Animation duo White Robot lends its humour to TV Licensing

Red Bee Media collaborated with animation collective White Robot to create an amusing trio of films that illustrate some of the more absurd excuses for not having a TV license.

Produced for TV Licensing to drive the organisation’s new YouTube channel, the three clips – Stolen TV, Lost Weight and Lethal Injection – tap into White Robot’s particular sense of BAFTA-winning humour.

“Using bold, vibrant animation we are able to develop the nature of the excuses, and abstract them with our sense of humour,” says co-writer and rector of White Robot, Will Anderson. “The excuses were naturally funny, so it was all about how we could bring them to life. All of our work is particularly conversational, so it’s a good match.”

Red Bee director of creative, Andy Bryant, agrees that the real-life excuses of license fee evaders proved a rich seam for the creative team: “We felt that if we could make people laugh they might just feel a little warmer about TV Licensing. And what better way than to use the brilliant comedy goldmine of excuses they’re already sitting on – hilarious, rude, surreal and bizarre.”

The films run on the organisation’s YouTube channel, with two more animated excuses to follow later this year, Queen’s Corgi and Six Months to Live.

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Burger art

Burger blogger Burgerac has released a part art, part recipe book featuring 24 burger-themed illustrations commissioned for 2011 pop-up exhibition Burgermat.

Published by Nobrow, The Burgermat Show includes artwork by  illustrators including James Joyce, Andy Rementer, Lazy Oaf founder Gemma Shiel, Linzie Hunter and Jen Bilik, founder of Knock Knock.

Each artwork doubles as a placemat and is accompanied by a burger recipe, from Burgerac’s own ‘super easy cheesy’ to burger chain Byron’s signature creation, with photographs by Thomas Bowles.

The Burgermat Show was launched in London in 2011 and has since travelled to Cape Town and Dublin.

“The show was inspired by the Burger Monday events put on by Daniel Young of Young & Foodish. For each event he invites a great chef to cook up a one-night-only burger for ticket-buying guests.

“After going to a couple, I knew I wanted to collaborate with him and bring art into the equation. I went for a burger (naturally) with Daniel and through a series of conversations, the concept for The Burgermat Show was born,” explains Burgerac.

“The concept for the book was born at precisely the moment we knew we were going to showcase artwork as paper placemats. I initially thought I could print and publish it myself, but once you start really thinking about it, you realise a publisher is far more than a print-broker. Working with Nobrow gives the book the credibility I feel the artwork deserves and the chance to be distributed around the world,” he adds.

Nobrow, which organised last weekend’s East London Comic and Arts Festival and specialises in design, graphic art and illustration books, has also published a new title by illustrator Robert Hunter, who has designed artwork for Picador, the New York Times, Guinness and a book documenting the V&A’s Memory Palace exhibition, which explores the link between illustration and story telling.

Map of Days (above) follows the story of Richard, who is lost in an alternative world after stepping into his grandfather’s pendulum clock.

The Burgermat Show and Map of Days are available to pre-order at nobrow.net

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

East London Comic & Arts Festival

The second annual East London Comics & Arts Festival takes place this weekend at Bethnal Green’s York Hall and includes screenings, workshops, live drawings and talks on graphic art and illustration.

ELCAF was founded last year by Nobrow – an East London publishing house specialising in design and illustration books – to showcase the work of young and established artists from London and beyond.

Production house Blink and animation studios Not to Scale and Studio AKA will be hosting free screenings throughout the day, and a rolling line-up of illustrators including Day Job Collective and Cachete Jack will be working on a banquet-themed illustration.

As well as a performance from poet and illustrator Matthew Hodson (Matt the Horse), Pebble Island author Jon McNaught and New York-based artist Andy Rementer, who has produced illustrations for Apartamento, New York Magazine and MTV, will be talking about their work.

A panel of speakers from publishers Nobrow, SelfMadeHero and Jonathan Cape will discuss the pros and cons of publishing and self-publishing with independent authors, and artists including Jack Teagle, Nick Edwards and Luke Pearson will be delivering talks on character design for comics, toys and animation.

Pearson will also be hosting a live drawing battle in the afternoon, and there will be a range of free hands-on workshops teaching visitors how to make mutant toys, pop-up books, comics and newspapers.

To celebrate the festival, Nobrow has commissioned prints by 10 artists: Icinori, Dominic Kesterton, Telegramme, Tom Frost, Eda Akaltun, Ping Zhu, Paul Paetzel and Ana Albero, Planeta Tangerina, Rementer and Hodson.

Each artist was asked to pick a two-colour palette from red, yellow or blue, and have produced some great prints featuring robots, bears, cats and cockerels. The prints will be available for £15 at the festival but you can view them in advance on ELCAF’s website.

