Memo Random by Black and Ginger, Liverpool
The deadline for the Sukkah City design competition is tomorrow, so if you've registered and got a re-imagining of the ancient form of the sukkah percolating, better fire up those Prismacolors tonight! 12 finalists will be built and exhibited in New York City's Union Square on September 19th, and jury members are Michael Arad, Ron Arad, Rick Bell, Paul Goldberger, Steven Heller, Natalie Jeremijenko, Maira Kalman, Geoff Manaugh, Thom Mayne, Thomas de Monchaux, Ada Tolla, Adam Yarinsky, and Core77's Allan Chochinov.
All info at the site.
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I was in Portland, Oregon for a conference on Visual Communication in June. (Yeah, it’s almost August; yes, I’m that far behind). I just have to post about the whole darn city, it’s so great. Normally in any given town I only find about three shops that truly appeal to me… in Portland, there are whole neighbourhoods filled with them! Indie bookshops, Powell’s Books (the mother of all second hand book shops), vinyl record stores, vintage clothing, antique stores specializing in the weird, artist-run galleries, more artist run galleries, craft and art museums, restaurant patios, and multiple brew pubs. And it’s pretty affordable to be a tourist in, with good public transit, almost as many bicycles as Amsterdam, and cheap eats.
Normally we post on specific artists here on Drawn, but I’m going to praise the whole city, because a supportive city helps the arts flourish – and Portland seems to have done a great job of it. The civic planners and the artists deserve credit. I didn’t get to all the arts districts, but the Alberta Arts District really works well. There, you can find places like Together Gallery, and Monograph Bookwerks, which specializes in fine art books. The photo above MIGHT be from Together’s back area… it had a great selection of zines and other DIY… I didn’t do the greatest job of keeping track what I photographed. Maybe someone can confirm??? I also loved Ampersand Gallery, which has vintage ephemera, art books, and a lot of things related to photography.
If I were American, this is where I would go live and draw….
Below: street art on Alberta Street.
Posted by Jaleen Grove on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Art, galleries, portland oregon
Maker Faire Detroit opens tomorrow [Saturday] - the first ever held in America's cradle of industry and what many view today as a post-industrial laboratory for the future.
The two day event will be packed with inspiration and enjoyment for people of all ages and walks of life, including Maker Faire favorite The Life-size Mousetrap, hot-rodded Power Wheel racing, demonstrations on everything from circuit-bending to screen printing, rocket building and cheese making, and lots of robots. Lots and lots of robots...
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It's a Friday, so I feel free to rail out at what I see as ridiculous or wasteful design, especially projects that get tons of blog attention for being "stunning." I don't know what Colier Sparkling Wine's eco-credentials are, but this packaging can't be green; the bizarre container the bottle comes in, "targeted to [sic] business women [sic]," looks like a carbon-fiber egg.
For God's sake look at the size of this thing. Imagine handing this big black egg to a female executive in congratulations. If someone handed this to me as a gift I'd have them removed from the premises. And what's with the egg metaphor? Also what are you supposed to do with the egg after you take the bottle out, use it as a purse? Keep it around to show guests? "Look, it splits down the middle!" This thing doesn't make any, freaking, sense!
The CR cutting board has never seen the like
The final cut-out-and-make project from CR's Bumper Summer Fun issue is perhaps the most challenging. But to prove it can be done, here's our very own 'Pinolta' pinhole camera that we made earlier with some invaluable help from our intern Jasmin...
The Pinolta camera is one of several models you can make from Justin Quinell and Josh Buczynski's Build Your Own Paper Cameras, published by Ilex Press (£12.99).
Justin and his publishers kindly let us include the instructions to create the Pinolta model in the new issue and also house downloadable templates for the camera on the CR website, along with notes on how to load and expose your film.
So all you need to make your own Pinolta is a copy of the Bumper Summer Fun issue, some A4 card (220 gsm recommended), a printer, a scalpel or scissors, some glue, a needle, an aluminium drinks can and two regular camera films. (The needle is used to make the tiny hole you need in your flattened square of aluminium).
Of course, the photographic fruits of our endeavours will be shared on the CR blog once we read up a bit on how to properly expose our film in a pinhole style. Suffice to say we'll be taking our surprisingly sturdy Pinolta around the office and on to the streets of Soho early next week. So once we're back from the chemists, expect a holiday slide show courtesy of CR!
