Hasta La Ideas

Animated GIF by Robin Davey for Wired Italia

“My career parallels that of the GIF format,” says illustrator and animator Robin Davey. “Unbeloved for many years, plugging away, facing obsolescence only to be rejuvenated by emerging platforms and applications.”

Davey was speaking at the opening of Loop, an exhibition of animated GIFs staged by ad agency JWT London. Around the agency’s reception, stills of GIFs from a variety of artists who have risen to the limitations of the medium as a challenge to their creativity sit, framed as artworks. Thanks to a tie-in with augmented reality app Blippar, currently gaining considerable traction with marketers, visitors may bring each image to life by viewing it through their smartphone. (You can see the work from the show here).

Loop was organised by JWT creative Yoni Alter, who invited four of the featured artists along to speak at the opening. Davey ran through a selection of recent GIF work, including some brilliant pieces for Wired Italia, shown below

Interestingly Wired Italia use still versions of the work as illustrations in print and animated GIFs in the iPad version of the magazine.

Alongside Davey, Matthew Powell and Mathew Lucas travelled down from the North West while James Curran made the shorter journey from Soho. Each one ran thorugh their GIF portfolio on Tumblr, providing a whistle stop tour of the extraordinary variety and richness of execution possible within the tight constraints imposed by both the medium and Tumblr’s upload restrictions.

So what makes a great GIF? “Start with something small and don’t overcomplicate things,” advises Powell. Here’s his hypotic piece, Reflection

Implode, also by Powell

And Topography

Perennial favourites on Tumblr, the key GIF distribution channel, are fast food, superheroes and sex – or combinations of all three.

Here are a couple of Davey’s food-related GIFs

And Flip Flop from Powell

Superhero GIFs from Curran

And Davey

Away from the more popular themes, Lucas’s graphic experiments are absolutely beautiful. For him, creating GIFs in his spare time has become a “full-blown addiction”

And you might recognise this one

Curran advised sticking to no more than two characters at a time (his Piratetheses GIF, part of a project to create type-themed GIFS, is shown above) while Lucas pointed out that, although Cinema 4D and Blender are typically used to create GIFs, great results can be obtained by just using Photoshop.

While animated GIFs may have been around for years, the work of all four speakers at the Loop event revealed just how sophisticated the format has become. It’s amazing how much hypnotic appeal can be packed into 1mb and a few hundred frames.

Design Museum exhibition The Future is Here offers a fascinating look at modern technology’s impact on design and features some stunning graphics by studio Lucienne Roberts+. Here, Roberts explains her role in the project and how the graphics were created.

If you haven’t already visited The Future is Here, you should. On until October 29, the Design Museum exhibition considers the possibility of a new industrial revolution, exploring the rise of technologies such as 3D printing, crowd-funding and open-source software and their impact on design and manufacturing.

Studio Lucienne Roberts+ created the graphics for the show and designed and commissioned signage, infographics, laser cut illustrations and large-scale photographs to illustrate its content.

“It was an interesting project to work on as we had a semi-curatorial role,” says Roberts, who has designed graphics for shows at the Wellcome Collection, UCL and Kensington Palace. “When working on exhibitions, you always try to help the story along but this project took that to a whole new level. The show deals with some complicated themes and we wanted to help make it simple, accessible and fun,” she explains.

The studio’s LED title signage uses a strikethrough device and places the word ‘is’ over an unlit ‘was’ to highlight the speed at which modern technology is developing. “We liked the name because it has two meanings: the future is here at the design museum but it’s also here and now and changing all the time,” adds Roberts.

Roberts also commissioned photographer Angela Moore to take a series of photographs of spaces where technology is changing how things are made. The photographs have been blown up and appear on each wall of the exhibition space. The five locations – a school, a greenhouse, a shop, a designer’s space and Roberts’s kitchen – were shot at night and lit using only computer or phone screens.

“The exposure was so long that it doesn’t even pick up Angela and her assistant walking around dropping iPhones into plant pots, or the fox that found its way into the greenhouse. The lighting is quite powerful and helps to unify each image,” she says.

The exhibition makes several connections between today’s digital developments and the industrial revolution that began in the late 1700s. This link is also referenced in a collection of laser-cut silhouettes designed by illustrator Mark Hudson and made out of 10mm black perspex. The silhouettes depict rural and industrial scenes from the 16th century to the present day, tracking the development of British manufacturing.

“Each one is three metres long – the maximum size you can work with when laser cutting – and the fine details really tested the technology,” says Roberts. “We wanted the scenes to be quite playful but historically accurate and informative, and chose black to represent the smog and smoke of the first Industrial Revolution. It was fascinating watching people peering at them and trying to identity the different elements, and we were lucky that Mark has a great knowledge of history so had a good idea of what buildings and landmarks to include,” she says.

The UK’s industrial heritage is also referenced in an excellent infographic (below) explaining regional manufacturing identities through the nicknames assigned to football teams, one of a series created by the studio for the show. Sheffield United was nicknamed the Blades, for example, because of the city’s steel industry, while Arsenal’s alias, the Gunners, refers to military arsenal made in the area.

