And my Canadian favourite and illustrator of the Work/Life cover, Darren Booth. (Buy the book here!) Apparently Work/Life is in the current HOW annual, but I have not seen it yet. It is also supposed to get a mention in the resources section of the March issue of Communication Arts.
Berlin-based design studio, Hort’s work on record sleeves invariably floats our boat and we love the batch of sleeves they’ve recently produced for Jazzanova’s album Of All The Things (which actually came out late last year) and singles Let Me Show Ya and I Can See. Here they all are, with the back covers shown too so you can see how they look too. Also shown is a poster and the album art booklet that has a rather nice embossed cover…
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Original ravers, The Prodigy have just released a new album, entitled Invaders Must Die on the Cooking Vinyl label. Art direction and design of the album (LP sleeve with its two inner sleeves shown above) is by Paul Insect.
You can also buy the album as a boxed set of five 7-inch singles (box not pictured)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The hard back book, Money Will Ruin Everything 2, comes with a folded poster acting as a decorative dust jacket – and the 2 CDs themselves, each housed in a delicately coloured card sleeve, are housed in the folds
In 2003 record label Rune Grammofon released a double CD and book called Money Will Ruin Everything to celebrate its fifth anniversary. Now, just over another five years down the line, the label has released Money Will Ruin Everything 2 – a book designed by Kim Hiorthøy that includes new graphic artworks, photos, video stills, seen and unseen sleeve art, a complete label discography, two interviews between Hiorthøy and the label’s founder Rune Kristoffersen, an essay on the label’s record covers by Adrian Shaughnessy and forewords by Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis and Rolling Stone magazine’s David Fricke. Here are some spreads from the book:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When we were in new Nike store 1948 (see previous post) we picked up a copy of The AM90 Sound boxed vinyl pack – adorned with artwork by Dutch illustrator Parra. The box set of eight vinyl records, a book and a DVD is the fruition of a project which saw photographer Shawn Mortensen travel across Europe and hanging out with eight young musicians from different cities who are all fans of Nike’s classic AirMax 90 (AM90) trainer. Each musician provided previously unreleased tracks for their vinyl disc in the box set. Design wise, the eight 12-inch record covers and 12-inch book can be arranged to form a 3×3ft version of Parra’s box top illustration (above).
To watch the documentary and for more info on the project, click here
Visit the portfolio of Tad Carpenter, Kansas City, Missouri, for some retro-inspired lettering and illustration.
There’s a an interview with Diana Sudyka about her artwork for Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast on an excellent music site called Sezio. {We were lucky to have Diana’s work in UPPERCASE for the Posteriffic show in 2007.}
Italian Vogue – A Black Issue, July 2008, fashion category winner
The winners in each category of the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2009 have been announced, ahead of an overall winner that will be revealed at a gala ceremony at the Design Museum in London on March 18.
The Design Awards have seven categories – architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport. The exhibition of the awards, currently on show at the Design Museum, contains several entries in each category, which have all been nominated by critics, curators and design practitioners. These have been whittled down to a shortlist of seven who are now vying for the top accolade of Brit Insurance Design of the Year.
The panel of judges this year consists of broadcaster Alan Yentob, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, designer and environmentalist Karen Blincoe, architect Peter Cook, fashion critic Sarah Mower, and last year’s winner, designer Yves Béhar.
The judges chose Italian Vogue: A Black Issue, July 2008 (shown top) as their winner in the fashion category. “Deemed a cultural watershed, A Black Issue firmly placed the debate about the lack of black models in the fashion industry to the very forefront of the fashion world’s consciousness as well as causing widespread debate outside fashion circles,” said the judges of their choice.
Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster won in graphics
Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama poster is the winner in the graphics category. The judges commented that “if there ever were to be a ‘poster of the year’, the Obama poster would be it. The US election was a watershed in contemporary history and this poster demonstrates the power of communicating ideas and aspirations from grass-root level. Just as the presidential candidate’s campaign speeches recaptured the lost art of oratory, so this poster breathed new life into a form that had lost its purpose.”
Make Magazine was the winner in interactive
Make Magazine is the interactive category winner. “Make Magazine is a website and blog that has created a remarkable resource through which to explore the process of making,” say the judges. “It is much more sophisticated than your everyday DIY website; Make Magazine presents you with unusual blueprints in which the users own input and customisation are both of practical and social value.”
Magno Wooden Radio won in product
The Magno Wooden Radio, designed by Singgih S Kartono, won in the product category. “The radio reflects a sense of purpose in the wider design context,” say the judges. “The designer has brought together local crafts people, teaching them new skills in making and assembling the radio, and by using local wood has brought a positive and sustainable infrastructure to a small community.”
