Anthony Burrill has created a new print to raise funds for Wilton’s Music Hall in London, the East End Victorian venue that still has many of its original features. The print will be launched at a Vintage Open House event on Sunday September 25 by none other than Barbara Windsor.
“Making a ‘playbill’ poster was an obvious idea,” Burrill says. He decided to have the poster printed by his regular collaborator, Adams of Rye. “The type down at Adams is of a similar age to Wilton’s – so it made a nice link. I picked a list of adjectives that suit Wilton’s. I was also thinking of the florid language used on original Victorian playbills”
“I asked Derek at Adams (above) to set the type to the same width, and he came up with a lovely selection of fonts, some simple, some more ornate, that filled all the available space. I didn’t want it to look like a pastiche, hopefully it looks modern and old at the same time”
The prints cost £50 and are limited to an edition of 300, signed by Burrill. All proceeds go directly to Wilton’s. The prints are available directly from Wilton’s and Nelly Duff on Columbia Road.
The open house (including a cake sale) starts at 3pm, with Ms Windsor in attendance. Burrill will also do a short talk about his work. Details here
CR in Print
Thanks for reading the CR Blog but if you’re not also reading the magazinein print, you’re really missing out. Our October issue includes the story of Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet, a profile of Jake Barton whose studio is currently working on the 9/11 Memorial Museum, plus pieces on branding and the art world, guerilla advertising coming of age, Google’s Android logo, Ars Electronica, adland and the riots, and loads more.
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.
Illustrator and artist Ian Wright has unveiled a series of new commissioned works from his role as artistic ambassador for Keaykolour paper, all of which can be seen at Tent London
The artworks all take music as their starting point – a constant source of inspiration in Wright’s life, and all have been created using Keaykolour paper.
Wright had the names of various radio stations foil blocked onto different colour papers and cut and folded the paper to build up a multi-layered, brightly coloured boombox. “This was my interest in pirate radio – which is probably where all my musical knowledge comes from,” says Wright. “So I wanted to reference that in some way.”
The three new works form the basis of Colourful Life, a campaign from design studio Blast to relaunch the brand and its 29 paper colours.
“We’ve worked with ArjoWiggins for quite a few years,” explains Blast’s Colin Gifford, “and they asked us to work on the rebrand of Keaykolour. It was originally introduced in the 1970s but as a brand it hasn’t really done much in recent years. So we’ve rebranded the range and come up with the campaign idea to relaunch it and reintroduce it to designers across the globe.
“The concept Colourful Life refers to the history of Keaykolour,” Gifford continues, “the fact that it’s been around for a long time. So we thought it would be nice to talk about the idea of living your life in colour. We wanted to work with an artistic ambassador so we wanted to find someone who’d had or who lived a colourful life who we could work with over a year – the idea being that the project would represent a kind of year-in-the-life of someone who could work with Keaykolour paper.
“We were looking for someone with an international profile, someone that does original, experimental and innovative work in a variety of mediums, and who is interested in craft, process and pushing boundaries and who has a colourful story to tell. With the brief written, I called [illustrator and educator] Lawrence Zeegen as we go back a long way and instantly Lawrence suggested Ian Wright.”
“At this point it was kind of a two way thing,” says Zeegen. “I was mentioning Ian to Giff, but at the same time having to see whether Ian was going to be free and available to take it on. And as soon as I mentioned Keaykolour, Ian’s response, which was completely unprompted – what was so good was Ian was like “oh yeah, I’ve always used that paper” which was brilliant because he’s familiar with the product and has used it in his work before.”
“I think I was just ready to use paper as a material,” says Wright of the project. “Recently I’ve been playing around with some stuff for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, trying to make low-key stuff because I’m aware of the political and economic climate, so in a way getting to work with something as pure as paper was perfect. Also, I’ve not been asked before to work with a brand or work in a particular way with someone over a period of time so I thought that was really challenging.
“Most commissions you get maybe a couple of weeks to do it, and you work on it for maybe three or four days and you really run at it. What’s different about this one is that in the making of it all there was this personal time to let your head spiral out of control and really question whether it’s any good or not – I’m trying to think about what I can do, not only be commissioned, which i still like to be, but I have to invent my own thinking.”
For this piece, Wright meticulously rolled strips of coloured paper into cones so he could place them in a specially created clear Perspex grid of thousands of holes. “It was a bit like I was planting and pruning with this one.” says Wright of the process. “I have a bit of a fascination, visually and musically, for Jimi Hendrix – there was a drawing by Martin Sharp, from a photograph by Linda McCartney that I saw when I was at school and cut it out of a magazine. I’d created an image of Hendrix for an It’s Nice That project, and this project allowed me to reinterpret it.”
All three artworks are on show in London until this Sunday (September 25) at Tent London, Shop 25, Old Truman Brewery, Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR.
