Hasta La Ideas

As part of its 80th anniversary celebrations (that we previously blogged about here), Faber & Faber is publishing an extensive series of Samuel Beckett’s works, including 18 novels, plays and short stories, to appear over the next two years. The typographic covers for the series were commissioned by Faber’s senior designer, Miriam Rosenbloom, and designed by London-based studio A2/SW/HK…

According to Rosenbloom, the project has taken the best part of a year from concept to completion, with the designers working closely with the Beckett estate as well as Faber’s in-house Arts team.

“Our starting point was some of the 1960s Beckett covers from the Faber archive,” Rosenbloom explains, “which take a bold typographic approach.

“A2 seemed like the perfect match for the series; they are renowned for their typographic work and have a wonderful ability to work with historical reference while always remaining true to their individual style.”

Each cover features a bespoke font that comes in four weights, while the book’s titles runs vertically to allow for the use of large point sizes.

“A neutral grey background was selected as a counterpoint to the special Pantone colours chosen for each of the 18 titles,” explains A2’s Scott Williams.

“This choice is, in part, a playful reference to Beckett’s directive that his gravestone be ‘any colour, so long as it’s grey’.”

The end result allows for a playful variety in the sizing and layout of the titles, the length of which range from one single word to several phrases, as in the case of the collected editions.

“This allows for some unusual word breaks and so the titles bleed off the edge of the page giving an energy and tension to the design,” adds Rosenbloom. “The colour palette is fresh and complements this striking and type-led series design.”

The first five volumes in the series are set to be published in May by Faber & Faber.

It seems Luke Hayman has a rival for Pentagram’s Mr Magazine title – two redesigns from Angus Hyland and team caught our eye this week…

Both are from the same publisher. First up, UK men’s title Palladium. Usually on projects such as this Pentagram would do the redesign then hand over to an in-house team but here the publisher was interested in an ongoing relationship, asking Hyland and team to art direct all five issues in the coming year. Before committing to such an arrangement, Hyland carried out an analysis of the current title, assessing what should be retained and what changed. “I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page,” he says (no pun intended).

With the parameters of the project agreed, Hyland and team set about “tidying it up and making it better… one would hope.” They identified the diagonal stripe on the cover as something ‘ownable’ for the magazine and introduced it on section dividers and fashion pages.

Gotham was used for headlines which is contrasted with Courier in captions. “We wanted to move it away from being too bookish and predictable. With books you are aiming for en even pace through the publication but in magazines you want to turn over the page and be surprised,” Hyland says.

The same team was also responsible for French men’s magazine, Upstreet. The black frame of the cover was retained but most of the information was moved to a block at the bottom of the page. Typeface Tiffany was introduced for headers.

“Doing magazines is a bit of departure for me,” Hyland says, “but a lot of it is common sense stuff really.”

The current issue of CR features The Annual, showcasing the best work of the past year. Nine projects have been chosen for our Best in Book section, the ultimate accolade. We will feature each of them in a series of posts this week that include additional content to further explain each project. In this post, see how Lobo’s wonderful hand-crafted title sequence for Brazilian TV series Capitu was made

Capitu is a Brazilian TV mini-series adaptation of 19th-century novelist Machado de Assis’ work, Dom Casmurro. The story centres on an ageing man looking back on his life in an attempt to discover whether his best friend is the true father of his son, who he has raised with his wife, Capitu. De Assis’ novel is now considered one of Brazil’s most important Modernist texts and, in order to convey its radicalism, motion graphics studio Lobo looked to the Dadaist movement as inspiration for the TV show’s opening titles and interstitials. The team referenced what several avant-garde artists called ‘décollage’, a process where – rather than building up an image through layering – cutting and tearing instead reveals layers of buried images.

Here’s the title sequence

And this is how it was made

See more on this and the rest of the selections from this year’s Annual in our May issue, on newsstands now.

Credits
Entrant: Lobo.
Client: Globo Networks.
Creative Direction: Mateus de Paula Santos and Carlos Bêla.
Concept: Carlos Bêla, Roger Marmo, Mateus de Paula Santos.
Design and Animation: Carlos Bêla.
Assistant Animator: Rachel Moraes.
Production: João Tenório.
Music: Tim Rescala

London-based design studio Airside celebrates its tenth year of business this year by self-publishing Airside by Airside, a 296-page hardback tome choc full of images of the projects that have not only paid the bills at Airside HQ but have shaped the company.

