Hasta La Ideas

An intriguing polystyrene box of artefacts, Container is the latest project from Artomatic’s Tim Milne. It has contributors, a theme, content and ambitions to be produced regularly – so that does that make it a magazine? asks Jeremy Leslie

However many times you try to replace it with ‘publication’ or ‘periodical’, the word ‘magazine’ remains the most pertinent, direct word for what I spend most of my days thinking about. Those other words just don’t hack it, and remain only as useful secondary alternatives along with adjectives like ‘annual’, ‘biannual’, ‘quarterly’, ‘monthly’ and ‘weekly’. You can sometimes get away with the abbreviation ‘mag’ but even that’s best saved for deeper into the article, once the full word has set the scene.

Container #1: Hot & Cold

So what happens when you’re developing a magazine that is consciously unlike others? At one level we find ridiculous made-up words such as bookazine and mook, words that exaggerate the difference between magazine and book. But what if your publication is really different? This was the challenge facing Artomatic’s Tim Milne when planning his new project Container, a box of objects created by a group of invited contributors in response to a theme.

Expressed like that, the metaphorical link with the traditional form of printed magazine appears obvious. Milne has set a theme, invited contributors to respond, and is publishing the resulting collection as a set. Not so different to the copy of CR you’re reading now? The finished item, though, could hardly be more different to CR, and calls into question the very nature of what a magazine is.

When talking to Milne, the conversation is littered with phrases such as “a magazine that’s not a magazine”, as he struggles to define Container in relation to traditional print publications. Yet Container is an ingenious name, as it describes the physical reality of the project as a box of objects, while also referring to the origins of the word ‘magazine’.

“It’s actually close to the original definition in its meaning of warehouse or repository to hold things in,” Milne explains. “It’s a colloquialistic stretch that we think a magazine can only be a printed book.”

There have of course been other magazines that have resisted the bound, printed format. Last year the 1960s art magazine Aspen was exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery to much excitement (as reviewed in this column at the time). “What struck me about Aspen was that it didn’t deviate that much from the printed format,” says Milne. “Most issues were really just a handful of printed pieces presented in a box.” What caught his attention was that even without stepping so far from the traditional format, Aspen was powerfully different to most magazines. “With Aspen you got something a lot richer and more fragmented, you got the sense that each individual item is the product of that contributor. The relationship is with the individual contributors and not with Aspen.”

David Hieatt’s contribution to Container – a bundle of pitch pine twigs

Milne has taken this a stage further by pushing the contributions to Container beyond print. “The brief was to make an object based around the theme ‘Hot & Cold’. It could be both Hot and Cold, or just Hot or just Cold. We said the objects would be put in a box determined by the things you make – implied in that was that the things had to be of a hand-held scale.”

The ten contributors encompass a rounded selection of different creative areas: graphic design (Malcolm Garrett), advertising (Mother), art (Daniel Eatock), product design (Nic Roope and Violetta Boxill), entrepreneurship (David Hieatt), writing (Leila Johnston). For future issues, Milne would like to broaden that out. “An object is a fundamental human language. Artists and designers shouldn’t have a monopoly,” he says, listing economists and scientists as possible future contributors.

For his Container contribution, James Bridle created a 3D printed model of the GPS system

So what can you expect from issue one? Under the name Artomatic, Milne has been sourcing creative print and production for clients since 1982 so it’s no surprise that the attention to detail across the whole project is remarkable. Milne has collaborated closely with his selected contributors, helping them execute their ideas in the most authentic manner.

Design studio Accept & Proceed’s diagrammatic etching of routes across the North and South Poles

The objects arrive packed in a polystyrene box, perfect for keeping the contents hot or cold, and inside, the ten objects range from a small hardback book to a length of heat-sensitive till receipt paper via a bundle of wood and a 3D-printed object. Most contributors have been seduced by the opposition of Hot and Cold, and only one, Accept & Proceed, went for Cold alone, with a diagrammatic etching of routes across the North and South Poles.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence we had so few cold ideas,” says Milne, “Hot gets people excited, cold has a numbing effect.”

