Here’s a nice idea from Danish artist Jacob Dahlstrup: creating images using a tattooing machine on heavy watercolour paper
Dahlstrup sketches the design in pencil first, then goes over it with the tattoo needle to create the final effect
See more of his work here
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Belgian illustrator Gwénola Carrère designed the cover of our January 2011 issue: she also features inside as one of our Ones to Watch for the coming year
We’ve given the January issue over to six talented creative types who we believe are ready to make their mark in the next 12 months.
From Brussels, we have the aforementioned Gwénola
Plus, photographer Laura Pannack, who first came to our attention last year when CR editor Patrick Burgoyne helped choose the LPA Futures winners, and who has already gone on to pick up some major awards including a World Press Photo prize
From Canada, by way of France, we have Caroline Robert – another designer to benefit from the patronage of Arcade Fire
And from Manchester, though now based in Sweden, we have illustrator, animator, agent, photographer and writer Chris Gray
And from New York, we have director Paul Kamuf
Joined by, from London, interaction designer and all round technical wizard, Marek Bereza
In our Crit section this month, the CR Readers’ Panel picks their stand-out work of 2010
Regular columnist Andy Cameron examines the growth of 2-screen media while Gordon Comstock wonders at the preponderance of the ‘c’ word – that’s ‘creative’ of course
Jeremy Leslie looks at how magazines have mastered the use of infographics and what one particular example reveals about the publishing world
And Jörg M Colberg looks for the truth in Andrej Krementschouk‘s disturbing images
And for subscribers only, Monograph offers a glimpse into the ‘what might have been’ world of movie posters with a selection of Hollywood poster proposals from illustrator Akiko Stehrenberger, many of which never made it past the first round
The January 2011 issue of CR is out on December 16. Our back cover fetaures Shay by Laura Pannack
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Crockery rarely makes an appearance on the CR blog. But with a royal wedding set for next year, we’ll make an exception for KK Outlet’s recently unveilved ‘unofficial’ Wills and Kate souvenir plates…
With only four months to go until the big day, royal wedding fever has already gripped parts of the creative community – largely those involved in ceramics, unsurprisingly, as Majesty magazine reveals. (Just the $70 for the ‘tankard’ then.)
And in an attempt to combat the tidal wave of tack that accompanies any decent royal wedding the Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel, has already issued a formal memorandum indicating that tea towels, for one, are right out.
So London-based creative agency KK Outlet decided to create some of their own souvenir plates for the more design-conscious fans of British royalty.
Many of the sentiments may not be wholly endorsed by The Palace, but we love the fact that April 29 2011 is already proving to be a special day for millions of fans of that other UK institution: the public holiday.
The plates will be available to purchase from KK Outlet from January 15. See kkoutlet.com.
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It seems that the snow, Christmas festivities and general busy-ness has resulted in a large number of requests for us to extend the entry deadline for May’s Annual, and in the words of a pantomime genie, “Your wish is our command”.
You now have until January 14 to submit your entries, so enjoy a little more festive cheer celebrating the success of 2010. Just remember to get the best of your work submitted before the deadline for a chance to be included in the 2011 Annual.
If you have any questions or would like to partner with us on the coming year’s Annual, please email Sarah Davies or call her on +44 (0)207 943 8093.
In the last week or so we’ve seen some really nice, lavish even, music packages so we thought we’d share some with you. First up is the packaging for a new series of 7″ records released on Fred (Airside / Lemon Jelly) Deakin’s Impotent Fury label…
The first single (packaging shown above) contains two new Impotent Fury remixes of tracks by Paul Haig – Trip Out The Rider and Signals. The record sleeve has been carefully crafted by the good folk at Think Tank so that the inner sleeve fits super-snugly in the outersleeve in order for the concentric circles of the design to sit perfectly together. A combination of die-cut holes and printed varnishes gives the impression that there are several layers of card in the pack, with the dinked centre hole of the record itself providing one of the layers.Here’s what the sleeve looks like as you remove the inner…
And here’s what the back of the sleeve looks like – with a white screenprinted pattern:
The idea is that this packaging design will apply to a series of 7″ releases, although the colour of stocks used will be different each time, as will the screenprinted pattern on the back. Here’s a sneaky preview of the second single release’s packaging:
These releases can be bought for £10 each direct from play.airside.co.uk
Regular readers might recognise the look of this package – as we featured the similarly silvery special edition CD package of UNKLE’s Where Did The Night Fall album back in May. Shown above, however is the special edition vinyl package which has become available more recently. Here are some photos to give you an idea of how the package is put together…
Open the 12″ box to reveal a tracklist on the inside cover – and also a matt silver envelope with a clear plastic window revealing a picture disc showcasing one of the images created for the album by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones…
There are actually three picture discs, each housed in an envelope with a clear window on the front and the disc’s tracklisting printed on the reverse in the typeface created specially for the album by Ben Drury.
Remove all the items from the box and there are three picture discs, a 12″ booklet with lyrics and illustrations and a 12″ hardboard book of Du Preez and Thornton Jones’ stunning album artwork printed on silver stock.
