Twelve British artists, including Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili, have been chosen to design posters for the 2012 Olympics. Great, but couldn’t some designers have been asked as well?
Alongside Emin and Ofili, Fiona Banner, Michael Craig-Martin, Martin Creed, Anthea Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Gary Hume, Sarah Morris, Bridget Riley, Bob and Roberta Smith and Rachel Whiteread will each create a poster. Their works will shown in a free exhibition at Tate Britain as part of the London 2012 Festival, and will go on sale this autumn (more here).
The idea has a precedent – 29 artists were commissioned to produce posters for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games (as we mentioned here). In the run-up to the 1972 Games, the Organising Committee decided to commission a series of Artist Posters to “represent the intertwining of sports and art worldwide” (see them here). It was a great success as sales of the posters, which were produced in various editions, made over 2 million Deutschmarks.
The 2012 posters may prove to be a similar success but wouldn’t this have been an opportunity for the UK’s world-renowned graphics community to show off their skills too?
The graphic design course at the University of Lincoln has certainly become one to watch in recent years. Here’s what caught our eye from this year’s graduates
First up is Luke Ochrombel‘s response to the ISTD 2010 brief based on the number 100. It’s a a kinetic type animation of a key piece of dialogue from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove
The RSA’s Giving and Getting brief to students asked for a scheme that would make it easier for charities to ask for money and easier for people to donate. Jennie Plant’s response was to introduce playful elements into a car park on behalf of CHIPS (Children’s Integrated Playschemes). Kids could encourage their parents to park in a particular coloured spot while games like hopscotch could brighten up dreary interiors.
We liked Anna Sangha‘s Corrupt Corporation project “to make the public more aware of how corrupt corporations are, what methods they use to get consumers to by their products and get them to believe in their corporation/ brand”.
Rick Green was one of several students to tackle an ISTD brief to redesign Edwin Abbott’s satirical novella Flatland. He also designed a rather nice range of Italian foods is response to a brief set by the Roses to redesign something in a supermarket.
We also liked Ric Gravina‘s series of scientific book covers for Pelican.
TapTone is Sophie Adams‘ idea for an iPhone app “based on the idea of rekindling the relationship between illustration and music now that downloading is the most popular format. The user taps along to the music they are listening to on the screen and creates an abstract animation”.
Emma Benwell was another to tackle the Flatland brief, here concentrating on relationships between the sexes in Abbott’s imagined 2D geometric world.
Unfortunately many students still fail to realise the importance of having a working website that creates a great first impression. Not so Matt Crowe – check out the image from his home page.
And finally a joint installation project from Matt Young, Chris Taylor, Dan Scase, Dan Unsworth and Ric Gravina (see above) that just about sums up how most final year students will have been feeling over the past few months.
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%.
For the first time this year, D&AD announced the winners of its Student Awards alongside the professionals. Here’s our round-up of the highlights
This year’s Student of the Year prize, plus a 1st in the Open Advertising 2 category went to Virginia Feito, Manu Manceda, Christian El Asmar and Andrea Ayala of the Miami Ad School Madrid for the above film. The brief was to “present an idea that engages support for Oxfam by triggering shared values and concerns in a wide range of people”, which the team did by satirising common approaches to charity ads.
Elsewhere in the advertising categories, Ryan Purcell and Alexandra Hickmott of RMIT University got a 1st in Copywriting for this campaign (the brief was to “Create a copy-based campaign to promote D&AD’s ‘refreshed’ edition of The Copy Book”).
Another 1st in the same category went to Stephanie Marie Flynn and Olivia Shortland for their take on the same brief. The copy read “Important people only, including The Queen, The Pope and Dizzy Rascal. Write it like you mean it.”
In the Open Advertising category, Scott Taylor and Andy Shrubsole of Kingston took a 1st for their ideas to launch ‘A Frame’, Umbro’s lifestyle footwear collection, to a young, football inspired, audience.
And in Digital Direct / Advertising, where the brief was to “engage generation ‘Y’ in a relationship with E.ON that champions new ways in which they can use energy in the home and empowers them to enlist others in an energy revolution” Robin Wiman and Kaspar Prinz of Beckmans School of Design took a 1st for their animated ad (view it here)
Becky Fuller and Anna Gladwin of the University of Lincoln got a 1st in Integrated Communication/Graphics for their response to the brief “Create an integrated campaign that celebrates the inherent democracy of the McDonald’s brand”.
