iStockPack offers a clear preview format so users can see the finished product and the vector file.
I love stock databases. They’re the best marriage of sharing culture with graphic design, and they’re a great resource for designers, especially ones working freelance or in small teams.
The site, still new, could use a few more resources, like clearer restrictions on licensing and usage. The usage section does mention restrictions, but it would be useful to include familiar language from, say, Creative Commons Licenses. It would also be great to have more social media features, to make it easier to share the ideas and inspiration on sites like Pinterest and Tumblr and to build a community amongst contributors.
But either way, iStockPack is a great pool of resources, and as they mention on their site, they’re looking for more user contributions. Some contributions, like the ones below, offer extensive directions and resources.
This set of intersecting cubes uploaded by user ikarusmedia comes with extensive directions on assembling the finished product.
In Korea, the Internet is everywhere. I had the privilege of living and working in Korea for a month this past summer and constantly found myself with opportunities to get online. The country is legendary for being the fastest, most wired in the world, but I didn’t expect to find myself catching wifi signals in the midst of Buddhist monasteries and at the top of mountains.
But in Korea, business cards are all the rage as well. In business contexts, I received them almost immediately after shaking hands, whereas in more casual settings, I usually received them after dinner. It could have been just as easy to trade Facebook contact information, but the importance of the business card exchange is difficult to underestimate. All throughout Asia, I’d be met with looks of mild irritation if I forgot to bring my business cards with me.
In the US, I trade business cards much less frequently—in my circle, we just whip out our smartphones and follow each other on Twitter—but I still carry them around. And I start to wonder about how they can interface and remain relevant with a digital generation.
A creative approach to embedding a QR codes in a resume.
A simple question on the Core77 Discussion Board posed by dexigner20110 has sparked a flurry of discussion recently: “I’m in the process of designing our new business cards and would like to know if any of you put QR code on them?”
As any designer knows, Pantone chips are a small but very important tool of the trade. They’re so small, in fact, that they often get lost or are mistakenly thrown away. Seriously, what are you supposed to do with the leftover chips? Throw them in a dish or tack each teeny weeny one to a cork board? It’s pretty frustrating that Pantone hasn’t come out with a way to organize its own product, but now there’s SLIP, a system developed by Jesse Reed, a graphic designer at MoMA, that keeps your chips safe, tidy and visible.
“Like many designers, we know the frustrations of having disorganized drawers and envelopes full of Pantone chips that didn’t make the cut or never made it to the printer. Our solution is simple—put your chips in a SLIP and don’t feel guilty about tearing off a few extra options.”
You can order a 5-pack of SLIPs for $12.95 and a 10-pack for $19.95.
Earlier this year, Amsterdam-based graphic designer and illustrator Tim Boelaars posted on his site a series of mono-weight icons he’s drawn for everyday use. Now he’s produced a series of screenprints that each gather a set of the icons…
Each 18x24inch screenprint (Furniture, shown above) has been produced in a series of 75 on GF Smith paper complete with it’s own blind deboss that gives each poster a particular texture. €35 each from Boelaars’ online store at store.timboelaars.nl
Above and below: Buildings
Above: Tools. Below: Guns
OK, so the guns icon set probably shouldn’t be considered as being for “everyday use”. But they do make a nice set. Maybe they could be incorporated into in a hitman-themed game app, er, aimed at graphic designers?
Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our March issue is an illustration special with features on Clifford Richards, Pick Me Up, the relationship between illustrators and writers, the making of the cover of the New York Times Magazine and a powerful essay by Lawrence Zeegen calling on illustrators to become more engaged with the wider world and accusing the profession of withdrawing “from the big debates of our society to focus on the chit-chat and tittle-tattle of inner-sanctum nothingness”.
The best way to make sure you receive CR in print every month is to subscribe – you will also save money and receive our award-winning Monograph booklet every month. You can do so here.
Never underestimate the power of license plates (as Cosmo Kramer once reminded us). They did the trick for the Society of Design (SOD). When the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit wanted an effective and memorable way to invite letterer, illustrator, designer, and Daily Drop Captain Jessica Hische to be a part of its 2012-13 speaker series, they looked no further than the Department of Transportation. SOD members researched the state’s custom license plate program (eight characters max, including one space), convinced 34 people to change their vehicle registrations, and mapped out a multi-plate message to Hische, a Pennslyvania native who is now based in San Francisco. After filing and re-filing oodles of paperwork over the course of several weeks, they finally had their invitation, in the form of 27 freshly pressed license plates.
The next step was to take the charming analog project to the digital realm. A website was created (invitinghische.com), and called to the attention of Hische via Twitter. “Pennsylvania misses you tremendously,” tweeted SOD to the designer. “Please come home.” Her response was immediate, heartfelt, and, fortunately for those who are now driving around with the plates on their vehicles, in the affirmative. “I am crying at my desk. I’ve never been so touched by a group of people I don’t even know!” Hische tweeted in response. “And the answer of course is YES! I will marry you! I mean come to Pennsylvania.” And she’s bringing presents. Each of the SODers involved with the project will receive a delightful drawing: Hische’s hand-lettered version of his or her name.
