the class-o-matic

2012-01-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

2012-01-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

digone here's the link for the photoshop tutorials

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

makes sure you review the sections on 1. making selections and 2. using layers, then repeat ! both are found in the Photoshop CS3, in the getting started section ...

2012-01-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

Classic Dieter Rams, Dietrich Lubs watches - circa 1972, they're barely there ... that lovely rational simplicity, which was a constant feature of Rams' genius.

2012-01-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

The artist's bio, illustrator Ruth Marten

Born and living in N.Y., Ruth Marten has worn several hats, in spite of the hair. From 1972 to 1980 she was an important figure in the tattoo underground and, as one of the few women practicing the craft, influenced people's ideas about body decoration. Working during the disco and punk era, she also tattooed in the Musee D'Art Moderne de La Ville de Paris during the 10th Biennale de Paris in 1977.

Hired by Jean-Paul Goude for her first illustration (and for 30 years after) she illustrated books, albums and magazines and is most associated with the "Year in Provence" books of Peter Mayle, art-directed for A.A.Knopf by Carol Devine Carson. That love of the printed image informs her newest interest: changing, through over-drawing and collage, the configuration and content of 18th century engravings.

Her book "Histoire un-Naturelle," published for her 2007 London exhibit at Isis Gallery, is a catalogue of the work that came on the heels of a 17 year obsession with hair. Her drawing, painting and sculpture has been exhibited at the Aldrich Museum, the Tang Museum, the Halsey Institute, and is represented in many collections -- most recently in the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

2012-01-16T15:09:00.000-08:00

in a time of plastic hearts, LED's and wifi jungles- here are simple things made by hand, made for the hand for use in the world - all from the wünderful Kaufmann Mercantile daily functional design, for the humans still among us

2012-01-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

some examples of the classic London Underground map, the red text is

linked to a little animation of how the maps have changed over time, the other

images will, if clicked, enlarge.

2012-01-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

the Design two- "it's not what you know ... ,

BUT who you know " list "

design two, assignment one, you'll see.

Walter Gropius

Edgar Brandt

Harley Earl

Alexey Brodovitch

David Carson

The Eames

Art Nouveau

Norman BelGeddes

U&Lc

Weiner Werkstatte

Arne Jacobson

Marcello Nizzoli

Wesley and Sean

Tangerine Studio

Joseph Hofmann

Henry VanDerVelde

Gerrit Reitveld

Saul Bass

Rudy Van derLans

George Jensen

George Nelson

Peter Behrens

Dieter Ram

Adbusters

Georg Kleeman

Richard Sapper

Peter Saville

GTF

William Morris

Charles Rennie Macintosh

the Bauhaus

Hoefler & Frere Jones

Micheal Graves

Marian Bantjes

Frank Lloyd Wright

Phillipe Starck

Chermayeff & Geismar

Norman Foster

Alvar Alto

Milton Glaser

R. Buckminster Fuller

Eric Gill

Brad Holland

Herb Lubalin

The Arts and Crafts Movement

Memphis Group

Herbert Mayer

William Van Allen

Marrianne Brandt

Jonathan Ive

Alvin Lustig

Chip Kidd

Tangerine

Paul Rand

Henry Van de Velde

William Morris

April Greiman

Welles Coates

Michael Beruit

Raymond Lowey

Peter Saville

Robin and Lucienne Day

Wally Olins

Mies van der Rohe

Emigre

Ray Gun

Ellen Lupton

Tobias Freres

Winterhouse

Joseph Muller Brockmann

LeCorbusier

Tibor Kalman

Barbara Kruger

Seymour Chwast

Pentagram

Push Pin Studios

Aubrey Beardsley

the Dadaists

John Heartfield

Ettore Stottas

the Constructivists

Hector Guimard

Firmin Didot

Jasper Morrison

Christopher Wren

Bruno Matheson

Victor Horta

Antonin Gaudi

Alexey Brodovitch

Alphonse Mucha

Fredric Law Olmstead

Alessi

Rene Lalique

Johannis Itten

Richard Neutra

2012-01-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

d is for designers, at work in the dark, E is for effort, required from the start !

assimilate the following people (D1)

digital one, assignment one ! ~ introduce yourselves to each of these graphic designers & typographers -look carefully at their work, learn to recognize their styles, and read about their lives and influences.

One of the names is quite jumbled, mixed up on purpose. If you can decode/deduce who it is, beaux Koo extra marks ..... She's part of a famous design couple, and an influential company/magazine specializing one might say in all type of types. due second class. please, no showing off, digital one only

2012-01-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

my new class schedule for the
winter 2012, click to enlarge ..

2012-01-05T00:19:00.001-08:00

something you all should know, courtesy of one of my personal heros, mid fielder Vinnie Jones

2011-12-22T22:24:00.001-08:00

if there is a Santa ( and I secretly think there is ) this is defintley what he drives on delivery... Merry Christmas !

2011-12-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

While at a New York School of Interior Design's show, entitled - “Modern in the Past Tense: Revisiting the Landmark Exhibition “Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was”, I saw a beautiful chair that I had never seen before.

As I'd never seen this design before, I was quite surprised when later that day while walking past the shop Artifacts of the 20th Century on Crosby Street, and saw a similar chair in their window! the "Pretzel" chair by George Nelson (1908-1986) from 1952.'

George Nelson is one of the preeminent design figures of the twentieth- century.

There is nothing that he could not do. Nelson was a terrific graphic designer and a supremely talented furniture designer too.

His (almost) forty-year relationship with Herman Miller, Inc. began in 1947 when he joined the company as its design director, is a testament to this. While at Herman Miller, Nelson was responsible for bringing on board Charles and Rae Eames, Harry Bertoia, and Isamu Noguchi.

In 1955 Nelson opened his own design practice, George Nelson and Associates, and hired many talented people there as well, including Irving Harper, who understood design in the same way that Nelson did, as "an internal, necessary, and ineradicable logic inherent in the fabricated, synthetic world"

Nelson was incredibly eloquent and wrote about his work better than anyone else could.

He was the co-managing editor of Architectural Forum (from 1935) and founded Industrial Design magazine (1953). Reading his interviews with giants of twentieth- century design like Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, and the Luckner brothers, which he conducted while living in Europe during the 1930's, and later published in Pencil Points (a magazine which eventually became known as Progressive Architecture), gives us insight into modern design and architecture that is essential to our understanding of the period.

The Pretzel Chair is made out of bent wood and was initially referred to as the Laminated Chair. The curved back, which gives the chair its name, and reminds one of the great Art Nouveau furniture with similar sinuous lines. Bent laminated wood is used not only for the backrest and its twin supports, but also for the four legs that cross underneath the seat.

In 2008, on the 100th anniversary of Nelson’s birth, Vitra placed the chair back into production in a limited Anniversary Edition of 1000 pieces. Nelson’s entire archive is now part of the Vitra Design Museum.