University of Ulster’s Jonathan Mckee to a 1st in Animation in response to a brief from Disney calling for “a lead character, with heart and optimism, for a narrative-driven comedy cartoon”. Mckee’s Baku is a “dreamcatcher who suffers from insomnia”.
The Partners’ brief in the Branding category was to “create a brand for a major new touring art gallery”. Catherine Perrott of the University of Hertfordshire took a 1st with her idea for Temporarily Admitted, a show of loaned artworks to tour the UK’s hospitals.
This year’s Illustration brief, from Diesel, was “to create an illustrated interpretation of a musical track that is experienced by the viewer in an unconventional and pioneering way”. Helena Bradbury of Kingston took a 1st with her idea to package Movie Star by Roisin Murphy with a life-size chocolate leg which, she says, visualises the idea of a movie star being a commodity consumed by the masses.
Sam Morris of University College Falmouth got a 1st in the Interactive Design / Graphics category where students were asked to “design a platform for the BBC Archive that brings to life its cultural riches for audiences to enjoy now and in the future”. See more here
In the Open Graphic category, Arjo Wiggins asked students to “Create a viral movement amongst designers that unbreakably links Arjowiggins Creative Papers with creativity and the creative design process.” Jenne Genser and Christian Grelich of Design Factory International in Germany took a 1st with Walk n Paint, their concept for an app that would create images by tracking movements via GPS and make the whole world a giant sheet of paper to be drawn upon.
In packaging, the challenge was to create a contemporary range for The Body Shop. Emma Hayes of the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham got a 1st.
All the winning and nominated work is available to see on the D&AD website here
Related Content
Our round-up of the 2011 D&AD professional award winners is here
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%.
In the same vein as the Tron special effects guys, Tatiana Plakhova has created some rather stunning works of art centered around data visualization. Plakhova, a graduate of Moscow State University, owns the design studio Colour Atelier in Russia.
It’s that time of year when we head to the degree shows seeking fresh talent. I visited the Central Saint Martins show at Nicholls & Clarke on Shoreditch High Street yesterday to have a mooch around. Here’s my pick of the work I saw…
One of the first things I saw was this huge, undeniably attention-grabbing (it’s about 8 x 8 foot) image by Fran Marchesi – who is something of a hand lettering specialist.
Next I snapped Henry Griffin‘s football scarf project in which he used knitted blocks of colour to represent various footballing facts.
Kirsty Collar exhibited illustrations of various East London neighbourhoods. Swimming pools, alms houses, crowds of kids, drunks and ducks abound…
This poster (and the alphabet shown below) shows off Fernando Rodrigues‘ Parallax typeface, the design of which, he says, “draws equally from tradition and innovation; it owes as much to the works of Gerard Unger, Fred Smeijers and Matthew Carter as it does to works of Christophe Plantin, FH Pierpont, JM Fleischmann, Philippe de Grandjean and Stanley Morison.”
These cosmic cats by Boya Latumahina caught my eye. As did her self-promotional poster displayed below:
These two posters led me to the display of Jonathan Seary – at which I found issue one and two of a one colour newsprint publication entitled The Changing Face of the Modern Gentleman. Issue one was printed monochrome black, and issue two monochrome red. Here’s a closer look:
Ji-ah Park displayed a large scale illustration of strings of hand drawn type made up from various objects. Underneath was a selection of felt tips and an invitation for visitors to the exhibition to colour in or write stuff and generally interact with the piece. jiahxpark@gmail.com
Illustrator Ellie Wintram created this series of images called The Beauty of Geometry
Jan Bielecki may be just graduating yet his work feels highly accomplished. Here is a selection of his work on display:
The above image, entitled Overprotective Parenting, was commissioned by GöteborgsPosten earlier this month.
The above illustrations are designed to encourage people to eat less meat.
Of all the photography on display, this image by Catriona Maciver (her graphic work was also great) was my favourite.
In advertising I quite liked Joanne Shum‘s spec ad for Parker pens (above) and also Henry Dinkel & Olga Krasanova‘s wall-painted Economist ad, created in response to a brief from McCAnn Erickson. “We wanted to break away from the brand’s monochromatic look and elitist stereotype to try and say something different,” they say. “The thought was to show people that global issues, small or large, have an effect on people and how they live their lives – hence the Economist is more about your life than you might think.” To see more of the pair’s work, visit trustmeimrussian.com.
