As of this morning, the food pyramid that I, for one, was raised on is no longer: the New York Times reports that “[Michelle] Obama, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Surgeon General Regina Benjamin unveiled [a] new healthy eating icon at a news conference in Washington.”
The new design is called MyPlate, forming the veritable centerpiece to Mrs. Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. Like it’s predecessor—which dates back to 1992, by the way—it is a straightforward graphic representation of dietary guidelines, updated to reflect the latest research.
The plate was created by the Department of Agriculture with input from the first lady’s anti-obesity team and federal health officials. The agriculture department said that it conducted focus groups with about 4,500 people, including children, as they developed the new icon. Developing the icon and creating a Web site and other educational materials to go along with it cost about $2 million. That money will also help pay for an educational campaign centered on the plate icon over the next year, officials said.
Among our first priorities on any Saturday is opening the door to UnBeige HQ and locating our freshly delivered copy of The New York Times, bloated with all manner of colorful weekend inserts. We shuffle furiously through the Best Buy circulars and Macy’s coupons to find The New York Times Magazine (and, if we’ve been especially good that week, T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well), and it’s distinctive cover has a way of setting the tone for the weekend, whether with exploding produce, a gilded manhole cover, a killer sugar cube, or most recently, conjoined twins that may share a mind. Meanwhile, the creative mind behind all of the New York Times magazines is award-winning design director Arem Duplessis, a veteran of Spin, GQ, and Blaze. He made time to answer our seven questions, and we detected a pleasing ocean/aquatic theme to his answers, which include mentions of drowning and sharks!
1. You’ll be presenting at next week’s ABSTRACT Conference in Portland, Maine. Can you give us a sneak preview of your talk? I’ll be discussing our new content and our most recent redesign. How we approach design problems, and more importantly how we solve them.
2. What is your greatest graphic design or publication design pet peeve? Magazines that are so clearly design derivatives of other magazines. A successful magazine/brand has an immediate identity that belongs to them. We all “borrow” from time to time but when it’s so bad that you cannot even tell which magazine you are in, there’s a real problem.
3. What is your best or most memorable design-related encounter? A decade ago, I was on a shoot and was accused by an overbearing publicist of trying to “drown” her client. Literally. It wasn’t the best moment, but certainly the most memorable.
4. What is your proudest design moment? I once designed a poster for my wife for an anniversary present. It had some personal writing in it, and it made her cry and laugh all at the same time. Sappy I know, but I’m keeping it real here. continued…
Cartlidge Levene is behind a new wayfinding system for a regenerated school in Southwark in London. The work includes a series of visual ‘shopfronts’ to each of the classrooms and a range of playful signage…
The Michael Faraday Community School in Southwark (the chemist and physicist was born in what is now part of the London borough in 1791) was developed by architectural firm, Archial.
The primary school is one of the first to be transformed as part of the Southwark Schools for the Future programme. It accommodates a primary school, nursery, adult education and community facilities, and an after-school play group.
The structure of the build is based on a ‘circular footprint’ with a flexible learning space, called the Living Room, in the centre. Classrooms for year groups one to six are arranged around the perimeter and are connected by the central communal space. The Living Room features a bright yellow, double height wall which encloses both the Studio and Roof Garden teaching spaces.
Cartlidge Levene was briefed to develop a wayfinding system that would engage the children, engendering a feeling of pride in their school, and that integrated with the architecture. Ultimately, say the studio, the visual language aims to provide a new graphic identity for the school and work alongside the Faraday logotype that is mounted above the main entrance.
Also of note are the year group classrooms that form a continuous row of ‘shopfronts’ around the circular space over two levels. Differently coloured flag-signs fold out from these shopfronts to identify each year group. The studio also devised methods of displaying the children’s work to provide an ordered but flexible system that could be easily operated by the teachers. The signage takes advantage of the intuitive building arrangement with, according to the studio, good sight-lines across the central, circular space. Furthermore, playful, 3D arrows are used to sign the ‘Studio’ and ‘Roof Garden’ teaching spaces and supporting facilities.
The use of terminology such as Roof Garden and Living Room (for the teaching spaces) and even ‘Ballroom’ (for the external pavilion that houses sports and dining facilities) was developed, say the studio, to create “a fun nomenclature that the children can relate to”. The Ballroom sign is integrated into the building’s cladding, along with a layer of decorative pattern and, in the toilet blocks a ‘paper chain’ of male and female toilet icons has been applied to the doors.