The exhibit at the NYSID, “Modern in the Past Tense: Revisiting the Landmark Exhibition 'Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was'", presents some key pieces of furniture, borrowed from private collectors, to give us a sense of what was on view in the original exhibition.

2011-11-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

You must click on this image, which will take you to the artists site. Then, make sure you click on his images, something extraordinary will happen if you do.

" Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."
~cj, Seattle, 2008

2011-11-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

from the department of "Wow, like totally brilliant" are these innovative

prints by Berlin based designer Sarah Illenberger.

She covered some cars with finger-paint (really !) and then made these

huge prints with them, what a fantastic yet simple idea. Low tech for

the win !

2011-11-26T14:58:00.001-08:00

Back in the days of yore when a computer’s interface was, well, less than “friendly” and only understood by the most entrenched computer programmers, a young Steve Jobs took a tour of Xerox PARC.

The company was developing a new graphical user interface (GUI) for computers marketed for corporations, but Jobs saw the future: user-friendly, personal computers that used GUI. He quickly licensed the technology so he could create a “democratic” personal computer.

Eventually, a young woman with a Ph.D. in fine arts came along and helped to create the fonts and icons that made people fall in love with the Apple interface.

That woman was Susan Kare. Back in the early 1980s, Kare was a recent graduate of New York University who had just moved to California’s Bay Area. But even securing a job as a curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the young artist felt like there was more she could be doing.

Specifically, her own art. So, while she was sculpting a steel razorback hog, a friend of hers, Hertzfeld, who was a lead software architect for Macintosh computers, told her that some computer guys were interested in her talent.

Not exactly what she had in mind, but sure. Kare started out designing fonts for the Mac OS, including the first ever proportionally spaced font

Jobs was satisfied with the literary-looking font, and Kare stuck around to start sketching ideas — on graph paper — for the navigational icons that first helped regular people use real, solid and fluent technology. You know the rest of the story .....

2011-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

Isaac Cruickshank

British Social critic and artist circa 1777

Published by S.W. Fores, 50 Piccadilly corner of Sachville St., London 1799 March 18.

This remarkable hand coloured political cartoon print shows Miss Hibernia seated at right wearing dress decorated with Irish harps; seated around the table are members of John Bull's family, identified as various taxes which are likely to be imposed on the Irish as a result of William Pitt's proposed Irish union.

A grotesque figure seated center and labeled "Isacc Income!!" is taking more than his share "Pr. An." He is admonished by "Abraham Hat Stamp" who says, "Dont be so boiseterous, there is enough for us all" and by Polly Powder Tax, "Really Brother I am quite ashamed of you." John Bull, raising a knife, adds, "Cant you take what comes to your share like the rest of the Family, why you swallow more than all the rest put togeather. Miss Hibernia will be frightened at your prodigious stomach and break off the connection!!" Miss Hibernia states, "Really Mr. Bull ... I fear I must decline all thoughts of the intended Union - your family is so very large...."

To better put this in context - Scot artist Cruickshank was working perilously close to the edge of civil survival. Whilst "the people" loved his work, Royalty, political radicals and those in power did not, and he was often threatened with violence or imprisonment.

He mercilessly skewered the Ruling Class, Napoleon et al. with his direct, scathing, and occasionally wonderful but quite crude illustrations. Those depicting the Royals "en flagrente delicto" were particularly popular for obvious reasons, and he was, along with contemporary Gillray - one of only a few now well known dissident cartoonists. He had an extraordinary wit and a relatively long career, dying at 55 of far too much dancing.

click on the image to enlarge it.

2011-11-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

Sinead O'Connor

Fred Woodward, 1992 Editorial design
Magazine, Type design
Art director: Fred Woodward
Director of photography: Laurie Kratochvil
Photographer: Andrew Macpherson
Publisher: Straight Arrow Publishers
Client: Rolling Stone Magazine

2011-11-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Fontalicious !

2011-11-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918; hostilities formally ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice ("at the 11th hour" refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 a.m.)

The day was specifically dedicated by King George V as a day of remembrance of members of the armed forces who were killed during World War I.

It was called, rather optimistically as " the war to end all wars". Ask me about it, my great grandfather told me many stories about it when I was a child, and so it became an object of imagination for me.

The soldiers who went and never came back, or came back and carried the terrible memories for life were called "the lost generation".

Perhaps, more than any other war earlier, largely due to advancements in weapons technologies and the way the war was reported daily to the home front - WW1 poignantly illustrated, the indifferent cruelty and ultimate pointlessness of war.

" I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing; -- it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us? "

(Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929)

2011-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

On June 10th, 1947, SAAB showed the world the prototype, but the first run of 20 cars did not leave the Trollhättan factory until Summer 1949 and full scale production wasn't until December of that year.

The car was available in only one color - green !

Directional arrows standard, lights optional!

The 92 had a two cylinder, two stroke, 764 cm3, 25/28 hp engine based on a DKW design.

The aerodynamic shape gave the car a drag coefficient of 0.35. One odd thing was the absence of a boot lid. Access to the luggage compartment (which also contained the battery) was via the back seat. An improved model, the 92B was introduced in Autumn 1952. This is what I want for Christmas, so start saving now !

2011-11-10T08:51:00.001-08:00

Vienna at the turn of the 20th century witnessed a great surge

in scientific and artistic innovation, just a few years shy of the

collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Art Nouveau was prevalent throughout European art and

design and took a particularly strong hold in Germany,

where it was known as Jugendstil (youth-style). The

ubiquitous movement was epitomized at Munich, but took

on a unique form in Austria. The Union of Austrian Artists

was founded by the painter Gustav Klimt out of the coffeehouse

bohemian culture of Vienna and spurred by rebellion against

what was called “historicism”: the proclivity of the Vienna

Künstlerhaus towards conservative, classical forms.

Klimt and his followers considered the prevailing art of their

contemporaries as grievously out-dated, and unfit for

the changing social needs of a new machine age.

2011-11-07T15:35:00.001-08:00

way too cool for school,

From the department of - " See Nothing Ever Really Changes" ... these shoes which were a huge hit at this seasons fashion week in Milan and NYC, are identical to shoes which I used to "sell" out of the back door of my very first real job at Crocket and Jones Shoes for the then princely sum of 4 Guineas - hundreds of years ago. What's next, bellbottoms ? you just watch, me boyo ...

2011-11-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

Alexey Brodovitch was a photographer, designer and teacher. However, he was most famous for his art direction, primarily for the magazine Harper's Bazaar, in which he re-invented magazine layout & page design. He spent his early life in and out of the military before spending time in Paris, which is where he began his career in the graphic arts. His first major success came after winning a poster competition for a local theater, the 2nd place poster was created by a short, little known Spanish guy named Picasso.

2011-11-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

A recent image (large poster) by former student Mohamed Thiam.
Mo's doing graduate studies in design at the Cranbrook Institute.

2011-11-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

2011-11-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

William Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, on 24 March 1834. The son of a wealthy businessman, he enjoyed a comfortable childhood before going to Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford.

