1. Sochi, Frame by Frame. Whether it’s figure skating or downhill skiing, at times it’s difficult to tell just what’s going on on a physical level. To help demonstrate the intricate body movements of each athlete, …
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Art and commerce are traditionally thought of as opposing forces. Of course, this is especially true for artists who’s work lands on both advertisements and gallery walls. Finding inspiration from commercial work while maintaining a sense of integrity in the art world is…
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Our March issue is a craft special and examines how a range of creative work was made, including Maya Almeida’s underwater photographs and a 3D-printed slipcase by Helen Yentus. We also explore the science behind Jessica Eaton’s extraordinary images, and go behind-the-scenes of new ads for Schwartz and Honda…
On top of all that we look at the BBC’s new iWonder platform, review the Design of Understanding conference and books by Wally Olins and on the Ulm School of Design, and Paul Belford explains the power behind one of the most famous posters from Paris 1968.
The March issue of Creative Review will be available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money, too. Details here.
Opening the issue, our Month in Review section looks back at the The Lego Movies’ ‘ad break takeover’; Black + Decker’s new identity; the return of the Old Spice guy; and the debate around the new Squarespace Logo service.
Daniel Benneworth-Gray raises a sleep-deprived toast to working through the night; while Michael Evamy’s Logo Log salutes the Mobil identity on its 50th anniversary.
Our craft features begin with a look at the work of underwater photographer, Maya Almeida. Antonia Wilson talks to her about what it takes to create her beautiful images…
And Helen Yentus, art director at Riverhead Books in New York, talks us through her radical 3D-printed slipcase she recently designed for a special edition of Chang-Rae Lee’s novel, On Such a Full Sea. (Yentus also created this month’s cover.)
Rachael Steven looks at the thinking behind iWonder, the new online storytelling platform from the BBC…
…While six of the objects that appear in BarberOsgerby’s In the Making show at the Design Museum are featured – each one ‘paused’ midway through its manufacture and beautifully shot by György Körössy (two pound coin shown, above right).
Antonia Wilson also talks to photographer Jessica Eaton about the process behind making her stunning images of cubic forms.
And Eliza Williams discovers how over a hundred sacks of spices were blown up in a new ad for Schwartz…
… while a more sedate approach is explored in a behind-the-scenes look at Honda’s Inner Beauty spot from Wieden + Kennedy.
We also look at why VFX is becoming more invisible, and (above) look at the latest trends in packaging.
In Crit, Nick Asbury reviews Wally Olins’ new book, Brand New…
…Mark Sinclair reports back from the recent Design of Understanding conference…
… and Professor Ian McLaren looks at a new book on the influential Ulm School of Design, which he attended in the early 1960s.
Finally, this month’s edition of Monograph, free with subscriber copies of CR, features photographs of Norfolk by designer Pearce Marchbank.
The March issue of Creative Review will be available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money, too. Details here.
“It helps to know that the pitchers in his still lifes are almost always the ones with the spout sticking up like a phallus. And the fruit dish: a few soft peaches are the breasts. When you crack the codes, you understand that they are pictures about his love of a woman, his desire, his anger, his disdain. And you understand why his pictures that only show a pitcher and fruit dish can be so sexy and also so unbelievably sad. And then he turned everything over again and suddenly he was the very fruit dish himself. This is one of the greatest challenges when writing about Picasso, because for much of what one writes about him, the exact opposite is also true. A person with such an extreme personality, with such extraordinary hypersensitivity, with so many contradictions—that kind of person usually ends up in the nuthouse.”
-Picasso biographer John Richardson, interviewed by Cornelius Tittel in 032c
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The J. Paul Getty Trust is serious about sharing. The institution, which encompasses the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation, is following its “Open Content” program that set free some 5,000 high-resolution digital images for use, modification, and publishing with a virtual library. Translation: 45 years of art books for free. Among the 250 (and counting) of the Getty’s backlist titles now available to read online or download as PDFs are the 2004 catalogue of the first-ever exhibition of Cézanne’s watercolor still lifes (“a moving examination of this most subtle and luminous of mediums and genres,” according to Getty President and CEO James Cuno), the definitive English translation of Otto Wagner’s Modern Architecture, and books on globe-spanning conservation projects. We suggest igniting your winter reading list with Kevin Salatino‘s Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Creative agency Uniform has designed an interactive donations box for Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, based on research that suggests increasing visitor engagement could boost donation revenue at free venues.