Here's a better look at Jasmin's Pinolta, with the shutter closed...
...and – wait for it – open. The metal you can see is the "lens" of the camera which is made from a drinks can. The "pinhole" is in the centre of the lens and is easily made with a needle:
More details on the book, Build Your Own Paper Cameras, at ilex-press.com. Make sure you also check out pinholephotography.org for examples of the kinds of images you can make.
And we'd love to see any pictures you take with your Pinoltas, not to mention shots of your cameras too.
In office furniture design we've seen tons of would-be successors to the cubicle, but nothing's really taken root yet. The latest to throw their hat into the ring is Italian furniture manufacturer Tecno, with their Red-Dot-Award-winning Beta workplace, designed by Pierandrei Associati:
Beta is a fresh furniture system that addresses the needs of the creative office. Using flexible system elements, offices can be creatively reconfigured and redesigned, while constantly adjusting to the user's individual work style. The starting point of this innovative concept was the idea that a progressive office should provide space for working on both an individual and a team basis as well as space for relaxation, while fostering the shared use of knowledge. Thus beta is not just a simple furniture system, but rather an atmospheric work environment.
At press time Pierandrei Associati's website was down, but Contemporist has got tons-o'-shots of the Beta system up.
Photographer Sergey Larenkov uses computational rephotography (as shown above and explained here by Wired) to overlay extant WWII-era photographs on their corresponding modern settings. The results are both spooky and stunning:
The shots really do have to be seen large, so check out Larenkov's LJ page for the rest of 'em.
via gizmodo
More proof that it takes (x) years to make an overnight success: Karlsruhe-based communications designer Felix Vorreiter invented the txtBOMBER back in 2005, but it's just in the past few days that it's exploded onto the blogosphere.
What is it? It's basically a handheld skywriter that prints on walls using an Arduino processor and seven markers. Pretty damn rad!
TEXTBOMER from H@nnes at HfG on Vimeo.
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Troika's newly installed two-way sign for the V&A museum in London is simple, quiet, and mind-boggling all at the same time, "a kinetic object consisting of three revolving parts, together forming the V&A monogram. With each half turn, the monogram de-constructs and reconnects itself turning into a mirrored palindrome."
Something fun for Friday: we love this charming take on a cart, a mason bag crossed with a radio flyer that functions almost like a picnic basket. Welcome, a design brand based in Los Angeles, is producing a series of these wheeled carrying devices, each one a remix of an existing "icon of carraige." The first one? A mason's bag with a bright blue trailer.
From Laurel Broughton, the designer:
The WAGON series is a curated bricolage of style and function that merges playful aesthetics with the timeless need to carry and convey. Each WAGON is modeled after an icon of carriage-- WAGON No.1 starts with the honest mason's bag and adds wheels and a friendly demeanor for chores about town, lazy picnics or at-home downtime. WAGON No.1 is an all duty companion, an updated wheel-y bag if you will.
Available directly from Welcome.
More shots after the jump.
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Guest post by Paul Fraser.
After hours of walking the SIGGRAPH 2010 expo aisles, you just need to unplug and have a little playtime in the sand. One exhibit located in the Art Gallery of the conference provided a sandy oasis from the sea of computer graphics and electronic do-dads.
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs, an interactive art installation created by Anthony Rowe and the digital arts group Squidsoup, allowed participants to manipulate the topography of a sandpit, which would change how projected virtual bugs respond in real time to their surroundings.
Using a haptic 3D interface, the piece was designed to encourage participants to look after, control, and even breed the bugs—sort of like you would with a Tamagotchi digital pet (remember those??). But most people just enjoyed lifting the bugs up high and then letting them splat against the sand.
The piece definitely was a crowd pleaser. Perhaps future sandboxes or other play areas will be commonly equipped with portable projectors, sensors, and software that allow kids to play in both the real and virtual worlds.
We posted a video of people handling (and dropping) the virtual bugs above.
