Hasta La Ideas

In the second movie Dezeen filmed with designer Erwan Bouroullec at Clerkenwell Design Week, he flicks through the new book documenting 15 years of work by him and his brother Ronan and talks about his favourite project ever.

Talking to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, he singles out the Slow chair designed for Vitra (below) as his favourite piece the studio has produced over the years because it is “lightweight, well done and comfortable”.

“We’ve always been keen on shooting our own products and showing them the way we want to,” he goes on to explain, describing how the brothers wanted the book to “speak with pictures.”

The book (above) is published by Phaidon.

Watch the first movie we filmed, in which Bouroullec speaks about the Pico tiles exhibited at Clerkenwell Design Week (above).

The post Movie: Erwan Bouroullec on his favourite
project ever at Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

In 2007, artist Robert Chaplin succeeded in making the World’s Smallest Book by carving a series of letterforms onto a microchip. Now he wants to release a printed version that readers can enjoy without the aid of an electron microscope…

To make his original copy of Teeny Ted From Turnip Town, Chaplin was granted access to a focussed ion beam and scanning electron microscope at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in Canada.

“In my time working with this equipment I designed and published an original work on a microchip, as an array of 30 tablets,” writes Chaplin. The 30 tablets are shown on the microchip in the image above – the chip itself is thinner than a human hair.

“The tablets contain the text of Teeny Ted From Turnip Town, complete with an ISBN. In 2012 I received a Guinness World Record confirming my creation of the smallest book yet made.”

His consummate skills with an ion beam aside, what’s particularly appealing about the work is the type that Chaplin came up with – where the size of the microchip format dictated how he carved the letterforms.

Aware of the restrictions, Chaplin traced the letters into the ‘single-crystalline silicon’ surface, often creating the outline of two letters with the same line, hence the squished-together and stacked appearance of the type. Each letter is carved with a line resolution of 42 nanometres (a nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre).

The microchip version, which can’t be seen with the naked eye (or even with a regular microscope) is to date the only copy of the book, so Chaplin now wants to publish a standard sized printed version that, he says, won’t get lost on the bookshelf. He has set up a Kickstarter to help get that part of the project underway.

More details at rchaplin.blogspot.ca. Via boingboing.net.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
In our October print issue we have a major feature on the rise of Riso printing, celebrate the art of signwriting, examine the credentials of ‘Goodvertising’ and look back at the birth of D&AD. Rebecca Lynch reviews the Book of Books, a survey of 500 years of book design, Jeremy Leslie explains how the daily London 2012 magazine delivered all the news and stories of the Games and Michael Evamy explores website emblematic.com, offering “data-driven insights into logo design”. In addition to the issue this month, subscribers will receive a special 36-page supplement celebrating D&AD’s 50th with details of all those honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards plus pieces on this year’s Black Pencil and President’s Award-winners Derek Birdsall and Dan Wieden. And subscribers also receive Monograph which this month features Rian Hughes’ photographs of the unique lettering and illustration styles of British fairgrounds

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

The UK edition of DT Max’s biography of the late US writer David Foster Wallace has a type-heavy cover designed by studio Murray & Sorrell FUEL. And as is often the case, it’s quite different to that of the American edition of the same book…

The Granta (UK) and Viking covers highlight two distinct approaches to selling a biography: making use of the subject’s name, or the face behind the name. In the case of a posthumous biography the task becomes even more delicate; perhaps even more so when the subject is a lauded literary giant who committed suicide aged 46.

For Fuel, the Wallace name was the selling point of the book so it needed to be conveyed prominently. “The title of the book is unusually long: Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace’,” says the studio’s Damon Murray.

“We decided the most efficient way of communicating the name and title was to combine them, so visually one ‘sits’ in the other. We also wanted something that felt very straightforward and definite, that had a finality as an image, to convey that it was the authoritative account of his life and work.

“We experimented with several typefaces, achieving the best result using the plainest font, the DFW name is clearly readable at a distance, and it also allows the viewer to perceive that there is something going on inside the text itself. This was also the reason for limiting the colour.”

The idea of placing one form of text inside another is something that chimes with Wallace’s work – he often wrote in sentences containing multiple clauses, and made use of extensive footnotes and endnotes.

As an afterthought, it’s interesting then that the US Viking edition has gone for a portrait shot of Wallace on the cover (above); his name given equal billing with the title proper and the author’s name. (Wallace’s, in red, is perhaps the least visibile element.) It seems to want to present a warmer, perhaps more touching picture of Wallace.

Wrapping themselves around the same content, these covers each create quite a different impression of their subject, and may even give the reader cause to remember Wallace’s story differently, too.

The David Foster Wallace biography is the third book for Granta that FUEL has designed this year (the other two can be seen here). DT Max’s Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace is out now, published by Granta; £20.

First look at the new book by Roman and Williams, showcasing a decade of interior design

Even if you’re unfamiliar with interior design powerhouse Roman and Williams, there’s a good chance you know their work. The Standard Hotel, The Breslin, The Ace Hotel, The Standard Grill, Stumptown Coffee, The Dutch, The Boom Boom Room—countless iconic NYC locales bear the mark of Roman and Williams’ protean…

Continue Reading…

Our forthcoming October issue (out next week) has a major feature on the rise of Riso – the photocopier-like printers that have become so popular among the graphic art fraternity in recent years. To whet your appetite, here’s a look at the output of graphic designer Stuart Geddes‘ A Small Press in Melbourne…

Whilst researching our feature about Risograph (in which we explain the history and the mechanics of the machines, as well as profiling a number of studios putting the process to good use), we came across Gedde’s magazine, A Head Full of Snakes (cover above), created in collaboration with Luke Wood.

