Published this week, I Like It What Is It? is a book of 30 detachable posters by Anthony Burrill and the stories behind them
Burrill has reworked many of his best-known posters for the book, as well as designing new pieces for it. Each is printed on 355 x 279 mm board in one of three special colours plus black. The reverse of each poster has been left as grey board on which is text telling the story of each project by CR editor Patrick Burgoyne. The book itself was designed by A Practice For Everyday Life.
In this month’s CR Mark Sinclair writes about the move by graphic design publishers away from traditional book formats towards ‘products’ – I Like It. What Is It? is very much in that vein. Within its wraparound cover, each poster is bound so that it is easily removable for putting up on the wall. The book also contains several sheets of stickers.
In this film by Andrew Telling, Burrill and Burgoyne outline the thinking behind the book
An exhibition to coincide with the publication of the book will run at KK Outlet in London’s Hoxton Square from November 8 to 30.
I Like It. What Is It? is published by Laurence King, £19.95
Orion’s repackaging of F Scott Fitzgerald’s writings enabled designer Sinem Erkas to get stuck into some Jazz Age-influenced typography. Her work for the series now covers six titles, the latest of which, The Last Tycoon, is published this week…
Referencing Art Deco-era typography, Erkas has created bespoke faces for each book cover, aiming to design covers that are rooted in the 1920s but have a contemporary feel. Writing on the Waterstone’s blog, she talked through the look of series which has, since May this year, used a striking type-only treatment across all of the new editions.
For The Last Tycoon, above, Erkas writes that she “designed a grid of dots to represent the Hollywood Lights without being too literal, and made the structure of the typeface quite architectural.”
As the novel was unfinished at the time of Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, Erkas left some of these letters “half-formed, filling the blanks in with the dots. I have also confused the boundaries between some letters by making interesting ligatures,” she explains in her blog post.
For This Side of Paradise, Erkas merged Art Deco scripts with her own handwriting (the book’s main character is a writer), and created letterforms with intertwining arms. “These intimate letterforms can suggest romance or relationships and also creates an interesting sea-like rhythm,” she writes.
For The Great Gatsby, the first title Erkas designed – to coincide with the release of the new film – she developed a serif slab, breaking the typeface up with randomly positioned line work.
“I wanted this to have a glitzy feel but be quite haphazard at the same time, subtly reminding us of the book’s subjects,” she writes on the Waterstone’s blog.
The cover for Tender is the Night references some French Riviera “hand-painted seaside lettering that unusually had dots above the uppercase I’s,” writes Erkas. “I used double lines and bars on this typeface evoking the Art Nouveau design style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.”
The type used on the cover of The Beautiful and the Damned was inspired by 1920s cafe culture; “the heavily geometric shapes on the cafe shop fronts and design paraphernalia,” says Erkas.
Using Futura, Erkas distilled each form to its basic shape and “the cover is a mixed bag of readable and more abstract letterforms … something beautiful but at the same time broken up, hinting at Fitzgerald’s themes of money, relationships and destruction.”
For Fitzgerald’s collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age, Erkas’s cover is just a celebration of the Jazz Age, she says. “This is probably the most contemporary-looking design out of all of them,” she adds, “and I drew the typeface in continual line to look quite industrial as well as heavily stylistic.”
The F Scott Fitzgerald series is published by Orion, with The Last Tycoon available from the end of this week. Tales of the Jazz Age will be published in March 2014. More of Erkas’s work is at sinemerkas.com.
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Leagas Delaney has launched a campaign for online beauty retailer Feel Unique with a series of typographic posters celebrating individuality.
Each poster uses a variation of the campaign’s strap line, it’s all about me, in a different type, style and colour. They were designed by Leagas Delaney’s head of design, Kerry Roper – aside from one which was created by Daren Newman. The designs will also be applied to postcards and static stickers.
The artwork supports a 30-second TV spot featuring a range of women – and some men – claiming it’s all about them. A little repetitive, perhaps, but the idea complements the Feel Unique name and should help increase brand awareness.
