Black and white are too of the most emotive visuals in nature. Polar opposites, the two seem to stand for opposing metaphors, as well. Black is usually seen as dark, a symbol of authority and power, and, occasionally, as a symbol of evil. White is a sign of purity and brightness and of a natural innocence that combats its opponent.
(Image source: Fotolia)
The real benefit of these two shades is to meld together in a contrasting design. Using such a stark dichotomy, you immediately establish a dynamic in the design that is impossible for the viewer to ignore. It is clean, can be either simple or complex, and has endless opportunities that other color schemes just don’t manage to generate. It all just balances itself out.
Many graphic designers today see that the best way to stick out in today’s full color world is not to join them but to set themselves apart by refusing to follow the norm. Duality has become the name of the game, giving us every reason to try it ourselves to see the effect.
Let’s take a look at how black-and-white designs are being used in various graphics, with great success.
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Product Packaging Design
1300 on Fillmore
This specialty food product is a line created for the 1300 on Fillmore restaurant, run by chef David Lawrence. Each bottle design features a simple black-and-white picture of his hands as they work with various ingredients, each one related to the item itself.
For example, you see Lawrence handling cornmeal for the jalapeno cornbread mix or dicing garlic cloves for the roasted garlic and bacon vinaigrette. The design is elegant and effective, without any color at all. It looks even more striking against the clear bottles of liquid dressings that have their own, natural color.
Henry (Lagarde)
This Argentinian wine is already well known throughout Europe for its taste. But the packaging needed to be just as memorable. Using a black bottle instead of the traditional, shaded green glass, they used both a black-and-white label and a matching box.
There are two different lines of the boxes, one that is black with white font and one that is white with black font, featuring a black-and-white picture of a cluster of grapes on a vine as the only decoration. The slight reddish color of the foil on the bottle works well with this design.
Scent Stories
Probably the greatest example of black-and-white packaging, Scent Stories is a product line of perfumes made as a personal project by Ah&Oh Studio. It is based on four famous authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Marquise de Sade, George Orwell and Pierre de Laclos.
Each scent was tailored to the tone of the writers’ stories, with a small explanation of each on the packaging. On the back of each bottle is a snippet from the authors’ most well known stories. Then, the bottles were topped with finely crafted busts for each. For de Sade it is a screaming women, for Poe a grinning skull, for Orwell a pig and for de Laclos a faceless, wigged aristocrat.
More: Showcase of 50 Black & White Creative Package Designs
Website Design
Marcin Kaniewski Photography
This photographer has implemented a really brilliant design for his website. Not only does it use the beautiful contrast of black and white very effectively, going so far as to remove all color from even the thumbnails, but it acts as a portfolio as well.
Each image features one of Kaniewski’s photographs, which can be viewed by clicking for a larger image. You can also change the background from black to gray or white.
Subtraction
Subtraction is the website for social collage app Mixel, created by former New York Times design editor Khoi Vinh. He took an interesting approach to the main image by using his large black dog as the featured subject. Then, he built the rest of the site in black and white around it.
The unique factor here is not the design itself but the way Vinh manages to make the contrast appear friendly and warm rather than the usual intensity the dual shades create.
2otsu
This portfolio site for a graphic design group has been featured on a number of lists for best overall concept. Available in both Flash and HTML, it uses viewer interaction to great effect. You start by deciding what format you want to view it in. Everything at this point is black and white.
Then, it takes you to the main page and has you select what color you want for the interface. From there, you are directed to the now customized list of fast, scrolling portfolio images, which are black and white until you click on them and they expand in full color.
More: Showcase Of Beautiful Black And White Websites
Logo Design
Culinary Zen
The black background with the white text and image is very direct and well made. It is impossible not to have your eyes immediately drawn to it as a whole rather than any particular part of the logo.
The use of the "C" doubling as a plate is another nice touch that brings it all together by giving the image itself more relevance to the actual name, not just the focus of the company.
Silent Monkey
Unlike the logo above, Silent Monkey uses a white background to give the image more light and brevity. The cartoon ape in the center is cute and simple, and the lack of a mouth brings the image together with the name very effectively.
The text is extremely small, which is actually a benefit, as it makes the words seem somehow quieter, as though they are being whispered to the viewer.