The magazine (spreads above and below) showcases how capable a Riso printer is of producing beautiful publications, not simply one or two colour zines. We made contact with Geddes to find out more about him and his use of Riso printing.

Creative Review: Are you a graphic designer by trade? Tell us about your practice and about A Small Press…
Stuart Geddes: Yes, I run a small (two person) publication-focused design studio, Chase & Galley, in Melbourne. We mostly make books, magazines, journals etc. A Small Press is the name we attached to our Risograph printer when we got it. It seemed like it should be an entity of its own, and the option is there to more formally become a publisher sometime in the future.

Before Chase & Galley I had another studio and worked as the art director at an architecture magazine, and overlapping with all of these I started (with some friends) another magazine called Is Not Magazine, which was published as a four-sheeter (2m x 1.5m) bill poster and posted on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney from April 2005 to July 2008.

It published a range of fiction and non-fiction content in many forms including, but not limited to, 2000 word essays, 300-500 word columns, comics, illustrations, diagrams, and 160 character (text message length) ‘flash fictions’. There was also a crossword.

See more issues of Is Not Magazine online here

CR: Can you tell us how you first heard about and started to use Riso printing?
SG: Dot Dot Dot magazine issue 15 was printed on a Riso duplicator and that was how I discovered the Riso back in 2008. I’d long been involved in independent and small press publishing, and [Riso] provided the means to experiment with actually owning a means of production, so to speak.

Above: spreads from 26 Runways26 Runways, a 56 page Riso-printed artist book by Jon Tarry, made collaboratively with Chase & Galley. The book, an edition of 75, pairs drawings of 26 runways with texts based on those locations. The book itself recalls other artists books, most specifically Twentysix Gasoline Stations by Ed Ruscha. More info and images here.

CR: What is it about Riso printing that you love?
SG: To begin with I really loved the idiosyncratic nature of the process, the mis-registration, scuffing and general crappiness of it. But as I’ve gone along I fetishise the printing style less – it’s just something you learn to design for. I appreciate more and more that what’s best about it is just that I own a real printing press and through it I can make books and magazines cheaply and quickly.

Above: Published by A Small Press, The Bedroom Philosopher Diaries is a 164 page Riso-printed book with text by musician, humorist and writer Justin Heazlewood, penned whilst on the road on tour between 2005 and 2011. It also includes photographs and illustrations by Leigh Rigozzi.

CR: We were thrilled to come across images of Head Full of Snakes online. Can you tell us a little about the project and if there’s a second issue in the pipeline?
SG: HFoS is a magazine (and a blog) I started with Luke Wood (who also publishes The National Grid magazine). He and I did a masters together a few years ago and we started HFoS at the end of last year. The idea was to do two issues a year, but we both just got too busy early this year to get a second one out although we’re hoping to have another one done by the end of the year.

Using the Riso was partly about the idea starting out as a fanzine, and to retain some of those lo-fi characteristics, but also, as we both customise and maintain motorcycles, it was in the spirit of this that we wanted to manually make this magazine, and have a hand in every aspect, from editing and planning to designing, printing, collating, binding and distribution. It was of course also a pragmatic decision, I have A Small Press in Melbourne, and Luke has Ilam Press at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch NZ.

CR: We saw a mention online of the Melbourne Risograph Printers Guild…
SG: The Guild is a tongue in cheek thing really. There are a few people here in Melbourne with Risographs, using them for different purposes, and we’ve got together a few times to discuss things, split bulk paper orders, and so on.

CR: So who else in your neck of the woods is doing interesting things with a Riso printer that our readers should check out?
SG: Brad Haylock is doing some great publishing under his imprint Surpllus. Aside from his Riso he also has a jogger, guillotine and semi-industrial perfect binder, so the whole setup.

Xavier Connoly runs Dawn Press, probably the only go-to Riso printer (the rest of us largely use them for our own projects to a greater or lesser extent). Xavier came to the Riso thing from photography, so has been doing some amazing work with photo reproduction and separating images using non-CMYK colours, greens, browns, purples etc. Some of these are visible through the link below to a great little bookstore here called Perimeter Books.

Rob Cordiner is more invested in zine culture than the rest of us probably, and you can see this stuff in the information section of his site at
cordiner.com.au. Rob is also the man behind Smalltime Books.

See more of Geddes’ work at chaseandgalley.com.

Look out for the October / Risography issue of CR next week!

Credit: The topmost image of Geddes’ Riso printer is by Tomas Friml.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
Students, grads, young professionals: if you buy one issue of CR this year, make sure it’s this one. The September print issue of CR is our annual graduates special. In it, we have teamed four recent graduates with professional practitioners in their chosen field who offer invaluable advice on how to get started in their profession. APFEL meet graphics graduate Arthur Carey, BETC London ECD Neil Dawson meets Sophia Ray, illustrator Matthew ‘The Horse’ Hodson offers sage advice to Sam Tomlins and photographer Jenny van Sommers meets Megan Helyer. In addition, our September issue also features Google Creative Lab, Unit Editions’ new book on Herb Lubalin, Michael Evamy on place branding, Jeremy Leslie on new bilingual magzine Figure and Gordon Comstock on the importance of failure.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.