Hasta La Ideas

Can you tell your Ai Weiwei from your Gilbert & George, your David Shrigley from your Si Scott, or your Marion Deuchars from your Laura Dockrill? Whether you can or can’t, if you want to own some original artwork from one of the above, head to Secret 7″.

The charity initiative is back this year with another massive guessing game, pairing tracks from seven mainstream music artists with a slew of illustrators, artists and designers to raise money for Art Against Knives.

Secret 7″ picked seven tracks (Elton John’s Bennie & The Jets, HAIM’s Better Off, Jessie Ware’s Still Love Me, Laura Marling’s The Beast, Nas’ The Don, Nick Drake’s – Rider On The Wheel and Public Enemy’s Harder Than You Think), printing each one 100 times to vinyl (courtesy of the Vinyl Factory). It then invited artists and designers to interpret them through artwork in their own style, drawing or printing directly onto blank record sleeves.

All of the work will be exhibited at Downstairs At Mother on April 13 & 14. The following weekend, coinciding with Record Store Day on April 20, members of the public will be able to buy their favourite one-off sleeves. Only at the till will the track, and artist who interpreted it, be revealed to the buyer through an inserted certificate.

This year, around 500 artists in total have contributed, with some designing more than one or a series of sleeves. Around 280 of those were chosen through an open submissions system, coordinated with Talenthouse.com. In addition to those mentioned above, the likes of comics artist Simon Bisley, artist and designer Toby Mott, Welsh artist Pete Fowler, illustrator Will Broome and rock photographer Michael Spencer Jones have all contributed. Here are some that have caught our eye (but you can view all work here):

The brainchild of Kevin King of Universal Music, and executed together with designer Jordan Stokes, Secret 7″ raises money for Art Against Knives, which funds creative initiatives supporting young people across London. Last year, it raised £33,500 – among the most in-demand sleeves was one designed by The Cure’s Robert Smith.

Artists are encouraged to “rethink what a record sleeve can be”, says King, and this year’s work includes a fully functioning guitar, sleeves that are three-dimensional, covered in felt (by contributor Felt Mistress, perhaps?), cross-stitched, as well as hand-drawn, screen-printed or graffitied designs.

The project is also accompanied by an online video, which shows the records being pressed at the Vinyl Factory in Hayes.

In addition, Matt(H)Booth has created artwork for a limited-edition print (see detail below for Harder Than You Think and Better Off), that visualises each track as its corresponding soundwave profile. No time like the present for securing a bargain slice of original art – and a nifty tune to boot.

Secret 7″ exhibition is on at Downstairs At Mother (Biscuit Building, 10 Redchurch St, E2) on April 13 & 14, with the buying weekend on April 20 & 21. Visitors can buy records for £40 apiece, and Matt(H)Booth’s prints (seven-colour print) are also be available to buy for £40 on site or online at Art Against Knives from later this week.

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

It’s not always easy to consult a map on a crowded tube train when you are squashed up against someone’s armpit. But what if that armpit displayed a handy eye-level map? Just one of Kingston students’ ideas on the Underground

Regular readers will remember our post on Kingston student Clare Newsam’s ingenious roundel-shaped seesaw seat. Clare’s was just one of a number of ideas that Kingston third year graphics students came up with in response to an open brief I set tem earlier this year. To tie in with the London Underground’s 150th anniversary, I asked them to come up with responses to the tube network as it is today, both good and bad.

Rachel Singer and Oliver St John (pictured below) came up with the idea of an Amrpit Map, handily positioned in the armpit of a coat so that travellers could consult it on a packed train.

Staying with ideas about knowledge of the network, Harriet Jowitt proposed a series of posters which would test travellers’ ability to identify the correct colour of each line:

Most Londoners and visitors are familiar with the ‘please mind the gap between the train and the platform edge’ warning that comes over the PA at certain stations, but just how much of a gap is there to mind? George Newton and Lucy Sansom decided to find out. They photographed the gaps along the length of each line and mapped the results graphically, the length of the aforementioned phrase indicating the relative size of the gap: here’s the Bakerloo

Davide Santi-Brooks and Eivind Reibo Jentoft loooked at the sometimes insanitary nature of tube carriages. “A constant worry in the back of our minds whilst travelling underground is hygiene,” they say. “In a response to this concern, we have exposed what really lies beneath the iconic fabrics of the underground carriages. Our patterns reveal the various forms of microscopic life which commute daily, unnoticed.”

Their proposed new versions of the tube upholstery’s famous moquette patterns feature some of the bacteria and substances sometimes found on the seats, eg Bascillus

and, er, human sperm

Sophie Both Turner also had hygiene worries, reminding us that sometimes the tube is ‘Snot healthy’

Mollie Courtenay suggests using moving image ad sites on escalators to promote more considerate use of persoanl stereos

And, finally, two ideas concerning the Metro free newspaper. “The London Underground is an experience that places us side by side, yet we barely interact. Little has been done in the way of utilising this communal experience,” say Sara Azmy and Tasha Thomas. “MET-ROLL works in creating a situation where you have to work together, generating conversation and encouraging positive social interaction.”

Here’s a demo version they tested

And Jack Mercer has an idea for the waeary traveller –  copy of the paper which also doubles as a pillow. Here he is testing the idea

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Despite something of a melt down of the limited wi-fi at OFFSET in Dublin yesterday, highlights were delivered by Hvass & Hannibal, Ji Lee (image from his Bubble Project, shown above), and Vaughan Oliver…

Nan Na Hvass and Sofie Hannibal are no strangers to us at CR – we featured them in a One To Watch profile piece in our May 2007 edition when they were still both undergraduates studying at the Danish School of Design – and have been keenly following their career since.