Hot and cold together: lolly stick jokes are transferred to chip forks by Violetta Boxill and Nicolas Roope

Violetta Boxill and Nic Roope have added lolly stick jokes to wooden chip forks, the surface humour strengthened by the subtle reference to their respective Caribbean and Scandinavian heritages; advertising duo Rebecca and Mike have swapped CDs with their opposites (eg The Very Best of Donna Summer and The Best Of Johnny Winter), recalling a time when music meant physical objects and CDs and their jewel cases could get muddled (see below).

The links between the ten objects and their stories might easily have been made explicit in a printed addition to Container, but Milne has wisely avoided putting written editorial inside the box as that would be a distraction from the objects, almost a “magazine of the magazine,” he says. “We can write about it in much more depth online, so that’s where the back stories will appear.” The polystyrene box will just contain the objects and a signed authentication sheet.

Writer Leila Johnston’s contribution uses heat-sensitive till receipt paper

While Milne avoids the use of the M word, for me Container is everything a magazine should be. It has wit and intelligence, great stories expressed visually, and makes the most of both the physical and digital. As a relatively expensive limited edition of 200 it’ll be beyond the reach of most but we should celebrate its existence and look forward to it inspiring people in future exhibitions. I can see it at the Design Museum rather than the Whitechapel Gallery, a record of an era when the balance between the analogue and digital is tipping.

Jeremy Leslie blogs at magCulture.com and writes a monthly column on magazines for CR – this is an edited version of his piece for our July issue. Container is published and produced by Artomatic. Container #1: Hot & Cold will be made as a limited edition of 200 copies and will be available to buy exclusively from containerwebsite.com from this month. CR readers can win a copy in our Gallery competition this month. See the print magazine for details

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here

The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more

Over the course of this year’s degree show season, CR readers will be guest blogging reviews of shows up and down the UK (and beyond). Here, Bobby Burrage of Norwich design studio The Click visits the Norwich University of the Arts Graphic Design and Graphic Communication shows

It’s 11 years since I was furiously spray-mounting, cutting, trimming and steaming through endless ink-jet cartridges in the early hours of the morning – all in preparation for my degree show. The result, of course, didn’t fully reflect the blood, sweat and tears that went in to producing what was adhered to these two 8 x 4 foot exhibition panels.

Before visiting this year’s NUA degree shows, I reminded myself of the paramount importance this single career-defining exhibition holds for each and every student. Some will get multiple job offers before the foam board displays are torn down next week. Some will have to attend dozens of interviews and, perhaps, endeavour to impress during several placements before finding the right agency or studio for them. And, of course, some just won’t make it in the design industry at all. Much of this fate depends upon what is on display during a single week in early summer. It brings back fond memories – the buzz, the fear, the excitement, the anticipation.

I focused my search on the third floor of the Gunton’s Building, which plays host to the Graphic Design and Graphic Communication exhibition. I’m pleased to report that there is a vast array of talent on display. And, here are my personal highlights:

Morgan Swain’s Classic Roald Dahl book jackets were a standout piece – a great idea, beautiful hand-drawn typography and intelligent execution.

Morgan’s book jackets were accompanied by three elegant packaging ranges: J2O fruit drinks, Batiste Dry Shampoos and Chocolu Mexican Sauces.

Anthony Blease also created packaging for a range of Mexican Sauces. A clever use of a paper wrap around the bottle sets this project on fire!

Alisa Barter‘s From His Royal Highness cake shop packaging demonstrated some well crafted typography and delicious packaging.

Mimi Van Helfteren‘s Carluccio’s pasta and pasta sauce packaging stopped me in my tracks – especially the advertising. Also, you must check out her packaging for Copella juice drinks on her website.

Sam Bristow-Bell‘s concept for Mikado biscuit sticks involved some very cool graphic characters, a brand story and an app to accompany it.

Jason Drake‘s identity for Latitude Festival was rather nice – particularly the map and mobile app. He also redesigned a popular triangular savory snack. How do you open yours?!

Nathan Whitmarsh created himself his very own monogram, which is used on his stationery and business cards, as well as some wonderful book jackets for Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The illustrations are fantastic – you need to get close up to appreciate them fully.

Matthew Callaby has already had a commission from Sony Music as part of their Brit Awards after-party invitation and collateral. Not bad before graduating hey?! Matthew’s illustration skills are very impressive, coupled with a good eye for production and finish.