Fashion Australia
Not all shades have to be so bold, and actually, using intermediate colors is a good idea for less stark logos. This one uses a dark gray that softens the image. It works well with the only color in the logo, which is a pink bowtie on the kangaroo.
It is also a softened version of a brighter shade, mixing it beautifully.
More: 35 Stunning Black And White Logos
Conclusion
Black and white are two of the most useful shades you can find for any design project. What are some of your own favorite examples of black-and-white design?
Tell us in the comments.
The demand for creativity from employees is rising in this age of rapid technological advancement. This is evident when we see multinational companies like Google setting up something known as a the 20 percent program or policy where Google developers get to spend 20 percent of their working hours (a day at work) on side projects. It was an attempt to give employees the time and space to think innovatively. Indeed, the policy works well, with some of the best products of Google (e.g. Google News) originating from the program.
(Image source: Fotolia)
Some of you may think that creativity is an inborn trait rather than something that can be learned and developed. This may be so, but without a conducive environment for creativity to be expressed, how can we expect to see ideas arising from creative employees? This is precisely what this article is about, to show you ways which you can adopt in the workplace to encourage employees to seek innovation in their work.
More related posts:
1. Reward Creativity
If you want to get employees to think out-of-the-box, you need to motivate them with some form of rewards. Moreover, suggestions have to be taken seriously so that employees are willing to come up with more creative ways of improving the workplace. Otherwise, everyone will think it’s a waste of time to squeeze out creative juices for suggestions that won’t be implemented anyway.
To kick-start things up, you can set goals for your employees to think up of some ways of making work processes more efficient. Perhaps each employee can be tasked to provide one suggestion by the end of each week and you’ll assess which idea is the best. This will be followed with a reward for the employee and equally important, implementation. The reward can be tangible ones like giving monetary incentives, or intangible ones like recognition from the organization by announcing the winner to the rest.
2. Anonymity & Confidentiality
Your employees may already be motivated to be creative but have no outlets to voice out their wonderful ideas. While the outspoken ones can always speak to the management about some suggestions they have in mind, others may be too shy or afraid to do so in this manner. Providing a suggestion box or anything similar would grant these employees the anonymity and confidentiality they crave, thereby inspiring the creative spirit that you wish to instill as part of the organization culture.
However, some of the most creative ideas are born out of brainstorming sessions where a group of people discuss and debate about possible solutions to a problem. Having such a private channel for employees to contribute ideas may thus hinder the creative process. Moreover, those who provide the effective ideas won’t get identified and get the recognition they need. It will be wise to balance both private and public mediums for employees to propose their suggestions.
3. Innovation Teams
A more systematic way of promoting creativity in the workplace is to set up innovation teams. Each innovation team will be tasked to come up with ideas on how to improve the work process of a particular aspect. Deadlines are to be set to ensure that the teams present their ideas and be rewarded if they are excellent. When done properly, this will signal to everyone that the organization values work-related creativity.
One catch is that such innovation teams may be seen as too ‘deliberate’ to some employees. Creativity is supposed to be spontaneous; ideas arising from the strokes of genius. Having such teams may make it seem like an extra chore for those assigned to them, and the systematic approach (i.e. the focus on a single topic) may come across as too rigid for creativity to flourish.
4. Support Creativity
Employees may be unwilling to take risks because they do not know whether the organization supports creativity. This is when you need to guide the organization in the right direction, and show that creativity is highly valued. This has a lot to do with how receptive you are to their ideas, and how you make known your intention to be a more creative company.
One reason why employees are not thinking out-of-the-box or coming up with solution that are vastly different from how things used to be done is that they may be afraid of the repercussions of making mistakes. Risk-taking has to be encouraged and be seen as a norm in the organization. Developing a creative culture takes time, but it starts off with management being more open-minded and less judgmental to the suggestions by employees.
5. Diversity Among Employees
How can different ideas exchange if everyone thinks in a similar manner? Employees with comparable backgrounds, qualifications, experience, etc creates a homogeneous working environment. Perhaps having such homogeneity between the employees will facilitate team-bonding and such, but when it comes to workplace creativity, a uniform and agreeable crowd leaves little room for ideas to flourish.