He originally intended to take holy orders, but his reading of the social criticism of Carlyle, Kingsley and Ruskin led him to reconsider the Church and devote his life to art.

After leaving Oxford, Morris was briefly articled to G. E. Street, the Gothic Revival architect, but he soon left, having determined to become a painter. His admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites led him to be introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose influence can be seen on Morris's only surviving painting La Belle Iseult.

Arts and Crafts Movement

In the 1860s Morris decided that his creative future lay in the field of the decorative arts. His career as a designer began when he decorated the Red House, Bexleyheath, which had been built for him by Philip Webb.

The success of this venture led to the formation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861. The 'Firm' (later renamed Morris & Co) was particularly well-known for its stained glass, examples of which can be seen in churches throughout Britain. Morris produced some 150 designs which are often characterised by their delightful foliage patterns.

Among his many other works were Icelandic and classical translations, Sigurd the Volsung, The Pilgrims of Hope, and a series of prose romances which included A Dream of John Ball, News from Nowhere, and The Well at the World's End.

Politics

Morris entered national politics in 1876 as treasurer of the Eastern Question Association. This was a post he was to occupy in two further radical organisations: the National Liberal League and the Radical Union.

He soon became disillusioned with the Liberals and in 1883 joined the socialist Democratic Federation. After disagreements with the Federation's leader, H. M. Hyndman, he formed the Socialist League, and later the Hammersmith Socialist Society.

During the 1880s he was probably the most active propagandist for the socialist cause, giving hundreds of lectures and speeches throughout the country.

The Kelmscott Press

In 1890 Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in premises near his last home at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith (now the headquarters of the William Morris Society). Morris designed three typefaces for the Press: Golden, Chaucer, and Troy. These were inspired respectively by fifteenth-century Italian and German typography. In all, sixty-six volumes were printed by the Kelmscott Press, the most impressive of which was its magnificent edition of Chaucer which was published in 1896. Morris died at Kelmscott House on 3 October 1896.

2011-11-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

Classic "moderne" watch design, the first - circa 1910, the other a WW2 pilots watch, circa 1938. Notice if you will in the first, the round robust case and bezel and as well, the wonderful over sized winder, the Art Nouveau numbers, and in the second, the groovy glow in the dark Radium all black face dial.

In such an interesting way, the stylistic differences immediately obvious between the two watches, echos the similar distinctions found between the two so very different worlds of pre & post war Europe itself.

The former was enthusiastically decorative, rather benign and likely hand made, the latter watch - simple, formal and much more utilitarian, and mass produced. just like Lady Gaga

2011-10-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

2011-10-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs on Creativity

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

– Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1995

2011-10-30T11:26:00.001-07:00

Christian Küpper, who adopted the pseudonym Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883. A Dutch artist - practicing painting, writing, poetry, typography and architecture, but he had been more successful writing about art than working as a studio artist. Quite adept at making new contacts due to his flamboyant, impulsive personality, he had many productive connections in the art world.

In 1917 he founded the group De Stijl and the periodical of the same name together with the architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils, Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo. The periodical propagated the group's theories.

The term De Stijl has come to represent their common aims and utopian vision.

The essential idea underlying De Stijl’s radical utopian program was the creation of a universal aesthetic language based in part on a rejection of the decorative excesses of Art Nouveau in favor of a simple, logical style that emphasized construction and function, one that would be appropriate for every aspect of modern life.

They simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.

THEO VAN DOESBURG
The Netherlands, Utrecht, 1883 - 1931
"There is an old and a new consciousness of time. The old is connected with the individual. The new is connected with the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal is revealing itself in the world-war as well as in the art of the present day." - Theo Van Doesburg

2011-10-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

I wish I was in this band, I think I'd fit right in, just like Ronnie Wood. Where's my bloody hat ?

2011-10-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

When Selfridge's (the London Dept. store ) opened in 1909 it displayed the Bleriot XI, the first airplane to cross the English Channel from Dover to Calais, ushering in an era of glamorous association between travel, technology and luxury goods. The Concorde brought this era to its pinnacle, and its grounding and removal from service also brought the era to a close.

(btw. the pictures above are of the Selfridges in Birmingham ... quite amazing ! especially so, if you knew Birmingham ...)

The fastest commercial plane ever engineered couldn't keep up with political and economic changes that made it untenable to operate, relegating it to the status of technological dinosaur for use only in museums and books.

Olympus is a celebration of the tremendous technological feat of Concorde and also a eulogy for the elegance and aspirations that died with it.

Using a maintenance manual purchased on Ebay for £6 (12$) and a lot of styrofoam, paper and glue, designers PostlerFerguson engage in a bit of recent-past archaeology to construct a full-scale model of the Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 jet engine from the Concorde.

Taking the form of an abstracted, three-dimensional technical drawing, it balances the beautiful technical perfection of the engine against the distance between today's budget-airline reality and the era of technological optimism it comes from.

2011-10-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Creative Review highlighted this new issue of stamps from the Royal Mail by Hat-Trick, celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The stamps feature images of David Tennant as Hamlet, Anthony Sher as Prospero, Chuk Iwuji as Henry VI, Paul Schofield as King Lear, Sara Kestleman as Titania, Ian McKellen and Francesca Annis as Romeo and Juliet accompanied by a line from a play rendered in gorgeous expressive lettering. I know that lettering has been applied to portraits for centuries, but these have a particularly graphic novel feel about them — the expressiveness, the iconic phrases used, the packing of text into white space, these are all ideas best known (to me at least) from the world of comics. Makes a lovely change from your usual setting of Shakespeare for stuff like this in an antique revival type — and is perfect for a company like the RSC. Get them from Royal Mail here.

2011-10-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

Were five stolen masterpieces worth
£400m crushed in rubbish truck after
'art heist of the century'?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047140/Five-masterpieces-stolen-Paris-museum-art-heist-century-crushed-rubish-truck.html

2011-10-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

the MUSEUM of Obsolete Objects

2011-10-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

click if you dare

2011-10-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yakov G. Chernikov (1889–1951) Yakov G. Chernikov (1889–1951), was a Russian artist, designer, and architect learned in classical and modern styles. As a draftsman he was on par with Piranesi and Rembrandt; his most forward-thinking drawings resemble the style of Yoshitaka Amano. This combination of knowledge and skill made him one of the most accomplished Russian Constructivist writers and architects; Chernikov designed sixty buildings—although most were not built—and wrote numerous books about architecture and graphic design.

In the late 1920s the state-controlled world of Soviet architecture began to turn against the Constructivists. In 1932 Stalin tired of the pointless political debate between Constructivism’s remaining supporters and many critics. He barred architects from political speech and limited Soviet architecture to classical revival. Unable to practice in his Constructivist style, Chernikov began drawing architectural fantasies that were usually not intended to be built. But he still needed work free from politics and in the 1940s he began to study and draw typefaces, an activity unlikely to draw attention.

