This is an amazing idea for a truly striking effect with a simple medium...if you have a heckuva lot of time and patience (and at least 5 friends willing to help). Using only clear thumbtacks--albeit 100,000 of them in this case--this gorgeous typographic mural was created.
Inspiration: Thumbtack Mural
SwissMiss, always a source for things design that inspire, posted about this amazing mural made of pushpins at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon. There is a video taken of the installation of this time consuming process, which is almost as interesting to watch happen as it is in its finished state.
We love the silvery effect that the pushpins have en masse, and are huge fans of the large scale of the type. While something in this size may not be a realistic DIY, we could absolutely see smaller scale applications of this technique. $20 worth of pushpins and some dedication could yield beautiful results...
Comments (17)
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Cool idea but what a lame message.
view slowdown's profile
Not a lame message at all: "Over 100,000 thumbtacks were used over 351 hours to create this typographic mural that spells out Fail Harder, a message that underlines the importance of failure during the creative process. Absolutely fantastic."
I totally get it, and agree.
view BruceS63's profile
WIN.
view mollynagel's profile
Superfly.
view calamityayne's profile
My bad. I thought this was just another hipster-ironic thing.
view slowdown's profile
This is fabulous (and the video is cool, too). It looks almost like sequins.
view arroyo's profile
@slowdown, it could be, but it immediately brought to mind my co-worker reminding me "If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough." Or even Teddy Roosevelt and his “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
You might even be able to do this in an apartment if you didn't mind having to yank it all out later and paint over it. Or maybe you could do it on cork tiles so you could bring it with you later? I kinda want to try it, now who do I know that I could bribe into helping me?
view Tiamat_the_Red's profile
This medium is used to better effect by artist Eric Daigh:
http://daigh.com/
(Best viewed a good distance back from your monitor)
view farmhousemoderne's profile
At least they didn't do
Keep Calm and Carry On.
view t3d's profile
Love how it looks like 3D sequins
view akay's profile
@t3d
haha, word!
view teacupcake's profile
Love it! But too much work. lol Frm afar it looks like glitter... I would've done it in glitter instead... lol
view Djluckyonline's profile
Love this. I'll take an actual size print, please. ;)
view Waldorf Modern's profile
I saw this in the documentary "Art and Copy" this weekend. I too thought it was an inspirational design piece. However, I didn't know the story behind it. That's pretty awesome.
view SIUCarbondale10's profile
I love this. Funny how you can achieve pure glamour with such lowbrow materials.
view violet212's profile
It goes to show that small things in big dosages makes an even bigger impact...
including rain.
view jayjay5's profile
I can only assume this is a f*ck up of a quote from Beckett's Worstward Ho (which in the process misses the point entirely), the entire quote being:
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
view lcatling's profile