Hasta La Ideas

Highlights from the Graphic Design, Design for Publishing, Graphic Communication, Textiles and Illustration shows at Norwich University College of the Arts

Dotted around several sites in the city centre, the graduates of NUCA have produced some really strong shows this year.

The National Maritime Museum is soon to unveil its new identity by Someone – will it be as good as this clever idea by Jamin Galea from the Graphic Design course?

Here it is applied to a bag

and business cards

From Luke Burroughs on the Design for Publishing course, Exposé, ‘the anti-fashion magazine that aims to shed light on the problems/issues that go unnoticed in the fashion industry’.

Also by Burroughs was a very nice series of book covers (one shown)

Also from the Design for Publishing course, Heather Elliott created this programme for the Ginger Jamboree “a free one-day event that would be held in Hyde Park London, to celebrate red hair”

She also showed The Paper 2012, a publication “to build hype for the London Olympics”

Rachel Price, on the Graphic Design course, created this series of typographic cereal boxes, providing plenty to read at the breakfast table

A nice idea for Penguin from Gareth Edwards

More good packaging ideas from Rachel Gidlow

And Thomas Fleet

This just a small selection, for more information or to reach those students without websites, contact senior lecturer Lucy Blazey, l.blazey@nuca.ac.uk

The Graphic Communication show took a different route with each students being asked to select single strong images that were made into posters. This is by Oliver Milner-Smith

and this by Nick Bond

The rest of the students’ work was then displayed in a separate room in a series of nicely made cardboard boxes as well as via a big-screen projection.

Milner-Smith’s other work included flyers for DJ French Kriss

In Textiles there was also some graphically interesting work.I particularly liked Emily Charman’s take on modern Britain

And Amy Deacon turned images of dreary 70s office blocks into quite beautiful patterns

Which, of the shows I was able to get round yesterday, leaves Illustration which was one of the strongest student illustration shows I’ve seen.

First up, Adam Avery who produced this lovely screenprinted publication for sale at the show, as well as having a very strong all-round portfolio

As a contrast, I also liked Matthew Craven‘s dark and quite disturbing work

Loved this series from Alyx Hardy

Prints from Dale Wylie‘s book Phyllis which is based around a woman’s love of funerals

Billy Glinn’s beautifully drawn and lettered series on how to skin and gut a rabbit

Olivia West produced an intriguing series for the book The Officers’ Ward by Marc Dugain, about a World War One hospital ward for facially disfigured soldiers

Thomas Kerr created this series for a calendar entitled A Year in Miserable Realisations

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, here’s a series from Jon Roe is response to The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

And some nice reportage work by Ben Rothery

And this story from Guy Roberts

And from Natasha Kinrade

And Emily Manning who created a series of signs for East Anglian towns and villages, including Aldeburgh

It was a really good show with far more good work than there is space for here. Please check out the show website for more here

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.

Big wins for Droga5, R/GA, Wieden + Kennedy and a first Grand Prix for China are among the highlights of the first five days of this year’s Cannes ad festival

JWT Shanghai won China’s first Grand Prix at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity as it is now known with an ad for Samsonite contrasting the peace of an airline cabin with the hell of the hold (budget airline passengers might suggest the two should be transposed). The ad took the top prize in the Press category. The ad was illustrated by Surachai Puthikulangkura and Supachai U-Rairat of Illusion.

The outdoor Grand Prix went to Droga5 for its Decode project for Jay-Z and MIcorsoft Bing (case study video here, subscribers can read our piece on Decode form the December 2010 issue here).

In the Cyber Lions, there were few surprises with three Grand Prix going to projects that have already won at many other awards around the world. R/GA won for the Pay With A Tweet scheme, billed as ‘the first social payment system’ whereby Twitter users can exchange their Tweets for goods such as free book downloads Wieden + Kennedy Portland for the response part of its Old Spice campaign in which bespoke Old Spice ads were created in response to requests from Twitter (see all of them here), and Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown interactive video took the third (read an interview with its director Chris Milk in the new, July issue of CR).

The Design Grand Prix went to Digital Kitchen in Chicago for The Cosmopolitan Experience, an installation of some 500 screens throughout the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel via which guests could access artworks.

See all the winning work so far here

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.

Dalton Maag has just launched its latest typeface, Elevon.If you think it looks like it might have been developed for the branding of a Sci-Fi movie set in space, well, you’re almost right…

“Yes, the design [of Elevon] is what one would expect from a Sci-Fi movie,” says Bruno Maag. “Actually that’s quite fitting as it was originally designed for the livery of the Virgin Galactic spaceship,” he explains. Just to clarify, the Virgin Galactic Brand Identity was created by GBH, in conjunction with Philippe Starck, with Dalton Maag working with them on the type. “Its square construction, that strictly adheres to a grid, is reminiscent of the staples of the Science Fiction genre,” adds Maag on Elevon. “We have expanded the characterset from the initial cap and lowercases to full Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyph sets.”