Discovery Network’s Animal Planet channel has launched an on-air refresh featuring a series of charming 3D worlds inhabited by various endearing animals
“Animal planet is all about Animals, wild and domestic,” says Federico Gaggio, VP, executive creative director, Discovery Networks UK & Western Europe. “The channel’s primary audience are adults, in particular adult women, who have a passion for animals. At times they watch with their kids or as a family. To reconnect them with our programmes we created small worlds (Animal Planets), where iconic animals display their natural charm and quirky behaviour, which makes them endearing to us. The logo is integrated in the environment where the animal action takes place.”
The concept was developed by Discovery’s creative agency in London, in conjunction with Double G Studios, who also designed and produced the animated idents. The animal character animation was developed with Blue Zoo.
CR in Print
Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our March issue is an illustration special with features on Clifford Richards, Pick Me Up, the relationship between illustrators and writers, the making of the cover of the New York Times Magazine and a powerful essay by Lawrence Zeegen calling on illustrators to become more engaged with the wider world and accusing the profession of withdrawing “from the big debates of our society to focus on the chit-chat and tittle-tattle of inner-sanctum nothingness”.
The best way to make sure you receive CR in print every month is to subscribe – you will also save money and receive our award-winning Monograph booklet every month. You can do so here.
Perhaps more than any other era, the 60’s and 70’s seem to have a graphic identity in themselves, the upshot of high modernity, mass culture and a certain creative spirit that brought the psychedelic aesthetic into the mainstream. Over the course of the past half-century or so, the graphic style has been imitated and rehashed countless times—usually in intentional homage—to the point that the imagery is shorthand for those decades past.
For Eye Sea Posters, it’s besides the point as to whether or not the aesthetic comes across as timeless or dated: they’ve unearthed a stash of dozens of authentic Polish movie posters from the mid-60’s through the mid-80’s, mostly in good-to-mint condition, selling the highly limited editions online. Founder James Dyer wisely chose not to divulge his sources, but he was willing to share a little background information on some of the designers.
Like many of his fellow designers, Victor Gorka (1922–2004) has spent much of his adult life outside of his motherland; they’ve relocated other European countries, as well as the United States and (in Gorka’s case) Mexico.
Christopher Nasfeter hails from a slightly younger generation of artists whose move from Warsaw to Berlin mirrors his shift from graphic design to fine art.
While a quick survey suggests that the majority of the films are Polish releases, a fair number of international titles turn up as well; we’ve highlighted some of these below…
Saul Bass, the legendary graphic designer, has been getting a lot of play this month. First, his opening title sequence for Anatomy of a Murder has been masterfully restored for Criterion’s new Blu Ray DVD, which also includes a behind the scenes look at his relationship with the film’s director, Otto Preminger. And now Rizzoli/Universe Books is reprinting Bass’ long forgotten children’s book “Henri’s Walk to Paris.”
Written by Leonore Klein, who penned only a handful of children’s books, the story is about a young boy who lives in a small French town and dreams of visiting Paris. If you can’t guess what happens maybe the title will help you out. It may not be the most inventive narrative and these aren’t even Bass’ best illustrations, but even mediocre Bass is still really, really great.
Steven Heller commented that “virtually each tableau in this book of spreads could have been a Bass film poster,” and “It looks as if he had taken the storyboard for a film title sequence and enlarged it to grand proportions.” And no where is Bass’ uncanny ability to convey mood and theme through image and typography clearer than on the cover. I love how the letters of the book’s title becomes physical. Incidentally, these two “legs,” if you can call them that, are all we ever see of little Henri—a singular touch from Bass, who never illustrated another children’s book.
Cape Town’s ever-inspiring Design Indaba conference kicked off yesterday with talks by speakers including Pentagram partner Eddie Opara, Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin and also René Redzepi, the head chef of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant…
Proceedings kicked off with a talk by Justin Gomes and Charl Thom of Capetonian ad agency FoxP2 who drew parallels between George Lucas’ creation of his first Star Wars film and how the agency approaches creating work for its clients. “Best practice can’t be applied to truly original work,” they suggested, whilst advocating courage to see a creative vision through. “Don’t put pants on the Wookie” was their final piece of Star Wars-related advice before they showcased some cracking work for a Drive Dry campaign they completed for Brandhouse that featured hardened convicts, rather than actors:
US designer John Bielenberg also offered advice in his following talk, suggesting that Indaba attendees shouldn’t simply think outside the box, but “think wrong”. He then named a few people he considered as “wrong thinkers” – Phillipe Starck, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, among them.
Bielenberg talked through his Project M project that looked to take advantage of his belief that creative genius flourishes between the ages of about 18 and 30. Assembling small groups of young creatives, Project M looked to cook up and act on ideas that could make a positive impact on certain communities. “It’s an immersive, experiential programme to expose young creative people to the chance to shape a positive future in communities, and about things that they actually cared about.”
Bielenberg ended his talk with a Skype link to Alex Bogusky who he partnered with last year (along with Rob Schuham) to create COMMON, which looks to take the lessons learned through Project M and “do shit that matters”.
