photographed over a period of three minutes as the subject tried to sit motionless, the idea being that it’s impossible to ever truly be still as our center of gravity shifts and our muscles are tense. The portraits are actually a layered lime-lapse representing several minutes in the subjects life and then cut like an onion to show slices of time, similar to the trunk of a tree.”

Below is a detail shot of the work shown above.

via: Colossal