“The basic premise behind the campaign is to celebrate everyone’s individuality,” explains Roper. “Nigel Roberts, our creative director, asked me to help support the new television commercial with a series of print designs reiterating the proclamation of individuality, to help engagement and build awareness, and take the campaign across into social media. The challenge was to create a spectrum of designs that present the same proud statement, but each with a sense of its own personality.” he adds.
Poster above by Daren Newman
Leagas Delaney has also launched an app allowing users to design their own t-shirts using a selection of fonts, backgrounds and designs, and visitors to feelunique.com/me can copy the looks of men and women featured in the spot. The agency recently updated the Feel Unique website, launched in 2005, and the brand’s logo, removing a dot above the i in Feel Unique and changing the dot in dot com to a square. “We were asked to finesse the brand identity. The changes aren’t a massive departure from the original logo, but the subtle differences have helped make it slightly cleaner and more contemporary,” explains Roper.
It’s a refreshing change to see a print campaign for a beauty brand that isn’t based on product shots or images of models or celebrities with flawless skin. The group of characters featured in the TV ad isn’t hugely diverse – most appear to be around the same age and size – but they all have a distinctly different look, and the varying posters capture the strong sense of individuality that Feel Unique is keen to promote.
“The whole point with the print designs is that everyone’s tastes are different. One person’s favourite might be another’s least favourite,” he says.
Credits
Creative director: Nigel Roberts Art directors: Alan Cinnamond & Kerry Roper Typographers: Kerry Roper & Daren Newman
Brand consultancy Construct has created a minimal visual identity for luxury London retailer Celestine Eleven using embossed and indented lettering.
The Shoreditch shop, owned by stylist Tena Strok, sells clothing and accessories as well as apothecary products, homeware and books. It’s described as “an alternative luxury store” that caters to consumers “aesthetically, intellectually and physically”.
Asked to create a strong look that would communicate “utilitarian elegance”, Construct designed a typographic logo, a roman numeral marque and a shortened monograph made up of a diagonal line adjacent to a vertical one.
The full logotype is used on the brand’s website and packaging, and the numeral marque and monogram have been applied to stationery and marketing material using embossed, de-bossed and foiled lettering, printed by Benwells. “As the marque was based on Roman numerals carved in stone, we wanted to enhance the chiselled aspect. The result was a timeless marque like a magnifier glass,” explains design director Segolene Hutter.
The colour scheme has been kept minimal but the numeral marque has been applied to more vibrant photographic backgrounds online (top). “Tena wanted the environment to be soothing and calm but not conventionally ‘green’,” adds Hutter. “[The identity] had to illustrate the junction between utilitarian and sophistication, fashion meets holistic health.”
A consultancy set up by former Mulberry brand director Georgia Fendley, Construct specialises in designing for luxury brands and has produced some striking printed publications for Mulberry, Claridges and tourist site Porto Montenegro, as well as London-themed packaging for Harvey Nichols commissioned to mark the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic celebrations last year:
Celestine Eleven’s packaging is a little less vibrant but it captures the minimal feel Strok was keen to achieve. The use of embossing and indents make print materials more tactile and luxurious, and the chiselled marque and logotype also work well online.
New band Woman’s Hour has been working with artist Oliver Chanarin to create a distinctive look across the band’s artwork and videos…
Woman’s Hour, who are originally from Kendal, but now based in London, consists of brother and sister Fiona Jane and Will Burgess, alongside drummer Josh Hunnisett and bassist Nick Graves. Fiona has worked with Chanarin (and also Adam Broomberg, Chanarin’s regular collaborator) to develop the band’s look, which they describe as being inspired by “a mutual love of didactic images”.
“Images that explain things,” they say, “how to resuscitate a dying man, or put a chain on your chihuahua, or fall over without hurting yourself. These are images made with a certain purpose, but they can be very beautiful too. Accidently beautiful, which is what we like about them.”