Jacob Leslie‘s work quietly occupied the very far corner of the top floor studio. It demonstrates great thinking and, for a young designer, it pushes the boundaries of graphic design. In fact, he refers to himself as a graphic communicator. To start with, he created a mobile app, named Geographic, which tracks your journey using GPS and outputs info graphics visualising how the same journey may look ten years on – based on global warming forecasts and research. For example, part of your journey may be under water! This is a thought-provoking piece of work, which could easily be transferrable to many other issues.

Jacob’s experimental approach was also evident by the interactive typeface he created. Using a mobile device, you slide up and down four controls, allowing you to create infinite variables of the type – with varying colour, fragmentation and legibility. Seeing some fun and exploratory projects among the more conventional redesigns of breakfast cereal and olive oil was refreshing.

One last project from Jacob (in collaboration with fellow student Jimmy Jarvis): Design your own record sleeve or music poster. In fact, play your favourite track, and allow the software to do it for you! The set up (pictured) creates a line-drawn pattern in front of your eyes.

I suspect we’ll be witnessing far more of this type of innovative project at NUA’s degree shows in years to come – which can only be a good thing. That said, I do love a classic old-school logo…

Luke Thompson‘s Worker Bee tea and coffee identity caught my eye – a strikingly simple and witty idea coupled with equally non-fussy execution. Likewise, the packaging would stand out on any supermarket shelf. Luke has also created some lovely packaging for Smoothie Safari children’s drinks.

A special mention should go out to the tutors at NUA – who continue to nurture great designers year-in-year-out.

Norwich University of the Arts (NUA)’s Degree Shows are on until 2 July, open from 10am until 5pm daily (closed Sunday).

Bobby Burrage is creative director at The Click.

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here

Designer Ciara Fitzgerald visited Dublin’s National College of Art & Design Visual Communication degree show and chose to highlight the work of seven students that she felt really stood out…

David Lawler designed the identity of the 2013 Visual Communication class, using the visual language of cartography to convey the multidisciplinary nature of the course.

He also produced a booklet (above) that accompanied the exhibition (which he also co-ordinated) of the special edition Risograph prints designed by each of the students.

Aaron Canning redesigned the 2011-2012 World Nuclear Report, aiming to display the information as clearly and concisely as possible. The report itself was hard bound and embossed while the accompanying supplement was printed on newsprint. For better, more detailed images please visit Aaronʼs Behance profile.

Andrew Keating designed an annual report for The Irish Times. Using their 2011 figures he divided the report into four sections contained within two separate books. A sixteen-page newsprint piece was also produced which briefly documents the history of the newspaper, while also giving details about each of its past editors.

Becky Moriarty explored the 2012 ISTD project brief, It Happened on this Day, using it to examine the involvement of the design industry in public holidays. Making April Fools Day an official holiday, she created an identity and also designed and produced a range of celebration stationery to promote Aprils Fools in 2013.

Julianne McMahon wrote, designed and produced an illustrated childrenʼs book entitled Digbyʼs Big Adventure. Her beautifully detailed illustrations were created using both ink and gouache.

In addition to the book, she devised an accompanying adventure journal and a special toolkit to encourage children to engage in their own big adventure.

Oliver Callan designed an album cover, book and a limited edition poster (printed on cotton) for The War of the Worlds Limited Edition (1979 version) album. The book contains the storyʼs narration; the poster illustration was inspired by a line from the album, and all three are housed in a wooden box.

Upon leaving the Visual Communications exhibition, I headed up a floor to have a look at the work from the BA in Design and Education course. Shane Murray had created a series of posters exploring the idea of rivalry within sport – I particularly liked the Rangers v Celtic one.

The NCAD’s Visual Communication degree show took place between 15-23 June. Ciara Fitzgerald is a graphic designer currently based in Tramore, Co. Waterford. See ciarafitzgerald.com.

Pages from Giulia Garbin’s linocut work, The Street of Ink (see below)

In addressing some of last year’s concerns over the display space given to the RCA’s Visual Communication graduates, this year’s show makes great use of the college’s Stevens Building and presents some particularly strong work in the process…

To the left of the entrance to the first room, Minho Kwon‘s piece The Neo Arts and Crafts Movement, dominates the space.

The large central drawing, made in pencil and charcoal on tracing paper, is flanked by two smaller ones which also incorporate flickering digital projections.