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Senior Visual Designer
frog design
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Qualified candidates will share our belief that design is as much about behavior and emotion as it is about utility and ease of use. Senior visual designers provide leadership in concept development, creation of original art and wire-frame interaction model, project design/development, and QA. They are responsible for the development of innovative navigation systems, interface designs, typography, and screen or page layouts for software, application, web sites, and other interactive media. They will push the state-of-the-art with every creation and thrive in our fast-paced studio.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
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Spin has unveiled a new look for the Alliance Graphique Internationale's website, at the same time improving access to the organisation's vast archive of graphic design...
a-g-i.org now contains around 3,000 additional images of members' work and also a wider range of essays and interviews with leading design figures (homepage shown, above).
Spin's Tony Brook hopes that the relaunched site can become a resource for students, educators and professionals, while also appealing to the casual viewer interested in the history of graphic design.
The wealth of members' work on show is certainly impressive. For example, here are the member pages for Hamish Muir, Margaret Calvert and Georges Calame (Jean Widmer's shown, top).
The selected essays and interviews are also well worth a look as there are plenty of interesting pieces on the history of graphic design, such as Ben Bos' take on the revolutionary spirit of the 1950s:
The new-look site also flags up the forthcoming AGI Open event, which the organisation will stage in Porto, Portugal on 11 October this year.
Speakers include Marian Bantjes, J. Abbott Miller, Bruno Monguzzi, Ahn Sang-Soo and Paula Scher and the event will take place in the stunning Casa da Música building. More details at agiopen2010.com.
The AGI website is a-g-i.org.
Folks, you have to wonder why no one else thought of this a long time ago:
This headphones packaging design (released last month by the European branch of Panasonic) was designed by Berlin-based Scholz & Friends, a creative agency whose motto is "Surprise! Convince!"
As Scholz & Friends explained to the Coloribus Global Advertising Archive,
The selection of earphones is huge and the products are often interchangeable. Only a packaging with a clear visual idea is able to stand out at the market among the generic packagings of the competition....The earphones show at first sight for whom they are made: for passionate music lovers.
...The new packaging was met with positive reactions from retailers and clients because it clearly stood out from the generic packaging of the competition. As such it helped to attract new target groups for Panasonic.
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[Update: This project was originally and erroneously credited to a UK-based design firm, who posted the project on their site with no proper attribution, leading one to believe the work was theirs, whether by accident or negligence. Please note that the designer is Daniel Dobrogorsky.]
Daniel Dobrogorsky's Koolhaus concept is a faucet that lets you know how much water you're using--not just from the Koolhaus itself, but throughout the entire bathroom, even dividing the bath tap and shower tap into separate categories.
I'm not crazy about the form factor--seems like a part from an extreme athlete's bicycle--and the screen's a bit too small for my tastes, but I realize these things are subjective, and overall I find the concept solid. Am also glad Dobrogorsky left toilet water consumption off the display--while it's easy to take a shorter shower, I wouldn't know how to begin curtailing toilet usage.
Hit the jump for some cool developmental shots.
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We can't help but wonder if the good folk at agency Clemmow Hornby Inge were inspired by our April issue of Monograph (which featured a selection of photographs of Ghostsigns from the archive at The History of Advertising Trust) when they came up with these charming new 48-sheet poster executions for Anchor Butter's Made By Cows campaign...
CHI commissioned illustrator Paul Slater and hand lettering artist Alison Carmichael to work with designers Dan Beckett and Suzie Hydon to create the ads - which all hark back to a time when advertising slogans were painted direct onto the walls of buildings in towns and cities. The idea is that this old style helps reinforce the fact that the Anchor has been producing butter since 1886 - which was the golden age of hand painted wall mural advertising.
Credits:
Ad agency: CHI & Partners
Creative team: Matt Collier, Wayne Robinson
Creative directors: Dave Masterman, Ed Edwards
Typography: Alison Carmichael
Designers: Dan Beckett, Suzie Hydon
Illustration: Paul Slater
Photography: Conor Masterson
Producers: Ben Etheridge and Brendon McLean
Client: Mike Walker, Kate Richards @ Anchor
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And, for those among you that don't subscribe to our lovely magazine – here's some of what you missed in our April 2010 (No. 32) Monograph - which showcased a selection of images of Ghostsigns from the archive of The History Of Advertising Trust:
More about Monograph here: creativereview.co.uk/back-issues/monograph/about-monograph
Illustration by Samuel Rogers, samuelesquire.blogspot.com
In this edited version of Gordon Comstock's interview with Will Self, which appears in the current issue of CR, the novelist discusses his grudging admiration for the ad industry, a subject matter that often crops up in his fiction...