Intended for used in an architecture textbook Chernikov’s typeface drawings are examinations of historical alphabets. These are not the overly rationalized alphabets of the renaissance, although Chernikov did examine the alphabets of Durer and Tory. Chernikov’s letters are modeled on historical forms, drawn onto grids with notation about proportion and geometry. The grids are arranged as tables for easy comparison. Consistent with Chernikov’s belief that graphics are superior to words these tables can be understood without Russian literacy. Most of the alphabets are Russian Cyrillic but there are also examinations of Slavonic, Latin, Greek, Phoenician, Persian Cuneiform, Cypriot, Demotic, Hebrew, Burmese, Samaritan, Tibetan, Syriac, Ethiopic, Palmyrian, Manchu, Arabic, Formosan, Iberian, and Georgian alphabets.

Chernikov also excelled at non-objective drawing, leading him to develop complex ornaments in a new constructed style. His ornamental drawings reveal a powerful imagination and great technical skill. Chernikov achieved accuracy and beauty that rival great Islamic ornamentation without aping it. At a glance these ornaments resemble Spirograph drawings; examination reveals myriad circles painstakingly drawn along a path combine to form lively gestures. Chernikov drew by hand what today can seem only possible with a computer.

2011-10-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

These days we too often use terms like original and visionary indiscriminately,

but here, sadly, is a rare instance where those words actually seem to fit. Steve Jobs was both those things, and like Edison and the Wrights before him, he re-shaped the universe. In this world of coal, he was a diamond.

2011-10-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

2011-10-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

Bauhaus in Tel Aviv series 2002

2011-10-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

The other day I had nice visit with a former student who came by to catch me up. He's returning to design school again after a couple of years working freelance in the fashion industry - doing print and web design. He's done quite well, and it was, he felt - the right time for him to go back to school and finish this phase of his studies.

Whilst a student - he had, I'd noticed - something about him ? A rare skill as it turns out. Sure he was gifted, but that's not really that uncommon - no, that wasn't it, and he was also, despite his relatively young age - quite sophisticated, but that wasn't it either.

Nope ... what made him unique was - he knew something all on his own, something that takes years to develop really, if it ever develops at all. It's something that most designers never really understand - or if they do suspect its existence - they're afraid to let it out of the box.

He knew when to stop.

He understood how to let a material, a simple line, or a discreet concept - speak for itself. He rarely overdid things. He knew when to sit back, when to push himself away from the table, he knew how, and most importantly - when to finish....

It's something that you need to always keep in mind - because it's as important to design, as silence is to music.

Here's a link to a personal project that he and his brother are collaborating on. Cheers

2011-10-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

2011-09-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

2011-09-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

Collaboration with Braun

Midway through the decade of the 50s, the HfG and Braun, began a phase of cooperation. Braun needed to stand out from the competition and asked Otl Aicher, Hans Gugelot, and students to work on new designs for the company. Dieter Rams, who was a newly hired Braun designer, collaborated with HfG on developing the forward-looking Braun product design approach. With this partnership the "Braun style" was developed, and according to Thomas Maldonado, "the style differed from Olivetti who sought unity in variety, while the style of Braun sought unity in the product and its coherence with other products. Because of this, the Braun-HfG collaboration was a formidable test bench for the design of "honest" form and coherent identity as an alternative to the random "styling" of individual objects.

btw. doesn't the radio's styling remind you of another, now rather ubiquitous entity ? extra marks you slackers !

2011-09-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

2011-09-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

D1&2- click on the image to enlarge it. and if you can .....

notice the bold yet balanced composition, and the overall elegance of

the pages proportions, the lovely sinuous line of the letterforms, and

particularly see the way some descending letters extend beyond the text

block - so as to better balance the pages dense blackletter body type.

This is accomplished by the letters descenders reaching out like a blackbirds

tail - beyond the text grid into the empty space and do note - the singular

hidden beauty, of the rather obscured ornate scroll work found just behind the

Capital h on the right or (recto) page...

bloody remarkable ... you can't do this on your iPhone punk

2011-09-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

2011-09-19T07:52:00.001-07:00

2011-09-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

"The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity.^[1]Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named.^[2]"

dig 1 und 2 please visit der links

Ulm School of Design

2011-09-16T08:06:00.001-07:00

the Design two- "it's not what you know ... ,

BUT who you know", list "

Walter Gropius

Edgar Brandt

Harley Earl

David Carson

The Eames

Norman BelGeddes

Weiner Werkstatte

Arne Jacobson

Marcello Nizzoli

Wesley and Sean

Tangerine Studio

Joseph Hofmann

Henry VanDerVelde

Gerrit Reitveld

Rudy Van derLans

George Jensen

George Nelson

Dieter Ram

Adbusters

Georg Kleeman

Richard Sapper

Peter Saville

GTF

William Morris

Charles Rennie Macintosh

the Bauhaus

Hoefler & Frere Jones

Micheal Graves

Frank Lloyd Wright

Phillipe Starck

Norman Foster

Alvar Alto

Milton Glaser

R. Buckminster Fuller

Eric Gill

Brad Holland

Memphis Group

Herbert Mayer

William Van Allen

Marrianne Brandt

Jonathan Ive

Alvin Lustig

Chip Kidd

Tangerine

Paul Rand

Henry Van de Velde

William Morris

Welles Coates

Raymond Lowey

Robin and Lucienne Day

Wally Olins

Mies van der Rohe

Emigre

Ellen Lupton

Tobias Freres

Joseph Muller Brockmann

LeCorbusier

Seymour Chwast

Pentagram

Push Pin Studios

Aubrey Beardsley

the Dadaists

John Heartfield

Ettore Stottas

the Constructivists

Hector Guimard

Firmin Didot

Jasper Morrison

Christopher Wren

Bruno Matheson

Victor Horta

Antonin Gaudi

Alexey Brodovitch

Alphonse Mucha

Fredric Law Olmstead

Alessi

Rene Lalique

Johannis Itten

Richard Neutra

2011-09-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

The incredible 3D Drawing Machine from Florence

Imagine a machine that lets you draw in perfect perspective

with nothing but your own eyes and a pen? Artists Ryan and

Trevor Oakes have invented a machine to draw realistic scenes

in perspective. Their unique machine helps them use a technique

which splits the ocular system allowing them to create views

that match the field of view of human vision.

Here's the video link http://vimeo.com/26633949

2011-09-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

the brilliant work of Krzystof Domadrdzki. Here's the link. Thanks to Davido

2011-08-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

from the department of " the profoundly stupid ",

here's a nutter from Norfolk England - 'wheres

Waldo ? tattoo. btw in England - he's called Wally,

rather than Waldo, and in a stunning instance of

staggering cosmic irony, in England a "Wally" is

also the word for an utter idiot. Careful what you tattoo

click to enlarge, where's Wally ?

2011-08-24T12:29:00.001-07:00

a very talented former student recommended this item, Mr.Charles DeFleuvio, aka Chuck

2011-08-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

2011-06-15T10:04:00.001-07:00

2011-06-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hey smelly..Wanna win a free trip to Hawaii ? ( in your mind ) who's this ?