Rather than setting stringent recruitment prerequisites, you might consider giving more allowance in your criteria. Hire staffs from different knowledge and background and get them to mingle around in projects and even company events. Organize more informal settings between employees with dissimilar profiles for the interchanging of thoughts.
6. Positive Working Environment
Sometimes, too serious a mindset can hinder creativity. Having fun during work allows one to be relaxed and that’s where one tends to get inspired with wonderful ideas. Needless to say, a stressful or even depressing work environment doesn’t give one the mood to think of doing things differently. The employee would only look forward to the end of the day.
Psychological studies have revealed that positive mood can spur creativity. The idea is that positive mood awards us with greater flexibility in thinking because our perspectives are widened. We become more open-minded in that sense and are willing to explore alternatives. Knowing such findings now, incorporating fun into the work through team-bonding activities or retreats every once in a while can be a crucial element in injecting creativity in the workplace.
Rails 3.1 and beyond has the asset pipeline. Node has connect-assets, and there are plenty of "Just In Time" CoffeeScript compilers out there for other platforms as well. I like using a File Watcher - and here's my code.
Every time Microsoft Marketing tries to make something "viral" it comes off as what my old baseball coach used to call a "Monkey F***ing a Football". It's just the same with their latest "Gmail Man" BS.
Last Fall I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and extensions popping up around Visual Studio LightSwitch. If you missed those rollups you can check them out here:
Looks like folks took a few well-deserved days to ramp back into the groove after the holidays (including myself). But there were still a lot of awesome things around LightSwitch this month, especially the number of submissions The Code Project had in the LightSwitch Star Contest. A lot of really interesting applications and some great case studies for LightSwitch as well as some for Azure. Check them out…
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In November The Code Project launched the “LightSwitch Star” contest. They’re looking for apps that show off the most productivity in a business as well as apps that use extensions in a unique, innovative way. Prizes are given away each month. Soon they will announce the January winners as well as the two grand prize winners of an ASUS U31SD-DH31 Laptop!
Check out all the submission we had in January and make sure to log onto Code Project and vote for your favorites. Here’s a breakdown of the 13 apps that were submitted in January (see all 34 apps that have been submitted here). There are some very creative “business apps” here – like a campaign manager for Dungeons & Dragons!
There are a lot of really interesting real-world LightSwitch production applications that were submitted. Some departmental apps, a few personal apps, some enterprise apps as well as a couple start-up companies. There are also some great case studies here for Azure, in particular:
Developer Center Updates
In December I kicked off a series aimed at beginner developers just getting started with LightSwitch and was featured in the MSDN Flash Newsletter. In January we updated the Learn page of the Developer Center to feature this series and it’s been getting some great traffic!
I also released the completed source code for the sample we build in the series: Beginning LightSwitch - Address Book Sample
How Do I Videos – Learning Made Easier
We also updated all the How Do I video pages to show the sequential list of videos so that you can easily get to the previous and next videos in the series. This makes it a lot easier to navigate through the over 20 videos in the correct order. Just click into any video page like this one and you will see the video navigator at the bottom of the page.
Notable Content this Month
Here’s some more of the fun things the team and community released in January.
The team also released a control extension sample that you can learn from. Check out the announcement on the team blog: Many-to-Many Control Released!
Build your own extensions by visiting the LightSwitch Extensibility page on the LightSwitch Developer Center.
Team Articles:
Community Articles:
Presentations:
LightSwitch Team Community Sites
The Visual Studio LightSwitch Facebook Page has been increasing in activity thanks to you all. Become a fan! Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources.
Also here are some other places you can find the LightSwitch team:
LightSwitch MSDN Forums
LightSwitch Developer Center
LightSwitch Team Blog
LightSwitch on Twitter (@VSLightSwitch, #VisualStudio #LightSwitch)
Join Us!
The community has been using the hash tag #LightSwitch on twitter when posting stuff so it’s easier for me to catch it (although this is a common English word so you may end up with a few weird ones ;-)). Join the conversation! And if I missed anything please add a comment to the bottom of this post and let us know!
Enjoy!