Central Saint Martins graphic design degree show runs until Wednesday June 22 at Nicholls & Clarke, 3-10 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6PG. For more info, call 020 7514 7022/3
Wieden + Kennedy’s Old Spice campaign was the big winner at this year’s D&AD Awards, picking up two Black Pencils out of the six awarded. There were Black Pencils too for the Plumen lightbulb, JWT New York, Arcade Fire’s Wilderness Downtown and the iPad. And Neville Brody was given the President’s Award
W+K’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign picked up five awards in all, its Black Pencils coming in the TV Commercial Campaign Category and the TV Commercials 21-40 Seconds Category (though wasn’t the YouTube response element the most interesting bit? That only got Yellow). The wins pretty much complete a clean sweep for the campaign which has also won the top awards at Cannes, One Show, the NY Art Directors Club and many more over the past year.
Hulger and Sam Wilkinson also won Black for the Plumen 001 lightbulb in the Consumer Product Design Category (the Plumen also won the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Award, which we posted about here).
And Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown promo (entered by @radical.media) followed up its Best in Book in the CR Annual and countless other wins with a Black Pencil in the Web Films Category. (Its director, Chris Milk, is profiled in the July issue of CR, out on June 22. Arcade Fire was also our Client of the Year.)
JWT New York also won Black for its ‘Burma’ campaign for Human Rights Watch in the Installations Category
And, finally, the now-traditional prize for Apple, this time for the iPad (shown above, just in case you’d forgotten what it looked like), in Consumer Product Design.
A total of 53 Yellow Pencils were also awarded. In design, GBH had a good year with three Yellows for its Puma work, one in Brand Experience & Environments for The PUMA Unity Initiative, part of its Play for Life campaign, a UN-backed scheme encouraging biodiversity. As part of the scheme a special Africa Unity football kit was created whose colours apparently “represent the sun, sky and earth. PUMA mixed soil from several African countries to create the pigment used to develop the earth elements of the kit,” we are told.
and the third in Packaging Design for PUMA Clever Little Bag, an alternative to traditional shoe packaging developed with Fuseproject.
Elsewhere in graphic design the Yellows were, again, pretty thin on the ground despite a 39% increase over last year in work either nominated, in-book or awarded a pencil.
The Chase won in for its Almost Extinct calendar for the BBC in Calendars.
It also picked up a Yellow Pencil in Writing for Design for A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words, a campaign (with copy by Nick Asbury) for photographer Paul Thompson which we blogged about here.
Cartlidge Levene took Yellow in Wayfinding & Environmental Graphics for its Bristol Museum & Art Gallery work.
There was a Yellow for Germany’s Jäger & Jäger in Catalogues & Brochures for furniture brochure Moormann in Simple Terms
In Typefaces, Spain’s Mucho won for Art Out, a publication for the Fundación Arte y Mecenazgo (the Art and Patronage Foundation in Barcelona)
while Animatorio and Lobo of Brazil won in Channel Branding & Identity with Toy Soldier for Cartoon Network Latin America
Cartoon Network in the UK also won a Yellow Pencil for Cartoon Network Duplicators
W+K’s Write the Future for Nike picked up awards for TV Commercials over 120 seconds, Integrated, Direction for Film Advertising and Editing in Film Advertising
And TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles’s Gatorade REPLAY, a five-part online documentary in which sports teams renew old rivalries, won in Integrated and Direction for Film Advertising
Plus HEIMAT, Berlin won in Sound Design for Film Advertising for its Faces ad for Hornbach
Other highlights include Troika’s V&A Palindrome sign, which won in Installations (we wrote about it here)
CHI & Partners’ Sunday Times Rich List campaign, for Poster Advertising Campaigns
Droga5’s Decode Jay-Z with Bing (which we featured here) which won in Ambient
In Spatial Design, Carmody Groarke won for Studio East Dining, a temporary restaurant on the roof of Westfield Stratford City
BBH London’s St John Ambulance Life Lost won in Press Advertising Campaigns
As did AlmapBBDO’s Billboard Music. See What It’s Made Of campaign
Also from Brazil, DDB’s Neighbours / America ad for Fedex won too
And there was a Yellow Pencil in Illustration for Press & Poster Advertising for Ogilvy Singapore for its Faber Castell campaign
AMV BBDO was a winner for its Walkers Sandwich campaign which took over the eponymous Kent town, inviting various celebrities in the process
