Hasta La Ideas

I’ve just had a look through the portfolio sites of the Graphic & Communication Design course graduates of University of Leeds’ School of Design. Here are  a few pieces of work that caught my eye. First up is the eye-popping illustrations of Mike Crozier (above) who has already completed internships at SNASK in Stockholm and at ilovedust…

To see more of Crozier’s work, visit his site at cargocollective.com/croz

I quite liked this pair of ads by Leo Bellis-Jones to promote Scotch’s ultra-strong exterior mounting tape. You can see more of Leo’s work at leobellis-jones.co.uk

Joanna Lowy created a campaign for recycling around the word “can” and some nice illustration:

Bruce Usher‘s graphic work, in particular his posters, impressed. Below is his four colour risograph poster for the Hunter Gatherer art show at Project Space in Leeds commissioned by Rhiannon Gilmore of Intelligent Clashing blog.

And Tom Elsey‘s work also appealed. I liked this A6 flyer (above) he created for a Leeds clubnight. The reverse of it is shown below:

To see more work by these graduates and the rest of the Leeds Graphic & Communication Design class of 2011, visit leedsschoolofdesign.co.uk

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog but, if you’re not also getting the printed magazine, we think you are missing out. This month’s bumper July issue contains 60 pages of great images in our Illustration Annual plus features on Chris Milk, Friends With You and the Coca-Cola archive.

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.

Fresh Start Sukie’s “A New Leaf” notebook, made from 100% recycled paper.

As you prepare to raise a sparkler and savor a grilled slab of protein in celebration of America’s 235th birthday, we offer two last, mildly patriotic morsels of news from AIGA. First up is the slate of five design minds that today joined the organization’s 15-member national board of directors: president Doug Powell (Schwartz Powell), Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center), Drew Davies (Oxide Design), Susana Rodríguez de Tembleque (SYPartners), and Nathan Shedroff (California College of the Arts). Elected by members, the new directors will serve three-year terms leading up to AIGA’s centennial in 2014.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles chapter of AIGA has launched the 2011 (Re)designAwards, a design competition that “showcases the importance and innovation of sustainable and socially responsible work created by design professionals, students, educators, and businesses and organizations from around the world.” Enter your sustainable design achievement in one of two categories—social responsibility or environmental sustainability—by July 22 to be judged by the likes of Eric Benson, Rachel Martin, Naomi Pearson, Tim McNeil, and Brian Dougherty. Click here for all of the details.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The sixth instalment of It’s Nice That looks to be a cracker and includes features on Lawrence Weiner, Marion Deuchars, Keith Haring and cover-star, George Lois…

Danish photographer Asger Carlsen and gallerist Kate MacGarry also feature in the issue, alongside a conversation piece between designer/artists Martino Gamper and Francis Upritchard. INT now also runs to 140 ad-free pages, apparently, which can’t be bad for a cover price of £10.

Also inside, write INT, “Pennsylvania-based photographer and publisher Nicholas Gottlund shows us his studio and the process behind his publishing house, Gottlund Verlag; the Bafta winning animator Mikey Please talks about his love of imperfection; curator Virginia Whiles remembers the artist Shelagh Cluett, her work and her collection of international artefacts; David Bennewith writes about typographer Herbert Bayer and in particular his _Universal Alphabet_ design study; photographer Carl Kleiner gets the freedom of ten pages to present his brightly coloured exploration of the golden ratio; and finally, Columbian musician Chaz Bundick (aka Toro Y Moi) welcomes us into his family home.”

The Work section of issue six features Xavier Antin, Assemble, Romulo Celdran, Dallas Clayton, Quentin Dupieux, Encyclopedia Pictura, William Goldsmith, Anna-Wili Highfield, Ill Studio, Tom Phillips, Eske Rex, Brian Nuda Rosch, Travess Smalley, Stephan Tillmans, Studio Weave, Paul Wackers, Ann Woo and Federico Yankelevich.

Published on July 14, It’s Nice That 6 will be available from itsnicethat.com and various stockists. Designed by It’s Nice That in collaboration with Joseph Burrin. Printed by Push. A Flickr set documents the entire production process of the issue, here.

Opening on Friday at Chelsea College of Art and Design, the inaugural artsmart two-dayer is billed as an art and design market where work from graduates of the University of the Arts London will be on sale. There’s also an extensive events programme…

Students and graduates can attend more than forty different talks, workshops and advice sessions delivered by industry leaders and alumni including photographer Tom Hunter, production designer Sarah Greenwood, and Big Issue founder John Bird MBE.