Video content has been growing in popularity and influence online for the past few years as more and more people worldwide gain access to broadband internet access. Now, video is almost a necessary component to any brand’s online presence, and is being used in virtually every industry (for evidence of this, one need only look at the popular Blendtec series “Will It Blend?“).
But most companies and content creators don’t realize the volume of sites out there that are available for hosting your videos. YouTube is just one site, but there are dozens of others out there, too, of varying quality. Below, we’ve covered twenty of the best (including YouTube), with information on content restrictions, cost, and whether they permit commercial content, as well as key features of each.
Free and Freemium Platforms
There are a ton of free and freemium video hosting platforms available, though many have content restrictions. Some don’t allow commercial use, some only take certain kinds of videos (like episodic web series), and some limit how much you can upload. Many of these platforms have paid plans that let you overcome some or all of the restrictions, and some have partner programs that let you earn money from your videos.
YouTube
YouTube, owned by Google, is the most popular video hosting platform out there. There are millions of videos on YouTube, covering virtually every topic and style imaginable (with the exception of pornography). YouTube has a lot of advantages as a video host, but also has some pretty distinct disadvantages for some users, namely the inclusion of ads on and around your videos, which may be undesirable for many businesses (the last thing you want is for a competitor’s ad to pop up next to your video). YouTube’s partner program does let you earn revenue from advertising, though.
More info:
- Cost: Free
- Content Restrictions: No pornography or sexually explicit content, no videos intended to shock or disgust, no videos showing illegal activity, no graphic or gratuitous violence
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Vimeo
Vimeo is one of the more popular video hosting platforms, especially for non-commercial video. There have been reports of difficulties with the Vimeo player for some users, though other users definitely prefer the Vimeo player to many others. They have two plans for non-commercial users, though they do allow commercial use for small, independent production companies with some restrictions. Vimeo also offers Perks to their Plus members, along with advanced statistics and unlimited groups, channels, and albums.
More info:
- Cost: Free for Basic plan, which allows up to 500MB/week uploads, including 1 HD video, or $9.95/month or $59.95/year for Plus membership, which includes up to 5GB/week uploads and unlimited HD videos (see Premium section for Vimeo Pro)
- Content Restrictions: No commercial content
- Commercial Content OK: Generally no, there are exceptions for small production companies and similar
Metacafe
Metacafe focuses on entertainment more than many other free video host, and specifically entertainment aimed at a particular demographic. They have more exclusive, original, and curated premium content than any other entertainment site, and are among the top 3 video sites in the U.S. They’re dedicated to showcasing short-form videos from the world of movies, video games, TV, music and sports, primarily aimed at young men. If your video content is likely to be appealing to that demographic, then Metacafe might be a good choice to host your videos.
More info:
- Cost: Free
- Content Restrictions: No content that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harrassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages illegal activity
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Vitomy
Vitomy is a hosted video player that lets you completely customize the video player to meet your branding needs. You can build your own unique and creative templates for your video player more easily than many platforms. The only downside is that only the paid plan allows player customization. Both plans, however, offer video uploads, previews, search, and built-in Vitomy templates. The free plan offers 40GB of bandwidth and storage, while the paid plan offers 200GB.
More info:
- Cost: Free to $59/month
- Content Restrictions: None listed on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Blip.tv
Blip.tv is focused on distributing original web series for content creators. They automate uploading of your videos to various channels, including YouTube, and allow for revenue generation. They offer insights and analytics into your traffic, a massive distribution network, and a number of powerful social tools. They also have completely customizable video players that can display a single episode, your entire series, or specific playlists.
More info:
- Cost: Free
- Content Restrictions: Aimed a episodice web series
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Premium and Enterprise Platforms
Many of the free platforms above don’t allow you the full control you need over your content, especially for enterprise users. That’s where premium video hosting platforms come into play. The biggest downside to premium video services like these is their cost, often in the hundreds of dollars per month. But what you get is superior service and generally more control over your content, as well as more advanced toold.
SproutVideo
SproutVideo is a business video hosting solution that offers a number of features important to businesses. These include security and privacy options, SSL embeds, domain whitelists, HD video, mobile playback, easily customizable video players, and embeddable videos. Their analytics will show you how many plays your videos get, where those plays are coming from, which videos are popular, and where your videos are being viewed on the web.