It’s like a strange architectural palimpsest – with newer buildings constructed upon the lines of older forms.

Even corner spaces are played by some students to their advantage. Chris Nott‘s installation Multicultural London English, for example, used the full height of the walls to investigate the “inner city sound of London”, a modern vernacular that, Nott says, “cuts across ethnicity and race”.

In an interesting spin on the subject, Nott also looked at the way language can prohibit movement – trapping those who cannot navigate beyond a particular dialect.

And the stairwell is certainly the best place for Becky Allen‘s piece Penelope – all 14ft of it. Approaching it from below, it’s quite hard to focus on – created from thousands of miniscule lines on rice paper, collectively they produce a warping, three-dimensional effect.

Detail from Penelope

Equally, Yeni Kim brought her alcove to life with a display of elements from her three books, Animals, City Acrobat and Signs and Symbols.

There is some really impressive illustration on show this year. Miguel Angel Valdivia, for example, has adapted a screenplay – Boccaperta by Italian actor and director Carmelo Bene – which was never made into a film.

Given this starting point, Valdivia’s eventual narrative, though filmic, has no preceeding visual reference points. He claims he struggled with deciding on the media to tell Bene’s story, finally settling on a wordless narrative which best conveyed his own voice.

Similarly, the gestural detail in Joseph Rudi Pielichaty‘s series, A Young Man Getting Ready, showed a real skill at employing a simple line to convey the universal in a much-recognised morning ritual.

Salt Tse-Ying Chiang‘s block print series Pre-ego/Down State (again, black ink on paper) also offered a good counterpoint to her sculptural work where a circular train track runs through a small group of toy dolls, while an animated heart beats in the centre.

Printing onto wood, Seungyeon Choi‘s Cubes in Cubism letters posters were also really well-conceived.

And with something of the Eric Carle about his series of arcrylic, ink and cut-out paper scenes, Sam Ashton captured his love of the textural side of illustration to great effect.

The narrative behind Serena Katt‘s book Sunday’s Child, from which she displayed a series of prints, apparently came from her grandfather’s writings about his childhood in 1930s Germany. The images are also based on archive and family photographs.

And as if to bolster the strength of the work on paper exhibited at the show, Jessica Morgan‘s book, The Future of Print Magazines, provides a neat manifesto for how the medium lives in the digital world. Her poster for the RCA show itself certainly conveyed the potential within the printed form.

Jacob Robinson’s Ruin Value is an interesting approach to the discussion of how (and why) Germany’s Nazi-era history might be preserved, with particular focus on the impact of the Third Reich in Nuremberg.

It’s a very well-realised project, with the photo essay (in book form) displayed alongside some impressive large format prints. Robinson also paired up with Kelvin Brown to produced the short 16mm film, Dry Stone Waller.

Giulia Garbin‘s linocut work, The Street of Ink, is accompanied by an audio book which features recollections from some of the printing press workers of Fleet Street.

For Garbin, the location acts as “a symbol for the fall of a communication industry” and she illustrates four of the workers’ stories. (The image shown at the top of this post is from Garbin’s book project, and she also presented a series of linocut prints in red.)

I also enjoyed Tamsin Nagel‘s Enclave (ii), a two and a half metre wide pencil drawing depicting a brace of clapboard churches and which “explores the small-town notions of life, death, religion and the absurd”.

And Goya Choi‘s posters which accompanied a book and documentary were cleverly back-lit – though in a much subtler way than my camera suggests.

Choi’s focus is on the indefinite ‘leave to remain’ (LTR) rule which illegal immigrants to the UK can claim if they have ‘overstayed’ in the country for a period of 14 years, becoming legalised in the process.

In the same room, Jack Llewellyn‘s work on the book, typeface and posters for the college’s two year-old Eady Forum looked suitably rigorous for the programme’s aims.

The Forum is, writes RCA senior tutor Adrian Shaughnessy in the book’s foreword, “a platform for the analysis and interrogation of contemporary graphic design practice”, realised through lectures, seminars and discussions. Llewellyn worked with an editorial team including the aforementioned Jessica Morgan and Joseph Rudi Pielichaty.

It’s interesting to see the students engaging critically with their own practice – and showing the results within their degree show – particularly as the RCA has itself seen plenty of changes in the last few years. For one, under its new head of programme Neville Brody, Visual Communication Art & Design has become Visual Communication.