Line-J Medellin Metro Cable won in transport
In transport, the Line-J Medellin Metro Cable in Colombia, designed by Poma, took the category prize. “This is a great example of how to re-appropriate an already successful cable car envisaged for ski slopes into a mass transit system for the urban poor,” say the judges.
Konstantin Grcic’s MYTO Chair was the winner in furniture
In furniture, Konstantin Grcic’s MYTO Chair was the winner and is described as a “design classic” by the judges. “It is tough creating a design classic, but the MYTO might just have achieved this through its rigorous experimentation and research, resulting in the technically very difficult outcome of a cantilevered plastic chair,” they say.
The New Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta won the architecture category
Finally, in architecture it was the New Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta which won the category award this year. “This is more than a beautifully designed building and an opera house,” say the judges, “it’s a living part of the city, a place for music, but also an outdoor space, somewhere all kinds of people like to go. Its mix of indoor and outdoor spaces attracts not just opera enthusiasts. It’s a building that gives people the chance to roam through, across and on top of it, all the way from sea to roof level.”
The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition will be on show at the Design Museum until June 14. More info is at designmuseum.org.
Detail from I Would Save Freehand print for ifyoucould.co.uk by tDR
I discovered recently that this (allegedly) high-tech industry of ours is populated by a whole
tranche of designers who are quietly hanging on to an old, obsolete piece of drawing software writes Michael Johnson. They know they shouldn’t, they get ridiculed for it, but they can’t help it. A piece of software that has been ever-present for decades has proved a tough habit to crack. Like the beginning of an AA meeting where people stand and admit that they’re hardened drinkers, it’s time to stand up and say that “my name is Michael and, yes, I do still use Freehand”…
At this point readers will be experiencing mixed emotions – some will be thinking ‘what an old saddo’. Younger ones will be asking ‘what’s Freehand?’. But, especially in the UK, it seems that a lot of people will be quietly nodding their heads.
Little things started to give it away. I asked Michael C Place for some text from a D&AD project recently and his answer was in the affirmative “as long as I didn’t mind getting it in Freehand”. We discovered recently that Dixon Baxi were still advocates. Some quiet digging revealed a vast array of design studios still using it: Neville Brody, Why Not Associates, Spin, to name a few. The Designers Republic were committed fans and we know there are users at Barnbrook Design, maybe even at North too.
Experiments by Jeff Knowles at Research Studio
MCP declined to contribute to this piece, not wanting to get involved in a discussion about a piece of software, and he has a point. But it seems the choice to use, and continue to use this programme is more than just geekery.
If Quark users have to migrate to InDesign, at least they’re moving to something on a par, and in some cases better. Just ten minutes with Keynote persuades most people to happily drop Powerpoint like a stone, such is the gulf in quality. But Freehand users are coping with a transition to something they see as a step sideways, often backwards.
It was one of the great, original debates of the graphic design business – ‘which programme do you use to draw?’ Battle lines were drawn early between the intuitive, easy-to-learn Aldus Freehand and Adobe’s more technical Illustrator. Malcolm Garrett remembers it well: “There was a sense that if you required a particular kind of precision then Illustrator was the way to go, in the same way that XPress won out over PageMaker. The clue is in the ordinariness of the names, Freehand, and PageMaker, they just don’t say ‘professional’.
Spread from Vogue Nippon supplement by Barnbrook Design
“I remember Erik Spiekermann once saying he disliked Freehand, because it was too, er, ‘freehand’.” He thinks that “designers who felt they were more ‘expressive’ liked the basic feel of Freehand, which allowed them to create in a welcoming environment, more akin to art studio than drawing office. For some reason Illustrator gave the impression that it was more technical and thus less expressive somehow.”
Garrett feels the differences are minimal but hardened users jump straight to its defence. “It’s intuitive and fast,” says Aporva Baxi from Dixon Baxi, still determinedly delivering artwork to printers in Freehand, despite the protests. “We just feel at home and can work very fast using it, allowing us to concentrate on the creative. The fact that you can drag any number of pages around, create a full book, guidelines or presentation whilst still being able to design freely is liberating.”
Logo book designed by Spin
For Spin’s Tony Brook it was love at first sight. “I went from a complete computer virgin, to a happy clapping convert in a matter of hours. I have met so many passionate advocates of Freehand, it is like a badge of honour, whereas your common or garden Illustrator disciple just mumbles and calls me old, which may be true, but if that’s the best they can do….”
