I recently stumbled across Shanghai-based designer Chris Hosmer’s remarkable tape drawings. I love the expressiveness and fluidity he achieves with the mundane “medium” of electrical tape.
Screening at the Open City festival in London this Friday is last year’s film about the German printer and publisher Gerhard Steidl and his intimate work with some of the best photographers in the world…
Gerhard Steidl is a fascinating character and a formidable businessman as printer, publisher and founder of Steidl in Germany. His love of the physicality of books saturates Gereon Wetzel and Joerg Adolph’s 2010 film (the trailer is here), but this doesn’t obscure his interest in where digital technology has taken photography.
Joel Sternfeld’s iDubai book, for example, is a series of iPhone photos of the city (spread shown, above) and it’s the production of this title that we see most of in How To Make A Book With Steidl, following its gestation from initial artwork meetings to the final, brilliantly garish binding.
The rest of the supporting cast aren’t bad either: Martin Parr, Robert Frank, Ed Ruscha (his handsome take on Jack Kerouac’s On The Road shown, below), Khalid Al-Thani, Robert Adams and Jeff Wall are all filmed in discussion with Steidl. Interestingly, we also see his work with author, Günter Grass, on a new edition of The Tin Drum.
What is evident throughout is Steidl’s restless drive to produce the best book he possibly can with each photographer; be it in deciding on the tackiest type of leather for the cover of Sternfeld’s iDubai, or which colours from the Qatari desert best suit the spines of Al-Thani’s ten volume paen to the landscape of his country.
Meeting up with Robert Adams at his home in Astoria, Oregon, Adam’s recalls a line by the critic John Szarkowski, where he compared photography to playing billiards: it’s what bounces off the edges that’s important, how it all interacts.
The image is resonant of Steidl himself, who can spend three or four days on the road, travelling back and forth to various meetings, which then generates many months of work back at the studio in Göttingen. Just how much he moves across the globe is hinted at in shots of his five iPods lined up on various airline’s fold-up trays.
How to Make a Book with Steidl, directed by Gereon Wetzel and Joerg Adolph (2010, Germany) will be screened at Open City, Malet Place in Bloomsbury, London at 1.30pm on June 17 (Screen 3; 88′). It is also showing with Doyald Young: Logotype Designer (see details below). Tickets are £5 and available to book here.
Other highlights of the festival include (texts are taken from the programme):
Steel Homes, Eva Weber, 2008, UK
8pm, June 16, Screen 1 (9’50”)
Self-storage units are windows into human histories: the silent cells with their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes and lives we cannot let go of. A poetic portrait of life at a self storage warehouse, Steel Homes explores the fragmented nature of memories, set in the starkly beautiful aesthetic of our modern industrial world. Showing as part of a UK Shorts Programme.
Utopia London, Tom Cordell, 2010, UK
5.30pm, June 17, Screen 1 (82′)
Today, London’s architectural icons are banks and office blocks that radiate their wealth. But there was once a group of idealistic architects who wanted to shape an egalitarian society through a concrete utopia. Now many of their buildings are being left to decay or are slated for demolition, but they remain extraordinary testaments to an attempt to an idealistic if controversial attempt to change the way people lived in our city.
Doyald Young: Logotype Designer, Scott Erickson, 2010, US
1.30pm, June 17, Screen 3 (41′). UK premiere
From humble beginnings in a small Texas town eight decades ago came legendary typographer, logotype designer, author and teacher Doyald Young. As elegant as his script fonts and as wise as his set of Oxford English dictionaries, Young sets the standard for his craft. He recalls the hundreds of iterations he went through in creating the logo for Prudential, and he puts pencil to tissue creating the pages for his next book about script lettering, Learning Curves. Young’s story is compelling, captivating, and most of all, inspiring. (Screening with How To Make A Book With Steidl.)
The full Open City programme is here.