Mobile winners included Hakuhodo’s Salute Trainer for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces which uses the phone’s motion detector to make sure recruits are saluting in the approved manner
And Dentsu for its charming iButterfly app
In magazines, Wallpaper* won for its DIY cover project (which we covered here)
New York won in Entire Magazines for its Spring / Fall Fashion Issue
and Bloomberg Businessweek won in Entire Magazines for its 2010 Year in Review
Other ad winners included Great Guns for its Local Radio BBC spot for RKCR/Y&R
TBWA\Paris for its Amnesty Death to the Death Penalty spot
RKCR/Y&R and Marc Craste for its Winter Olympics BBC trail
and TBWA\London for Skittles Updater
Plus CP+B won fo Dominos Turnaround
In Direct Integrated Campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney won for the Country Australia Border Security – Nothing Soft Gets In for Toyota
Code and Theory’s Vogue redesign won in Graphic Design for Websites
and Y&R New York’s Invisible Pop Up Store app for Airwalk won in Digital Design
Plus R/GA New York won in Digital Solutions & Use of Social Media for its Pay With A Tweet scheme whereby people on Twitter received a free book donwlaod in exachange for Tweeting about it
while in Integrated Digital Campaigns BBH won for Google Chrome Fast
and Mother New York won in Brand Experience & Environments for its Target Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular at New York’s Standard hotel
which pretty much just leaves music video, in which the Yellow Pencil winners were
Harry & Co for Zef Side by Die Antwoord
Colonel Blimp for Love Lost by The Temper Trap, directed by Dougal Wilson
and Prayin’ by Plan B, entered by Partizan, directed by Daniel Wolfe
The other major news of the night was that Neville Brody was given this year’s President’s Award, the top honour that D&AD bestows each year to someone who has made an outstanding contribution to creativity. Here is Brody receiving his award from D&AD President Simon ‘Sanky’ Sankarraya and chief exec Tim O’Kennedy. He looks pleased.
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%.
Designer and sneakerhead Matt Stevens has launched a fun Kickstarter project called Max100, featuring 100 different interpretations of the “greatest sneaker ever made”: the Nike AirMax 1.
As a long time designer, I was looking for a personal project that would give me a chance to get back into illustration. I’ve been a sneakerhead as long as I can remember, so I decided to illustrate every pair of shoes I ever owned. I began creating this personal museum of a youthful obsession that I never outgrew. After finishing that, I took my favorite shoe of the bunch, the AirMax1, and I began illustrating it in a different way each day…
I started exploring the styles of some of my design heroes and current designers and illustrators that inspire me most. I loved digging into their work, trying to figure out what made it tick, and then apply it to this one object. By then the project took on a life of it’s own. I left the tributes behind and began to explore, illustration, photography, design and most importantly, ideas. How many ways could I think of to interpret this one object? It became a playground for all my influences and ideas.
When I realized I was going to keep doing this for a while, I set for myself a goal of 100 total… I was and still am overwhelmed with people’s response to the series, and I’ve always had this nagging feeling that I have unfinished business. That was the birth of the MAX100 book project.
Brian Wood of DMZ, Northlanders, and Local comics fame is now offering a free download of his second Public Domain design guide. A free download of the first Public Domain is available here. These guides are must-have references for designers, street artists, and comic fans alike.
Matthew Curran’s stencil art use seemingly random lines to beautifully describe the forms of his subjects. The magic is that he takes drawings originally executed with ink brushes and somehow manages to transform them into reusable stencils without losing the grace of the drawings.
The British-born graphic designer emigrated to the States as a teenager, when American skateboarding scene turned him on to street art.
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.
The Partners’ brief in the Branding category was to “create a brand for a major new touring art gallery”. Catherine Perrott of the University of Hertfordshire took a 1st with her idea for Temporarily Admitted, a show of loaned artworks to tour the UK’s hospitals.
Sam Morris of University College Falmouth got a 1st in the Interactive Design / Graphics category where students were asked to “design a platform for the BBC Archive that brings to life its cultural riches for audiences to enjoy now and in the future”. See more 
And there was a Yellow Pencil in Illustration for Press & Poster Advertising for Ogilvy Singapore for its Faber Castell campaign