Before signing off Bogusky left the audience with this insight for those with similar dreams of encouraging creative solutions to the world’s toughest challenges: “If changing the world isn’t fun – nobody’s gonna do it.”
Landscape designer Dan Pearson showcased a beautiful forest and garden environment he’s been working on in Japan and then René Redzepi, head chef at Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant spoke of his approach to creating wonderful and original food using freshly foraged ingredients.
Pentagram’s newest partner, Eddie Opara cited his mother and Lebbeus Woods as his biggest influences, presented a few projects that have sadly never seen the light of day after suffering “death by committee”, and showcased various projects which revealed his love of folding paper and materials to create “dimensional” objects (above and below). He finished by showing footage of an interactive table created for the Savanna College of Art and Design and also a highly adaptable data visualisation project called View 2 developed for JWT.
Alfredo Brillembourg of Venezuelan design and architecture practice Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) gave an impassioned talk about how his company has been working to create simple but functional structures and infastructures in slums in both his hometown of Caracas and also in Brasil. Here’s a look at the slum in San Augustin in Caracas with it’s Metrocable car transport system courtesy of U-TT:
The project, like all of U-TT’s work, is based on a thorough understanding and empathy towards landscape, the community and its needs. Find out more about U-TT’s work at u-tt.com
The final talk of the day was given by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin – who have never presented together before. They talked of their quest to explore the question “what else can music videos be” and showcased the projects they’ve worked on together – namely The Johnny Cash Project – which allowed fans to create artwork for a frame of the video of their choosing in black and white using an online application built in to the project’s website (by the brilliantly named Mr Doob – a programming whizz pal of Koblin’s) at thejohnnycashproject.com. Visitors to the site can also explore artwork already created and also choose to watch the videos in a number of different ways according to how each artwork has been tagged by its creator.
It turns out that Milk and Koblin (who had met at a design conference in Europe a few years ago) actually had the idea for the Johnny Cash project (their first collaboration) before they knew which artist they’d be able to work with on the idea. Fortunately Milk bumped into his friend, legendary music producer Rick Rubin (as you do) who was just finishing off the final Johnny Cash album and so Milk was able to pick a track that could work before the record was released.
In many ways Johnny Cash was perfect as it made sense to make it a black and white project (JC was, of course, known for wearing black) and Cash also has a huge international fanbase who could get involved and contribute to the project.
Milk and Koblin’s proactive exploration and generation of ideas also led to them working with Arcade Fire to create The Wilderness Downtown site. As the pair explained, showing footage from the website at a conference doesn’t really work as the project is designed for individuals at their computers to have a personal experience as the site pulls in Google Earth images relating to each viewer’s childhood neighbourhood. Read our post about the project from September 2010 here.
The pair also showed examples of projects they’ve worked on individually. Milk showed some hilarious ads that he made at the beginning of his directing career that I can’t actually mention for legal reasons – and showed clips of various music videos he’s directed for the likes of Kanye West, Gnarls Barkley, U2 and more. See his work at portfolio.chrismilk.com.
Koblin also showed various projects that showed his love of exploring new technologies and services to create artworks. Highlights were projects he created using The Mechanical Turk website where you can crowdsource pretty much anything – from drawings of sheep (for just 2 cents each) to vocal recordings. To see (and play with / explore) his work, visit aaronkoblin.com. Chrome users will benefit most from the experience!
The duo signed off by showing footage relating to ROME (above) – a musical collaboration orchestrated by LA-based producer Dangermouse. Koblin and Milk developed a new type of music video experience that takes advantage of WebGL – an extension of javascript that allows super high quality motion graphics to be rendered instantaneously on screen. If you’re running Chrome as your browser, there’s much fun to be had at ro.me
To the audience’s delight, the duo signed off by showed this clip featuring Adam Buxton (which we flagged up here on CR blog in August last year) – a making-of spoof:
Today’s schedule promises talks by Hellicar & Lewis, Porky Hefer, and United Visual Artists – and more!
According to The Washington Post, “American citizens know little about current events in general and even less about overseas events.” This isn’t a recent phenomenon. Designer Johnny Selman points out that “even at the height of the Cold War, when international issues were front page news, the American public displayed only superficial awareness of overseas events and foreign policy.” But instead of just feeling depressed and embarrassed about it, Selman decided to create a poster based on the news he heard that day and every day, for an entire year.
BBCX365 became his thesis project at Academy of Art San Francisco, where he was mentored by graphic designer/artist Paula Scher. Selman devised a minimalist mantra to guide him through the year. He set goals for himself like, “Reduce the story to its simplest visual form. Don’t over think it. Don’t over work it… Stay neutral. Be bold. Don’t be afraid.” To that Scher added these very wise words:
Be culturally literate, because if you don’t have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you’re not going to express anything to anybody else.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
iStockPack offers a clear preview format so users can see the finished product and the vector file.
This set of intersecting cubes uploaded by user ikarusmedia comes with extensive directions on assembling the finished product.
QR code business card by 