Above: the lyric booklet (spread shown, below)
The special edition vinyl box set, produced by Modo, is priced at £100 and is available from unkle.com
This is the sleeve of Shobaleader One’s album, d’Demonstrator – a project by Squarepusher, released on Warp. “The project is unusual in that Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher) is performing with a band, each member wearing a mask of LED lights which displays a representation of what they’re playing as they’re playing it,” explains designer Sam Blunden who art directed the sleeve. “I worked closely with Tom whose brief of ‘hi-tech pagan’ set the direction, photographer Donald Milne, James Burton at Warp, as well as Valley Wands, purveyors of cloaks – making for a very enjoyable collaborative effort.”
Above are the back cover and a shot of one of the inner sleeves showing a cut through to one of the vinyl labels. Below is a press shot of the band, fully cloaked:
Another special edition music package we’ve recently clapped our eyes on is the Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set of Underworld‘s latest album, Barking. The package is a 10″ box, as shown above. Remove the lid at the top and…
…inside there’s a colourful gatefold package. Pull it out and open it up to find three discs housed on the right hand side, and a tipped on booklet on the left hand side.
There is a standard CD album on one of the CDs, bonus tracks plus remixes on another, and the third disc is a DVD containing films created to accompany the tracks by a host of directors and image makers including Dylan Kendle, Michael Horsham, Graham Wood & John Hollis, Simon Taylor, and TImothy Bricknell.
The 32 page booklet on the left of the gatefold contains illustrations, photography and also track by track commentary by Rick Smith and Karl Hyde. Here are some spreads:
What I really like about this deluxe edition of the album (produced by Modo) is that it’s a practical package that can be shelved amongst collectors’ other prized vinyl packages – and, crucially, it’s not priced beyond the means of your average fan. £35 from underworldlive.com
The above CD pack is for a compilation of tracks released thus far on the International Feel label. The black plastic CD case has been printed directly onto with silver ink. Very nice. Simplicity abounds inside too – with a black folded insert housed where a booklet usually goes. Fold it out and it has the same globe illustration as on the cover of the case. Text containing all the track listing, copyright and legal bumpf is reversed out of a black screenprint on the CD itself. Design by Phantom.
Working on a pro bono basis, Landor Associates has created two distinct wayfinding systems for Great Ormond Street childrens’ Hospital (GOSH).
The first (which has already been implemented) sees each of the hospital’s six buildings take on a particular colour identity to make navigation through the various buildings easier. And the second, which has been specifically devised for the yet-to-be completed Llewelyn Davies Yeang designed Morgan Stanley Clinic Building (MSCB), is based on the natural world. A host of different animal characters will help visitors to the building find their way around, as well as put children at ease in the environment…
“Great Ormond Street Hospital came to us with a brief in 2008 based upon the organic mess that the wonderful hospital is architecturally,” explains Carl Halksworth, design dirctor at Landor on the project, “and knowing that there was a huge redevelopment scheme – old buildings being knocked down and new ones built. The wayfinding problem that existed was that people knew they were in the hospital but not which particular part. How to get from A to B was also a problem.”
“As you travel through from building to building, there was no signage to tell you where you are,” adds Landor’s associate creative director, Ben Marshall. “On our first visit I found it easy to reference the Lego model of the hospital I’d seen in the reception area, thinking, ‘are we in the orange bit now’ or ‘are we in the purple bit?’ It was kind of obvious what we should do.”
Beyond colour coding the hospital’s various buildings (example of some of the new signage shown, above), the design team at Landor found they wanted to develop a more rigourous wayfinding system. “For me, it required a multi-storey car park level of simplicity of navigation,” says Halksworth,” but we couldn’t stop there because when you understand the nature of the organisation, you don’t want to just apply some big numbers and say that’s what it’s all about. We wanted to take the opportunity to really get into the culture of the hospital.”
The team at Landor came up with a more complex wayfinding system (which will first be implemented in the new MSCB when it opens in 2012, but which may well extend to the rest of the hospital in time) that has two purposes, to direct and also distract.”We wanted to use whatever method we could to make sure that it’s as clear and simple to find your way around as possible for the parents, partners, visiting GPs – a huge audience of people,” explains Halksworth. “Now it feels relatively common place, but for me it was an eye-opener when we started to talk to the team at GOSH about the way distraction / distraction therapy – is a key part of the therapeutic environment. The thinking is, if you’re going to give someone a big injection in their bottom, give them something to look at, get them to count the number of bees on the wall – it will make the situation better. So we wanted to look at how we could bring that distraction into our scheme and to make it more of an inviting and welcoming environment.”
The natural world-based system takes into account the fact that many wards in the hospital are already named after animals. The basic idea is that each floor of the building takes on a natural world theme, with the lower ground floor being under the sea…
…and the top floor being the sky – with levels in between taking on habitats found in between…
Each ward on each floor is then named after an animal that is associated with that particular environment – and they can appear in corridors to help guide people to them…
Here are some of the illustrated characters developed in house at Landor for use in the project
Each animal character has a distinct icon (somewhat reminiscent of Lance Wyman‘s zoo work) for easy representation on hospital signage
And here are some examples of how the animals and graphics might be applied within a hospital ward or corridor to help distract and entertain the hospital’s patients.