Keaykolour is also releasing a series of making-of films in which Wright discusses each artwork and his approach to it. They can be viewed at keaykolourpaper.com. Here’s the first of the series of Colourful Life films:
CR in Print
Thanks for reading the CR Blog but if you’re not also reading the magazinein print, you’re really missing out. Our October issue includes the story of Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet, a profile of Jake Barton whose studio is currently working on the 9/11 Memorial Museum, plus pieces on branding and the art world, guerilla advertising coming of age, Google’s Android logo, Ars Electronica, adland and the riots, and loads more.
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.
The October issue of Creative Review features a cover set in granite and concrete. The design ties in with our feature on Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet, the latest typographical installation by artist Gordon Young and design studio Why Not Associates
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.
The Comedy Carpet features sketches and catchphrases from some of the many comedians to have performed in Blackpool over the years (some of our pages on it are shown above). To create the carpet, which has been installed on the seafront across from the Blackpool Tower, letters were cut from granite and concrete at a special factory set up by Young and Why Not in Hull. The letters were then arranged on paper layout sheets and concrete poured around them to set them into paving slabs.
For our cover this month, Andy Altmann of Why Not took our coverlines, created a layout, had the letters cut at the Hull factory and then shot the result at PSC in London.
The back cover shows an in-progress shot.
And in this month’s Gallery competition, you can win a red granite off cut from the Comedy Carpet project
Inside the issue, our main profile is on New York-based Jake Barton whose studio is currently engaged in creating the interactive exhibits for the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York
Plus the BBC’s Duncan Swain talks us through the design of the corporation’s global iPad iPlayer app
Gavin Lucas leads s discussion on the changing nature of ‘guerilla advertising’
Eliza Wiiliams looks at the art world’s new-found respect for the power of branding
And Emma Tucker interviews music video collective Canada
In Crit, Andy Cameron visits Ars Electronica in Austria, where the exhibits included a special suit for extracting phosphorous from the wearer’s urine and a scheme to allow pigeons to defecate detergent
Michael Evamy’s logo column this month looks at Google’s ubiquitous Android
Jon Daniel calls for black designers and creatives to celebrate their role models, such as Archie Boston, whose self-promotional ads tackled race head on
And Gordon Comstock experiences pangs of guilt over the August riots
Jon Daniel was also responsible for our Monograph this month which draws on his collection of stamps celebrating the African diaspora – soon to be an exhibition as Post Colonial at Stanley Gibbons in London
Keen-eyed readers will also notice that each section of this issue is printed on a different paper stock, all suppplied by Denmaur. At the beginning of each section, a page details the stock used alongside one of a series of illustrations from Handsome Frank‘s stable of artists telling the sory of paper from forest to printed page (illustrations below by Stephen Cheetham and Malika Favre)
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.
Have a look around Container’s studio this Friday, where this strange object was made
Graphic design gets its very own series of ‘open house’ events this Friday as a host of London studios open up their doors to visitors. It’s part of GraphicBirdWatching‘s efforts to celebrate the work of some of the capital’s leading female designers…
On Friday September 23, a range of print, type, illustration and photography studios based in east London will invite groups of interested parties to look around their working spaces as part of GBW’s ‘graphic design walk’ (see graphicdesignwalk.com).
Marion Deuchars is also participating in the open studio event
Visitors will be able to purchase tickets to the studios (£5) on a first come first served basis from the event’s ‘base camp’ – the [SPACE] Gallery on Warburton Road, E8. Tickets come in the form of a map of the area which then allows access to the participating studios, as well as the stalls set up in the gallery. More details on the ticketing process, here.
The open studios will include April; Camille Rousseau; Catherine Nippe; Ciara Phelan; Container; Lucienne Roberts+/GraphicDesign&; Marion Deuchars; Mia Wallenius; Nina Bygraziela; Rosalie Pryor; Rachel Thomas; and Them. You can read a brief biog on each of them here.
They will open their doors once every hour at 11.15, 12.15, 13.15, 14.45, 15.45, and 16.45 and permit 10-15 visitors per session. The [SPACE] base camp with be open from 10am to 10pm.
Appearing at the ‘base camp’ gallery space will also be work from 10 Collective; Alida Rosie Sayer Studio; Cicada Books; Claudia Doms; Coralie Bickford-Smith; Emma Löfström; Geetike Alok; Grit Hartung; Imogen Grasby; Olivia Sautreuil; Sophie Clements; Theda Schoppe; and Veronika Burian.
The ‘graphic design walk’ is part of the London Design Festival.
As of today a beta version of the BBC’s homepage is online at beta.bbc.co.uk, organised around a “visual-first” design and carousel. While not specifically created for touchscreen devices, the design undoubtedly owes much to the new ways in which users access content online…
Writing on the BBC Internet Blog earlier today, James Thornett, head of BBC homepage product, said that in order to “make the [home]page more relevant to a broader audience” the redesign had adopted a “showing less of more” approach.
