Hasta La Ideas

Initial sketches by Richard Green for the new-look Pelican logo (on left). He explains that the bird’s ‘eye’ was a challenge to get right (original Pelican logos shown top left in both grids; Green’s final logos show bottom right in each)

For our latest edition of Monograph, free with subscriber copies of CR, we talked to Penguin Press’ art department about the rebirth of the Pelican imprint which relaunched this month. It was a chance to discuss design decisions, logo sketches and early cover treatments – and also look to where the brand is going next…

Pelican was relaunched this month after three decades in hibernation – and while one might think that the rich heritage of the imprint might weigh heavily on the shoulders of the design team (the brand originally ran from 1937 to 1984), it was in fact the digital era that influenced its new direction as much as anything.

Our new 18-page Monograph – which is available with new subscriptions starting with the June issue – features early Pelican designs by Edward Young, William Grimmond and Jan Tschichold, but focuses on the work that the current design team, led by art director Jim Stoddart, has been doing since last year.

Pages from Hans Schmoller’s notebooks showing the first Pelican logos from the 1930s and 40s

Launching in the late 1930s with Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, & Fascism, the non-fiction series was to continue the Penguin ethos of printing quality books at an affordable price. Pelican was about self-improvement – making knowledge accessible to a wider readership.

Indeed, Pelican’s were to be “the true everyman’s library for the twentieth century,” said Penguin founder Allen Lane. Now, Penguin’s art department has resurrected the imprint for the twenty-first.

Pelican covers from the 1940s and 50s

Pelican covers from the 1960s and 70s

Cover experiments by the current Penguin Press art department

Grid and logos for the new-look Pelican books

With a new logo by Penguin’s Richard Green and cover, text and digital design by Matthew Young, the project has put the talents of this tight-knit team to great use.

When the brief was announce last year, Young initially worked on a responsive website for Pelican – and from his experiments with typefaces there, chose Brandon and Freight as display and text fonts, respectively.

The first five editions in Pelican’s 2014 range

The full story of the rebirth of Pelican is in this month’s Monograph – available only with a subscription to Creative Review (it comes with our June issue, a World Cup special). Go to our Shopify page to start your subscription today.

Samplers from the first five Pelican books are now available from pelicanbooks.com – the books are in shops now (£7.99). The full website launches on June 1.

Glasgow studio D8 has designed branding, packaging and signage for a new craft brewery opening in Glasgow today.

Housed in a former box factory in the city’s east end, Drygate describes itself as the UK’s first experiential craft brewery: the site includes a beer hall, shop, gallery space and outpost of Edinburgh gastropub Vintage and from June, visitors will be able to try brewing their own beer.

We first featured Drygate back in February, when D8 invited Glasgow School of Art alumni to design artwork for packaging. Fifteen designs were selected and displayed at a one-day exhibition in the city, and three have so far been used on bottles.

The initial range of beers includes Bearface Lager, with a label illustrated by Jack Bedford and Linda Sweenie:

Outaspace Apple Ale, with artwork by Patch Keyes and Good Press:

And Gladeye IPA, by Andrew Park:

Large-scale versions of Bedford, Sweenie and Park’s illustrations have also been applied to walls and equipment around the building. The remaining twelve designs will be used on future packaging and some are currently featured in the brewery’s gallery space.

D8’s David Shanks says the choice of artwork was based on “gut feeling and standout. Choosing something that would catch the eye on the shelf and try to bring something new to the crowd of craft beers already out there.”

Illustrations were inspired by flavours in the beer, and each beer’s name is based on the artwork on packaging. Keyes and Good Press’ illustration, for example, depicts funk and soul singer Billy Preston, who was the first signing to the Beatle’s Apple record label. “He’s also apparently the only other person to be name-credited on a Beatles record, bar the Fab Four that is, [and] the name came from one of his classic funk tracks Outaspace,” explains Shanks.

The brewery’s marque is inspired by the German/Nordic translation of Drygate, which mean’s ‘Priest’s path’:

And the structure fo the building itself. ‘The seven peaks of the Drygate building give it a strong aesthetic, hinting at its industrial past…Drygate wants to take people on a journey from the everyday to the exceptional, but being exceptional isn’t easy, so the path isn’t straight,’ says D8.

The rounded logotype includes a reference to the building, too, says Shanks: the crossbar of the ‘a’ is inspired by the apex of the roof of a walkway that leads to Drygate’s beer garden.

D8 has also designed a website for the brewery and worked closely with local studio Graven Images on interiors. “The client sought to reflect the grit and glamour of Glasgow, keep the unique industrial details of the space, which was previously a box factory, but still have warmth: somewhere you would want to stay, eat and drink,” says Shanks.

Images: Gordon Burniston

Drygate’s logo and signature zig zag appears on glasses and murals but the overall approach to branding inside is restrained. “There’s no need to over brand the interiors…Graven’s reflection appears subtly, as it should, in furniture details, such as angle stitching in the banquets, edges of tables, dual colour tile work, parquet flooring, [and] trusses between bespoke made beer benches,” says Shanks.

