Top 10 VisuaLingual Posts of 2013

I love ending the year with a look at why people visit this blog, and these 10 posts got the most hits in 2013. There are some repeats from 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, plus a few surprises, including a big one at the end.

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The Art of Matte Stephens

Manhattan by Matte Stephens

Portland, OR-based Matte Stephens is sort of the love child of Georges Damin and Mark Coomer, with a hint of Nicholas Takis and a touch of Jim Flora in the mix, sprinkled with a garnish of early Charley Harper. His gouache paintings are very much rooted in the forms and colors of the middle of the 20th century, and I especially like his scenes of different cities.

World City Illustrations by Fernando Volken Togni

Fernando Volken Togni is an illustrator based in Porto Alegre, Brazil, who recently completed a series of awesome illustrations for Oryx, the in-flight magazine of Qatar Airlines. Each image represents 24 hours in a city, including New York City, Melbourne, Phuket, and others.

Nature Reserve by Helen Nodding

Insect Bridge by Helen Nodding

Helen Nodding is a London-based artist who has created a series of miniature urban interventions. These Lilliputian structures animate overlooked spaces with a grand sense of fantasy that belies their small stature. These installations are part of her Nature Reserve series; check out Stories from Space for more of Nodding’s work.

Elsewhere

Urban Play: justforview wonders about open source urban design.

Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future: the streetcar debate continues, and Cincinnati gets a shout-out from the NYT.

It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!: the best real estate photos ever.

Hotel Door Hangers Collected by My Grandfather: an extensive collection of vintage “do not disturb” signs from all over the world.

Moving Targets: the bicyclist versus the driver.

MyFarm SF: San Francisco’s MyFarm installs and maintains vegetable gardens and is also a local CSA for those without garden space.

Eureka Carpark Melbourne: a kickass anamorphic wayfinding system in a parking garage in Melbourne.

City Plates by notNeutral

LA-based notNeutral has been developing this line of City Plates in three collections: Gateways, Culture and Capital(ism), and Capital Migration [which includes Melbourne, pictured; look at all those parks!]. They’re available individually, as sets of 4, or as a full set of 12. I hope they’ll continue this idea, maybe including ancient cities, ghost cities, imaginary cities… Or, they could develop the idea of a set further — sprawling cities could become platters, compact cities could become tidbit plates… I want to see some unexpected cities, like Chernobyl or Detroit, in this series.