The new features include a carousel that makes use of colour coding to denote categories, alongside a series of icons that depict content type. There are also various ‘filters’ and ‘drawers’ that allow users to tailor individual pages based on their interests and select more or less aspects of certain content.
The new visual language incorporated into the design is the result of Neville Brody and Research Studios’ extensive work for the broadcaster that was unveiled last year. (The project formed our Case Study feature in CR April 2010, which you can read here; Research Studios’ posted about it, here.)
Thornett suggests that the carousel device “feels like an intuitive way to navigate content which test groups have said feels ‘just like flicking through a magazine’. There’s a general sense too that the dynamic page does a better job of showing the breadth BBC web content than a static page could.”
With its emphasis on visually led content and left-right navigation, the beta homepage certainly invites touchscreen scrolling. However, in the comments to his post, Thornett later confirmed that “this web version of the new BBC homepage is not optimised for touch interaction”, but acknowledged that “the visual look and feel of the page is quite similar to many applications that use touchscreen.”
“User testing has confirmed that ‘swiping’ through content is becoming increasingly intuitive,” he continued, “whatever the screen you’re on … In time we’ll look to optimise the homepage across mobile and tablet devices and we expect that this design approach will lend itself well to introducing touchscreen interaction where possible.”
BBC Online launched in 1997 and the last major redesign took place in 2008. The beta hompage at beta.bbc.co.uk will be replaced with a full version later this year. The BBC’s Phil Fearnley has also blogged about the redesign from a strategy perspective, here.
CR in Print
Thanks for reading the CR Blog but if you’re not also reading the magazinein print, you’re really missing out. Our October issue includes the story of Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet, a profile of Jake Barton whose studio is currently working on the 9/11 Memorial Museum, plus pieces on branding and the art world, guerilla advertising coming of age, Google’s Android logo, Ars Electronica, adland and the riots, and loads more.
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.
If you are heading to the London Design Festival’s Tent London show, be sure to pick up a copy of the rather nice accompanying directory designed by Marc&Anna using Rick Banks’ F37 Bella font
Tent London is a major design trade show with over 200 exhibitors showing furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, materials and so on, plus various installations and extra shows which will be at the Truman Brewery from September 22 to 25.
Marc&Anna‘s 48-page directory is printed on the same pink paper used by the FT. It makes great use of a slightly altered F37 Bella, which we previously blogged about here. “We tweaked the font slightly, so that the keyline serifs we’re consistently 0.5pt (when used smaller they were very fine, and almost disappeard), says Marc&Anna’s Marc Atkinson. “This meant that it would hold when reversed out of black on the press, and made sure that all the lines used throughout were the same.”
This year’s London Design Festival opened at the weekend, complete with an identity by Domenic Lippa and his team at Pentagram; their fifth iteration for the annual event…
LDF invites
The design is hooked around the phrase ‘design from all angles’. Lippa and team created the identity by printing text on pieces of paper, folding them and then photographing them from different angles. “The differing angles enable the 2011 festival to have a flexible identity across the whole gamut of events whilst maintaining a consistent look and feel,” say Pentagram. “Once more the identity leverages its ownership of red in order to create maximum impact.”
Following on the watery trail left by the Oyster, Orca and Octopus cards, Merseyside is the latest authority to introduce a transport payment card with the name of an aquatic animal: the Walrus
With a name and visual identity created by Liverpool-based Kenyonfraser, the Walrus was introduced on September 19, though it will take two years to roll out completely. The cards can be use across Merseytravel’s buses, trains and ferries (“Across the Merseyyyyy…etc”).
And the name? It’s a Beatles tie-in, of course. According to Merseytravel’s Ian Kenyon, “Obviously, Walrus has a link to Liverpool’s Beatles heritage, but more significantly the brand builds on the successes of Octopus, Orca and Oyster and other international smartcard brands… with an appropriate edge of Liverpool humour. The brand was tested and reviewed by three independent panels.”
The Orca card was introduced into the Puget Sound region of the US in 2009, while Hong Kong launched its Octopus card back in 1997
Californian wine merchant Barefoot Wine & Bubbly has backed One Beach, a film documenting ‘creative innovators who support clean and sustainable beaches’. To promote the film, BBDO SF created a poster made from 17,500 pieces of rubbish picked up from beaches in Southern California.
Directed by Jason Baffa, the film apparently “focuses on inspiring people with creativity, optimism and a deeper look at how people are cleaning our beaches and changing the world” (more here).
To promote the film, BBDO’s San Francisco office created this mural in Venice Beach.