2011-06-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

by Steven Heller

Anon, short for anonymous, is as common in art history as Smith is in American telephone directories. Yet for a specific work to have its maker buried in an unmarked grave in history’s Potters Field is a sad epitaph indeed.

Credit implies ownership and accountability. Around the eighteenth century art became more commonly a function of individual creators who received credit. The term Anon is less commonly found in art histories of this era. In fact, the signature became an important component of a work, even for lesser artists.

While not on the lowest rung of the art hierarchy, illustrators and cartoonists of the nineteenth century started signing their wares as much for their personal satisfaction as for the recognition it afforded them in an increasingly competitive marketplace. And not only did the illustrator’s signature appear, so did the engraver’s and printmaker’s — akin to the lengthy acknowledgments found in contemporary graphic design annuals. By the mid-nineteenth century credit on a printed work was even given to the printing firm. Yet amid this flurry of credit only certain artists were actually allowed to sign what was rightfully theirs. The leading illustrators and cartoonists made their marks, but many lesser ones were prohibited from doing so owing to rules established by the client. Moreover, while the printing companies affixed their imprimaturs, usually the individuals who set the type, made the layouts, and probably even “designed” the page on which artwork was a component, did not.

Arranging type was merely a skill considered unworthy of individual credit. And to a certain extent this was appropriate, for as the earliest practitioners of graphic design, most printers and compositors blindly followed the styles dictated by a few leading commercial artists and promoted by “art service agencies,” the so-called sweat shops of design which began to have influence around the turn of the century. It was in this way that graphic design began to develop into an anonymous profession.

However, to assert that all graphic designers during this formative period were anonymous would nevertheless be a distortion. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the initial surge of graphically designed things began, the exemplars who created posters, magazine covers, and trademarks, regularly signed their names — or identifiable pseudonyms — on all their works. In the chicken and egg history of graphic design it remains unclear whether these artists made the profession or vice-versa. But during this period in the expansion of Western commerce many graphic designers actively competed for business by developing personal styles which they promoted in trade magazines and throughout other media, which they did every bit as aggressively as a product they might be commissioned to advertise. Nevertheless, for each designer with a recognizable signature scores of anonymous ones were regularly churning out the overwhelming majority of commercial art for art service agencies, printers, sign painters, and display shops.

The ethic of American individualism was irrelevant to this service-oriented profession. Graphic design was an adjunct to advertising, used to focus, position, and make an idea or product more appealing. The purpose of design was to shed light on the product, not the designer. In addition to the benign indifference of design directors and practitioners, the commercial art field echoed some of the progressive, yet nevertheless dehumanizing, developments in American industry. Old photographs of art service agencies showing row upon row of mostly men dutifully sitting at their drawing boards suggest a veritable production-line procedure that eliminated the individual’s role in a total creation.

Anonymity was perpetuated by the profession itself. Even the trade magazines from the teens and early twenties routinely neglected to publish the names of the makers of work selected for publication as examples of the best of a particular discipline. While some commercial artists did earn fame and fortune, they represented a small percentage of the entire working population. Conversely, in Europe, especially the great industrial nations — England, France, Germany, and Italy — anonymity was not as common owing to commercial arts magazines and advertising trade shows which not only aggressively touted the profession as a whole but promoted the leading stylists as stars of the popular culture. Names of the masters, like the Beggerstaffs, Lucian Bernhard, Ludwig Hohlwein, Jean Carlu, A.M. Cassandre, Leonetto Cappiello are known today, but at the time, even designers on the second and third levels were known by name – if not by the general public, then within the field.

The anonymity of American practitioners further fostered American mediocrity. When compared to the average European poster and magazine, American graphic design of the teens and twenties was decidedly lackluster. Arguably an anonymous designer is neither held accountable or feels responsible for bad work. Taking credit forces adherence to certain standards.

American commercial art was anonymous yet it was also a profession on the rise. A number of trade schools and correspondence courses began before World War I (many were located in the Midwest). And while not promising fame they did offer fortune in the fields of advertising, posters, book jackets, brochures through the mastery of lettering, story-boarding, as well as fashion and product illustration. With an influx of people entering the field it wasn’t long before clubs and societies organizing exhibitions and annuals were founded. Of course, this kind of recognition fueled egos and forced designers to demand due credit for their work.

During the twenties competition for jobs increased as well, and in addition to agency and studio positions graphic design became a profession largely of freelancers. Promotional books like The Graphic Arts Yearbook, similar to today’s Creative Black Book, published listings and ads for hundreds of eager practitioners. Given that prior to World War I the field was comprised overwhelmingly by anonymous printers and compositors the scores of display ads in the 1928 Yearbook, for example, promoting the services of named designers, letterers, calligraphers, layout artists, and so on, indicated a move away from anonymity as an accepted convention. However, today the number of commercial artists represented in that and subsequent Yearbooks ring few bells of recognition in the profession’s memory.

History sifts out all but the most notable designers. Yet while plenty of time has passed since graphic design’s infancy, little history was recorded. So despite the fact that more and more practitioners were beginning to sign and advertise their work in the late twenties, the society as a whole refused to acknowledge them as anything more than equivalent of migrant cultural laborers. The only graphic designers who rose above the anonymity imposed on them by apathetic cultural pundits and historians were those who either transcended the limitations of graphic design, such as the so-called Designers for Industry including Walter Dorwin Teague, Raymond Loewy and others, who in the 1930s practiced industrial, interior and product design as well as graphics, and the European emigrés, including Herbert Bayer, Laslo Moholy Nagy and others, who came to the U.S. bearing the torch of Modernism.

These design luminaries did not simply make images that might have been popular only in their day — and are currently revived as vernacular — but developed a canon with long lasting influence. Design became less anonymous, and virtually well known, when the results of the designer’s labors had lasting effects. Some of the American followers of the Modern movement also realized the deleterious effects of anonymity on their professional standing too.

Paul Rand admited that the only reason he signed his work consistently from a very early age was to advertise himself. “Having my name on an ad or magazine cover in the public’s eye,” he told this interviewer, “was the best promotion I could ever get.” Likewise, other great names and original design thinkers, such as Lester Beall, Alvin Lustig, Leo Lionni, Cipe Pineles, among them, were recognized both by clients and their peers because they routinely signed their wares. However, the act of signing one’s work did not insure commissions or immortality — quality has always been the deciding factor — but it did indicate that an individual was responsible and took pride for the work.

Today everyone in the collaborative design process wants some of the glory when its offered. But has graphic design, far from being anonymous, become too individual? Style versus no-style? Does one serve the client or oneself? And who should really be served?

In an ideal world all designers with passion and conviction should be recognized for what they do, but in the real world, graphic design is still a service to businesses and institutions. Nonetheless, designers should not be Anon.

(Illustration above: Albrecht Durer’s monogram has become one of the most well-known designed signatures in art and design history.)

