Beijing Logo Design Process

I got this in an email that is going around, so I do not have a proper source to credit. But I thought it was powerful to share it with you anyway.

Extensis' Type Casting: What's Your Type?

Funny viral promotional website by type foundry Extensis. Do the quiz to find out what your type is, or drag two charcters to the stage to see how they'd match up in live action.

Breez Evahflowin' & Dirt E. Dutch: Don't Be Afraid.

YouTube Version:


Video produced by Elasticbrand.

Blip TV Version:


Excellent interview by Freelance journalist Adam Bernard with the Dynamic Duo here.

Stefan Sagmeister's New Blog

Mr. Sagmeister has been at these autonomous environmental graphic design pieces for a while now, and as a crown on his achievement with them, there was a very nice exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York. (Just Closed.)

Check out his blog about this work at thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com

New FabCrew Portfolio Site

Ben and Dan of the Indianapolis based FabCrew are a graphic designer and illustrator respectively who do some seriously badass graffiti as well. Some of the best in the country, I do not hesitate to say.

Give them a look.

Stefan Sagmeister & Michel Gondry at Deitch projects.

Two of my heroes and creative role models exhibit back to back at Deitch projects in New York; Stefan Sagmeister and Michel Gondry. Sagmeister proclaimed that Style= Fart at an AIGA sponsored lecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art back in 1999 when I was a student there. His graphic design is often informed by sharp wit and smart, insightful social commentary. And if you are even mildy interested in Music Videos or accessible Avant Garde films, the groundbreaking work by director Michel Gondry can't be missed.

Beauty is in the Street Exhibition

This Month in the Bronx River Art Center:

Beauty is in the Street – curated by Gerry Beegan

An exhibition of historic Che Guevara posters from the Lisbet Tellefsen collection and especially commissioned works by contemporary artists, collectives and designers

Opening Reception: Friday, January 11, 6 – 9pm
On View from January 11 – February 16, 2008
Gallery Hours: M – F 3 – 6:30pm , Sat 11 – 5pm


Ñiko, Che Hoy y Siempre (installation view), 1983, silkscreen poster, 76 x 51cm

Bronx , NY …. There are linked questions at the heart of this exhibition. In what ways do the meanings of images change when we collect them, reproduce them, or exhibit them? Are political images drained of their subversive power, co-opted, and aestheticized when removed from their original context? Beauty is in the Street explores these concerns using one of the most compelling images of the last four decades, the image of Che Guevara. The printed likeness of this controversial Argentinean revolutionary retains a remarkable cultural presence and resonance 40 years after his violent death.

Despite the historical Che's hard-line politics and his military failures, his icon has become a symbol of hope, of Latino identity and unity, and of opposition. It has also uniquely found its way into popular culture on T-shirts, advertising, and CD covers. Does the ubiquity of Che's image indicate that he has simply become an empty signifier, a meaningless surface on which any meaning can be inscribed? In order to look at this complex and contradictory phenomenon the exhibition sets up a dialogue between one of the finest collections of Che Guevara posters in existence and specially commissioned works by contemporary artists, collectives, and designers.

The exhibition includes artists and designers from USA , Cuba , Central and South America, and Europe . Artworks include posters, prints, photography, installation, and animation, as well as collaborative works made with the local community. As an exhibition that focuses on the printed image, Beauty is in the Street highlights issues of multiplicity and reproduction through the selection, display, and juxtaposition of posters and artworks, many of which play with repetition in various ways. Its final question is, what is the place of beauty and of aesthetics in the social and political – the beauty of a design, an action, or an idea?

The posters in this exhibition are from the collection of Lisbet Tellefsen , a poster collector, archivist, and curator of the Movement Archive, a digital archive created to preserve the posters and printed materials from a variety of social justice movements.

Participants :

Karlos Carcamo
Born in El Salvador Karlos Carcamo studied at the School of Visual Arts and at Hunter College, NY. He lives and makes artworks in Beacon, NY where he directs the gallery Go North.

Experimental Jetset
Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam graphic design unit founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. They focus on printed matter and installation work and teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy .

Karolyn Hatton
Karolyn Hatton is a New York based artist who studied at the University of Chicago , the London College of Printing, and Goldsmiths, London . Her written texts and artworks have been published and exhibited internationally.