“All the artwork derives from instruction manuals,” they continue. “The image that you see on the cover of Darkest Place [shown top] is taken from a first aid manual that we bought in a book market. It shows a young man with a hand reaching into the frame and pressing down on his neck. It looks aggressive, but in fact the image is demonstrating how to stop bleeding from a main artery. this kind of ambiguity is intrinsic to the overall style of the band’s artwork. We definitely want to create something that is recognisable as belonging to Woman’s Hour, but it’s something that is evolving with each new release.”
Chanarin and Bloomberg are known for their use of found photography and imagery in their art projects, and some of the images used in Woman’s Hour’s art come directly from the duo’s archives. “The falling man on the cover of the To The End 7″ (above) came from a Czech police manual we found in Prague over a decade ago,” says Chanarin. “Our recent publication Holy Bible includes over 500 vernacular images from the Archive of Modern Conflict; and we also made a book called People in Trouble Laughing Pushed to the Ground that incorporates archival images from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. So the visual language that you see with Woman’s Hour is closely related to our practice. Adam and I collaborated with the band on their new video. It’s all in the family.”
The video, for Darkest Place, is shown above. Chanarin describes it as a homage to the 1971 performance Pryings by Vito Acconci (which can be viewed online here). “In our remake of this seminal piece of performance art, Fiona attempts to sing the lyrics of Darkest Place while having her eyes prised open,” he says. “It’s horrible to watch, simultaneously violent and strangely tender.”
More info on Woman’s Hour can be found on the band’s Facebook page, here. More on Oliver Chanarin and Adam Bloomberg’s work is at choppedliver.info.
Creative agency Them has curated an exhibition of horror-themed prints to celebrate the release of London club night Disco Bloodbath’s new album, Go Bump in the Night.
The prints were launched at an exhibition in Dalston earlier this month and are available to buy online. Contributing artists include Jimmy Turrell, Maria Sagun, Lukas Muellner, James Cook and Studio Pensom.
Them also designed the logo for the club night, which was set up in 2007. “After a meeting with the Disco Bloodbath team regarding their album launch, we thought an exhibition could draw more of a crowd for their launch night. We got in touch with artists and designers we’ve worked with before and advertised submissions through social media,” says creative director Dan Moscrop.
“All of Disco Bloodbath’s previous artwork had been based around B Movie horror posters but the only brief [for the exhibition] was ‘Go Bump in the Night’, to give the artists as much flexibility as possible. We were really interested in what we would receive back – the final selection was whittled down from 57 entries and included screen prints on foil and live edge plastic, riso prints and even a hand-made lenticular,” he adds.
Them is also planning a follow-up exhibition later this year with a different theme, and is looking for artists to take part. For details, email submissions@them.co.uk.
Go Bump in the Night is released on Monday.
Prints (from top) by: Lukas Muellner, Koby Barhad, Studio Pensom, Dan Moscrop, Maria Sagun, Itzik Rennert, king Jimbo and Joshua Middleditch.
Illustrator Malika Favre and design agency Irving & Co have created some lovely festive packaging for Italian food chain Carluccio’s, inspired by Bolognan architecture.
The design for Carluccio’s Christmas range is based on a different Italian city each year. Favre was asked to visit Bologna with Irving & Co designer Ana Rachel and has designed a series of bold geometric patterns featuring hidden characters and narratives. Her work will also appear in Carluccio’s store windows, where boxes will be stacked to create ‘an abstract city’.
Favre was approached by the brand and Irving & Co after staging a solo exhibition, Hide and Seek, at London’s Kemistry Gallery (more info here). “They felt that my minimalist yet narrative approach to architectural patterns was in line with their vision for this year’s Christmas array,” she explains.
“The challenge for me was to extract the core of the architecture around me without being too literal. What really struck me in Bologna was the light and contrast it created, so I decided to focus on the shadows that the architecture was casting rather than the elements themselves. I then added little narrative elements in order to create some depth and tell a story on each box. The characters and objects were carefully placed somewhere around the boxes to bring depth,” she says.
Lettering on this year’s Christmas range was inspired by signage, menus and typography in Bologna, which Rachel sketched and photographed during the trip. It works well alongside Favre’s illustrations. “The typographic heritage in Bologna was so rich and diverse that it felt a shame not to keep that diversity for the Christmas range,” Rachel says.