Landor Associates has created a guidelines document for GOSH (pages shown above) detailing how the scheme should function so that the redevelopment team from Great Ormond Street Hospital, with support from Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, can implement it when the building work on the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building is complete. The design team at Landor have also made themselves available for further consultation on the project too.
Stefan Sagmeister’s new website offers a glimpse into his studio’s working life: the homepage features a live webcam while interaction is via vinyl graphic ‘buttons’ stuck on the floor
Sagmeister’s sites have always departed somewhat from the portfolio-based norm – the last one, for example, being a headache-inducing clash of colour and type which was more endurance test than pleasant browsing experience.
The new site creates an interface out of a series of vinyl stickers applied to the studio floor and shot from directly above by a live webcam. So now the world can thrill to the site of a bustling modern design studio at work ie designers sitting in front of screens for hours on end with their headphones on, rising occasionally to get more coffee/relieve themselves/go shopping for more skinny jeans and overpriced trainers . And presumably clients can keep an eye on things too…
No doubt Sagmeister’s detractors will see it as an exercise in vanity but it’s certainly a fresh and intriguing way to tackle an issue which all design studios struggle endlessly with – the dreaded studio website.
This film shows the installation:
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A note on commenting: previous posts about Sagmeister have brought out the worst in certain commenters. Any abusive comments will be deleted by the moderator.
We know you love this one: it’s Pantone’s colour prediction for next year! So away with your Turquoise already and in with Honeysuckle (18-2120)…
Pantone’s fortune cookie for 2011 tells us that “Energising Honeysuckle Lifts Spirits and Imparts Confidence to Meet Life’s Ongoing Challenges”.
While the tagline is philosophical, it’s interesting to note that there’s a definite awareness of the financial climate in there. No purely fun-time mimosa (2008), honeysuckle is living in the real world – it’s going to keep you pepped up as you face those Challenges. That remain Ongoing.
And while turquoise (2009) did indeed serve “as an escape for many” (those days are long gone) a decent bit of honeysuckle naturally “emboldens us to face everyday troubles with verve and vigor”.
Aside from that, other conclusions drawn by CR are:
It reflects the swing to the right in US politics.
It’s pretty much the opposite of turquoise.
Um, we need more pinky-reds in our lives while we dig ourselves out of this bleak economic mess.
Anyway, we look forward to hearing how you all incorporate the hue into your lives.
Grid-loving graphic design legend Wim Crouwel, now 82, will get his close-up next year when the Design Museum celebrates his career with a major retrospective. Spanning more than 60 years, the exhibition will cover the Dutch designer’s rigorous approach and such milestones as his work for design practice TotalDesign, the identity for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, as well as his iconic poster, print, typography, and lesser known exhibition design. In a nod to Crouwel’s mod works that captured the essence of the emerging computer and space age of the early 1960s, the show is entitled “Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey.” It will be on view from March 30 through July 3, 2011.
Fontheads like us will delight in the show’s in-depth look at Crouwel’s NewAlphabet, a typeface he designed in 1967 for use in the newfangled computer systems of the day. “This illegible font challenged the design establishment and provoked debate, a debate which Crouwel was happy to engage and openly admitted to placing visual aesthetics above function,” noted the Design Museum in a statement announcing the retrospective. Meanwhile, guest curator and Spin creative director Tony Brook won’t leave viewers hanging as to Crouwel’s influence on contemporary graphic design. The exhibition will feature commentary from design stars such as Peter Saville and Stefan Sagmeister, while the Design Museum Shop will be stocked with Crouwel-inspired prints created by the likes of Experimental Jet Set, Cartlidge Levene, and Hamish Muir. Another bit of special merch we’re looking forward to: a limited-edition wallpaper inspired by Crouwel’s work.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
In news sure to send a frisson through the design community, London’s Design Museum announced today that it is to stage a major retrospective of the work of Wim Crouwel, opening in March
Wim Crouwel – A Graphic Odyssey will be Crouwel’s first major UK retrospective. It is to be curated by Tony Brook, creative director of design studio Spin, who has an extensive collection of the Gridnik’s work.
“Original sketches, posters, catalogues and archive photography will be on display alongside films and audio commentary, we are promised in a statemnt from the Museum issued today. “In addition to celebrating Crouwel’s career this exhibition will also explore his legacy and influence on contemporary graphic design with commentary from leading industry figures including Peter Saville and Stefan Sagmeister. In addition six designers will take inspiration from Crouwel’s career to produce a series of limited edition prints, a unique Wim Crouwel inspired wallpaper will also be sold exclusively in the Design Museum Shop.”
Wim Crouwel – A Graphic Odyssey will run from March 30 to July 3 2011. More here
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