This is not your typical studio monograph. Dip into the text on any given page and it becomes clear that the intention is not just to show off the work created since the company’s inception in 1999, but also to use the book as a means to contextualise the work within the story of the company’s development…

“When we first talked about doing a book I was very keen that it had something of worth in the narrative,” explains Fred Deakin, who, along with Nat Hunter and Alex Maclean originally set up the company back in 1999. “I was very conscious that I wanted to do something where the narrative would be as interesting as the images. I’ve got loads of design books where I haven’t actually got round to reading the text but if you chose to read ours, I felt really strongly that it needed to be something that would give an insight into why the work was produced and the context and the culture in which the work was produced.”

The book’s hard cover favours pattern over any informational text (rather like a Lemon Jelly record sleeve) – a removable sticker carries the info. Inside, the first thing you notice is that the text on each page is both in English and in Japanese. “It’s partly because of Lemon Jelly,” explains Deakin, referring to the band which he runs along­side the design studio. “The Japanese public are so design literate that, when we first went out there, almost more of them had heard of Airside than had heard of Lemon Jelly, which was quite a revelation. We’ve done a lot of work now in Japan and while I wouldn’t say we’re big there, we’ve got an aware­ness – we’ve done lectures and we’ve had exhibitions in Japan and we’ve all got a real love for the culture. Our Japanese agent suggested the dual narrative and I really like it, it looks really nice. I think it gives the book more weight, more traction.”

This dual narrative that runs throughout the book tells the story of Airside in detail.

“I guess we were trying to do three things with the book,” says Deakin. “We were trying to show off the work that we’re very proud of, but we also wanted to show people how Airside happened because it’s been quite an unusual process. We were very lucky and we took very firm decisions about certain things that we weren’t going to fuck with so I wanted to show that, to make that explicit because that is part of the work really. The values and processes that created each piece of work are crucial, I think, to giving the book that deeper insight which is what I was hoping the people that bought the book might want. The third reason would be that if you are about to set up your own design company then it’s very much a kind of case study, a ‘how to’. If you want to set up a company like Airside then this is exactly what we did, here are our mistakes, here are our successes, this is what we’re proud of, this is what we’re not proud of. We consciously tried to put in the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. I think we expose ourselves really extensively over the course of the narrative – that’s the intention anyway.”

Read the full version of this article in the current issue of CR. Airside by Airside, £35, is available now from airsideshop.com

Interior graphics for the exhibition, Mythologies (designed by Spin) at Haunch of Venison’s new Burlington Gardens space in London

The Haunch of Venison gallery unveiled its new home last month with a new exhibition, Mythologies, that paid homage to the building’s previous incarnation as the Museum of Mankind. The exhibition essentially turned the gallery into a giant cabinet of curiosities and, before it closes this weekend, we wanted to post some images of the graphic design work created for the show by London-based studio, Spin…

One of the posters created for the exhibition

The Mythologies exhibition aims to explore the uncanny and the extraordinary as featured in such historic anthropological collections as the Pitt Rivers, the Hunterian and the Sir John Soane’s museums. The new show features work by over 40 international artists, including Sophie Calle, Tony Cragg, Bill Viola, Keith Tyson and Damien Hirst.

It’s an apt inaugural show for Haunch’s new space as between 1970 and 1998, 6 Burlington Gardens housed the British Museum’s ethnographic collections, staging exhibitions on subjects ranging from the Mexican Day of the Dead to Japanese Kites.

Catalogue covers

Various spreads from the catalogue…

Spin’s Patrick Eley explains the studio’s approach to their work for the exhibition:

“Reflecting the ethnographic history of the building, we created a strong totemic typographic identity for the show using Milton Glaser’s Baby Teeth – a typeface which contrasts sharply with the grand Victorian gallery space. To create the poster we overlaid this on pages photocopied from Miscellanies – Hans Sloane’s mammoth inventory of curious objects he had collected (which became the founding core of the British Museum’s collection).

“We wanted to make a catalogue that didn’t feel too formal or traditional and so kept it almost pocket-sized. It uses lightweight, warm Munken paper to unify a diverse set of archive and artist imagery, and with soft covers and rounded corners feels very much like a notebook. The title and list of artists are held on a gloss sticker which wraps round the book. The special edition in gold held a limited edition poster by Nathan Coley, while the green version contained a couple of extra sections of installation photography. Unlike most catalogues, there’s a huge amount of text – over 50,000 words – so we kept the typography clean and readable – combining Haas Unica and Baskerville Book with green detailing.”

Invite for the show’s opening

“We tried out something new with the VIP invite and laser-etched the identity into heavy 2mm board,” explains Eley. “Aside from the funny smell (and the fact we had to wipe the dust off each one by hand), it worked out quite well.”

A poster featuring the front of the new gallery space at 6 Burlington Gardens

Mythologies closes this weekend. See haunchofvenison.com for more details.