Liselot van der Heijden
Liselot van der Heijden is an artist from the Netherlands who works in New York City . She has shown art projects and videos throughout Europe, the US and South America . She has a BFA from the Cooper Union and a MFA from Hunter College .

Henry VIII's Wives
Henry VIII's Wives is a collaborative consisting of artists Bob Grieve, Rachel Dagnall, Sirko Knupfer, Simon Polli, Per Sander, and Lucy Skaer founded in 1997 based in Scotland and Scandinavia. Its members have been involved in numerous collaborative performative works and installations.

Pedro Lasch
Pedro Lasch was born and raised in Mexico City , and has since lived in New York and Durham , NC , and teaches at Duke University . His work has been published and shown internationally at both alternative and mainstream institutions.

Cristóbal Lehyt
Cristóbal Lehyt was born in Santiago , Chile and now lives and works in New York . He studied at Universidad Católica de Chile, Hunter College and on the Whitney Independent Study Program. Notable past exhibitions include Kunsthaus Dresden, Artists Space, Shanghai Biennale and the Whitney Museum .

Aleksandra Mir
Born in Lubin , Poland and a citizen of Sweden Aleksandra Mir lives in NYC , USA and Palermo , Sicily . Her work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions including Kunsthaus Zurich , Switzerland , White Columns, NYC and the Greengrassi Gallery, London .

Carrie Moyer
Carrie Moyer is a New York-based painter and one half of the public art project, Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!). Her paintings and public art collaboration have been widely exhibited and reviewed in both the US and Europe .

Stefan Saffer
Born in Germany and now living in Berlin Stefan Saffer studied at Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg , Goldsmiths, London and the Whitney Program in New York . He has taken part in residencies, exhibitions, and public art projects internationally including Kate MacGarry, London , Pavel Zoubok Gallery , New York and Villa Grisebach Gallery , Berlin .

About the Curator :
Gerry Beegan is a writer, curator, and designer who creates exhibitions, visual works, and historical/ theoretical texts that explore the relationships between art, design, media, and audience. His writings on the history and theory of reproduction include the book The Mass Image (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and he has also contributed to books, journals and magazines internationally.
Henry VIII's Wives, Untitled (detail), 2007, C-print Elena Serrano, Untitled, 1968
offset print
Liselot van der Heijden, Untitled(Che, New York), 2007, installation Carrie Moyer, Amigas! Get Your Che On!, 2007, 3-Color Screenprint
Stefan Saffer, SMOKINPEOPLE, 2007, Mixed Media. Cristóbal Lehyt, Violeta, 2006,
32 Inkjet Prints


Travel Directions:
Train: IRT # 2 or 5 to East Tremont Ave. Walk one block east.
Bus: #s 9, 21, 36, 40, 42, or Q44 to East Tremont and Boston Road.
Car: Bruckner Expressway to the Sheridan Expressway and exit at Tremont Ave., or Cross Bronx Expressway to Rosedale Ave. Exit.

Vanna White & Pat Sajak discuss Sans Serifs

Linzie Hunter's Spam Art: "One Liners"

Uk illustrator Linzie Hunter goes to town on custom lettering illustrations called Spam One-Liners inspired by spam subject lines.

AIGA Kenya Hara talk at Bumble & Bumble yesterday

Buy Kenya Hara: Designing Design.
Review on Core 77.
Review on DeZeen.

Interesting presentation yesterday by renowned japanese art director and curator Kenya Hara. After a question by Massimo Vignelli, Mr. Hara made an interesting distinction between Minimalism, based in western rationalism and meaning "stripped down" or simplified and the Japanese idea of Emptiness, which according to him means "The possibility of putting something in it". Emptiness is his mantra and design philosophy and the driving concept behind the MUJI brand.

Best Book Covers 2007

For more see:
http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-favorite-book-covers-of-2007.html
And take the poll at the bottom of the page to vote.

Amazon Kindle using E-Ink

The Amazon Kindle, it's already sold out as I write this. (?!)
It does look a little like an Eighties Cellphone doesn't it? Never the less, I (still) think it's very exciting to have one book that = a million books on demand, than having to buy a new paper book every time I finish one, and filling my shelves with them. Why have dozens of novels and business books I will not reread in my New York apartment where every square inch counts? (And what will this mean for Brookyn Stoop Sales? Used Books are a big part of those.)