There's a powerful anti-literary strain in most creative departments, writes Gordon Comstock. This is a shame, I think, because there are certain kinds of literary author we might learn a lot from.
Will Self is one of them. I take a long lunch from my freelance gig and meet him at Bar Italia. In his Paul Smith shirt, jeans and loafers, he looks every inch the creative director of a boutique ad agency. And in a way this is true.
Self is a one-man agency that only sells one product, its own product. His campaigns are ubiquitous, embracing radio, TV and press. And successful: I knew there was a writer called Will Self long before I'd read a word of his work. But this hardly matters, like any great brand you can have an opinion about him even if you've never tried the goods.
He orders his coffee black, sits with his back to Frith Street and lights a cigarette held in a plastic filter, a la Hunter S Thompson. "So young man," he says, "what do you want to talk to me about?"
Well, firstly I want to ask him about a short story called Prometheus from his last book of fiction, Liver. It's set in an ad agency, Titan, which he locates somewhere near Brick Lane, in a building equipped with "conversation pits of the kind favoured by imprisoning reality TV shows" and "pods where the creatives [are] coddled by a warm albumen of piped in pop culture". I feel like I've worked there, but what made him want to write about it?
"It was obvious a theme [for Liver] was emerging," he says. "A modern retelling of the Prometheus story is an obvious feed. I thought, what's the equivalent of incredible divine inspiration in the modern world? Well it's kind of advertising in that one line can generate vast amounts of economic activity. There's something magical about that."
. . .
Although he describes himself as "an old commie" and "a sort of Unabomber of the city", something like a grudging admiration for the industry persists in his work. "A killer end-line," says the narrator of Prometheus, "should be like a garrotte applied to any consumer's faculty for making a rational calculus of price and benefit."
. . .
Gingerly I offer a titbit of my own, a pet theory: advertising creatives are the priests of capitalism, mediators between the public and the ideology of the time. "Sure," he says, "it's like what Mary Douglas the anthropologist said about money: that it's only a specialised form of ritual, so you could argue that advertising is part of a wider ritual. It mediates between value and ideas. Between the individual and the commonality. Yes, that's just what you are, I mean look how priestly you look."
I straighten my dog collar and point out some of the things we might have in common, the novelist and the adman. The love of epigrams, the twisting of cliché, the use of animals behaving uncannily – all Self tropes, all things that a copywriter might well have in his book.
It's a notion I can imagine certain writers would bridle at, but Self only nods philosophically, "Well, maybe I am a copywriter that's gone to the dark side, I don't know."
. . .
This is an edited extract of Gordon Comstock's two-page interview with Will Self that appears in the August issue of CR, out now. CR subscribers can read the interview in full, here.
Gordon Comstock is a freelance copywriter and blogs at notvoodoo.blogspot.com. More details on Will Self's latest book, Liver, are available at the penguin.co.uk website. See also Self's blog at will-self.com.
Illustration by Samuel Rogers, samuelesquire.blogspot.com.
Before a brief role in Catwoman, a fabled appearance on the This Morning coffee table, CR also had some airtime in a mid-90s episode of Mr. Bean. It so happens that this 1995 episode was screened on ITV3 last night. It's given us another chance to marvel in disbelief at the character who is clearly dressed to look like ‘a creative'...
An eagle-eyed collegue on Design Week – foregoing Midsomer Murders for the Bean rerun on ITV3 – noticed that in Hair by Mr. Bean of London, where the wobbly-faced mainman gets all flustered in a barber's shop and ends up cutting the hair of three unsuspecting customers, one of them happens to be weilding an old issue of CR.
Gavin here informs me that yes, both he and Patrick had seen the episode before. But why was he recalling this through gritted teeth?
Well, let's take a quick look at the attire of choice for the mid-90s creative in the episode. Beige suit jacket over white T-shirt? Check. Sunglasses? Mhmm. The latest mobile phone? Oh yes. And ponytail? Why of course.
Can anyone recall actually dressing like this?
For those of you wishing to relive some classic Beanean comedy, the relevant clips are below. But if you want to cut to the good stuff, the CR-weilding chap makes an appearance at 4.02 and brandishes his copy around 4.13. It's a pretty good cover by the looks.