“Please put your shirt back on.” Rarely does an art director have cause to utter these words while on the job—and rarer still when the job in question is a Maxim photoshoot with starlet Olivia Wilde—but it’s all in a day’s work for Dirk Barnett. The editorial branding pro, who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism before finding his calling on the art and photo side of the masthead, moved from Maxim to Lucky last fall, but put in only a few days at Conde Nast HQ before Tina Brown wooed him to her newly formed “NewsBeast,” the Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Since then, Barnett and his team have rolled out a redesign (the eighth major newsstand title he’s overhauled), a new logo, and a special “Osama Is Dead” issue, all the while making images and photojournalism more prominent in the magazine. Now they’re working their magic on the Newsweek and Daily Beast websites. We caught up with Barnett after his presentation at Friday’s ABSTRACT Conference to ask him seven questions.
Barnett’s design work for Blender and Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine
1. What has been your best or most memorable design-related encounter?
When I was a young designer at Entertainment Weekly in ‘97, I was working on a story about Van Morrison, and we were using one of Anton Corbijn’s portraits from the 80’s. Photo editor Michelle Romero knew I was a huge Corbijn fan, and as I was designing the opener, she ninja’ed me and brought in Anton to take a look at the layout. My jaw dropped and he started telling stories about Van, etc. It was a fantastic early career moment that always sticks with me.
2. What is your greatest graphic design pet peeve?
Laziness
3. What do you consider your proudest design moment?
Pulling off Newsweek’s Osama bin Laden special issue in 36 hours.
4. You were among the design star-studded list of presenters at the ABSTRACT Conference. For those who couldn’t make it to Maine, what did you talk about?
At ABSTRACT, I talked the conference attendees through “a day in the life” of what it means—and takes—to art direct, conceptualize, and design a news weekly magazine in 2011. Looking through the lens of Newsweek’s recent redesign, I walked through how we dealt with the Japan earthquake and tsunami disasters and bin Laden’s death.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The AIGA held their biennial Best of New England (BoNE) show on Thursday night at Boston University’s 808 Gallery. The theme for this year was “Wicked Problems,” seeking entries that were “complex and ill-defined.” The show drew submissions from all across New England, although Massachusetts and Connecticut dominated the awards.
The judges included Ann Willoughby (Willoughby Design Group), Bobby C. Martin, Jr. (Original Champions of Design), and Jon Kolko (Austin Center for Design).
Long Distance Relationship installation at CSM from printinterventions.blog.com
On Wednesday evening the new Central Saint Martins development in London’s King’s Cross was unveiled before an audience of alumni, designers, architects and press. But while CSM students were conspicuous in their absence, their voice has, if anything, been louder in recent months than much of the relocation fanfare…*
This is because of the issue currently dividing the institution prior to its move: that the screenprinting, bookbinding and etching facilities will not be joining the students at their new site in King’s Cross but, instead, will be moved to CSM’s Byam Shaw campus in Archway, three miles away from the new site.
At the pre-launch event, on-site photography and digital animation offered a glimpse of what the University of the Arts and architects Stanton Williams hope will become the first truly 21st century art school. Set to open in September and part of the 67-acre King’s Cross redevelopment, the site is truly impressive. Exposed brick sits alongside new structures (much of the site is based on retained transit sheds and a vast granary store dating from the 1850s) and there will be plenty of light and space in which to work. By virtue of maintaining a visual link with the area’s industrial past, the building already has, as Argent developer Roger Madelin pointed out, a heart and soul.
Alongside a 12m-wide ‘street’ running down the middle of the site, the new development will include a theatre and performance spaces; a dance studio; exhibition spaces and workshops; the potential for temporary pop-up spaces; even viewing areas where students can watch each other working. Essentially it unites the spread of the five disparate CSM campuses into a single site, with 4,000 students expected to arrive in September.
Yet despite the exciting presentation, the talk of enhanced experiences and transformative spaces (not to mention Sir John Tusa’s reassurance that the character and traditions of each department will not be diminished) it seems that five hasn’t quite gone into one. And those counted in the remainder, namely CSM’s graphic design students, are far from happy.
The Off-Sight poster
For several months CR has been aware of blogs, such as printinterventions.blog.com and csmprintprotest.tumblr.com, and tweets from students alerting us to the petition against the relocation of the printing workshops. More recently, on the night of the pre-launch at King’s Place, the student-organised Off-Sight exhibition opened at the Camp space in east London, the culmination of months of student protest against the relocation. The show aims to register their disappointment at the move while celebrating the work that the BA (Hons) graphic design course has produced.