To contrast Carluccio’s red and gold colour palette, Favre also used aubergine, cream and orange. “These three colours were inspired by real buildings. We based them on a painting swatch Ana and I found in a small shop while in Bologna. I felt it was important to have bold and sophisticated colours in the palette, in order to create contrast and reflect the incredible light and sharp shadows that are so characteristic of the city,” she explains.
It’s a little early to think about Christmas shopping – although retailers would certainly disagree – but Favre’s packaging has left us feeling quite festive, despite the fact it’s only October. If only all gifts came in such pretty packages…
Danish design duo Hvass and Hannibal have created a cheerful identity system for the children’s department of Copenhagen’s central library, Hovedbiblioteket.
The identity is based on a modular system of basic shapes that can be mixed and matched to create various patterns. The idea, say Nan Na Hvass and Sofie Hannibal, is that children can interact with the system and make their own designs and stories.
Before deciding on the final design, Hvass and Hannibal tested the identity on schoolchildren in two workshops. At the library, they left children to play with cut out shapes and stick them to the window of the building, before returning to see what they had made. They also visited a third grade classroom and asked ten to twelve-year-old students to rate a series of logo designs.
“The result was very surprising – the children generally prefered the more simple designs, whereas the librarians prefered the more complex ones with lots of details. So in the end we decided on keeping the logo very simple with the possibilty of adding details when combining it with more of the identity’s shapes,” they told CR.
Hvass and Hannibal are hoping the identity will be used on a range of merchandise, as well as around the building.
“We are hoping we’ll be able to print a sticker sheet with the forms on so kids can use them on their notebooks, back packs or wherever they like! The plan is also to create canvas bags, t-shirts etc and to have foil on the windows so the identity can be implemented in many ways,” they added.
With so many European libraries facing closure – more than 200 were shut in the UK last year – it’s vital that they present themselves as exciting places to meet up, have fun and be inspired. Hvass and Hannibal’s identity system is bold, playful and engaging, and it should appeal to older readers as well as infant ones.
A mock-up publication produced in Context, complete with foiling
Joshua Distler, the US designer behind the LiveSurface image template library is today launching Context, a new application that offers designers the chance to see their latest projects rendered on objects in real time, as they work…
When Distler launched LiveSurface in 2006, with a series of just 25 images, it was in response to an emerging demand from designers who wanted to show new concepts in as realistic a light as possible.
Aside from shooting actual objects and placing artwork onto them, or scouring photo libraries for pictures of blank packaging, there was little out there to help accurately convey how a new design might look in the real world – and certainly with as little fuss as LiveSurface required.
The Context application has a ‘live view’ window which renders a designer’s work in real time
As I wrote last November, the success of LiveSurface over the following years even engendered a related debate about the role this kind of image-creation was playing in muddying the waters between designers’ ‘real’ and conceptual projects. (More about the article Shooting Blanks, here.)
Distler later mentioned that he was working on a new project that would change the way that designers worked yet again – and that’s where Context comes in.
Unlike LiveSurface, it is a program that links directly with Illustrator and enables designers to see just how concepts that they are working on will look like within a range of applications.
Banner signage mocked-up with LiveSurface’s Contextapplication
The ‘ink effects lighting’ tool can adjust reflections
Instead of exporting a flat design and placing it onto a blank template (a billboard, poster or bag, for example), Context fits the design to the particular product while the design itself is being worked on.
And as there are more than 350 ‘surfaces’ available within the Context program, this should enable designers to get as close as possible to the look of a final product.
A mock-up publication
What’s really clever is that the multiple layers can control a whole range of external elements, such as shadows and reflections, or suggest processes like screenprinting and embossing. It can even convey the sense of depth unique to a particular foil stamp.
Designers can also share an ‘editable surface’ via email. Good news for clients, perhaps, who can tweak elements (see, that logo can go bigger), but certainly a collaborative element to the software that should help speed up the dialogue during any project.