In the second sequence, where our creative gets his hair cut by Mr. Bean, he sits in the chair at 0.44 and in an example of some excellent continuity picks the issue up ‘twice' at 1.02. While engrossed in his CR (it looks like he's looking for a freelancer in the index section) Mr. Bean inadvertantly cuts his ponytail off. Good job Mr. Bean.
But what of Catwoman incident? Well, in the 2004 film, Halle Berry plays the feline superhero who is, by day, a graphic designer named Patience Phillips. So we were asked by the producers if we could send a batch of CRs over for her bookshelves.
To date, I can't find anyone who's spotted them. And I believe someone here in the office even watched all the way through...
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Drawings by Joe Kievett
Title: Terry Pratchett
Via Data is Nature's @MrPrudence
Atley
Via Data is Nature's @MrPrudence
Atley
Graphite drawings & title by John Borowicz
Folkert
Folkert
Scottish independent beermaker BrewDog has taken unconventional packaging to a whole new level for its 55% proof The End of History. As well as claiming it to be the most alcoholic beer in the world, BrewDog co-founder James Watt also believes it to be the most expensive. A nattily-attired bottle of the Belgian blond ale will set you back a princely £500.
Suggested serving is in a whisky tumbler, as opposed to necking straight from the furry bottle
12 bespoke bottles have been produced. According to your preference you could opt for one of seven dead stoats, four grey squirrels or, for those wanting something a little less common, there's the single hare.
Watt suggests the beer is, “An audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion."
For ale connoisseurs and the flush of cash, purchases can be made from the BrewDog website.
Thanks to Ann-Marie on the Creative Review LinkedIn group for pointing us in the direction of this story.
We just had a play with our very own Dress Up Designer set, included with CR's current Summer Bumper Book O' Fun issue. Created by Peepshow's Elliot Thoburn there's a whole host of achingly hip looks to give your creative duo...
So, to start off, here are our two budding creatives on the page, in their smalls (the firm grip the chap is sporting is for his cut-out iPhone of course). You can also download the templates for him and her from the website address included within the issue, should you not want to deface your new CR.
A good few weeks' growth on the 'creative beard' and our chap also gains some nice skinny jeans:
Hello! That's a handsome shirt sir! Not to mention a tasty timepiece. Meanwhile, our creative lady has found a pretty cool T-shirt (Ocean Pacific no less) and is now rocking a nice pair of shorts too. Must be summer.
Now he gets shoes, while she receives a belt, a pendant, a hoodie and – very important this – a nice bag to carry ones knitting in:
All the clothes come with folding tabs so you can alter the look of your creatives as you wish (see top image for the full free-standing look complete with shades, bangle and bags).
The more adventurous among you many even have added your own additions to the wardrobe and, if so, we'd love to see them.
Thanks to Jasmin for her sterling efforts with the scalpel in the CR office! Dress Up Designer appears in our current August issue, out now.
OK, I’m back home now from 12 days of ICON followed by San Diego Comic-Con. At both events there was a lot of talk about how 2-D illustration is (once again) “dead”. Previously killed by photography, illustration is now suffering death-by-animation. Or rebirth, as many point out. Naturally, the debate was instigated by Adobe, purveyor of motion-graphics software, and publishers such as WIRED and the NY Times, who are increasingly moving to online and iPad delivery. Graphic media writer Michael Dooley in Print Magazine’s online presence has assembled comments from ICON attendees about it. By the way, the RSS feed on Imprint’s column for illustration is worth subscribing to.
Of course, just as the illustration community is discussing the impending motion-graphics turn as the event of the immediate future, those who have been immersed in it are already sticking it in the museum. You animators might like to submit your work to this exhibition being curated by the Guggenheim:
Developed by YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in collaboration with HP, YouTube Play hopes to attract innovative, original, and surprising videos from around the world, regardless of genre, technique, background, or budget. …Now through July 31, 2010, participants are invited to submit new or existing videos created within the last two years at youtube.com/play. Submissions may include any form of creative video, including animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos, and entirely new art forms.
Meanwhile, more illustrators are transitioning into gallery venues with their still images. The photo here is of the exhibition opening at Nucleus Gallery, showing works by attendees at ICON. Is this where illustration art will increasingly go if motion graphics is the medium of the future?
Posted by Jaleen Grove on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Some nice music promos. First up is this great new video for Grum's track Through The Night (still shown above), directed by The General Assembly...
