Hasta La Ideas

Graphic designer and author Chip Kidd has written an introduction to graphic design for children. The book offers an entertaining and inspiring look at visual communication…

On the front cover of Chip Kidd‘s new book, Go! A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, is a big red sign usually reserved for the word ‘stop’. On Kidd’s cover though, it says ‘go’. As he explains later in the book, Kidd is toying with his readers. “It is meant first to attract your attention, then to make you want to investigate it and figure it out. And I think that’s what all book covers should try to do,” he says.

A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design is aimed at children aged 10 and above and provides an introduction to some of the key concepts in graphics and typography. Witty, engaging and never condescending, it’s exactly the kind of introduction to graphic design that I never had – but wish I did – when I was at school.

Kidd’s book starts with an explanation of what graphic design is and why it’s important. As he explains, “everything that is not made by nature is designed by someone…and it affects us all the time”.  He also provides a potted history of graphic design, stretching from cave paintings in 10,000 BC to the invention of Garamond in 1530, the first user-friendly Apple computer in 1984 and Photoshop in 1989. It isn’t an exhaustive list but it references some key design movements and technological developments.

The rest of the book is divided into four chapters – form, typography, content and concept – which outline key design principles. In form, he presents examples of how to create powerful designs using techniques such as cropping and juxtaposing images, layering text and playing with light and dark:

And in a chapter on typography, he introduces readers to kerning, points and picas, and a selection of iconic fonts including Didot, Princetown, Huxley Vertical and of course, Gill Sans and Helvetica. It’s a complex subject to relay to a young audience but Kidd pulls it off by toying with type to illustrate his points, encouraging his readers to really think about how typography affects the way we interpret words.

Chapters on content and concept introduce readers to Louis Sullivan’s ‘form follows function’ theory, highlighting the importance of addressing the question, what are you trying to communicate? before deciding on a final design concept. While Kidd acknowledges that the idea for a concept is often the result of luck or a stroke of genius, he encourages readers to “let the problem itself give you ideas”, citing the inspiration for some of his most striking cover designs:

The book ends with a series of design projects encouraging readers to practice the theory they’ve learned. In one, he invites children to create their own visual identity, asking “what is your idea of yourself? And what idea of you do you want others to have?” He also suggests starting a graphic design collection and making a font specimen sheet.

Kidd’s guide is full of practical advice and examples of his own work and others’, including his brilliant Jurassic Park book cover – just one of more than 1000 he’s designed during his design career. It’s informative without being boring,  simplifies complex themes without patronising readers and most importantly, it shows children that design can, and should, be fun.

Go! A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design is published by Workman and costs $17.95. To order a copy, click here. Kidd will be posting readers’ responses to practical project briefs from the book at gothebook.com.

Asked to design a print that would explore the differences between northern and southern England, The Designers Republic has identified a subtle difference in drinking habits

In the US they have the Mason-Dixon line – perhaps in England, we have the Shandy Line.

TDR was commisioned to create the print by Made North, the network for design and making in the north of England. Director Patrick Murphy says “We wanted to produce an archetypal work that graphically explores the idea of ‘northern-ness’ and what a difference between the north and south of England looks like.”

Here’s TDR’s response:

TDR’s Ian Anderson says: “The map is a blown up scan of small sketch I made in my notebook around 15 years ago to explain to a journalist in the simplest possible terms why TDR^TM found it easy to resist any perceived temptation to relocate ‘Down South’. I was born in Croydon and subsequently lived on the outskirts of Bracknell New Town on the outskirts of London. As soon as I could I used going to University as an excuse to escape the claustrophobic one dimensionality of The South East and head for the adventure of real life in The North, in Sheffield. To a degree my political pilgrimage North was every bit as flawed as Northerners heading to London for streets paved with gold, but the sentiment in the map will hold true as long as there’s shandy-quaffing Southerners intoning ‘It’s grim up North’ having never had the bollocks to find out the truth for themslves.”

The 500 x 700mm print has been produced in a run of 150 on GF Smith Ebony Black Colourplan 350gsm paper and glow in the dark ink for the shandy line itself, priced £120 and available here

Stockholm communications agency Lowe Brindfors has created a flexible new graphic identity for local opera house Folkoperan.

The new identity is designed to make the opera house feel more accessible and was launched to coincide with a major redesign of the building.

“Folkoperan has been going through a few changes recently [it’s also hired a new artistic director] but the main reason for a new identity was the change in its activities, with more types of productions than before. Also, the logotype hadn’t been touched since the start of Folkoperan in 1976. The client was really clear on wanting a revolution and not an evolution of the identity,” says Noel Pretorius, who art directed the project with Kalle dos Santos.

The identity was inspired by the Art Deco venue and typefaces of the period, and the new logo features a flexible illustration of a song bird which will be adapted to suit print and digital communications and signage.