“The new site is incredible and this has never been a fight against the move to King’s Cross,” says Off-Sight’s Alexandra Hook. “But the original plans were for us to have a space in the new building. In moving all the screenprinting, bookbinding and etching faciltiies to Byam Shaw, it’s going against the CSM ethos – which is why we’re angry. It’s meant to be everyone working togther but we’re being isolated – from the course and from our influences.”
Hook, a second year graphic design student, says that the current screenprinting area in Southampton Row is one of the only places on campus “where you get total cross-pollination. It’s a community,” she continues, “and that’s how I got interested in printing in the first place. I walked into the studio having seen something I liked on the walls outside. That element, I think, will be gone.”
From printinterventions.blog.com
CSM say that the equipment going into the print room at the Byam Shaw campus will include some of the very old print machines and letterpress currently located at Southampton Row, in addition to some brand new technology. A statement on the CSM Snapshot blog also assures students that there will be more presses and technicians available because they are all in one place.
“It is important that students have an opportunity to work with equipment they will see in industry as well as hone their skills on the traditional machines,” runs a statement from the CSM press department. “It is understandable that the graphic design students will miss the immediate proximity of the workshops, but like other schools to which the print rooms have not been readily available, they will get used to organising their time to book space.”
From csmprintprotest.tumblr.com
But as the Eye blog reported back in April, an additional student concern is that the facilities will thus be ‘centrally managed’ – what was a graphic design department facility will now be accessible to students on a range of CSM courses. While the potential for collaboration is increased, overall access could in fact be reduced.
Conversely, in a lengthy comment on the Grafik blog, CSM graphic design course director, Alan Baines, offered his concerns about isolating the printmaking facilities: “The synthesis of digital and analogue (e.g. printmaking, photography, moving image) and our ability to offer both within the same physical and intellectual space is what makes BA graphic design so current,” he wrote. “This philosophy is a major component in forming our USP, which in turn supports the CSM brand. It seems, however, as if in the move to King’s Cross it has been assumed that graphic designers only require Apple Macs to be creative.”
So how do the students who currently use the printmaking facilities envisage working day to day come September? “I’m a printmaker at heart,” says Hook, “and I’ll have to spend whole days at Byam Shaw and whole days at King’s Cross. With printing you can’t just leave and come back; you prepare things, there’s a lot of waiting around, drying time.” One comment left on the CSM blog post alluded to the mechanics of the potential journey: “Kings Cross – > Archway / Archway – > Kings Cross / Kings Cross – > Archway / Archway – > Kings Cross etc…”
In the lead up to the move, many difficult decisions have no doubt been made. Head of college, Jane Rapley, acknowledged that the hardest ones had come down to choices between staff and space. “The most important factor other than staff is access to equipment,” she said at the pre-launch when asked by designer Ken Garland how the amount of physical space for work and study would be affected. In fact, she admitted, there will actually be less square footage at the King’s Cross site. There will be much less “owned” space, too – a philosophy that adheres well to cross-disciplinary intentions, but could usher in a few problems of its own.
As Rapley concluded, there are always “challenges of going into an environment that isn’t formed – but there is space for the unexpected.” While that does sound like a perfect environment for a creative education, it will be clearer in September just how the move works out for CSM’s graphic design intake who already appear to have done all they can to make their voices heard.
*UPDATE: CSM would like us to point out that invites to the King’s Place pre-launch went out to 30 student reps from across the course and college, to eight sabbatical officers and to five students from the Student’s Union.
More details on the King’s Cross move here.
“Much of what we have known as designers has suddenly shifted,” says Luke Hayman. “However, we still have the ability to establish identity, and to communicate and engage through our design tools.” A partner at Pentagram, Hayman is something of a world champion in establishing identity, communicating, and engaging, whether on behalf of New York magazine (which he famously overhauled as design director) or the Khaleej Times, a Dubai broadsheet. Other publications that have enjoyed a visual rebirth at the hands of Hayman include TIME, Consumer Reports, and the Atlantic. This afternoon, he’ll take the stage at the ABSTRACT Conference in Portland, Maine, to lead a session entitled “Identity Crisis?” We took the interrogative hint and asked Hayman to answer our seven questions.