The video will no doubt draw comparisons to Spike Jonze's 1994 Sabotage video for Beastie Boys – just because it features moustachioed cops from a bygone era going about their business in a tongue-in-cheek style. However, we're very much of the opinion here at CR towers that this video for Grum is worthy of merit in its own right. Set in the 70s it features two buddy cop partners who spend a lot of time together - on and off duty. Perhaps too much time together... The casting is great – as is the acting and characterisation, and, well, it's very, very funny. Check it out:
The General Assembly is repped by Townhall in the US and by Skin Flicks in Europe.
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Last we heard of Chilly Gonzales – he was spotted playing piano in the foyer of ad agency BBH in London – but here he is starring in the video for his track I Am Europe which is, essentially, a montage of footage from a feature length film he's made called Ivory Tower which is also the name of his forthcoming album. The film (that also stars Feist, Tiga and Peaches) charts the story of two champion chess-playing brothers who fall in love with the same girl... Yes, people, more tongue-in-cheek music video action:
I Am Europe credits:
Director: Adam Traynor
Editor: Pierre Boittard
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Next up is Blink director (and one of our 2008 batch of Creative Futures) Tomas Mankovsky's new video for Dancing Pigeons' track, Ritalin. The promo features two hillbilly characters who meet on a deserted stretch of road one night to dual – in glorious slo-mo. Their weapons of choice: one has a flame thrower, the other a fire extinguisher. But what will be the outcome of this modern day dual? Find out...
Ritalin credits:
Director: Tomas Mankovsky
Production company: Blink Productions
Producer: Patrick Craig
Commissioned by Diesel:U:Music
Casting director: Sophie North
Editor: Julian Tranquille
Post Production Supervisor: Justin Brukman
Production Manager: Adam Shaw
DOP: Adam Frisch
Art directors: Arthur De Borman & Sam Ludgate
Special effects: Artem
Special effects supervisor: Simon Tayler
Special effects technicians: Toby Stewart, Jonathan Bickerdike, Matt Loader
VFX Producer: Justin Brukman
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Director Alex Turvey got cake artist Lily Vanilli involved to make, among other things, a huge cakey heart – in this new video for track Carnal Love by Ash:
Carnal Love credits:
Director: Alex Turvey
Producer: Ann-Marie Negre
DOP: Daniel Trapp
Cake artist: Lily Vanilli
Design / art direction: Alex Turvey
Editor: Bradley Josiah @ Family
Post: Alex Turvey
Grade: Simone Grattarola @ Rushes
Set Builder: James Hamilton
Assistant Art Dept: Kristina Feldman
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OK, so the next film isn't a music video - but an online film to promote clothing brand Firetrap. The brand's mascot, a rather mean looking garden gnome called Deadly, has been absent from the brand's communication for over a year. Now he's making a comeback via a series of online films - of which this is the first. No prizes for recognising which classic Ridley Scott film the piece takes its cues from...
Deadly Returns credits:
Client: Firetrap
Director: Steve Glashier
Agency: New Selecta
Producer: Sean Stuart
Commissioner: John Hassay
Graphic designer and BMX rider and enthusiast Johann Chan approached Seb Lester to create the graphics for a bike frame he's designed for bike company Emer Bicycles – the Emer Swift. Here are some photos of the frame and decals - and also some shots of the bike fully made up and ready to roll...
"It's a 24inch cruiser with modern BMX geometry," explains Chan of the bike frame's design. "The geometry puts the rider in the same riding position as a modern BMX, but it runs large 24 inch, skinny wheels and high set gearing for a faster ride."
Of the commission, Lester explains: "I was contacted earlier this year about designing the graphics for a new BMX frame, designed by Emer Bicycles. BMX was a big part of my life for the best part of ten years, and I still follow the scene, so I was really pleased to help out. Emer said they wanted a logo that conveyed speed and dynamic energy, as that's what the bike is all about. It's a very light and fast cruiser with 24" wheels and modern BMX geometry. It seemed like a strong idea to make the letters out of the swooping flight path of a Swift with the inline treatment accentuating movement as well. The lettering style developed is a very modern, cursive, flourished script. Emer wanted the logo to look strong and robust, like the frame, so it's got a solidly constructed feel to it without looking clunky.