2011-05-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

A is for Aardvark, obscure from the start ....

2011-05-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

2011-05-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

East London designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby will design the London
2012 Olympic Torch, it has been announced.

The studio will also create the celebration cauldrons to be used when the Torch Relay stops for lunchtime and evening celebrations. The Olympic Flame will arrive in the UK from Greece on Friday 18 May, 2012. ( today ! )

It's definitely from the department of - " hmmn.., that's never occurred to me".

Someone does after all - have to design the Olympic torch, and it's a huge honor and a harrowing responsibility both. Imagine if your design fails mid - relay or at the cauldron during the opening ceremonies ....

What are the principal concerns ? Functionality, aesthetics, politics ? Can the torch reflect it's time and place stylistically, or does it merely perform as propaganda ? A subtle yet powerful visual extension of the host state ? Can it faithfully articulate the vaunted Olympic values or the more earthly politics of the hosts ?

Shouldn't it as an Olympic symbol, be above the often crude insinuations of national vanity ? It's a seemingly labyrinthine brief, one that promises to extend well beyond the dictum - of form following function.

Read the fascinating, interactive BBC article.

2011-05-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

grazie al mio buon amico Mohammed

2011-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Lost Type Co-Op is a Pay-What-You-Want Type foundry, founded by Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin.

What originally was meant to be a 24-hour adventure to distribute a single typeface, has blossomed into a full-fledged foundry, distributing fonts from designers all over the world. Users have the opportunity to pay whatever they like for a font, you can even type in ‘$0′ for a free download.

2011-05-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

Some Secrets Should Stay Secret, 2010

found bottle on wooden stand containing instructions on how to build a ship in a bottle

2011-05-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Il mio cari studenti , hanno una grande vacanza e
ricordare per giocare bello!

Here's another installment in the "See, nothing ever really changes"
category.

Once upon a time in Venice, we chanced upon a traditional typographer in the center of Arezzo. At 76 years old he’s been working in this same place for the past
60 years. The shop has been functioning since 1900 and much of the
original equipment and type remain there.

The poster was for a current exhibit, using old type forms and technology
that still can totally do it ! If you can identify the typeface and type style
you'll win a new Dodge Charger ! ( I don't really know what that is, nor
will you win one, whatever it may be, I think its a car...)

for ten extra points can you guess who's the cat in the hat ?

2011-05-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

It's genius, Martha Graham's 117th birthday. Graham worked as an American dancer and choreographer from the 1920s up until her passing in 1991.

I suspect that she did for dance, what Matisse did for painting - as her ideas went about re-defining the form, and certainly as a result, she redirected its trajectory - away from the staid, classical cannon, common to dance at the time, towards a much more modern, immediate and and occasionaly improvised expression of movement and space.

But, ... I don't really know - what I actually know about dance - you could easily fit in the outside ring of an atom. But when I look at her work, that's been my impression.

I wonder therefore, if Ms. Graham endured the same opprobrium that Henri Matisse did ?

Matisse was pilloried as crude, his Fauvist interpretations were not at all universally popular during his lifetime and he endured the vigorous and often unfair criticism of his contemporaries. Doesn't the photograph of Graham's dancers remind you of Matisse's drawing?

I wonder if she drew inspiration from his work ?

2011-05-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

Wabi-sabi

2011-05-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

the reason I've included this poem, which may seem totally out of context for this blog - was that I recently dreamt about a wonderful bronze statue of the author and poet John Betjeman - which was or is, in ( I think ) the Saint Pancras Train station in London.

It's a life size bronze full body portrait of the Poet, social critic, activist and art historian.

He's looking up at the sky, as if looking at a cloud, or a plane, or something off far in the distance thats caught his eye... in a kind of quizzical and relaxed manner he peers.

I remember walking by the statue in a hurry, but drawing up short and being immediately, deeply struck by the beauty of the sculpture and by the extraordinary brilliance of the sculptor. It was actually breathtaking.

He'd caught a single moment so eloquently, a man innocent and unawares, as if real, a small, normally private, incidental fragment of a life.

It was really, truly beautiful, and to my jaded, ubercooly cynical hipster mind, it was a real good lesson in just shutting up and having a look.

And so it thus occurred to me, rather sadly I must admit, that you guys would probably never ever read his poems unless forced to by a berating Englishman. That the wonderful ironic wit and genuine sadness of his words would never be noticed by you, in just the same way, that the beautiful statue had gone unnoticed by me. So I'm trying to set that right. Read it. Think of it as a coin you've found in your pocket.

It's meant to be both ironic and true at the same time, an exercise in contradiction, one rarely appreciated or even seemingly allowed these days. enjoy

Slough - by John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

"Slough", as in now, is a ten-stanza poem by Sir John Betjeman, first published in the 1937 collection Continual Dew. It was written in protest against 850 factories that were to be built in the English town of Slough. The poem caused an uproar when first published. Slough was becoming increasingly industrial and housing conditions were truly terrible. In willing the destruction of Slough, Betjeman urges the bombs to pick out the vulgar profiteers but to spare the bald young clerks.

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

2011-05-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

In My Heart is an Idiot, filmmaker David Meiklejoh n --of Portland, Maine!--follows FOUND magazine's Davy Rothbart on a North American promotional tour. Along the way, Rothbart seeks advice on his love life from various celebrities (including Zooey Deschanel and Ira Glass). I definitely recommend that you check it out!

2011-04-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

the fascinating work of Léon Gimpel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the Vanier students bestest friend - Léon Gimpel (13 May 1878-7 October 1948)[1] was a French photographer.

Born in Paris in 1878 , Gimpel worked for his family's fabric company, managed by his older brother Eugene. In 1897 his interest in photography was kindled when he acquired a Kodak detective camera, he soon swapped this for a Spido Gaumont which allowed him greater creative freedom.

By 1900 he was working prodigiously, documenting

the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. By 1904 his work was being published regularly in the magazines La Vie au Grand Air, La Vie Illustrée and L'Illustration.

A restless and innovative photographer, Gimpel experimented

with perspective, produced self portraits using distorting mirrors and experimented with night time photography. At an air show at Béthény in August 1909, Gimpel ascended in an air ballon to photograph the crowds below, pioneering aerial photography. However it is his pioneering work in colour photography that he is most

notable for.

In 1904, Gimpel met Auguste and Louis Lumière, who had just displayed their invention the autochrome to the Académie des Sciences. Limited by the long exposure time required, Gimpel used the process, to photograph still lifes and landscapes. Assisted by his colleague Fernand Monpillard, Gimpel modified the plates to produce "instant" colour pictures. Thanks to his works Gimpel was the only photographer who succeeded in capturing, in colour, scenes of everyday life during la Belle Époque.