Elevon is available in five weights from Extra Bold through to Ultra Light from daltonmaag.com

Elevon Bold

Elevon Regular

Elevon Ultra Light

Virgin Galactic would appear to be science fact rather than fiction. For more info, visit virgingalactic.com

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.

Creative Review’s bumper July double issue includes an extra 60 pages of great work in our Illustration Annual plus features on Chris Milk, the Coca-Cola archive, Cass Art and Friends With You

Congratulations to everyone featured in our Illustration Annual, especially to our Best in Book winners, three of which are shown here

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.

Elsewhere in our special double issue, Eliza Williams meets Chris Milk, the director behind such interactive extravaganzas as Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown site and The Johnny Cash Project

We take a look at the 10-year designer/client relationship between Pentagram’s Angus Hyland and Cass Art’s Mark Cass and their mission to “fill this town with artists”

Mark Sinclair delves into the remarkable Coca-Cola archives, uncovering early brand manuals, Coke’s first African-American spokesperson and some unlikely celebrity endorsements

Gavin Lucas interviews the ever-joyful Friends With You as their latest installation opens in New York

And LogoLounge‘s Bill Gardner sifts through thousands of submissions to bring readers the most significant trends in logo design from the past 12 months

In our Crit section, the London Transport Museum’s Claire Dobbin traces the role of the River Thames in London Underground’s advertising down the years

Rick Poynor enjoys the British Library’s Out of this World show on sci-fi

And Eliza Williams reports from the PhotoEspaña festival where, this year, it’s all about the portrait

And for subscribers only, our Monograph booklet features Stephen Wragg’s fantastic Walking Men project

Thanks to Peter Grundy for this month’s cover design (the i is for illustration in case you were wondering), which has both a white and a silver foil courtesy of Celloglas and is printed on Rives Design Bright White 350gsm, supplied by Antalis McNaughton

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.

In an attempt to re-engage design with social and political issues, new exhibition Information is Currency looks set to articulate some true 21st century concerns within the gallery space…

The exhibition’s title is a contraction of third US President Thomas Jefferson’s phrase – “Information is the currency of democracy” – updated, say the show’s curators, for the internet age. The exhibition opens at The Book Club in east London next week.

A theme that unites the work in the show is the rise of WikiLeaks and its cable releases and exposés of recent years.

One of the works in fact plays on a chilling line of dialogue taken from a now infamous film from July 2007 that saw American Apache helicopters opening fire on a group of people in Baghdad, killing around a dozen, including two Iraqi employees of the Reuters news agency.

As one of the helicopters circles a wounded man, one of the crew is heard saying, “Come on buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.” The US military had claimed that all the dead were insurgents killed in battle engagement and the film of the incident was surpressed until it was obtained and decrypted by WikiLeaks.

“Whatever one’s personal opinion of WikiLeaks, it has brought to the surface issues of freedom of speech, privacy, transparency and power,” says UP^’s Jamie Balliu who curated the show with Jeff Knowles of Planning Unit.

The show aims to open up debate about the role of the designer in relation to these issues. “Everyday we are handed briefs requesting us to reach a particular market and tap into their desires using our creative noses and skills,” he continues. “This represents a challenge to a much more difficult terrain, one that investigates our relationship to society and requires us to look within to find our own opinions and positions.”

Some of the works in the show are direct visual responses to a particular cable release, whereas others will “explore the scandals and media circus surrounding the figurehead of WikiLeaks”, namely Julian Assange.

The exhibition features work from designers and artists including Barnbrook, We Buy Your Kids, Erkut Terliksiz, David Shillinglaw, Apropos, Marco Ammannati, Suki Dhanda, Nic Zoids, 10-collective, 21-19, OWNI, and UP^.

Information is Currency, directed and produced by UP^ and Liat Chen of Chimera Productions, launches at The Book Club, 100 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4RH on June 29 and runs until July 31. More information on UP^ Creatives at upcreatives.com.

Above: a limited edition print, left, and litho-print poster for the show

Above: a lithoprint poster, left, and limited edition print for the show. Below: various print series that will be exhibited at Information is Currency

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog but if you’re not also reading Creative Review in print, you’re missing out.

The June issue of CR features a major retrospective on BBH and a profile piece on the agency’s founder, Sir John Hegarty. Plus, we have a beautiful photographic project from Jenny van Sommers, a discussion on how illustrators can maintain a long-term career, all the usual discussion and debate in Crit plus our Graduate Guide packed with advice for this year’s college leavers.

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%.