I'm talking mainly about novels and newspapers. For the time being, I think I'd still prefer my art and design books on paper. These are usually more tactile objects and more interestingly designed, both in their look as well as their feel.

It uses the e-ink technology that promises to look and feel more like ink on paper, as it isn't backlit like conventional computer and pda screens. So you'll have no glare or lighting issues which makes it musch easier to read outside or other uncontrolled environments.


Check out Engadget.com for some first impressions.

Brett MacFadden Snaps to Grid

If you are a graphic design and/or type design enthusiast, you must check out my friend Brett's latest exhibition of lettering inspired by and drawn in... Quark XPress. (Yes, you read that correctly). While you are there, also see the massive stack of books he designed and art directed for Chronicle books.

New Blog: Retire Trajan (The Typeface)

The Monolithic Rule of the Tyrannical Trajan Font in Entertainment Advertising has to come to an end. Let's retire Trajan!

Superfad!

I'm becoming a bigger fan of these guys everytime I see new work it seems. Their commercial for Pioneer is a truly amazing feat of animation, film and design. It involves pretty much any type of animation as far as I can tell, from 3d, to anime.

On a more toned down level, I might enjoy these target spots even more. The aesthetic is perfectly on brand while being innovative, engaging and refreshing, not a small accomplishment either.


Target Ads.



Pioneer Ad.

Elliott Earls updates

Some updates from the studio of Elliott Earls, artist-in-residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art's 2D Design Department.



Elliott Earles: "On thursday evening I gave a lecture at The Wolfsonian Museum as part of their exhibition on the work of John Heartfield. My lecture used the work of Heartfield as a kind of foil against which we can begin to understand a more powerful role for the contemporary graphic designer. In the lecture I primarily used the work of Heartfield as a way of attempting to place my own work within an historical context and to provide it a cohesive conceptual framework. To radically simplify the lecture, initially I pit John Heartfield against Paul Rand1 (Lord Vader) and discuss the goals of the post world war one avant-garde. In the lecture, I frame my own work in terms of the spirit of oppositional cultural practice exemplified by Heartfield – and by extension El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko et al.
"




From Bull and Wounded Horse.

Faust Haus - New Site

I recommend you do check out these sleek and stylish, funky yet highly controlled typography and other sweet stylings by Leah Faust!

Irma Boom article on The New York Times website.

From the New York Times:
..."Winning prizes is nothing new for Irma Boom. Working with a single assistant in her Amsterdam studio, she is also accustomed to struggling — in one way or another — to make each of her books as inspiring and surprising as possible. Over the years, she has experimented with everything from elaborate color-codes and hidden motifs to scented bindings, printing on filter coffee paper, producing a 2,136-page book with no page numbers or index,

and hacking page edges with a circular saw.

"...

Read the article.



Irma Boom's website.

Small Steps: Creating the High School for Contemporary Arts DVD

I had the great opportunity to contribute title graphics -stop motion animated chalkboard drawings- to this inspiring documentary, directed by David Becker of Cabin Creek Films.

You can buy the DVD from PBS directly.

Pay special attention to the amazing score, composed by Skooby Laposky.

New Apollo Program Website

Elliot Earls relaunched his TheApolloProgram website.

Earls:
As early as 1995 I began to understand my work as serving two primary functions. The first being intrinsic, while the second was extrinsic. Intrinsically, I see my work as a kind of test bed upon which I attempt to work out a form of interpersonal ethics. First and foremost I see myself as a contrarian and a social critic. And while I realize that my work appears highly formal, at it's core it is essentially Instrumentalist. Extrinsically, I see my work functioning as a form of cultural criticism dealing with issues of race, class and sexuality in America.

Marian Bantjes with Pentagram for Saks Fifth Avenue

Check out these lovely typographic stylings of Marian Bantjes under direction of Michael Bierut of Pentagram for Saks Fifth Avenue.

Shepard Fairey Speaks

At his Studio.

Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography at Cooper Union in New York City

Check out Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography at Cooper Union in New York City at the Lubalin Center at the Cooper Union in new York.

October 11-27, 2007. Weekdays 11 a.m.- 7 p.m., Saturday, 12 p.m.-5 p.m., closed on Sundays.

