Hasta La Ideas

In his profile piece for the current issue of CR, Rick Poynor notes that Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design finally gives the great man the book he deserves. A short film shows the book in production

Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design (Laurence King, £48) runs to 424 pages – it’s a weighty tome in every sense. In his piece for our current issue, Rick Poynor notes that, judged by the admittedly crude metric of Google results, Bass is by far the most famous graphic designer. And yet, until this new work, designed by Bass’s daughgter Jennifer and written by design historian Pat Kirkham, there was no monograph covering his entire career.

This film documents the printing of the book and gives some sense of its sheer scale:

On November 14, MoMA in New York is hosting an evening which will screen some of Saul and Elaine Bass’s most notable film works, including the fantastic Why Man Creates short (clip from the famous Edifice sequence below). Details here

Poynor’s piece, in which he argues that the enduring appeal of Bass’s work lies in its humanity, is published in the November issue of CR, out now.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine and get Monograph every month for free

The sketchbooks of 18th century artist Katsushika Hokusai are packed with humour, charm and glimpses of everyday life. Pie Books in Japan has just published them as a beautiful collected edition…

Shunro, Taito, and, later in life, Gakyo Rojin or ‘Old man mad about painting’: Japanese artist and illustrator Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) went by several pseudonyms.

But the Hokusai moniker by which he’s best known was adopted when he was 38 and used for the next 18 years. In showcasing the pick of his ‘manga’ sketches in a new 700-page edition, Pie has revealed a man who was certainly crazy for his art.

Hokusai drew anything and everything but his cartoons of human figures, sketched in just a few bold lines, convey character, expression and movement in a way that we can still relate to. Some of them look like they are straight out of contemporary manga. Just look at the sketches of hands (above) – the one on the right seems to depict someone deterring an unwanted grope.

Hokusai’s take on ‘Ukiyo-e’ woodblock printing depicts ordinary folk and the houses they lived in, tackles proverbs and the Japanese landscape (his most famous and most recognisable series of works is probably Mount Fuji in 36 views).

With Hokusai Manga, Pie has produced a wonderful book that includes a brief but astute commentary on a man whose work proved to be an influence on Art Nouveau but, in his own time, captured the breadth and character of everyday life in Japan.

Pie Books; £35. More details at piebooks.com.

Competition: we’ve teamed up with NAi Publishers to to offer readers the chance to win one of five copies of the Dutch Design Yearbook 2011.

The 216-page paperback presents over 60 projects from the Netherlands in the last year, including work by designers Aldo Bakker, Studio Job and Marcel Wanders, and architects such as Anne Holtrop and MVRDV.

The volume also features some of the biggest events, awards and exhibitions of 2011, as well as discussions and debates on the theme of “the Future”.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dutch Design Yearbook” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers.

Read our privacy policy here.

Competition closes 8 November 2011. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page.

Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

The information below is from the publishers:

Dutch Design Yearbook 2011
Today’s best Dutch designs

The Dutch Design Yearbook 2011 presents a survey of more than 60 of the best Dutch designs produced in 2010–2011 in the fields of spatial design, product design, graphic design and fashion. A selection of important events, publications and exhibitions adds colour to the design year and content to the design debate. In three essays, Max Bruinsma, Victor van der Chijs/Daan Roosegaarde and Georgette Koning analyse current developments in the design profession and look at the role of design in the future. The Dutch Design Yearbook 2011 is presented on 22 October 2011 during the Dutch Design Awards show.

The theme of the Dutch Design Yearbook 2011 is the future. Design is evolving rapidly, and designers and their methods are increasingly being employed for forward-looking explorations and possible scenarios in the field of design, as well as for the development of strategies. The texts in this edition of the Design Yearbook therefore devote plenty of attention to anticipated changes in the design profession, to the question of how design provides an answer to current and future social, societal and economic developments, and to designers and their visions for the future.

With designs by, among others:

Aldo Bakker, Jop van Bennekom/Veronica Ditting, Blommers & Schumm/Experimental Jetset, Guerrilla Games, Hansje van Halem, Ineke Hans, Bart Hess, Chris Kabel, Lernert & Sander, Metahaven, MVRDV, Observatorium, Opera, PhilipsDesign, Piet Oudolf, Bertjan Pot, Rietveld Landscape, RO&AD, Scholten & Baijings, Studio Rolf.fr/Zecc, Studio Glithero, Van der Veer Designers, Marcel Wanders, West 8/MRIO.