The Pixel ArtCade machine is made up of three giant, illuminated pixels. When visitors insert money, the pixels change colour, shifting one step along the RGB colour wheel. Visitors who create a triadic colour combination (a mix of colours evenly spaced on the colour wheel) unlock a secret game.
The concept is based on a study carried out by local game design company Denki on whether video game theory and design could be used to improve donations.
Denki began by comparing DCA’s visitor donations to similar venues to determine if figures were below average, but discovered the amount received was “pretty typical”. The company then interviewed a number of people about donating to free venues and found that most didn’t see it as a priority.
“If the lights are on, the doors are open and there aren’t any reports of imminent closure…then their assumption is that free-entry organisations are already adequately funded…so they don’t feel especially compelled to give further,” says Denki’s managing director Colin Anderson.
Despite it being easy to donate via a box at the venue’s entrance, visitors were choosing not to, and Denki concluded that this was due to a lack of engagement, rather than a lack of convenience.
“We had to create something that not only asked for donations but gave something back. The most successful route was to create something that was playful…physical and tangible,” explains Anderson.
Denki appointed Uniform to create the installation and the agency worked with Professor Jon Rogers, chair of creative technology at the University of Dundee, and Patrick Stevenson-Keating at London-based studio PSK, on its build and design.
Pete Thomas, Futures Director at Uniform, says there were several constraints to the project – mainly a lack of sound. “It was important for both ticket desk and galleries teams tha the machine didn’t make any noise in operation, so the interaction is very simple.
“When money is dropped into it, a laser is broken, the pixel changes colour and message box flashes up a ‘thank you’ for in the same colour for a few seconds. The pixels will stay on this new colour until a new player changes them,” he explains.
The machine also had to appeal to both adults and children and be durable enough to withstand “late night revellers,” says Thomas.
As well as housing a shop, print studio, restaurant and research hub, DCA is home to an art gallery and cinema and regularly hosts multimedia and screen based art, which Thomas says inspired the studio’s decision to create an RGB light installation. “It was important that we created reflected the scope of activities at DCA,” he says.
The project is one of a series supported by the Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture Organisations in Scotland, an initiative funded by Nesta, Creative Scotland and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Lorna Edwards, programme manager for Nesta, says the fund has financed 10 schemes that utilise technology to increase revenue to arts and cultural organisations.
In London, Barger Osgerby and Universal Design Studio recently created a ‘Fundraiser Desk‘ for London’s Science Museum, which visitors had to pass through on entering the venue. The project increased donations by 80 percent and received a gold award at DBA’s Design Effectiveness Awards last week.
The ICA has invaded London shopping venue Dover Street Market for the latest instalment in its ‘Off-Site’ series of events. Designed by Julia, the show offers a fascinating look at some rarely seen material from the Institute’s archives.
Dover Street Market now houses luxury clothing and accessories but between 1950 and 1968, it was home to the ICA and is allegedly the birthplace of op art, pop art and brutalist architecture.
The venue hosted some of ICA’s best known shows, including exhibitions by Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock, and was a regular meeting place of the Independent Group, whose members included Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and the architect Peter Smithson.
The exhibition was launched this week to coincide with a Hamilton retrospective at the ICA and Tate Modern and the release of a new book, Institute of Contemporary Arts: 1946-1968. Until April, each of Dover Street Market’s six floors will feature large scale photographs, posters and imagery produced during the ICA’s 18-year tenure there, including ICA Bulletin covers, Francis Bacon’s first ever show covers and posters for various exhibitions held at the site.
ICA executive director Gregor Muir came up with the idea for the exhibition after discovering an old poster bearing the address 17-18 Dover Street. After exploring the ICA archives, he discovered more ephemera dating back to the institute’s stay there and asked London agency Julia to design an exhibition using the rarely seen material.
As the site is now home to a busy shop, Julia had to work within the existing furniture and layout, but the agency has done a fantastic job of ‘invading’ the space while remaining sensitive to its interior.
“It wasn’t easy at first – the site is already very busy and full of work by a lot of designers, and we were adding another layer of business on top of that,” says Julia co-founder Erwan Lhuissier. “In the end, we think the work we’ve made integrates with the store pretty well, but there were a lot of situations where we had to adapt to suit the existing layout,” he explains.
