Team iDesign

Cool Backgrounds generates beautiful, abstract, geometric images perfect for use as backgrounds on your computer or mobile gadgetry. There are four different styles, many color scheme options, and a feed of nice free photos.

While finishing up a gradient generator project CSS Gradient (which launched earlier this year), I unexpectedly noticed the popularity of wallpaper and background images. Digging a bit deeper, I found this huge community of online sites that were curating wallpaper images from the eclectic Deviant Art crowd to the more modern creative commons image sites. While free static images are great, what was missing was a tool that enables non-technical folks to use all the emerging javascript libraries to create unique images of their own. So Cool Backgrounds was born 💥.

This is really fun. With Japanese artist Rintaro Hara‘s latest piece, visitors can make giant bubbles simply by pulling on a rope. By doing so, her Projection Wall raises a grid of ropes that have been dunked in a soapy solution. Then, as it’s rising, eight fans blow through to create a rainbow-y wall of extra-large bubbles. And, who doesn’t love a wall of bubbles?

LinesLab is “an experimental design studio established by Sergej Stoppel that explores algorithmic art and robotics.” Among his cool works are these single-line portraits.

Most latte art is a monochromatic palette of rich browns and creams. Korean art professor Kangbin Lee has taken his Creamart works into the rest of the spectrum.

This view comes courtesy Howard Wang, co-founder of Convoy Investments, who charted bitcoin’s massive gain against other famous periods of speculation, notably the Dutch tulip mania in the 1600s, which had previously reigned as history’s biggest.

When Tatsuo Horiuchi retired, he decided to try his hand at art. But instead of spending money on paints and brushes, Horiuchi used what he already had pre-installed on his computer—Microsoft Excel. Now, the 77-year-old artist is creating remarkably intricate digital masterpieces of the Japanese landscape, all on the free graphing software.

A lot of people can apparently hear this GIF. I can feel it.

The GIF was created by HappyToast.

“WHIPPED CREAM & OTHER DELIGHTS” — HERB ALPERT & THE TIJUANA BRASS (1965)

Cover model Dolores Erickson was three months pregnant when she posed in whipped cream for this album. It sold 6 million copies (99 percent of them to teenage boys).
Continue reading →