The choice of artwork used on bottles is diverse, but the custom type and Drygate marque give packaging a unified look that should stand out on the shelves against more established brands. Drygate says it will release new guest ales on a regular basis, and the first round is expected in early July.

For details, see drygate.com.

Iain Sinclair, American Smoke. Cover by Nathan Burton

Penguin Books has launched a partnership with WeTransfer where selected book covers for new titles will be showcased via the full screen backgrounds to the file transfer website…

The first series to be shown via the website is for the publisher’s Street Art Series of novels which feature covers by artists: ROA, gray318, Nathan Burton, Sickboy and 45rpm. The series actually launched last year – details on the ten participating artists are here – but today’s launch will pilot what looks to be an ongoing collaboration between the publisher and WeTransfer.

Zadie Smith, Embassy of Cambodia. Cover by gray318

For the Street Art series the covers are photographed as still lives, surrounded by objects which reflect the subject of the books. If users click on the image they are taken to Penguin’s online store.

While the project isn’t launching with an entire set of brand new cover designs (three from this series were released in June last year), the tie-up is an interesting way of promoting forthcoming editions. WeTransfer has 20m monthly users so the cover artwork – and the book, of course – has the potential to reach a wide audience. The next series of covers will be premiered on WeTransfer later this summer.

Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel. Cover by ROA

Zoë Heller, The Believers. Cover by Sickboy

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End. Cover by 45RPM

WeTransfer have also recently collaborated with the British Fashion Council, designer Nelly Ben and Where’s Wally.

La marque Schwartz (Herb & Spice) a fait appel à Print Tech, Novalia et l’agence créative Grey London pour concevoir un poster interactif sur lequel chaque couleur d’épices possède un son quand on la touche grâce une encre spéciale. L’illustrateur Billie Jean est derrière l’illustration de toutes ces saveurs qui se transforment en sons.

This system of illustrated characters and animations was developed to help people learn to read Chinese, and is one of the 76 projects nominated for Designs of the Year 2014 (+ slideshow).

Taiwan-born entrepreneur ShaoLan first began developing the Chineasy characters as a way to teach her own English-speaking children to read traditional Mandarin Chinese, by creating a visual connection to the words.

Having struggled to find a straightforward way to negotiate the huge number and complexity of Chinese characters, she teamed up with graphic artist Noma Bar to develop a system of shapes representing some of the most commonly occurring symbols, which can be combined to create more complex phrases.

“I created a methodology that breaks down thousands of Chinese characters into a few hundred base building blocks,” explained ShaoLan. “When these building blocks are combined, they form compounds that can in turn be combined to create phrases. Through this method learners can quickly build a large vocabulary of characters with very little effort.”

As well as providing users with a memorable way to understand the characters, Chineasy aims to offer those living in the West an insight into Chinese culture in a visual format.

“It is educational, social, cultural, and I hope, inspirational,” said ShaoLan. “I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and ancient culture with a modern interpretation through sleek modern design.”

The entrepreneur spent her evenings selecting and sketching suitable characters to form the building blocks of the Chineasy system, which she then modelled on her computer and refined to create contemporary graphic representations that could easily be understood by Westerners.

Having presented the initial idea at a conference organised by innovation forum TED that was published online in May 2013, the interest she received encouraged ShaoLan to begin working on a book and launch a Chineasy website and Facebook page.

A campaign launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter exceeded its goal of £75000, eventually achieving £197626 of backing that was used to publish the first Chineasy books.

The books are now being published by Thames & Hudson and an ebook and app have also been developed to illustrate how to write and correct stroke order through simple animations and give tips on pronunciation.

Chineasy was nominated in the Graphics category of the Design Museum’s shortlist for Designs of the Year and features in an exhibition at the museum until 25 August.

Here’s a project description from ShaoLan:

Chineasy

Chineasy’s aim is to bridge the gap between the East and the West. I want to give the west a real understanding of China and an appreciation of Chinese culture through their own eyes rather than layers of packaging and manipulation.

It is evident that people are hungry to learn about China. People are keen to be able to communicate with the 1.3 billion people. Tet there is not much out there to enable them to do so. Whilst the entire Chinese population is learning English, the west is struggling to comprehend this complex economy and society with their own eyes and judgment. Knowing their language is the key towards true understanding.

Chineasy will become the first step for anyone in the world who wants to understand China, Chinese culture and its language. It is educational, social, cultural and inspirational. I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and broad culture through a modern interpretation using sleek and simple design.

Chineasy’s goal is to allow people to learn to read Chinese easily by recognising characters through simple illustrations. The magical power of the Chineasy method is that by learning one small set of building blocks, students can build many new words, characters, and phrases.

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to make learning Chinese easy appeared first on Dezeen.