UK Graphic Artists Celebrate the Year of the Bus

Putting original artwork (and a bus map) in Londoners' wallets with 10 limited edition Oyster card-holders

This year happens to be the Year of the Bus, and a celebratory campaign by Transport for London (TfL) and London Transport Museum is recognizing buses as “arteries of the capital.” Pretty apt, considering London is home to one of the largest and most accessible bus networks in the world. TfL is collaborating with Outline Artists (you might be familiar with the small illustration agency’s …

Omar Ba’s State of Emergency

The Senegalese artist's striking pieces are beautiful, but deceptively dark

The vibrant, precise color combinations and elaborate detailing in artist Omar Ba’s paintings, on show now at London’s Hales Gallery, sometimes make them reminiscent of illustrations for a beautiful children’s book. But as you draw closer, the sinister underside of the images starts to reveal itself—the reflections in a man’s sunglasses depict tanks and a helicopter, the marionette hands that control soldiers and weapons bear …

BeatWoven Translates Music into Textiles

The London-based studio analyzes music through a custom software program to produce tangible visual patterns

By the time he passed away in 1943, Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff had left a legacy: one that penetrated beyond the realm of classical music, and infiltrated the lives of the audience and the works of other artists. Featured in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” a wide range of films and even being sampled by the Beastie Boys, Rachmaninoff’s Romantic-era compositions have influenced artists …