On June 10, 1907 Gimpel was the first photographer to have images published in color. A special edition of L'Illustration was published to demonstrate the new technology, it included an insert featuring four autochromes taken by Gimpel, a group of soldiers, two scenic views of Villefranche-sur-Mer and sunset at Lake Geneva. A few weeks later on June 29, 1907, Gimpel published the first color news photographs when L'Illustration published his picture of Frederick VIII of Denmark and his wife Louise of Sweden, who were visiting France at the time. Gimpel produced many works using the autochrome, arguably the most famous are the images known as The Grenata Street Army produced during the First World War. Gimpel befriended a group of children from the Grenata Street neighbourhood of Paris who had established their own 'army'. Under his guidance he helped them build their tanks and aircraft, documenting their 'battles' against the Boche. On a more serious note Gimpel also recorded the French experience of the First World War visiting munitions factories and trenches on the Western Front.

Gimpel married Marguerite Bouillon in 1939 and settled in Béarn. He died in 1948 at Sérignac-Meyracq. Although largely forgotten, his work has experienced a revival recently.

The band Beirut used one of his photographs as the inspiration behind their 2007 album The Flying Club Cup. A major respective took place at Musee d'Orsay in Paris in February 2008. His work helped influence the 2009 Spike Jonze film Where the Wild Things Are.

2011-04-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

WOWé !

2011-04-22T17:37:00.001-07:00

Another fantastic video by Everynone in collaboration with WNYC | Radiolab.

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

2011-04-18T18:19:00.001-07:00

Paper Record Player from kellianderson on Vimeo.

thanks to leplumagegris

2011-04-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

just watch it, it will almost fix everything, all-together too funny, enjoy ! warning extreme silliness, occasional swearing, and really really bad dancing. OH! and cowbell !

2011-04-09T13:59:00.000-07:00

I've been reviewing some of your mid-term magazine assignments, and I must admit they are much better than I expected at this stage. Some of them are in fact rather lovely, and demonstrate a sophisticated use of colour and interesting compositions. Johnson's layout in particular. Well done Mr.Ta ! Here are some vintage David Carson Raygun covers to inspire you, decades old, but they still walk the walk. eh ?

2011-04-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Cleek to make more bigs - A cool event and an opportunity

to see some interesting work by young, emerging designers

and former students. Check it out.

2011-04-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

An important reminder: ! Don't Forget !

Digital 1 and 2, please remember that you must hand in at the beginning of the last class a "portfolio".

It should contain all of your work (graded or ungraded), all of the assignments for your particular class.

Such as, but not limited to: the Pollock assignment, the David Carson Project, The Blog, any/all layout typesetting assignments, le Magazine, the Sculptural letterform poster, the Street Sign assignment, the Onomatopoeia assignment, and the Film Titles assignment, etc. (note: not all projects apply to all sections, if you don't recognize a project relax.). Every section is, naturally, slightly different.

It can constitute anything you want really, the basic assignments or beyond - to infinity- it can contain a re-working or improvements of earlier projects, like the book or CD, or the product assignments or personal stuff you've done or just the assignments, as you wish.

Put your portfolio - your greatest hits, on a USB key (it will be returned next semester) or on a DVD (it will not be returned next semester), make sure that all the files are there, correctly.

If I open the portfolio and there are files missing, or fonts missing well you can guess what the result will be. Remember to always check your files on another computer, so as to ensure that it is universally openable and all the parts are there. Don't forget to " create outlines " in illustrator !

Make sure that the files are all saved as jpegs or pdf's, also ensure that you've handed in a copy, never ever hand in an original.

This is not an optional or negotiable part of the class, it is resolutely, absolute.

Due the beginning of our last class & complete. If you have questions, see me in class.

2011-04-06T10:31:00.001-07:00

It's always about the idea, about the content. There's never really a substitute,
for it, even for things as innocuous as business cards. the cards be linked.
Thanks Qi.

2011-04-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

the extraordinary drawings of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

2011-04-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

Magazine of the Month

Underscore is created and self-published by Singapore-based design agency Hjgher. As such it is partly a show-case for the agency, but more importantly, according to editor Justin Long, it’s the magazine they felt should be out there but wasn’t.

Justin describes Underscore as ‘a magazine attuned to a simple rhythm,
quality of life’. And the physical manifestation certainly achieves quality –
this is a lovingly created, calmly paced magazine that sets it apart from
so much of todays media. The name has a double meaning – it underscores
the values it espouses but also, in a nice touch, refers to the other meaning
of the word, background music. So alongside each issue the team prepare
a musical soundtrack to be listened while reading (available on the website
and signified alongside the related texts, below).

Book-like in design (and feel – 144pp of heavy matt paper bulk it out to
about 15mm thick), the magazine immerses the reader in a global trawl
of curiousities. Issue two (the top cover) is based on the theme ‘Constant’
while the first issue (the lower cover) was about emptiness.

Although based in Singapore the magazine has a global outlook, a quick flick yielding material about Japan, Switzerland, Berlin and Ireland. Only two issues into the project, the Hjgher team have already developed a community of like-minded collaborators around the magazine enabling the team to do things they would never have been able to achieve before launching the publication.

The colour palette, layout and typography (featuring a custom headline sans serif) are all subtle but establish a clear identity that shares some elements with Monocle in the way it refers to book design but has far more flexibility than that magazine.

The cover of issue two and the spread above feature artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s drawings of insects genetically damaged by the Chernobyl radiation. The issue also carries a pull-out print of one of the insects.

Highly recommended for its design and content, the second issue of Underscore is currentlyavailable throughout Europe, the Middle East and China, and issue three is due June this year.

2011-04-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

HOW A MAGAZINE GETS MADE

2011-03-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Breathless 1960, Typography by Emanuel Cohen

Breathless 1960, Typography from Emanuel Cohen on Vimeo.

/ school project (université du québec à montréal, UQÀM)
/ instructor : denis dulude
Brief: Create a 30 sec. kinetic typography animation, based on a movie part, or any kind of audio recording... I chose a part from the famous French movie "À Bout De Souffle" (Breathless) by Jean-Luc Godard, 1960. In that part, Jean-Paul Belmondo is driving alone in his car, talking to the camera... In my animation, I attempted to reproduce that "in a moving car" feeling, where everything is shaky, as well as the old film look and retro animation style... Enjoy!
*Type Directors Club : TDC Intro 2010 Winning Entry.thanx TG

2011-03-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?

dig 1 und 2 read this or I will come to your house .....

2011-03-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

New Work: Vignelli Gala at the Architectural League

Pentagram designed the programs for a very Vignelli evening.
On the evening of Tuesday, March 8, The Architectural League gave its President’s Medal to Lella and Massimo Vignelli. The award (past recipients of which include John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Hugh Ferriss, Joseph Urban, Richard Meier, Robert A.M. Stern, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown) was given to the Vignellis “in recognition of a body of work so influential in its breadth that it has shaped the very way we see the world.” The setting was a gala evening in midtown Manhattan attended by nearly 300 colleagues, friends and admirers of the guests of honor. Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, an Architectural League vice president who began his career over 30 years ago as a junior designer at Vignelli Associates, designed the evening’s program. With five different covers featuring five different classic Vignelli quotes (in Helvetica, of course) printed in PMS Super Warm Red (the couple’s favorite color), the programs were the perfect table settings for a memorable evening.