More info:
- Cost: $10 to $750 per month depending on bandwidth and storage needs, there’s a $1 free trial available
- Content Restrictions: None specified on the website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Viddler
Viddler is a video hosting platform for businesses, including educational institutions and non-profits. They offer three plans depending on your needs, including a customizable enterprise plan. Videos hosted with Viddler are HD quality, embeddable, and will play on mobile devices. They have their own ad network to help you generate revenue with your videos, and they also offer a plan to sell access to your video using subscriptions, both available on their Business plan.
More info:
- Cost: Starting at $50/month for Pro and $100/month for Business, discounts are availalbe for education customers and non-profits.
- Content Restrictions: No hateful, threatening, pornographic, obscene, abusive, unlawful, harrassing, racially or ethnically offensive, libelous or defamatory, or any content that encourages illegal activity.
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Google Video for Business
Google Video for Business is part of the Google Apps suite, and is optimized for internal corporate and enterprise video communication. It’s private, secure video hosting that makes it easy to share things like training videos with your coworkers without making them public on the web or having to deal with an on-site solution. It’s accessible from anywhere, and works on Mac, PC, and Linux computers.
More info:
- Cost: Included in Google Apps, which is $5/month/user or $50/year/user
- Content Restrictions: None specified on the website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
iPlayerHD
iPlayerHD is a high definition hosting service for businesses. It’s ad-free, includes a DRM streaming option, allows you to choose whether videos are embeddable or not (or choose which domains can embed them), and allows for unlimited video length. They also offer analytics, and they auto-detect the device the video is being accessed on so the appropriate file is automatically delivered. You can set up custom landing pages for you videos and even choose a "no encode" option that won’t re-encode or compress your video files.
More info:
- Cost: $30/month or $300/year. A 30-day free trial is available
- Content Restrictions: None specified on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Framesocket
Framesocket is a premium video hosting platform designed for developers. It offers an API to make uploading easy (as well as a desktop uploader), an easily customizable video player, customizable channels, automated audience building tools, and mobile compatibility. You can gather videos from an unlimited number of users and sources, and then securely store or serve them via Framesocket’s content delivery network.
More info:
- Cost: $25/month including 5GB of storage and delivery, additional storage is available at $.50/GB and additional transfer is available at $.25/GB
- Content Restrictions: None listed on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
23 Video
23 Video is a premium video hosting platform that’s aimed at high-traffic enterprise videos. It includes 1TB of traffic per month, with additional traffic available. You get an unlimited number of videos, unlimited users, and unlimited video length. You have full freedom over the design of the open source video player, and you get your own fully-customizable videosite with your design and your domain. There are powerful analytics included, as well as a variety of distribution options (including subscribing via email, podcasting, iTunes or AppleTV), and videos can automatically be posted to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google Video.
More info:
- Cost: $675 per month, plus $250 per extra 1TB of traffic
- Content Restrictions: None on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Vzaar
Vzaar is a professional video platform that is easy to use but quite powerful. It includes a video player with customizalbe colors, borders, brand overlays, brand text & links, subtitles, end screen text, and more. Videos are high definition and iPhone compatible. You have access to privacy controls, domain controls, and more. Videos can be set to autoplay and loop, and you have a variety of encoding options. Vzaar also offers integration tools for Ebay, embeddable video code (including HTTPS embed code), and integration with Google Analytics and Mail Chimp.
More info:
- Cost: $29 to $499 per month depending on bandwidth, video numbers, and optional iOS streams
- Content Restrictions: Nothing tasteless, offensive, or obscene (including pornography)
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Brightcove
Brightcove offers an enterprise-level video hosting platform that includes live streaming capabilities, YouTube sync, and other distribution and syndication options. They offer monetization and advertising opportunities for your online media, as well as powerful analytics and integration options. There are fifteen video player templates you can choose from, all of which are customizalbe. Smart Players let you deliver both Flash and HTML5 video so you don’t have to manage separate players or have extra code on your website.