Designer and imagemaker Tom Darracott is the first recipient of a CR Bursary, our new initiative supported by Blurb, which will provide funding for personal projects by promising creatives.
Each CR Bursary will provide £1000 to a designer, art director, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker or similar creative artist to complete a personal project in any medium. We will feature the project on the CR website and Blurb will produce a book designed by the artist to document the work.
A graduate of Leeds Met and St Martins, Darracott first came to prominence with his work for the Fabric nightclub. After finishing his MA at St Martins some ten years ago, Darracott attempted to set up a studio with his friend and long-term collaborator Carl Burgess (profiled by CR in 2008 here). Things didn’t work out (Darracott blames their naïvety) and, after a period of freelancing, Darracott was asked to join Jonathon Cooke’s Love studio.
One of Cooke’s major clients was the Fabric nightclub for whom Love produced regular mailers featuring imagery that was determinedly different to the regular flyer fayre of the times. “It was a pretty open brief really but it had to sit in that less obvious, surreal or twisted area,” Darracott explains, “basically anything that was as far as it could possibly be from nightclub visuals.”
In 2007 Cooke joined forces with Blue Source’s Seb Marling to form Village Green (profiled by CR in September 2008 with cover by Darracott).
Darracott came too and continued to produce striking imagery for Fabric that balanced surrealism with a certain Englishness that drew on folk traditions.
He also worked on projects such as the 2008 identity for music and arts enterprise, The Vinyl Factory, in which a variety of abstract marks form the backdrop for a classic logotype
while probably his biggest project was for the 2007 Mark Ronson Cover Version album where posters were designed, printed, pasted and ripped before being re-photographed to make the cover artwork
“It was at the tail end of when the music industry was still putting some money into artwork,” Darracott says of the campaign that featured multiple torn images of Ronson as if from a wall of flyposters. “It was a really enjoyable project to work on, and it made me realise you can’t be too fussy about the product you are working on. It’s far from being my type of music – at university I had this idea in my head that you should only work on ‘cool’ things – but that project taught me to be not so precious about things and realise it’s a job of work. There’s no shame in that at all.”
The idea came from the record label, weirdly, which might have come down from Mark Ronson as well. Then I worked closely with Seb [Marling] on it, researching artists who did work on ripped posters in the past. What helped was that the timeline was short so it meant that various people at label didn’t have days on end to agonise over every tiny detail.”
Earlier this year, Darracott decided to leave Village Green to set up on his own. As yet, there’s no fancy studio, just a shared space in East London. “It’s an age thing I suppose,” he says of his reasons for the move (Darracott is 32). “I couldn’t imagine I’d be working at Village Green when I’m 50 so, whilst I don’t have any big commitments in the rest of my life, now seemed a good time to throw myself totally into my work.”
And what characterises that work? “I’d like to think my work has a sense of urgency to it, that it’s not too polite I hope, I like to try to get some energy into it. That English, surreal look was more of a Village Green thing than me and it’s something I would like to move away from because it feels like it’s quite on-trend at moment – the whole oldy-worldy thing is not for me really.
“I’m more into work which is super polished I guess. There’s been a real fetishisation of craft in recent years which is self-indulgent I find. I’m interested in the techniques but find it all too backwards-looking, slightly unhealthy I think. I can see why people like those things, but we should be looking into the future a bit more,” he argues.
“I’m not sure it’s right that graphics work should be timeless as such, it should be tailor-made for current times and then who cares if it looks dated ten years later?”
For his CR Bursary project Darracott is working on a moving image piece which will be featured here on the CR website at the end of June.
Thanks to Blurb for their support of the CR Bursaries.
Related Content
Read Mark Sinclair’s profile of Village Green 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 some comic books cities are represented as nondescript block buildings in the background not meant to distract from the superhero brawls happening in their streets; but in many, the city is an integral part of the story. Readers may only be given a glimpse or a bird’s eye view of a metropolis, but that city can extend itself for countless miles in the reader’s mind. That is the power of the comic book—to use both images and words to create surreal worlds that feel more real and more tactile.