"The logo took shape quickly," Lester continues. "I always start with very loose spontaneous pen and paper sketches as it's the quickest way to get ideas down. Once roughs were approved (some of his sketches shown below) I went about drawing the vector outlines. I'm pleased with the results. Emer seem to be too – they've produced a small run of tshirts, screen printed with the logo in a metallic gold ink, which look excellent."
Whilst Seb Lester's lettering style might be recognisable to many readers of the CR blog, we'd imagine that hardly any of you know that Lester used to ride freestyle BMX back in the 80s. Chan interviews Lester about those glory days on the Emer Swift website - which includes a photo of Lester performing a bar ride (standing on the handlebars) during a 1989 flatland competition:
Says Lester in that interview: "In [both] my line of work and BMX you have to be highly focused and patient to progress. So to some extent I think I learnt about the rewards of single minded focus and hard work from BMX."
It's that time again where we post up a few record sleeves that have landed on our desks recently. First up is the gatefold CD sleeve for Chris Coco's new album, Feel Free Live Good...
As well as being sent the album, we received a copy of this poster too:
The artwork is by Anthony Burrill in collaboration with No Days Off;
"Anthony and I are old friends and have collaborated on projects before," explains Coco. "Anthony and Jack Feathrestone are also creating visuals for the album launch show at the Big Chill Festival," he adds.
Inside the gatefold of the sleeve, there is an insert containing various graphic patterns;
Feel Free Live Good is released this month on Big Chill Recordings.
This anomalous record sleeve, designed by David Vigh, is for Michael Morph's Something For The Weakened album - out this week on Pure Mint Records. The final cover composition was essensially a collaboration with Morph himself, who initiated the idea of using magazine cut outs to augment Vigh's initial cover concept which Morph describes as a "scary, crazy plant." Vigh then came up with the idea of shooting Morph's facial features, using an angle that suited the image.
We posted the video to Baby I'm Yours – the new single from Ed Banger Records' act Breakbot a couple of weeks ago, but we just recieved a promo CD of the track (which includes an Aeroplane remix) today (promo front cover shown above, reverse shown below). The single artwork is by Irina Dakeva - who created the animated video. The sleeve is made up of a collection of Dakeva's illustrations – she painted over 2000 images using watercolours - which were also used in the making of the animated video (click here to see the video).
Along with the CD promo, we were also sent this flick-book, which recreates a segment of the music video – as well as two large pin badges sporting Dakeva's artwork:
Here we have the gatefold CD sleeve for the newly released 'Farewell My Lovely' by The R.G.Morrison - signed to Loose Records. Only 1000 units have been made and each copy has been assembled by hand by the band members at their Devon homes...
The ink splats inside the gatefold were applied by hand, making each copy different to the next.
Ben O'Brien aka Ben The Illustrator was commissioned by Andy McNeil of The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra to create this dreamy illustrated sleeve for their eponymously titled album.
O'Brien, who mainly designs idyllic landscapes, was sent a demo of the album and briefed to produce a sleeve with a fairly authentic Canadian feel, using a natural scene which could be representative of the band name and its use of the traditional Sunburst Triolian guitar – note the 'f-holes' on the cable car.
Deciding on a predominantly red colour palette, and using the sky as the focus, O' Brien created a scene which appears across the front and back cover of the gatefold CD in which the day to night transitions and the mixture of old and new - which are apparent in the music - become part of the design.
"We'd always aimed for a package that fuses both fresh, 21st century creativity, in the music and artwork itself, but also feels somewhat beautifully aged, like a lot of Andy's instruments and vintage vocal samples," says O'Brien.
Graphite drawings by Marissa Textor
Title: Joseph Beuys
Via timolvo
Folkert
Via timolvo
Folkert
I’m really enjoying these paper-cut shadowbox pictures made by UK artist Peter Slight. There are big ones and small ones, and he’s got other goodies in his Flickr portfolio as well.
Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Illustration, paper cuts, Peter Slight
Paintings by Peter Zimmermann
Title: Deleuze
Folkert
Folkert
+ More BDiF People
Folkert
Photographs: Across America by ck/ck
Title: Goethe
Folkert
Folkert
35mm from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.