Creative Review will also be offering advice on how to get your work in the press, while our art director Paul Pensom takes a session on succeeding in visual communications. Arts Thread, the online creative graduate networking site, will also be exploring the increasing importance of an online portfolio.

Full details at artsmartlondon.co.uk. Here are a few of the piece that will be on sale:

Suits Me Fine by sculptor Lucia Quevedo

Video Killed the Radio Star by Lauren Mortimer

Telephone by illustrator and D&AD New Blood winner, Sroop Sunar

Box Print by artist Mike Ballard

It has to be said that I left it feeling somewhat disappointed with this year’s RCA show. Usually the communication art and design work is displayed really clearly in a large space in the main building but this year the work was displayed in corridors, small rooms and even stairwells in the considerably smaller Stevens Building.

I know, for example, illustrator Rose Blake is among this year’s MA graduates, yet somehow, despite going around in circles several times around the exhibition spaces, I failed to spot her work exhibited. Having said that, there was some super work to be found, so here is a small selection to whet your appetite and hopefully encourage you to visit the exhibition yourself over the next few days.

Joohnho Kwon‘s interactive typographic sculpture, Life, was the first piece of work to not only greet but block the path of visitors to the communication art & design section of the show. Turn the crank on the right of the nearly three metre high piece and the physical rows of text turn to reveal that there are, in fact, four pages of text to read. The text is an extract from a harrowing  interview between Kwon and a female refugee who had escaped from North Korea where she had suffered numerous human rights violations.

Catherine Hyland exhibited three large scale photographic prints including these two images:

Wonderland, China, C-Print, 1981.2mm x 1280.8mm

The Finishing Room, Sri Lanka, 2010, C-print, 1981.2mm x 1320.8mm

As well as exhibiting three large framed C-type prints (which made me think of the work of Andreas Gursky) Hyland also exhibited a moving image piece called Inglenook which featured a plume of what appears to be smoke travelling towards and past the camera’s viewpointf. It was actually shot in the north of Iceland at the same time of the hugely disruptive eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April/May last year. “Inglenook focuses on a well-known furnace which grumbles beneath the ground, expelling gases through the peak of a hidden mountain ridge,” Hyland explains. “The piece attempts to create a seductively sinister husk of the former event. A poetic meditation of the prodigious but overlooked.”

Inglenook from catherine Hyland on Vimeo.

Another film I enjoyed was Liron Kroll‘s High Expectations film which, the accompanying blurb explains, “aspires to highlight the gap between the idealised family photograph and the reality it represents. To create the film, actors were first shot against a green screen. They were then placed in photo illustrations, constructed from hundreds of photographs taken in various places around the world.” The following series of extracts from the film don’t really do it justice as the pace of the full version is wonderfully slow.

High Expectations (extract) from Liron Kroll on Vimeo.

I liked the tricky-to-photograph We Do Big Things slogan, inspired by ghost advertising wall paintings and a Barack Obama speech theme that was painted on the wall of a stairwell and projected on to by Michael Lum:

And in one of the gallery rooms up the stairs I found Hannah Montague’s mutant letterforms screenprinted on to wooden panels. The letterforms were designed for RCA’s journal Arc. “The forms reference Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming’ where and when A becomes B, A does not give up being A,” says Montague. “It continues to be A, yet it becomes B without transforming itself into B.”

In animation, I enjoyed Soyoung Hyun‘s piece How Life Tastes, extract below:

How Life Tastes (excerpt) from Soyoung Hyun on Vimeo.

I also enjoyed the frankly bizarre film, Decoration (still shown below), by Ben Wheele whose recent work, he says, “has explored a boroque netherworld of collapsing logic.”

I also wanted to include here the first piece of work that made me slow my already slow pace walking through the main RCA building towards the back where I could exit and find the Stevens Building where the Communication Art & Design graduate work is exhibited: these illustrations by Emma Shipley, graduating from the Textiles MA. As well as the drawing on paper (detail above) the image was printed on to textile (below) and hung on a wall wallpapered with another of Shipley’s intricate, nature-inspired patterns.

The RCA degree show is on until July 3 (closed on July 1). For more info and opening times, visit rca.ac.uk. For a selection of work from the graduates of the communication art and design shown, go here.