Perhaps the comic most singularly about the city is a strange series called Mister X. Created by Dean Motter in 1983, Mister X is a bizarre tale of an architect driven mad by his radical “psychetecture” architectural style. The story is set in the gorgeous Radiant City metropolis, with fanastical art deco-esque skyscrapers. There is also some great Vorticist-like design.
With the Danish capital declaring itself ‘cOPENhagen’, the city joins ‘I amsterdam’ and ‘LondON’ in the trend for word-within-a-word logotypes. But where else might benefit from this touristic wordplay?
What might be termed branding tmesis, or a form of visual infixation, works like this: take your city or country name (the anglised version is most commonly used in tourism) and see if it contains a word within it that could be adopted as an appealing slogan.
For example, similar in its tone to ‘I Love NY’, where Milton Glaser replaced the word “Love” with a heart symbol, in The Netherlands KesselsKramer came up with the inclusive-sounding ‘I amsterdam’ a few years ago.
…and it even translates into physical type sculpture, too, which in turn becomes a desination in its own right (shown here, outside the Rijksmuseum):
In 2009, the VisitCopenhagen organisation launched its cOPENhagen: Open For You campaign, branding the Danish Capital Region anew (brand director: Jacob Saxild). In the UK, the branding is currently running in newspaper ads.
Its designed to be interpreted by users…
…and, again, used across a range of media:
So in the same spirit, I wondered where else in the world might be able to trade on this quirk of naming?
Well, Finland, Romania, Tuvalu and Estonia could surely do well out of accentuating the positives, as above. But what about Columbia? Or Australia? Vietnam? Something for the graduates, too? Hold tight…
Tenuous you say? These are mere puns? Well, how about this effort for the Cuban capital, with apologies to the late Freddie Mercury… It is the whole city name after all. (Though might be a job to get it onto a T-shirt, let alone a badge)…
And this one would definitely get me thinking about a trip to Aruba:
Really though, the best example of potential word-within-a-word branding has to go to Japan. Simple, universal, graphically appealing, too:
Also looks great on a T-shirt.
UPDATE: Martin at elneff.com has more on the phenomenon on his blog, “Cope with it (pun intended)”. While the cOPENhagen work is currently being used in the UK press, Martin also informs us that branding excercise launched in Denmark in 2009. Thanks Martin.
Comic books are many things: pieces of artwork, hot movie properties and connections to childhood memories. But comic books are also a product and comic book covers are the product branding. These are six current cover artists who exemplify the aesthetics of good design and product identity.
1. Brian Wood
Wood is an indie favorite writer-artist, currently writing DMZ, Northlanders, and The New York Four. His cover designs are provocative and rely heavily on graphics rather than character portraits (the usual comic book trend). The covers also draw inspiration from graffiti, whether stenciling, overspray or plain ol’ social commentary.
2. Dave Johnson
Johnson is a prolific cover artist, most famous for the one hundred covers he provided for the complete run of the critically acclaimed 100 Bullets. Many of the covers were either optical illusions or pushed character portrait to new limits. Johnson also makes great use of type, often making words part of the cover landscape.
The June issue of Fast Company, celebrating the “100 Most Creative People in Business,” is covered in Conan O’Brien—nine of him, in guises ranging from Madonna to Moses—and ends with Margaret Rhodes‘ delicious backpage infographic about pastries (in honor of National Donut Day, which is this Friday, June 3). At the creative helm of all this creativity is Florian Bachleda, who since his appointment last fall, has dedicated his considerable talents to ensuring that the design of Fast Company is just as visionary as its subject matter. Bachleda, whose previous positions include creative director of Latina and design director of Vibe, was kind enough to pause his Memorial Day festivities to answer our questions about his lead-off presentation at next week’s ABSTRACT conference, career highlights (other than those involving O’Brien and exotic costumes), his summer reading list, and more.
1. You’ll be presenting at the upcoming ABSTRACT Conference in Portland, Maine. Can you give us a sneak preview of your presentation? I’ll be talking about the four or five guiding principles of the ongoing Fast Company redesign. For previous titles, I’ve always employed specific design frameworks based on an editorial idea, so I’ll be sharing how that approach works, and doesn’t work, for Fast Company.