“This playful metaphor reflects different moods, is flexible to use and interacts with the logotype depending on the message or use. Our symbol flies, sits and sings. Sometime’s he’s happy, sometimes mischievous and sometimes, sad. It depends on the performance and the context,” explains Pretorius.

The sans-serif letters in the building’s original signage, below, provided a starting point for the design, says Pretorius, and the A, B, G, R, Å & Ä were applied to a more modern cut of Futura for the new signage system and headline font. “The bird is also made up of typographic elements based on strict geometric shapes of the logotype’s early twentieth century-inspired forms,” he adds.

The colour palette matches the red used throughout the building’s updated interior, coupled with black, grey and white.

Lowe Brindfors is also working on an animated version of the song board which could be used for digital communications. The agency has worked with the opera for more than 10 years and Pretorius hopes the new look will convey its more experimental programming.

“The existing happy and sad opera masks [in the old logo, below] were a little dated. We wanted to find a new, playful metaphor not as commonly connected to classical opera, since Folkoperan is such an experimental opera house. We also believed the crown on the original logo was better suited to the Swedish Royal Opera House and not Folkoperan, which means ‘The People’s Opera’. The new identity hopefully feels more inviting to newcomers in opera.”

The inaugural Book Cover Design Awards were launched this month by two of the UK’s leading book designers, Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan. Aiming to celebrate book cover design from a wide range of genres, it is now open for nominations from 2013…

The intriguingly-named Academy of British Cover Designers was initially set up by Gray and Keenan with the intention of promoting a broader range of cover design than currently features in awards schemes, magazines and blogs. Its associated Book Cover Design Awards aims to cement this further with a new competition to find the best work created in ten publishing categories:

Children’s, Young Adult, SciFi/Fantasy, Mass Market, Literary Fiction, Crime/Thriller, Non-fiction, Series Design, Classic/Reissue and Women’s Fiction.

Gray says that book cover design is quite a different beast to the bulk of graphic design – employing “unwritten rules of genre and hierarchy” – and an awards scheme dedicated to the discipline would have a better appreciation of the demands made upon individual books.

“We have to use quotes and make them large; we have to mention prizes, shortlists, author’s previous books,” he says. “There is a lot of information to be conveyed in a small space. Managing that and still creating something new is difficult. Getting that through a publishing house, an author, an agent and a supermarket, all of whom have their own ideas is even harder.

“It means that when it comes to design awards the work often just doesn’t fit. If it’s judged using the same criteria as an art book with two lines of carefully spaced, minute Helvetica, then it doesn’t really stand a chance.”

The first BCDA competition will be open to any cover produced by a British designer for a book published between January 1 and December 31 2013.

Book covers will be voted for only by fellow cover designers – “the people who know the restrictions that the work is created under,” adds Gray. “They appreciate the sometimes tiny details that make one thriller cover better than another, or a children’s cover that tries to break out of its genre. Work that generally goes unnoticed but we think deserves recognition.”

And the awards itself? “It won’t be a glitzy thing,” says Gray, “just a few designers in a pub with a projector. Which we think sort of sums up book designers nicely.”

Further details on entering work will be announced via the @abcoverD twitter and Gray’s blog at gray318.com/blog. Designers will be able to enter their own work or the work of other designers. Entry is free.

A replica of the newsstand magazine that features briefly in John Carpenter’s 1988 film, They Live, is now available from two Swiss publishers. And readers don’t need special sunglasses to see ‘the truth’ contained within…

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Carpenter’s classic sci-fi film, everyedition and fold in Switzerland are publishing a replica edition of the magazine that the film’s protagonist Nada picks up while first realising he can – while wearing the sunglasses – ‘see’ through the gloss of consumer society and even the ‘aliens’ who control it.

The black-and-white view through the glasses is not a pretty one. Here’s the sequence where Nada looks at some innocuous-looking hoardings, flicks through said magazine and encounters a few of the extra-terrestrials. (Warning – contains various attempts to convey ‘astonishment’):

The newsstand as featured in They Live, viewed through the special sunglasses

Spread from This is Your God

They Live follows Nada as he uncovers how the ‘aliens’ have been controlling human society through mass media. Imagery from the Carpenter-penned story also famously inspired the artist Shepard Fairey to develop the “Obey” concept into an ongoing theme in his work.

Designed by Piero Glina, This is Your God is named after the slogan which appears on the dollar bills (which feature in the newsstand scene) when viewed with the sunglasses. According to the publishers, the replica edition makes use of the film version’s “iconic typography with all its flaws and special characteristics”.

*UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments below, Spanish magazine Belio had a similar idea in 2011 and also published a version of the They Live publication, which can be seen here on their site and is available as a PDF here.

Published alongside the everyedition/fold edition of the magazine, a second volume features images of the places where the billboard and signage slogans originate in the film.

This is Your God is available from everyedition and fold (from 27 CHF).