A Flock of Words by Why Not Associates and Gordon Young
Spread from Typography Now by Why Not
Why Not Associates’ Andy Altmann reveals that it “was great for designing all the typographic layouts for the environmental projects we have collaborated on with artist Gordon Young. The typographic trees in Crawley [see CR March 09], the entire 320m of the typographic pavement in Morecambe – it would have been really painful to have done it in anything else.” Amazingly, Altmann also admits that all the artwork for the seminal book Typography Now was done as 200 individual pages in the programme.
johnson banks’ Mouse identity for Microsoft
Nearly all of its adherents know the writing has been on the wall ever since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, getting their hands on the crown jewel, Flash. The 2007 announcement that Freehand wouldn’t be updated came as no surprise, and Adobe’s position on this is clear: “Adobe has no plans to initiate development to add new features. While we recognise it has a loyal customer base, we encourage users to migrate to the new Adobe Illustrator….”
To Adobe, bouncing a bunch of ‘has-beens’ into switching makes logical sense, and without any apparent fan-base in the States (a US source could only think of one designer they knew still using it) they faced no significant backlash there.
But its impending demise will feel like amputation to some. “For me it basically feels like an additional limb used purely for design, a third arm that understands and knows what I want,” says Nick Hard in Neville Brody’s Research Studios.
MTV2 ident work by Dixon Baxi
Baxi admits they “quietly dread the day we have to install a system update to osx that suddenly conflicts with it”. Tony Brook reveals that “Adobe has finally beaten me into submission. This Christmas I did a day’s course on Illustrator. I still don’t get it.”
For this writer, once a Freehand beta-tester, it’s been ever-present on a 20-year journey. But now my copy won’t let me print out anything containing fonts (bit of a drawback), and regularly needs re-booting/re-installing (not ideal). Garrett criticises this as an inherent inability to embrace change, a sort of ‘I know what I like, and I like what I know’ culture.
I Would Save Freehand print for ifyoucould.co.uk by tDR
He’s right of course, and the news that The Designers Republic has folded should perhaps be the death-knell for their favourite piece of software too. Its central place in British graphic design for 20 years is coming to an end.
At least there’s a glimmer of hope. It seems that Adobe has (finally) acknowledged that Illustrator could do with some of Freehand’s best bits (like multiple, different-sized pages in a document, and even simple old ‘paste-inside’).
Perhaps they’ll send me a copy of CS4 and I’ll be a (slightly late) beta-tester? But in the meantime, I have a logo to do by this afternoon, I think I’ll just knock out a few quick ideas in a programme I know well….
All projects shown were designed in Freehand.
Michael Johnson is design director of johnson banks and editor of the johnson banks Thought for the week blog . This article appears in the Crit section of the CR March issue.
London-based screenprinting club, Print Club London is hosting another show of screenprints following the success of last years Blisters On My Fingers exhibition. Like last year, there will be 35 exhibiting artists (last year’s artists included Jon Burgerman, Steve Wilson, Richard Hogg, Serge Seidlitz, Jody Barton, Andrew Rae and Si Scott), 35 editioned and signed prints by each, selling for £35 a piece. Only this year, Print Club is offering the chance for all and sundry to be in the show which will take place in July at MC Motors in Dalston, London…
Some of the exhibits at last year’s Blisters On My Fingers Show
Illustrators and artists can submit designs for a chance to be one of the selected 35 exhibitors at this year’s Secret Blisters show. Simply send a low res version of your B2 (500 x 700mm) screenprint design to postershow@printclublondon.com no later than
2 April.
Another difference at this year’s show will be the secret element: Each exhibited print won’t be signed by the artist – to encourage people to buy the posters they like, rather than buying simply for the sake of who the artist is. This aspect of the exhibition may be, we suspect, driven by the fact that prints by street artists Eine and Pure Evil sold out instantly at last years show, possibly bought by people thinking the value of them might “do a Banksy”…
Another shot of last year’s show in the wonderful MC Motors venue which is, handily, practically next door to Print Club’s Dalston studio
For more details about Print Club London and the forthcoming Secret Blisters show, visit printclublondon.com
Fairey’s poster for Earth Hour
Following the success of his Obama poster, Shepard Fairey has been commissioned to create a poster to advertise this year’s Earth Hour.
Earth Hour was created by WWF and Leo Burnett advertising agency in 2007, when over 2.2 million Sydney dwellers switched off their electricity for an hour in a bid to raise awareness of climate change. In 2008, Earth Hour went global for the first time, taking place in 35 countries. This year Earth Hour will take place on March 28 at 8.30pm.
Earth Hour 2009 video
“Of all the crises we’re facing right now, I think the environmental one is the biggest,” says Fairey. “Bigger than the economy, bigger than terrorism. It’s serious, but I’m hopeful about it, because I feel like every single person can make a difference and be part of the greater solution. If I can use my art in any way to have a positive impact, I’m glad to do it.”
Detail:
We’re really digging designer/illustrator Dan Funderburgh’s pattern-symbol making. It’s constrained – yet playful – at the same time. More imagery below:
Wallpaper Patterns: “PowerPlant”
Commissioned Work on Moleskin:
Related Posts:
A Chapel of Type
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.