In the introductory text to the 2013 show, Professor Brody says the course will further the consideration of how new technology works with old while being increasingly aware of the changing relationship between design and the society it is created for.

The department is, he writes, “moving along a line between making things and making thought”. From the evidence of this year’s show, it looks to be getting that balance right.

The Royal College of Art’s degree shows run until June 30 at two main sites – RCA Kensington and RCA Battersea (both open 12-8pm daily, closed June 28). For the full list of exhibiting courses see rca.ac.uk.

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here

The Central Saint Martins BA graphic design degree show displayed an impressive range of ideas and approaches, and more than a few references to its relatively new home in King’s Cross…

The new CSM site is still proving new enough to provide inspiration for several students’ projects. The BA Fine Art catalogue, designed by graphic design students Masaki Miwa and Adam Hutchinson, for example, references the space the department occupies – the only course to have a presence on all four floors of the building.

The typeface used, Granary Complex, is by Matt Taylor who based his design on the shapes of various architectural aspects of the new campus. (Images taken from Miwa’s CSM page.)

This hand-cut print of Westminster Abbey (below) comes from Jason Pearsall‘s series, A – Z of London (Royal Albert Hall shown, top of post). More on the book, here.

This is a close-up of part of Rebecca Wood‘s ‘typeface network’, Infini-Tea. Here, two faces are printed onto two separate sheets of tracing paper; one made up of tea leaves, the other railway tracks.

The project “communicates a story of how tea connects two seemingly random people on opposite sides of the world,” says Wood. More details on the work at rlawood.com/Infini-Tea.

I couldn’t find a name attached to this piece Employing a huge piece of paper, Stephanie Byttebier investigated the frequency of letters used in the English language, with the most commonly used words clustering at the centre of the sheet. (If anyone can credit the work, let me know via the comments below and I’ll add them in here).

These clever origami designs for a new tea brand, Fortune Tea, were by Yi Guo.

I also enjoyed Joseph Townshend‘s Weaving Liminality project. Townshend says he took the concept of ‘data-bending’ as his starting point; “a term used to describe the act of intentionally corrupting digital files in a bid to create ‘artefacts'”.

He then opened up a series of image files as text files, editing and rewriting them in the process (two shown). The result is a series of glitch-heavy distortions and Townshend then applied this aesthetic to create a series of hand-woven textiles (learning how to weave in the process).

Yizi Zheng‘s series of five 3D posters, in which a coloured area grows from the centre of each piece of paper, was impressive, too. “Looking into ways to give life to paper,” Zheng says.

Edward Carvalho-Monaghan‘s work was certainly hard to miss (El Topo poster shown above). Some of his brightly-coloured sequential art reminded me in places of comic book artist Jim Woodring’s work, but Carvalho-Monaghan’s style is very much his own.

He also seems happy to work in a purely pictorial manner when constructing a graphic narrative, too – see detail from The Trip, below – which is much harder to do than it looks. Read the rest of The Trip on his website, which contains a host of other great (and strange) pieces.

Mina Pile had a great space to show a range of her work – and it was a pleasant surprise to see so much of it hanging up rather than encased in glass. She also displayed some of the lino she used to create the prints (see below, in light blue). And frankly, who doesn’t like a piece of lino.

And linocut was also used by Cai Lunn to striking effect in a series of illustrations for The Wind in the Willow (two shown).

I also liked the deranged, claustrophobic quality of Clio Isadora‘s Anxiety Portraits – if I recall, they were made using the most unattractive colours she could find. More here.

My camera-work doesn’t do Celia Colantonio‘s Nostradamus print justice (above), so here it is is red, minus reflections, taken from her page on the CSM graphic design 2013 site.

Matt Gardner‘s prints were also really interesting and I would have liked to have seen more going by the range of great examples of both design and illustration on his site, dirtwizzarrd.tumblr.com.

Finally, while I couldn’t see a credit for these posters written in Turkish (above), on display in the publications room, Natalie Braune‘s collection of elegant printed works impressed (below). Image taken from her CSM page; more of her work at her Cargo page, here.

The Central Saint Martins BA graphic design degree show closed last weekend, but the students’ work is well documented on csmgraphicdesign.com.

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here