1. Can you give us a sneak preview of your ABSTRACT Conference presentation?
I’ll be talking about the importance of finding and establishing identity for a publication. What makes up the DNA of a magazine and how can it be expressed in rich, lasting way.
2. What is your greatest graphic design/publication design pet peeve?
Thoughtless stealing…as opposed to thoughtful ‘borrowing’!
3. What has been your most memorable design-related encounter?
George Lois calling to give his opinion on the cover of the first issue of New York magazine we did. He didn’t like it!
4. What do you consider your proudest design moment?
Joining Pentagram.
5. What’s on your summer reading list?
I’m on a Lee Child binge: guilty pleasure/escapism.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Artist Jake Tilson’s latest book In at the Deep End, Cooking Fish, Venice to Tokyo, is out in September. And he’s promoting it with this rather lovely pack of food-related goodies
Jake Tilson has always been one of the more original voices in graphic design, his playful, multilayered work defying both convention and easy description. In recent years much of his work has centred around food – many readers will no doubt have seen A Tale of 12 Kitchens, his part travelogue, part recipe book.
His new book deals with a lifelong squeamishness about eating fish. To get over it, Tilson sent himself on “a quest to buy, prepare and cook fish and seafood” around the world. As with 12 Kitchens Tilson has created everything in the book himself, including four new food-inspired typefaces which are revealed on a series of cards in the pack.
Also in the book is a magic fortune-telling fish that can advise the user on how to cook their fishy dinner – a moving head means you should steam it, if it curls up entirely, it’s time to fire up the barbecue
Plus there’s a little bottle of beautifully packaged soy sauce
and some rather nice piscine postcards
and a pack of Jake Tilson Trading Cards
all of which, as well as being a very pleasant thing to receive in the post, hint at the incredible invention and level of detail to be found in the finished book which is published by Quadrille in September.
Today’s Google Doodle is a sweet homage to Les Paul, the musician and electric guitar pioneer who would have celebrated his 96th birthday today. While Paul didn’t technically invent the electric guitar, he did solve the problem of feedback with his solid-body model, developed in his apartment in Queens, New York in the 1940s.
The Les Paul Google Doodle allows you to digitally play the guitar on their homepage. Strumming by mouse/trackpad is fun if tricky; but hit the black button below the strings, which enables you to play by keyboard, and then you’re off to the races.
When you hear the word “graffiti” in the context of art and design, the names Banksy and Shepard Fairey probably come to mind right away. But only knowing those names is equivalent to only knowing the name Frank Gehry in the context of architecture! The modern street art scene is just as diverse and creative as the architecture scene. Here’s a brief rundown on types of “graffiti” and some of my personal favorites.
Tagging/Walls
Daim
Saber
Tagging has bad connotations in most cities due to its associations with gangs and gang violence, but tagging is the basis of the street art scene. Many graffiti artists get their start tagging and some continue to push the boundaries of putting life-size typography on a wall.
Stencils
C215
Kenji Nakayama
Stenciling involves cutting out the negative image of a design from paper, cardboard, or even metal, then using spray paint to fill in the holes. Stencils can be as small as a business card or as large as a building. This is a great way to transition for many artists and also one of the most fun, as the image can be repeated multiple times.
Sohnar in collaboration with CR are presenting a series of free evening lectures, beginning with a look at ten of the world’s most enduring symbols with Pentagram‘s Angus Hyland…
In his lecture, Hyland will talk through ten abstract and representational trademarks, examining both the history and development of some of the world’s most recognisable symbols. He will also look at how these particular designs have lasted and at the relationships with the brands they represent. Hyland’s book, Symbol, written with Steven Bateman, has just been published by Laurence King and contains 1,300 examples of purely visual marks.
The evening event will take place at Pentagram’s London studio at 11 Needham Road, London W11 2RP on Wednesday June 29 (6.30pm).
We have 60 free tickets to this event. To apply for one please contact Jade Mellor on jade.mellor@centaur.co.uk or 0207 970 6238.
We will also be releasing a number of free places for students. Further details will appear on the blog very soon.
For more information on the evening’s sponsors, Sohnar, click here.
Above: spreads from Symbol, published by Laurence King
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.
