Creative Stories and Projects you may have missed in 2019
Brexit, bots and Berlin Wall fonts – this year had it all.
All the news and creative gems you may have missed on Digital Arts this year, with our top ten favourite stories and projects from the last 12 months.
The Guardian responds to artist pressure over its illustration contest
There was good news as The Guardian made changes to a controversial Glasto illustration competition.
The prize, which called for submissions to go on branded tote bags accompanying Guardian copies sold at Glastonbury 2020, originally followed the unfortunate trend of asking creators to work for free on the off-chance they either win a cash prize or be featured on the Guardian site as runner-up. Ugh!
The response ranged from our own reaction to the news as widely-shared on social media, along with big names such as Rod Hunt weighing in on the issue with thoughts and tweets like the sort below. The pressure obviously worked, with a Guardian News Media spokesman telling Digital Arts exclusively “Following feedback, we have updated the application process to request that only shortlisted entrants will be asked to produce bespoke work and will be paid appropriately.”
Woo hoo! Read the full story here.
The Pantone Colour of the Year 2020 ‘will be Bleached Coral’
At the start of the year creative duo Jack + Huei cleverly hijacked the Pantone Colour of the Year 2019 to draw attention to the environmental crisis killing the Great Barrier Reef.
Related: What will be Pantone Colour of the Year 2020?
Artists fight back against bots stealing their work to sell
December saw Art Twitter take on pesky bots nabbing artists’ work to go on the front of T-shirts, the kind you get on open-source platforms as sold by less-than-reputable vendors.
Artists have long been used to work being copied and passed off as somebody else’s, but this situation is a much more programmatic nuisance to bear. Select a bunch of popular artists, feed their streams as a source of data for bots designed to extract imagery, and then feed this data to open-source platforms where the image is used as a template for made on-demand merch like those shown above.
Artists fed up with finding their illustrations slapped onto a T-shirt without consent or due compensation played this dark system at its own game though this week, getting copyright-baiting images to trend as much as possible so they made it onto such sites – with hilarious results.
Fun animations show the eternal struggle between designer and client
DeeKay Kwon’s GIF work on designers versus clients took Instagram by storm.
Studio Ghibli met Finnish folklore in this year’s best student animation
The making of Fox Fires, a British short film that lit up YouTube this year.
Brexit was finally explained in this handy infographic from David McCandless
The power of a good infographic can explain everything – even Brexit.
Check out this art – and then check your breasts!
Genie Espinosa, Eva Cremers and more teamed up with Life Saving Lingerie to remind women to coppa feel.
Kristina Bold, the font based on a stroke survivor’s handwriting
A new font was designed to take over websites and newspapers for World Stroke Day 2019.
The colouring books brightening dementia patients’ lives
Beautiful project A Colourful Life offers personalised colouring books to dementia patients as created from their personal photographs.
The Berlin Wall inspired a new font for the 30th anniversary of its fall
Words can stop walls when written in this free font known as Voice of the Wall.
Read next: The Best Music videos of the 2010s – visual delights that defined a decade
https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/creative-stories-projects-you-may-have-missed-in-2019/