Badge designs created in Context
Distler has released a promo film for Context, which can be viewed below, and from that it certainly looks like a slick, well-produced system for getting design work as near to a physical reality as possible.
Cutting the need for wasteful printed mock-ups is a great leap forward and Context looks like something that can only help convey designers’ concepts to clients, and indeed help shape a client’s feedback to designers.
More details on Context are here, while a trial version can be downloaded here.
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Little Black Book founder Matt Cooper has teamed up with ad creatives, illustrators, animators and design studio Freytag Anderson to launch a sustainable childrenswear brand, The Fableists.
The brand, which launched today, is part owned by ad agency Brothers and Sisters. It sells a range of eco-friendly children’s clothes and limited edition t-shirts designed by a rolling selection of illustrators. The first collection was designed by Crispin Finn, Anthony Peters, Gregori Saavedra and Saami Viljanto, who were asked to communicate the brand’s message in their own style.
The Fableists’ strap lines are ‘dress responsibly’ and ‘play hard, live forever’. Products are made in India by adult workers without the use of chemicals and are mostly shipped over land and sea to reduce the brand’s carbon footprint. Workers are paid a fair wage, says Cooper, and a percentage of profits will go towards funding charity initiatives and educational programmes in areas where the products are manufactured.
Crispin Finn
Anthony Peters
Cooper came up with the idea around eleven months ago, after visiting India on business. “I had been going back and forth for a couple of years and the thing that bothered me originally was child labour, but that led me to discover how farmers were committing suicide in their thousands because they couldn’t get a good rate for crops. Bad working conditions drove me nuts, so did the amount of chemicals being put into the land and, just as importantly, the chemicals being put into the clothes, that were going back into the wearer’s body,” he says.
“I thought we could change the way things were done and do it in a creative way, using top graphic artists from around the world,” he adds. “The concept really was to get creatives together to create a beautiful brand and make people think about how we dress our kids, making sure no children are involved in the labour.”
Gregori Saavedra
Saami Viljanto
Cooper has recruited an impressive line-up to help launch the brand so far: Great Guns will be shooting documentary commercials, The Mill are making animated films for release early next year and promotional imagery (top and above) was shot by Sam Robinson. Steve Scott, Michael Arnold and director Olivier Venturini are also involved; and Cooper is keen to recruit new and relatively unknown illustrators to design t-shirts as well as more established ones. 500 of each design are made – illustrators are paid an upfront fee – and Cooper says products are designed to have “a very punky feel”. A select few will also be made into adult sized t-shirts for grown up fans of the brand.
The Fableists isn’t the first brand to promise fashionable and ethical clothing but it has a distinctive visual identity, designed by Glasgow studio Freytag Anderson. “We’ve worked with Matt on a few projects before,” says studio co-founder Daniel Freytag. “This one really stood out for us as there are so many parts to it: Matt wanted it to be sustainable, responsible and fresh in its approach. We were given pretty much free reign to play with different symbols and come up with a marque that communicates the energy of the brand – rebellious was a word that kept coming up in our discussions, so we wanted to reflect that in the identity,” he adds.
The lightning bolt device has been used online, in print and on packaging and labels. “We wanted to create an immediately recognisable symbol – the bolt can be embossed, foiled, filled or just an outline,” explains Freytag. Acid green was chosen to reflect the brand’s environmental credentials; and business cards and stationery were printed by Glasgow Letterpress on FSC accredited papers.
“We were keen to keep the look quite lo-fi and honest because there are a lot of brands out there that claim to do what The Fableists does, and people are often quite cynical when they hear about a new one,” he says. “We were also keen to do things differently, so we broke grid lines, coupled the green with contrasting greys and white and used a robust typeface [T Star Pro]. It looked quite jarring at first – quite reckless – but I think it works,” he adds.
The Fableists’ playful identity is striking, and should appeal to the children its products are designed for as much as the adults buying them. The brand has some admirable ideals, and will hopefully make a positive difference in communities where money is scarce and child labour is sadly commonplace.
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