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

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.)

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

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.

grazie al mio buon amico Mohammed

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.

Some Secrets Should Stay Secret, 2010

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

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 ?

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 ?

Wabi-sabi

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.

In My Heart is an Idiot, filmmaker David Meiklejohn --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!

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.

WOWé !

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

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

Paper Record Player from kellianderson on Vimeo.

thanks to leplumagegris

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 !

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 ?

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.

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.

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.

the extraordinary drawings of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

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.

HOW A MAGAZINE GETS MADE

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

Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?

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

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.