2011-03-26T14:55:00.001-07:00

Pino is a market place for unique, functional and innovative design objects. The idea for the concept camefrom the name of the shop, Pino, which means a ‘pile’ or ‘stack’ in Finnish.That is taken visually into the new logo and the design of the shop fixtures.The interior concept with a subtle colour palette works as a background for thefresh, colourful identity and products.

2011-03-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

2011-03-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

2011-03-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Marcel Marien, L'introuvable, 1937 dav.

2011-03-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

sculpture as fashion, the brilliant work of

Mary Katrantzou at London Fashion Week
Young designer Mary Katrantzou first standalone show
at London Fashion Week was stunning. The collection
was inspired by the stylized 70s photography of Helmut
Newton and Guy Bourdin, where the interiors became
as important as the models. Each garment was a work
of art; the patterns were inspired by old copies of
Architectural Digest and World of Interiors. Delicate
silk blouses were tucked into mini-crinolines imitating
lampshades while dresses with prints of window frames
had chiffon fluttering like drapes.

" With this collection, I wanted to put the room on the woman,
rather than the woman in the room."
---Mary Katrantzou

2011-03-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

I have a query - that maybe one of you monsters can answer.

I've noticed that typesetting or type set in different browsers can appear differently in various browsers. In other words ( I hate doing that ) what appears to be well set, balanced, correctly leaded and kerned etc. in one browser, goes all screwy in an other.

The recent post regarding the football supporters graphic/map is a good example, in Safari it looks fine but in FireFox it looks as if typeset by a marmot. Any ideas ? Is there a universal typsetting method which is browser agnostic, and will work in all browsers, regardless of it's origin ? Or is that just ridiculous ? , an impossible thing to ask for - continuity .....

2011-03-20T13:40:00.001-07:00

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

2011-03-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

digital 2, vis a vis your product assignment - remember that

design isn't decoration, anymore than dj's are musicians ...

2011-03-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

" Football isn't a matter of life and death," - it’s much more

important than that,” is a quote often attributed to Bill Shankly, the
legendary manager of Liverpool FC. As exaggerations go, this one gets

pretty close to the truth. Millions of fans identify intensely with the highs
and lows of their favourite sports team, perhaps a modern substitute for
the tribal loyalties of bygone days.

Fandom is a bit more complicated than mere tribalism, though. Which

team you support is the result of an intricate compound of ancestral,

regional, social, and sometimes even religious loyalties. And, of course,

personal choice. However, this map of London seems to indicate that

geography is a major factor in fan loyalty.

check out Frank Jacobs's facinating site, concerned with informatics
design and all manner of strange and wonderful maps that you might
imagine.

2011-03-14T11:00:00.001-07:00

my friend Ani sent me a link today to a site of hauntingly beautiful - glass dry plate portraits of criminals from Australia during the 1920's and 30's.

Looking at them I am struck by their sad beauty, and remember reading a remarkable book by Robert Hughes - the notable art critic (the Shock of the New) and writer. The book is entitled The Fatal Shore - it's an epic account of Australia's founding, and seeing these tragic portraits, I can't think of a more accurate title.

Australia is a typical modern paradise - alive with industry, people and all the crude trappings of success, but it was for a very long time, in fact for most of its history by far, a truly unknown land.

Australia, or New South Wales as it was known then, was all the way on the other side of the world - it was as far away from home as anywhere could possibly be. Imagine that.

To those thousands of luckless souls who found themselves cruelly "transported" away from home - chained aboard Her Majesty's grotesque prison ships - it was a truly terrible fate, the stuff of real nightmares, shackled - in a vast, poisonous continental prison.

2011-03-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

Class Cancelled Today - Thursday

March 10th. Sick, acke.. ack.. urp.. gorrrlp .. ewww

back tomorrow.

2011-03-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

d1 and 2, visit this marvellous site devoted to
contemporary collage.Then, consider the work of
Raol Hausmann, Joseph Cornell and Man Ray,
do please proceed beyond the shallow edges of the wiki...

click image = more bigger

2011-03-03T14:42:00.000-08:00

Hey, photo-contest !... of no known pedagogical value .. ..if you can

identify the chap in the boater, you'll win a prize, a brand new white

iPhone - shiny, expensive, cool ....

graciously donated by famed alumni Wesley Yendrys. Ok, you mumbly

hooligans ...Who is it ? and before you ask it's neither one of the

original Village People, nor is it my sister.

(I thought I was being real witty here, thinking there was no actual

white Iphone, hence, I was safe ... but today I was informed by my

students in that terrible tone that one reserves for complete idiots,

that there is in fact, much to my horror, a white Iphone .... You do realize you monkeys, there's no actual prize right ? and Wesley isn't going to actually donate one, you do get that right ? )

>Johnny - Christmas 1976, see ... nothing changes ... nothing.. he used to put cake mix in his hair, and yes, he then would put his head in the oven to harden it , a right nutter, our Johnny

2011-03-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

1 und 2, please review this site - as it's full of fascinating

ideas during a time of stupefying mass/global similarity.

It's rather novel, which admittedly seems at least these

days to be, real adventure (no, it's not a novel, its novel)

anyway this is linked ... check it out

2011-03-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

digital warriors 2, your product/ branding assignment is

due soon, btw. witty fish references will not be taken kindly

2011-03-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

par exemple ... firmly set in the - "... see ... not that much ever really

changes category " .... the aesthetic concerns of the 16Th cent. French

scribe - whose lovely work we see below were essentially the same as

ours today as we typeset our pages. Continuity, legibility, form, balance,

structure, clarity, and line - all held tenuously together by a slavish

attention to the minutiae and the marginalia. two words you need to know, two words that separate the mutton from the lamb ....

the class-o-matic

Arts and Crafts Movement

Politics

The Kelmscott Press

THEO VAN DOESBURG

The Netherlands, Utrecht, 1883 - 1931

the reason I've included this poem, which may seem totally out of context for this blog - was that I recently dreamt about a wonderful bronze statue of the author and poet John Betjeman - which was or is, in ( I think ) the Saint Pancras Train station in London.

It's a life size bronze full body portrait of the Poet, social critic, activist and art historian.

He's looking up at the sky, as if looking at a cloud, or a plane, or something off far in the distance thats caught his eye... in a kind of quizzical and relaxed manner he peers.

I remember walking by the statue in a hurry, but drawing up short and being immediately, deeply struck by the beauty of the sculpture and by the extraordinary brilliance of the sculptor. It was actually breathtaking.

He'd caught a single moment so eloquently, a man innocent and unawares, as if real, a small, normally private, incidental fragment of a life.

It was really, truly beautiful, and to my jaded, ubercooly cynical hipster mind, it was a real good lesson in just shutting up and having a look.

Slough - by John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

Slough

Another fantastic video by Everynone in collaboration with WNYC | Radiolab.