Dutch Design Awards

The festive prize-giving ceremony for the Dutch Design Awards 2011 takes place on Saturday, 22 October at the Concert Hall Frits Philips in Eindhoven. Tevens wordt tijdens de show het eerste exemplaar van het Dutch Design Jaarboek 2011 overhandigd. The exhibition runs from 22 October at the Brainport Greenhouse Eindhoven and is one of the highlights of the crowd-pulling Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. The 10th edition of the Dutch Design Week takes place from 22 till 30 October in Eindhoven.

Editors: Timo de Rijk, Antoine van Achten, Hans van de Markt
Authors: Max Bruinsma, Victor van der Chijs/Daan Roosegaarde and Georgette Koning
Design: Studio Dumbar
216 pages
Illustrated (colour)
Paperback
Dimensions: 22.5 x 27.5 cm
English/Dutch edition
ISBN 978-90-5662-831-4
NAi Publishers in association with Dutch Design Awards
With the support of the Mondriaan Foundation
Available 22 October 2011

More competitions »
Back to Dezeen »

A young graphic designer’s first monograph is full of color and motion

A lot of artists might think twice about issuing a retrospective before they
reach 30. But the young Canadian graphic designer Julien Vallée—
whom we covered earlier this year—already had a considerable
body of work from which to choose. Vallée’s art is distinctive for its daring combination of traditional handcrafts and
digital manipulation, and his painstaking combinations of cut paper and stop-motion
animation are by turns whimsical, dazzling and baffling. People leap through screens
and turn into shreds of paper, while smoke, light and glass mingle in seemingly impossible
combinations.

“Working on this book was an amazing opportunity to take a look at the
work [I’ve] produced in the last few years. I never really had time to do it before,” said
Vallée. “There was a lot of behind-the-scenes material, and it was hard to cut it out without losing details behind the process.”

In Rock, Paper, Scissors, Vallée pulled together a selection of his commissioned work for clients as diverse as The New York Times, MTV and AOL, as well as a few of his
personal projects. In keeping with Vallé’s multimedia approach, the reader can also access exclusive videos—both of the projects and behind-the-scenes work—through
Gestalten’s website.

The monograph took seven months to compile with the aid of several friends and
collaborators. The text was written with Montreal-based artists Eve Duhamel and
Mike Canty. “For the design, I started myself but realized soon I was still too close to my work. I found out it was better to have someone that was not involved in the projects,
looking at them with fresh eyes,” said Vallée, who turned to Montreal-based design studio Feed and a friend, Matthias Hübner, at Gestalten for help.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors” will be available for purchase in
the United States through Gestalten’s website by the end of October. For a closer look at Vallée’s work, check out his website here.

The hotel’s publishing imprint presents a new book from Chicago-based artist Dzine

The Standard, positioning itself as a culture and lifestyle brand beyond its current roster of hotel properties, has once again succeeded in making an artful book under their publishing imprint, Standard Press. Following their first publication, “What Me Worry,” by artist Andrew Kuo, comes “Nailed,” by the edgy and multi-talented artist, Dzine.

The artist’s work typically revolves around themes of beauty, style, culture and fine art, but for this collaboration, he zeroes in on the concept he calls “Kustom Kulture.” Described in a press release as “the exploration of customization and personalization taken from ideas of subcultures,” the idea of Kustom Kulture and how it applies to the ornamentation of the body—more specifically, the underground nail art movement—became the topic of focus for Dzine’s new book.

Dzine presented the “Imperial Nail Salon” as an exhibition at Salon 94 Freeman’s, showcasing highly ornamented nail pieces alongside part-time manicurists working as part of the project. The artist also set up a mobile nail salon in the front window of the New Museum, inviting visitors to come and “Get Nailed” with free artsy designs.

Essentially, the book recounts the most significant eras of nail adornment and document how trends in nail art have changed all around the world, while also featuring commissioned photography from working salons in various cities around the US, and the artist’s own creations. To celebrate the book’s release in December, Dzine will host a nail salon installation at The Standard Spa in Miami during Art Basel. “Nailed” is available exclusively through The Standard Shops from December, and in March will be distributed internationally by D.A.P. for $45.