It’s another impressive project from Roberts’s studio – even more so as it was completed in just a month. While most graphics play a supporting role, Roberts’s work for the Design Museum is a central part of the story.

“It was a great project to work on – we really felt like all of our skills were being used, and it was a really collaborative experience. Before I went to art school, I studied stage management and in a way, putting on exhibition graphics is just like putting on a show. The best exhibitions have a bit of theatre and the graphics build the stage that sets the scene,” she adds.

The Future is Here is open until October 29 at the Design Museum, London SE1 2YD. For visitor info see designmuseum.org. To see more of Lucienne Roberts’s work visit luciennerobertsplus.com.

Credits

2D design: Lucienne Roberts, Dave Shaw, John McGill and James Ward, Lucienne Roberts+

3D design: dRMM

Photography: Angela Moore

Illustration: Mark Hudson

Les deux illustrateurs barcelonais Juan et Alejandro Mingarro ont un style bien à eux. Leur Brosmind studio, fondé en 2006, est aujourd’hui un label de qualité auquel de nombreuses marques, dont Nike, Microsoft ou Honda, ont fait appel. Ici quelques uns de leur travaux, notamment issus de la série What’s Inside.

Skilled in a sundry of creative practices, multi-talented French artist Jean Jullien is perhaps best known for his work in graphic design, which he studied at both Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art….

Continue Reading…

Every graphic designer seems to have a children’s book in them, says hat-trick‘s Jim Sutherland. Having just recently helped to create one, he considers why so many in the profession, including Alan Fletcher, Paul Rand and Milton Glaser, have decided to work – and play – in the medium…

As designers, often the best time in our job is when we get to play, so it’s no surprise that we like the idea of children as an audience. This was neatly summed up by George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”.

Working as a professional designer can be incredibly serious. Sometimes it seems that we all have to be grown up far too soon. So when the opportunity to approach projects with a sense of unadulterated joy arises, it’s one we grasp. Even the word ‘unadulterated’ suggests a lack of adults being involved.

Children may be a tough audience but the rewards can be tangible and joyful (how many of our grown-up clients’ faces light up when we present work?) I think there’s a parallel between the joy we feel when solving projects and the reaction of a child who sees it.

When I look at the work of some of my favourite designers, it seems that all of them have made at least one book. It’s great to see designers who are happy to turn from large corporate identities, to a small hardback book to inspire and entertain children, not to mention adults.

I love the idea that one minute they might be doing a title sequence for a Hitchcock film or IBM’s identity, and the next they’re drawing a strange frog. I think it’s this balance of serious and playful work that appeals to us all.

Bizarre animals, typography, cut paper, colours and wit all make an appearance between the pages. What follows is just a personal choice of some my favourites, hardly touching the surface of what designers have created over the years. Feel free to add your own favourites in the comments.

Bruno Munari seems to be a good starting point (see the first two images in the post, above). An amazing designer, educator, writer and publisher. His educational and book work is phenomenal. Some of my favourites include the books ABC and Zoo.

Unsurprisingly, one recurring theme is alphabets and letters. A lovely example of this is Alan Fletcher’s Ant Eaters to Zebras (‘O’ spread shown, above) and the recently published book featuring his ‘abecedarium’.

Another example is the typographic beauty of Alphabeasties by Werner Design Werks. Above is an elephant made, of course, from the letter ‘e’.

Designers have often worked with their partners, too. Paul and Anne Rand published Little One, Sparkle and Spin (above) and I Know a Lot of Things (see ‘dog’ spread, shown above).

Milton and Shirley Glaser collaborated on If Apples had Teeth (above) and The Alphazeds.

While long-time collaborators Saul and Elaine Bass worked together on Henri’s Walk to Paris (above).

Another couple of favourites from the US would have to include Seymour Chwast’s 12 Circus Rings and Get Dressed! (cover shown, above) and Bob Gill’s What Colour is Your World? (below).

Then there are those illustrators who are also obviously designers in their own right. Eric Carle originally worked as graphic designer in the promotion department of The New York Times, before going on to worldwide fame with The Very Hungry Caterpillar (cover shown, below); while Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy, was a graphic designer and illustrator.

More recently we have seen Marion Deuchar’s wonderful drawing books Let’s Make Some Great Art and Let’s Make Some Great Fingerprint Art (below).

And it’s not always just books – just look at Ken Garland’s amazing work for Galt Toys. One of the nicest identity projects ever, where he was designing the toys themselves as well as all the packaging and all the print.

At hat-trick we have been lucky enough to recently publish a book of our own, Hide & Eek! (below), working with Rebecca Sutherland. Not in the same league as the above, but it’s a start.

Perhaps we could all put more of our efforts and abilities into things to inspire children, rather than spending time discussing brand onions. It would be nice for us and, more importantly, nice for our children, too.

Jim Sutherland is creative director at hat-trick design. Hide & Eek! is out now – more details on the book (which should be read in bed with a torch) in our post on it, here. Art directed by Sutherland and Gareth Howat and designed by Sutherland and Laura Bowman, it is published by Californian publisher Knock Knock and launches in the UK in the autumn.