Die, Speech Bubble, Die! Via Eachday.com

For a while, I worked for a company that had various speech bubbles in their corporate identity, as well as in their main logo. For the longest time I didn't think anything of it, in fact thought they were somewhat engaging... until I came across this page. And I realized that I was rather culturally insensitive not to have noticed sooner.

THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER 2007 6:30–9:00PM: Crouwel/Vignelli

Wim Crouwel.



Massimo Vignelli.

A rare opportunity to see and hear these godfathers of modernist graphic design and corporate identity.

From Aiga.org:
Wim Crouwel, Dutch graphic designer, exhibition designer, museum director and educator, established his first freelance design practice in Amsterdam in 1954. In 1963 he became one of the five founding partners of Total Design, so called because it was the first multidisciplinary design studios in the Netherlands. During the sixties and the seventies he was responsible for many of the posters, catalogues, and exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. From 1985-1993, Wim was director of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In 1967 he launched his New Alphabet within the Quadrat-Print series of journals published by Pieter Brattinga and his printing firm Steendrukkerij De Jong. This radical typographic experiment proposed new letterforms as a response to new technology. It was commissioned by Olivetti for a new typewriter font and although completed it was not released at the time due to changes in technology. The basis of all Wim's work is a strong underlying grid system, his typefaces being a logical extension of this grid. Within the last two years The Foundry in London has digitalized and marketed four of Wim's typefaces.

Massimo Vignelli, Italian designer of graphic and corporate identity programs, publications, architectural graphics, exhibitions, furniture and products of all kinds, has lived and worked in New York for the past four decades. Massimo studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano from 1950 to 1953 and later trained at the Universita di Architetttura in Venice. His first professional position was as a designer of glassware for Venini, and from 1958 to 1960 he taught design at the Institute of Design, Chicago, while his wife, Lella Vignelli worked for architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. In 1960, the couple returned to Milan and founded the Lella and Massimo Vignelli Office for Design and Architecture. Four years later, Massimo began creating graphics for the Container Corporation of America, and designed its new logo. In 1965, with Bob Noorda and Jay Doblin he founded Unimark International, a design consultancy originally based in Milan. Soon after, The Vignellis moved to the U.S. and in 1966 Unimark established a New York office, specializing in corporate identity. In 1971, Vignelli Associates was established and subsequently designed corporate identity programs for Knoll, American Airlines, Bloomingdales, Xerox, Lancia, Cinzano, and Ford Motors. Massimo also turned his attention to designing furniture for Sunar, Rosenthal, Morphos and Knoll, including the Handkerchief Chair and Paper Clip table for Knoll. Some of the most well-known work of the Vignellis includes directional signage for the New York and Washington, D.C. subway systems.

Alice Twemlow is the chair of a new MFA program in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts, which launches in the fall of 2008. Alice writes about design for publications including Design Issues, Design Observer, Good, Eye, I.D., New York Magazine, Paper, Print, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Varoom. She is the author of What is Graphic Design For? (Rotovision, 2006), StyleCity New York (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and has contributed essays to Jonathan Barnbrook’s monograph, Barnbrook Bible (Booth Clibborn, 2007), Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allworth Press, 2007), ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING (Design Institute, 2006), and Why Not Associates 2 (Thames & Husdon, 2004). She has directed several design conferences, including “Voice: AIGA National Design Conference 2002," and “Being Here: Craft and Locality in Graphic Design,” held in Berlin in 2004, and co-directed “Looking Closer: AIGA Conference on Design History and Criticism.” Alice has an MA in Design History from the program run by the Royal College of Art and the V&A Museum in London, where she is currently a PhD candidate.

TIME AND PLACE

Thursday 25 October 2007 6:30–9:00PM
Tishman Auditorium
The New School
66 West 12th Street
Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues

6:30—7:00PM Check-in & admission
7:00—8:30PM Presentation
8:30—9:00PM Reception

Ed Fella Online

I remember that only recently, esteemed designer and design educator Ed Fella could not be reached via email. Now he has a wonderful website that you simply must check out. Thanks to Barry Deck's site, where I found the link. I have no idea if this is new or has been around for a while, but I'm glad it exists. His work is actually touching. I don't think that I can say that about a lot of graphic design. There is a high level of personal identity and emotion in his work that would not work for most designers or projects, but it works for Mr. Fella. Now if I could only get me a piece of his on my wall.