Credits Client: Barefoot Wine & Bubbly Project: One Beach Trash Mosaic Agency: BBDO San Francisco
Mike McKay, Executive Creative Director Sean O’Brien, Creative Director Melanie Simonich, Copywriter Erin Butner, Art Director
Louise Doherty, VP Production Solutions Michael Schwartz, Editor Joanne Rotella, Production Manager
Brent Smart, Managing Partner Kerri Martin, SVP Business Director Molly Frost, Account Supervisor Wyeth Whiting, Account Executive
Mark Himmelsbach, SVP Senior Director Anar Joshi, Strategist Amy Gilmer, Community Manager
BeCore Inc. Mark Bilik, BeCore Inc. / CEO Kelly Vaught, BeCore Inc. / Executive Producer Stephen Zellhoefer, BeCore Inc. / Production Director
Production Team: Stephen Miles, BeCore Inc. / Producer Peter Schulberg, The Eco-LogicalART Gallery / Director Keri Rosebraugh, Eco-logicalART Gallery / Lead Artist Laura Schulberg, Art Assistant Rocco Brovo, Art Assistant
Videographer Team: Erik Craighead, CEO Nick Lange, Executive Producer Topher Smith, Lead Videographer Fern Holiday, Assistant Videographer
Creative Review now has one of the most vibrant and best-read websites of any magazine in its field. The contributions of our readers play a huge part in this, but they can also be a problem. How can we raise the tone of the debate here without ruining what makes the site great?
When we first set up the CR Blog, the precursor to this site, we asked readers to register and log in using a password before commenting. Result: almost zero comments. Once we lifted that restriction, the comments flowed in and the debates raged. We’ve had some brilliant, passionate, informative and memorable discussion on this site. But we have also had comments that are boorish, deeply unfair, unpleasant and cowardly in the sense that commenters hide behind anonymity in order to say things that they would otherwise never dare to.
The comments on the site reflect the best and the worst of our community: witty, intelligent and committed to high standards, but also sometimes petty, jealous and bitter.
This isn’t just a problem for Creative Review. Read some national newspaper sites and you will see comments far worse than anything that we allow to be published here. And YouTube takes things to a whole new level of abuse. But we can’t do anything about those sites, we can with this one.
I have been contacted many times by aggrieved designers or creative directors who feel that their work has been unfairly treated on here. With those who I feel have a case I have either removed offensive comments or stepped into the debate and tried to steer it into calmer waters. Others just can’t bear to have their work being criticised. So there is a balance to be struck here between allowing legitimate criticism, especially of those who enjoy prominence in our industry, and combating mindless abuse and comments motivated more by jealousy than judgement.
We have to strike a balance between, on the one hand, allowing readers to express themselves freely and, on the other, fostering worthwhile debate for all that is not drowned out by the self-appointed few. We need to balance the right of commenters to be critical with the need to maintain the reputation of Creative Review and to be fair to those whose work is commented upon.
We are currently at the very early stages of revamping the CR site. I propose that part of that revamp includes the switch to registration for comments. A reader would need to register with us, using a real, working email address, before being granted access to comment. This would be one-time only. Readers would still be able to create a screen-name for themselves that would appear next to their comment – some degree of anonymity is necessary I feel, particularly when readers work for large companies or are in sensitive positions. There are great advantages to anonymity in those cases in terms of eliciting views that would otherwise never come forward.
Comment registration would have to be introduced as part of the wider site redevelopment and so will take several months to implement. In addition, there are other measures we can take (if you can think of more,let us know):
1, Introduce ratings for comments so that the better ones rise to the top. This could be married with an option to view just the best rated comments on a story. It’s widely used but has limited success – check out the Daily Mail site if you can bear it.
2, Introduce a more obvious means of reporting an offensive comment. Currently, people usually just email me or respond directly to a commenter if there is something they take offence to. I’m not sure a more obvious means of reporting comments helps very much but it’s an option.
3, We take a fresh approach to moderation. At the moment, all comments are moderated. The downright abusive and/or libellous are removed but we err on the side of freedom of speech. I propose a change of approach in which commenting is less a right and more a privilege. This would mean that only comments – positive or negative – that, in CR’s opinion, contribute to the debate, go up. The danger with this one is that it might suck some of the life out of the site but, on the whole, it’s an option I favour.
There is, of course, a fourth, nuclear, option which is to switch off comments altogether. To my mind this would be a huge mistake, akin to keeping the whole class behind just because of one or two troublemakers.
Whichever way we do it, the goal is to improve the tone and the content of this site without destroying its ability to provide a place where anyone, whatever their status in their profession, can see and engage in robust, open debate about the things that matter most to them. Because that, ultimately, is what we and most of you want from this site.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Illustrator and artist Ian Wright has unveiled a series of new commissioned works from his role as artistic ambassador for Keaykolour paper, all of which can be seen at Tent London
