A new Colossal feature presents Timothy Boomer’s photographs of plant galls. These small growths look like objects from an unfamiliar workshop, but the photographer works with real nature. The feature appeared on 30 October; his own archive is available at Wild Macro.
What catches the eye is the mismatch between size and visual complexity. A small surface accommodates ridges, spines and colour transitions. Magnification doesn’t add decoration: it changes our sense of how much information was there in the first place.
For a designer, that’s a welcome adjustment to the reflex to find another shape generator. Sometimes changing distance is more useful. A yard, a park or a fallen leaf owes you no finished logo, but it might disturb an overly comfortable reference folder. See the photographs with their author: our cover is an independent conceptual illustration, not his photograph. Nature wasn’t hired as art director. It’s busy without a brief.