More info:
- Cost: $99 to $499+ per month
- Content Restrictions: No content that contains pornography, promotes illegal activity, is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, sexually, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Vimeo Pro
Vimeo Pro is an enterprise video solution from Vimeo. Pro videos don’t show up within the regular Vimeo site (though you can enable the "Community Pass" for videos which meet Vimeo’s regular content guidelines), and you can host commercial content. You get 50GB of upload space and unlimited on-site plays, and up to 250k embed plays (additional space and plays can be purchased), with no bandwidth caps or time limits. High definition video is available (with full 1080p), and it’s compatible with mobile, tablet, and connected TVs. You get fast priority uploading, as well as HTML5 support with the Vimeo Universal Player.
More info:
- Cost: $199 per year
- Content Restrictions: Not specified on site
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Oculu
Oculu offers unlimited video uploads for your commercial videos, with restrictions on storage and plays based on the plan you select. Their controls are incredibly easy to use, with a dashboard for customizing each individual video. They offer multiple embed options (including standard embed, overlay, and lightbox videos), and tools to manage, measure, and optimize your video campaigns.
More info:
- Cost: $19/month to $245 per month
- Content Restrictions: Not listed on site
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Ooyala
Ooyala makes it easy to manage your video content across a variety of CMS platforms, including WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, and others. They automatically transcode your videos into a variety of formats and sizes to support major devices and screen sizes. You can customize your player however you want, with completely customizable player templates that can be used with Silverlight, Flash, and HTML5. They offer APIs for integration with third-party CMSs as well as for bulk uploads and importing of content (including YouTube content). Ooyala works with Flash Access Digital Rights Management and supports custom meta data. Full syndication is possible across YouTube, Facebook, and iTunes, as well as through custom feeds.
More info:
- Cost: Starting at $500 per month
- Content Restrictions: Not listed on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Kaltura
Kaltura is an enterprise video hosting app with some of the most versatile options out there. They offer browser-based, bulk, desktop, FTP-based, and drop folder uploads, among others. They let you transcode your videos to a variety of formats and sizes, using teh transcoder of your choice, and they have powerful management and publishing tools for your video content. Their video player works with Flash or HTML5, and it makes it easy to share content via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and over fifty other social networks and blogs. Kaltura is one of the only commercial video platforms that also offers basic video editing tools, including the ability to trim and clip content, and add subtitles. They offer a variety of options for monetizing your content, including adveritising, pay-per-view, and VAST support. They offer deployment options for SaaS, self-hosted, community, and cloud editions.
More info:
- Cost: Not specified, though a free trial is available
- Content Restrictions: No content that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harrassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages illegal activity.
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
Limelight Networks
Limelight Networks offers the Limelight Video Platform, which gives you flexible tools to publish, manage, analyze, and monetize your video content. You can manage your entire online video workflow with Limelight or just the parts you need. It includes sophisticated metadata management, integration with your existing CMS, analytics, in-video search, and support for free, suscription, and ad-supported videos.
More info:
- Cost: Not listed on website
- Content Restrictions: Not listed on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
GravityLab Multimedia
GravityLab Multimedia offers a number of premium video hosting plans that makes it easy to deliver your content from your website to computer screens, TV screens, and handheld devices. Their videos are fast streaming with little buffering required, work with Windows Media, Quicktime and MP4, and Flash streaming with pause, fast forward, and rewind. They don’t require any annual contract, so you can cancel at any time.
More info:
- Cost: $19.99/month to $420/month
- Content Restrictions: Not listed on website
- Commercial Content OK: Yes
From my old notes - a list of sample database scripts (.SQL files) that you can use for your SQL Server experiments:
Also see:
Can’t… stop … laughing… (via boingboing)
Hands and fingers are the greatest assets of every human born in this world. With hands and fingers, human created great arts that shine in the human history. They are really great, but can they be artistic as well? It’s hard to answer this kind of questions with a ‘no’, especially in this technological age, when everything can possibly become an art with the might of creativity and the power of the Photoshop.
(Image Source: Coltography)
In this showcase you won’t see any regular hands and fingers, as we brought to you 35 manipulation works with artistic attempts on hands and fingers. So let’s see what artists and designers can do when it comes to brush up their own hands and fingers!