2. What is your greatest graphic design or publication design pet peeve? People who don’t create content passing judgement on those who do.
3. What is your best or most memorable design-related encounter? Three things: 1) Working for many years under Bob Newman, and trying to practice daily the lessons he taught me; 2) My first SPD Board meeting in 2002, and sitting at the same table with people like Diana LaGuardia, Janet Froelich, and especially Fred Woodward, who is the reason I’m a designer; 3) Having the opportunity to get to know George Lois, which is an experience and a privilege all it’s own.
4. What do you consider your proudest design moment? Seriously, it’s every single day that I get to make a living doing a job I love. My father worked as a steel smelter for one company all of his life, from the age of 16 (he told the company he was 18) to 62. He never understood what I did, but he saw that I loved it. It’s a luxury he never had. continued…
We’ve chosen our winner and added some of our favourite reader suggestions to the bottom of this blogpost. Read on to find out if your suggestion made the cut.
Vintage has republished a series of five science fiction classics, including titles by HP Lovecraft and Jules Verne, and what’s more they’re in 3D, with specs included in each copy so you can see the illustrated covers in all their glory. (Read on to find out how you can win a complete set.)
To make the covers, creative director Suzanne Dean and the Random House design team worked with four different illustrators. Jim Tierney created illustrations for both Jules Verne covers (shown above), and Sara Ogilvie and Mick Brownfield contributed artwork for The Lost World and Planet of the Apes respectively (shown below).
Vladimir Zimakov created the cover for The Call of Cthulhu, the last book in the series.
If you’ve got a spare pair of 3D glasses nearby, you can see the effect for yourself on the pictures above.
Competition winner
Thanks to everyone for sending us your favourite images, we were reminded of a few science fiction classics we’d forgotten about. Honourable mention should go to the following submissions:
However there can be only one winner, and the set of books will be going to Chris Anderson, for his submission of John Wyndham’s The Outward Urge.
Free with the June issue of CR, this year’s Graduate Guide looks at how to promote your work, use blogging and Twitter to get commissions, and make the best of a studio placement. We also talk to the Lost in the Forest Institute who applied their “learning by doing” approach to designing the Guide itself…
The latest CR Graduate Guide (available now to subscribers and on UK news-stands) saw the Stockport College-based educational initiative, Lost in the Forest Institute, collaborate with CR and Barnbrook studio on its design.
For this edition we also have a great offer for UK-based students who can receive £2.90 off the price of CR June (which includes the Graduate Guide). To receive the discount, students should email Laura McQueen from their .ac.uk accounts. They will then be sent an exclusive voucher that can be redeemed at the news-stand for this month’s copy. An offer of a discounted subscription is also available.
Inside the Guide we have advice from SheSays co-founder, Ale Lariu, and some of her graduates from the Miami Ad School in New York on how you get your name out there, how to network and make the best of an interview:
Aberdeen-based illustrator and social media enthusiast Johanna Basford also answers questions on how she uses both her blog and Twitter to share projects and, ultimately, get some great client work:
The Lost in the Forest Institute tell us all about their unique learning environment for students (they’re a partnerhip between Stockport College and design studio Thoughtful) and the process of “learning by doing”, exemplified in their hands-on work on the design of the Guide this year:
Plus, we have Jonny Burch of ShellsuitZombie magazine talking to Jake Jennings – aka ‘Placement Man’ – on how he has managed to notch up nine placements at some prestigious studios since leaving university. He spilled the beans on how he gets them, what he gets out of them, and how best to use your time in a studio:
Finally, we have our list of Graduate Shows, which will appear on the blog as a separate post (feel free to add the details of your show to the list).
If you’re a student and would like to receive a voucher for £2.90 off the price of the June issue of CR (which includes the 2011 Graduate Guide), just email Laura McQueen from your .ac.uk account. Vouchers can be redeemed at the news-stand for this month’s copy.
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.
Among our first priorities on any Saturday is opening the door to UnBeige HQ and locating our freshly delivered copy of The New York Times, bloated with all manner of colorful weekend inserts. We shuffle furiously through the Best Buy circulars and Macy’s coupons to find The New York Times Magazine (and, if we’ve been especially good that week, T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well), and it’s distinctive cover has a way of setting the tone for the weekend, whether with 
Batman
The June issue of 