Sarah Biermann, Torsten Strer, Felix Meyer, and Pascal Monaco crammed thirty-five of their favourite movies into this slick 2-minute piece of motion graphics. The animation makes this a refreshing change of pace from the countless “minimalist movie poster” designs littering the Internet these days.
Can you name all thirty-five movies?
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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18 comments
Tags: Animation, movies
I’m at ICON in LA, and if you’re in the area you really ought to try and get in to one of the events.
At the book table, I was really excited to find this textbook for drawing by Michael Fleishman. As someone who has taught drawing in the past and may do so again in the future, I have to say there are very few textbooks I would recommend. Instructional books have never been terribly exciting – you best learn to draw by drawing, in my opinion, and the old classics like The Natural Way to Draw and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain are still good. But kinda boring.
Fleishman’s book is for illustrators, for a start. Secondly, it isn’t one person’s magic-bullet how-to book. It’s more a compendium of advice from dozens of contemporary illustrators, using their words. Third, there are billions of images in all styles – from the high realism of the cover image (by David Bowers) to the best crudest sketch to the most wacked out stuff. Fourth, although it features work and words from some of the current hottest illustrators, it isn’t limited to them. There’s input here from every kind of illustrator, many of them instructors. While the general flavor is “American” looking, it includes artists from all over the world. Finally, this is the ultimate how-to book for people who hate reading, typeset with lots of headings with text broken up in swallowable amounts, that you can open it at random, scan, and get something out of.
Although it offers the most to those who know the least, I also found it interesting to read what people I know are saying about their own work. Perhaps the most fabulous aspect of the book is that it imparts not just great tips and approaches to drawing, but it communicates a way of life. It has things to say about Fulfillment. For people like us who live and breathe the making of images, and want to learn more or initiate someone else into this life, this is the illustrator’s guide to the galaxy.
UPDATE
There was a request for me to post some shots of the page layouts, so with Michael Fleishman’s input I selected the following:
As you can see, there’s a great balance of images and text, and a variety of images. I especially like the headphone girls there by Yuko Shimizu. And each chapter ends with a summary and ideas for exercises.
Posted by Jaleen Grove on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Installation by Sam Songailo
Title and Excerpt: C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity—only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated.
He could see also (but the word "seeing" is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells—people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like—ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities.
It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: But afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole figure of there enamored and inter –inanimate circling was suddenly revealed as the mere superfluities of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into it’s own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of striping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation he looked about him…
Atley
It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity—only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated.
He could see also (but the word "seeing" is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells—people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like—ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities.
It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: But afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole figure of there enamored and inter –inanimate circling was suddenly revealed as the mere superfluities of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into it’s own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of striping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation he looked about him…
Atley
Illustrations from Diagram Graphics by Kazuo Abe and Fumihiko Nishioka
Collected by design et typo
Title: Edward Tufte
Folkert
Folkert
Works by Eben Goff
Title: Dr. Seuss
Folkert
Folkert
Photographs by Nicolai Howalt
Title: J.G. Ballard
Atley
Atley
“TACK’S CARTOON TIPS have been pepared for the purpose of aiding those desirous of entering the field of Comic art. I have used these “Tips” in my personal instruction classes with marked success”
From a Flickr slideshow / scan of B. “Tack” Knight’s 1923 instructional book on cartooning.
Posted by Matt Forsythe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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13 comments
Tags: Cartooning, Comics, How-To, tips
Over on his Flickr account, Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley shares an interesting look at how the flow of panels his comics has improved from earlier volumes.
Take this page from Book 3:
And compare to one from Book 5:
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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7 comments
Tags: Bryan Lee O'Malley, Comics, Scott Pilgrim
I stumbled onto Ginette Lapalme’s Flickr account by way of Michael DeForge on Twitter. I love the playful experimental nature of these watercolour sketches.
Even more, I love these painted sticks:
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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2 comments
Tags: Ginette Lapalme, Illustration, watercolour
Yes! Brian Taylor has released the last in his series of six letterpress prints, Bumtown Bruiser. The universe of Brian’s Candykiller universe is one born out of 1920’s Fleischer animation, EC horror comics, and everything in-between.
Here’s the full set of prints:
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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4 comments
Tags: brian taylor, prints
While his Guardian strip is on hiatus, Tom Gauld is doing a weekly comic over on Flickr. Fantastic news!
Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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2 comments
Tags: comic, Tom Gauld