More related:
25 Fingers. Aside from its seamless manipulation, this work is so great that it makes me actually think that having 30 fingers look really cool! Well I have to confess that as a developer, I will like to have a hand like this. (Image Source: Alexandre Guilbeault)
Multi Hands. Another really cool one with awesome manipulation applied. (Image Source: j.walsh)
A Handful. “I would be so much better at piano…” (Image Source: pwnedbyryan)
Again, I Say… For everything you do, there might be an eye watching you. (Image Source: 0 W8ing)
Arms Break, Vases Don’t. Sometimes if you are too careless, your hand will go wrong on you! (Image Source: alltelleringet)
Being M.C. Escher. So which one is the real hand? A nice one! (Image Source: billyboingo)
Candlehand. Looks great, and what’s greater with this photo: it’s completely real! (Image Source: Bradi)
Chase Your Love. Killer metallic effect. (Image Source: SubhadipKoley)
Cyborg Hand. The day you know you’re not your father’s son. (Image Source: Naikoivanenko)
Don’t Preach. Which one is the real hand? Or which one is the photo? (Image Source: haribahagia)
FingBods. “Hey man, what’s weird about me?” (Image Source: Sterzy Hunter)
Finger Killer. It’s a magnum, for sure. (Image Source: thecolourushproject)
Flaming Fingertips. This actually makes you think about it, wonderful piece. (Image Source: PhilipHolm)
Give Me A Hand. Don’t try this at home! (Image Source: Stefano Sala)
Give Me A Hand. It’s like these hands got some personalities! (Image Source: tiagogmc)
Gold Fish In My Hand. Very sleek manipulation with amazing uses of colors! (Image Source: sertanarig)
Handed. How many fingers in total? You will never get it right. (Image Source: Õri Balázs)
Hands. I have to say, the 3rd hand is epic. Amusing and unique one! (Image Source: cute0designer)
Hands. Could be what you’ll see when you did too much Photoshop stuff! (Image Source: justyourtype)
I Love Chocolate!! The expressions are priceless, and I believe it will be troublesome to live with these kinda annoying fingers. (Image Source: Manu Pombrol)
M&M’s Chocolate Candy. Cute or haunting? Different people will have different thought about this piece. (Image Source: erwin mallari)
Mutant Cell Pearl. Yikes! (Image Source: Tavieo Sawyer)
My Kind Of Angel. “As an artist, I soar high to the limitless boundaries of my imagination through art and I enable myself to fly with my bare hands.” (Image Source: Alvin Adriano)
Orchestra. More hands are surely cooler. (Image Source: Manu Pombrol)
Pyro. Great manipulation and lighting, gave me a feel that the photo is expressing something. (Image Source: Tom Miatke)
Save the Earth. Unique manipulation work with great details inside it. (Image Source: Fayaz Mohamed)
Screaming Hand. You can’t have quiet environment with this kind of hand. (Image Source: Lintza)
Self Disassembly. “I have a robotic left arm. It malfunctions once in a while from too much computer work, so I have to take it off and service it. The hardest part is trying to reconnect all these wires with one hand.” (Image Source: Josh Sommers)
Some Skills. I doubt its usability, great concept though! (Image Source: Julio Mello)
Spander. Never thought the evolution of the spider could be that similar with human hands. (Image Source: Coltography)
The Hand That Feeds. The Hand That Feeds! (Image Source: Josh Sommers)
Today I Got My Guitar Fixed. Love the slightly transparent effect on one of the hand, guess which! (Image Source: holly henry)
Working Fingers. I always imagine if I could just lie on bed and type on the keyboard like this. Beautiful hand by the way. (Image Source: saibia)
You Are What You Eat. Amusing idea with classic quote, well done! (Image Source: Dimaci)
You Will Never Be Alone. There’s always a helping hand for you. (Image Source: Olivia Ariferiani)
Reflection
So now you see, hands and fingers could not only make interesting stuff, they could also be interesting by themselves! In fact I was quite doubtful that what would be the manipulation works of hands and fingers look like when I just started to search for them here and there, and I didn’t regret to compile them into a showcase, just like they didn’t fail to inspire and/or amuse me!
Which one would you choose to customize your hand to? Oh! The question should be, which manipulation piece you like in this showcase! Do let us know your favorite(s)!
Time for another update on what's happening at Tekpub - and there's a lot of good stuff. This coming month we're working with more authors then we ever have - and I think you'll like the lineup.