Above: Hvass & Hannibal transformed that most boring of spaces, the meeting room, into a colourful wonderland for client DGI-BYEN

The Danish duo told the OFFSET audience about how they met and started working together mainly on producing flyers and decorative installations for friends’ music nights – as well as costumes in which to dance around in.

As well as explaining how their illustrative and colourful style has developed, the pair also demonstrated how performance was a crucial part of the making of the above sleeve for band Efterklang’s Magic Chair album (shown above) – by jumping around the stage waving the colourful ribbons they created to be twirled around by a host of gymnasts during the album cover shoot.

They also told of a project they agreed to do for free for a gym that approached them with the offer of doing an exhibition in their space. It turned out the gym just wanted the duo to decorate the interior of their drab gym (which used to be a butcher’s workshop) for free. But the duo, despite hating the space, made the most of the opportunity and, rather than covering it in the bright colourful illustration of previous interior projects, decided to instead install ironic anti-exercise statements:

“If you’re going to do something for free, it’s important to maintain creative control so you can at least do what you want,” the pair warned of taking on such projects.

See more of the duo’s work at hvasshannibal.dk.

Later on, Ji Lee, now Facebook’s creative strategist, showcased a host of impressively pro-active and experimental personal projects to demonstrate that “idea is nothing, doing is everything”.

His Bubble Project – in which he created speech bubble stickers and stuck them to advertisements to encourage the public to add their comments – brought him much attention, including this ABC news item in which Ji Lee appears, hilariously disguised:

Just as Iain Tait did yesterday, Lee spoke about enthusiastically about the benefits of hacking: “The term has negative connotations, but hacking is improvising, reappropriating, fast and highly efficient,” he said. “The bubble project was a hacking project and turned corporate monologue into a public dialogue.”

Another of Lee’s personal projects demonstrated neatly the power of the potential of personal projects. Intrigued by the fact that ceilings are generally undecorated in modern households, he created a miniature domestic scene on the ceiling of his flat and posted pictures (including the one shown above) of it on his blog. The project were reblogged and Lee ended up winning a commission to create a similar work from MoMA in New York, no less:

See more of Lee’s work at pleaseenjoy.com.

Pixies Come On Pilgrim album cover by Vaughan Oliver

My own personal highlight of the day was witnessing a talk by a man who has designed the sleeves of records I’ve been admiring and collecting for about 25 years: Vaughan Oliver. Oliver’s main stage talk focused mainly on his early career working on record sleeves for independent record label 4AD (after leaving a packaging print company where he worked on such creative tasks as designing cat food labels), and the enthusiasm he still has for the work was palpatable.

He spoke lovingly of the relationships formed with the numerous photographers he collaborated with such as Simon Larbalestier who worked with Oliver on sleeves for PIxies.

The biggest surprise of Oliver’s talk was his engaging use of humour throughout – although there were more surprises too. I, for one, had no idea that the cover of The Breeder’s 1990 album, Pod, actually depicts Oliver himself wearing a couple of eels strapped to his midriff, otherwise pretty much naked and “doing a fertility dance”. Who knew!?

Immediately after his main stage talk, Oliver appeared in the conference’s Room 2 interviewed by Adrian Shaughnessy, revealing further his playful sense of humour as well as some hugely insightful details about his career post-4AD and in particular his difficulty in coping with new ways of working in the 90s when using computers took over older, more hands-on methods of creating layouts. Now, Oliver revealed, becoming a valued educator through teaching as a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich is the reason he gets up in the morning.

Seeing one of my all-time graphic design heroes enjoying talking to a crowd clearly enamoured not just by his work but by his personality, enthusiasm and his ability to engage and entertain is something I won’t forget too soon. Thank you OFFSET.

For more info about OFFSET2013, visit iloveoffset.com. To keep up to date with all the latest OFFSET news, follow@weloveoffset on Twitter and check hashtag #OFFSET2013.

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Record label Ghostly is offering a special edition vinyl version of Beacon’s album The Ways We Separate which is housed in a ‘cast sugar sculptural object’ by artist Fernando Mastrangelo

The 13″ by 13″ block, cast in sugar and epoxy will house a ‘dusty pink’ vinyl version of the album. The letters TWWS appear as if carved into its surface. Twenty copies will be made, which Ghostly is selling at $200 each.

This video shows Mastrangelo casting the first prototype:

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Rememberum is a new online memorial service where users can design tributes to loved ones. For its launch the startup created one for Apple founder Steve Jobs, adopting the aesthetic of the original Mac OS interface, in tribute to his life…

The Jobs microsite has been developed by David Kelley, Eric Liang, Daniel Eckler and Nick Bujnak of Rememberum which, according to Kelley, has been in development since the Toronto Startup Weekend last November.

“One of the primary goals of the design was to simulate the original Macintosh OS interface as closely as possible,” writes Kelley of the Jobs tribute site. “This meant pixelated (pixel-perfect) graphics as well as some of the original functionality of the Macintosh, such as keyboard folder navigation and double-clicking.”

“We separated key points in his life into groups of folders and individual files. The folders have keyboard navigation and it is possible to hold down CTRL to select multiple files to open. Each file opens as a ‘textpad’ file and can be moved and cascaded like any window. This, coupled with the keyboard navigation and small retro animations helped to provide a more genuine experience of the original Macintosh computer.”

The Steve Jobs site is at rememberum.com/steve-jobs-tribute. More about Rememberum at rememberum.com and on Kelley’s site, davidkelley.me.