Also check out this book by Mr Fella, that I've happily owned for a few years now.

Barry Deck Studio

Time to check out the new venture by "kid-design-star", template gothic creator and branding expert Barry Deck. After being a Creative Director for such industry giants as Ogilvy and Red Rockwell, he is now heading his own company again.

Check.

Neelu Made, Graphic Designers

Give the site of graphic designers Nazanin Arandi and Ryan Ward a look, why dontcha.

From their site:
Nazanin Arandi and Ryan Ward have worked as
senior graphic designers and art directors for five
years in the area of print, web, motion graphics and sound design. They are the award winning creative team behind Neelu Made.

They hold MFA degrees from Cranbrook Academy
of Art, home of Charles & Ray Eames' design,
in 2d design and printmaking.

Their work ranges from web and identity to multi-media visual campaigns to apparel and jewelry design.They are passionate about art and design and apply both to their daily activities and studio's aesthetic.

They collect late 19th c. shadow drawings, old photographs, design books, and guitars.

If you are looking for a unique and a personal identity for your product, Neelu Made will provide just that.

Retro Animated Logos

Funny, I was just talking about one of these the other day when at home watching trailers... then ran across this amazing compilation of Retro Animated Logos on Motionographer.com.

Designer Spotlight: Danielle Foushee

Check out design with flair by L.A. / Salt Lake City based Art Director Danielle Foushee.

Justice - D.A.N.C.E [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Another well designed music video for graphic designers with type fetishes.

Katherine - Excuse moi, 2006

Amazing frame-by-frame hand drawn typographic animation.




Petra Mrzyk and Jean-françois Moriceau are a very creative, prolific and sometime provocative couple of artist, living in Paris. They already exposed all around the world their universe, made of strange creatures inspired from pop culture, comics, porn...

Their third video clip is an animation movie made of more than 5000 draws for the French offbeat musician Philippe Katerine. The song is about what a guy should think about in order to avoid ejaculating in his girlfriend's hair. So you'd better start learning French now!

Design Gangsta

"A whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink

I read this interesting excerpt on How Magazine's website this morning:

You've said that in the emerging economy, the smartest thing someone can do is to be a designer and tell their children to be designers. Why is design a great career move these days?
Because the working world that you and I live in is very different from the one that our parents prepared us for. When I was a kid—and I grew up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s—parents told their kids to become doctors, lawyers, accountants or engineers. Those jobs were the pathway to a happy and prosperous life. But that's not true anymore. The economy that's emerging today confers the greatest rewards on a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. It rewards not "left-brain" knowledge workers, but "right-brain" creators and empathizers. The future belongs to those kinds of folks—artists, inventors, caregivers and, yes, designers.

We've heard about this left-brain/right-brain division before. How does it apply here?
The best metaphor to describe what's going on in work and business today is right inside our heads. The structure of our brains reveals a lot about the contours of our times. Our brains are divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is logical, linear and sequential. It works like a computer. The right side is holistic, artistic and big-picture. Of course, we use both sides of our brain for most things. But the sorts of abilities characteristic of the left hemisphere are becoming less valuable. And the sorts of abilities characteristic of the right hemisphere are becoming more valuable.

Why is this shift happening?
Three big, unstoppable forces. What I call the three A's—abundance, Asia and automation.

Songs For Ice Cream Trucks on ABC World News

Check out Michael Hearst on ABC World News Tonight, he talks about the album as well as about all the novelty instruments he used to create Songs for Ice Cream Trucks.

Also check out the cover art by yours truly in all its glory for a few seconds!

Doug Bartow and Michael Fallone's ID29 wins Harry Potter contract

[From MSN MOney Central:]

A small, Troy, N.Y., advertising agency played a big role in the marketing campaign for the "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

The four-year-old id29 beat out agencies from all over the world to design print ads, Web ads, animated movies, billboards, point-of-purchase, and exhibition displays to herald the release of the book, the seventh and final one in the series about the boy wizard. Sales of the much-anticipated "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," published by Scholastic, began at midnight July 21.
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