Key to this was visiting the site with the company responsible for printing the large scale artworks to determine exactly what could be put where, says Lhuissier. “We had to strike that balance between placing the images where they would have maximum impact and hiding some behind furniture to create a kind of narrative through the building,” he says.
Dover Street Market regularly hosts art and design installations, but the ICA’s is the first to take over every floor of the building. “[Dover Street Market and the ICA] pretty much gave us carte blanche, which was nice, and we had a lot of freedom to add extra elements such as an ICA timeline on the staircase, which provides some context for the show,” says Lhuissier. “What’s great is that it appeals to two audiences – the people who have visited Dover Street Market to shop and those who are interested in the ICA,” he adds.
As the show has been launched to tie in with Hamilton’s retrospective, Julia has made references to the artist throughout, such as in the use of black and red graphics, colours which Hamilton often used. ICA shows from the fifties and sixties also provided inspiration for the positioning of images.
“We looked at a lot of shows that were hosted in the space and the artists often used to hang things horizontally, vertically, or from the ceiling. We wanted to reference this and also reflect the idea of an invasion – having things on the ceilings and floors instead of hanging in frames,” adds Lhuissier.
The show is one of several Off-Site events staged by the ICA since last summer. In September, it launched a journey through London’s sub culture in the basement of the Old Selfridges Hotel, which featured 56 vitrines of art, fashion, design and memorabilia produced by London creatives over four decades – you can read our blog post on it here.
The latest show provides a glimpse into a seminal period in the ICA’s history and Julia has done an excellent job of designing the space.
ICA Off-Site is open at Dover Street Market, 17-18 Dover Street, London, W1S 4LT until April 6 – see ica.org.uk for details.
Each February since 2005 Marian Bantjes has sent out handmade Valentine’s gifts. This year, she posted a series of rather unusual letters – ones originally sent to the actor Robert Wagner in the late 1950s…
Two letters turned up at CR this week, postmarked ‘Canada’. Inside both were envelopes containing other letters; both of them were addressed to Robert Wagner. These had postmarks from Santa Fe in Argentina and Mandaluyong in the Philippines and were dated – four days apart in fact – June 1957. What was going on?
After turning the letter around and studying the envelope things became a bit clearer: a red “Timeless Love” was stamped on the paper and “Marian” was handwritten alongside. The stamp, I realised, was in the shape of a fan.
Over the years, artist and designer Bantjes’ Valentine’s Day efforts have included sending out artworks printed on ‘glassine’ (2005); making 150 hand-drawn hearts (2007) and 300 names made out of a heart-shaped alphabet (2008). In 2009 she mailed out ‘found’ fragments of hand-written love letters; the following year it was used Christmas cards laser-cut into intricate, lace-like hearts.
As unconventional as this year’s approach was, it did get me thinking. Had these letters ever reached the actor, who at the time they’d been sent had just appeared in The True Story of Jesse James (he was 26 then). Or had the letters at least reached someone who looked after his fan mail? (One has an officious ‘Not at MGM Studios’ stamp on it). If so, did the senders – Viviana and Conchita – ever receive their signed photos?
That we had two letters, posted from opposite sides of the world, made me think that someone who worked for him had kept them.
Twitter confirmed that the actor was the link in Bantjes’ latest project: there were Instagrams and Twitpics of letters from Germany and South Africa, each one sent to Wagner. Scrolling the tweets also made me think how relatively easy it was to send a message to someone famous these days. Do people even still write letters to film stars?
This is the 10th year Bantjes has been sending out her Valentine’s gifts; Wagner’s 84th birthday was February 10. Coincidence? Only the sender can say. Either way, it was a nice surprise to receive a hand-written letter – a very rare thing these days. Even if the letter wasn’t originally meant for me.
All of Marian Bantjes’ Valentine’s projects are collected on this page at bantjes.com.
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Four years ago, burnt out on the way mainstream snowboarding was headed, artist and professional snowboarder Corey Smith turned to his Lake Tahoe garage/studio for refuge. Here, he founded Spring Break Snowboards, an art project aimed at bringing the activity he loved…
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Minnesota may be known for ice fishing, but the huts many a grandfather once huddled in have nothing on those created for the Art Shanty Projects, an artist-driven community temporarily located on White Bear Lake, MN….
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