ELCAF runs from 10.15 until 7pm on Saturday, June 22. Tickets cost £3 and are available on the door or online. For more info and to see the full programme and exhibitor list, visit elcaf.co.uk

Images (from top): illustration by Andy Rementer; last year’s ELCAF; prints by Kesterton, Rementer and Icinori.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

CR July 2013: type and more

The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more

You can buy the July issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Rachael Steven recounts how the world’s largest wood type collection, at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Wisconsin, was rescued from homelessness with a new location in which to carry on its work

 

Michael Evamy takes a detailed look at Experimental Jetset’s ‘responsive W’ identity for the Whitney Museum of American Art

 

And Mark Sinclair explores the resurgence of graphic design that relies solely on type, as documented in a new book from Unit Editions

 

Plus, we have our annual LogoLounge Trend Report courtesy of Bill Gardner, analysing some key trends in logo design over the past 12 months, from ‘molecules’ to ‘banners’

 

The Ideas Foundation works with schools to introduce pupils to the advertsing industry and get children working on briefs supplied by real brands. Anna Richardson Taylor attended one of their sessions in Woolwich, London

 

Jean Grogan reports from Paris on an exhibition dedicated to the history of the Chanel No 5 brand, from Brancusi-influenced advertising to bottles designed by Dalí

 

In his regular column on art direction, Paul Belford argues that well-crafted advertising is never ‘polluting”, no matter what digital naysayers may argue. And Gordon Comstock claims that copy that apes the language of the web is doomed as it’s just not ownable

Björn Ehrlemark and Carin Kallenberg report from Stockholm on Hall of Femmes first conference, an event dedicated to women in design

 

And Jeremy Leslie lifts the lid on Container, an intriguing editioned box of curated items which owes much to magazine culture

Plus Daniel Benneworth-Gray ditches his Mac for the joys of a stubby pencil and the great outdoors

 

For subscribers-only, our Monograph booklet this month brings together a wonderful collection of posters produced by artists-in-residence at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum

 

You can buy the July issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

 

Back To The Line

Coup de cœur pour le travail de l’illustrateur italien Jonathan Calugi pour un rendu minimaliste tant au niveau des lignes que des couleurs, c’est d’ailleurs ce qui lui donne toute sa force et sa pertinence. Quelques unes de ses très belles nouvelles illustrations avec la série « Back To The Line » à découvrir dans la suite.

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Please draw a chair

Kingston University students Jack Beveridge and Joshua Lake held an art lesson with a class of seven and eight year-olds at a local school and asked each of the children to draw a chair. They then picked two and had them made…

Turning children’s drawings into three-dimensional objects has seemingly caught the imagination of a few parents recently, with services such as Crayon Creatures and Stuffed Drawings now available to offer rendered figurines and stitched versions of prized paper art.

But for their latest project, Beveridge and Lake (the latter of the ingesting-film experiment we blogged about in May last year) held a class at St John’s Church of England Primary School in Kingston, Surrey, in which they gave each of the children a piece of paper and asked them to ‘please draw a chair’.

“With a little encouragement and some colouring in pencils, the children started scribbling away their dream chair,” says Beveridge. “After an hour, we had the most beautiful selection of designs.” Over the next couple of weeks the designers selected two of their favourites and built them.

The results include a red and green ‘Deniss the Menace’ edition and a rather fine bright yellow rocking chair, complete with goldfish bowl (some construction shots are featured below).

The designers say that they plan to produce more editions in the future. See jackbeveridge.com and joshua-lake.com.

And here are a few more of the children’s drawings of their dream chairs. Love the fruit one.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

#OccupyGezi: The art of the Turkish protests

Two street stencils on walls in Istanbul

The Occupy Gezi movement started in Istanbul with the aim of preserving one of the very few green areas left in the city and turned into a group of massive, nation-wide anti-government protests. This has ignited a flurry of creative production which has resulted in a variety of posters, banners and street art…

This post was originally published on the V&A Museum’s Posters blog. Our thanks to V&A curator Catherine Flood and Yaman Kayabali for permission to repost it here.

The protests that started with the Occupy movement in Istanbul have since spread to other Turkish cities such as the capital Ankara and Turkey’s third largest city, Izmir.

Twitter was officially labeled as a “troublemaker” by the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan after the start of the protests as it was instrumental in distributing information for the protestors in a time when the traditional media practiced self-censorship.

The Twitter bird wearing a gas mask is displayed in a stencil along with the most famous hashtag of the Gezi protests, #occupygezi (shown, above left). The gas mask, which has now become an everyday object for the Turkish protestors, is a reference to the enormous amount of teargas used by the police.

On the other hand, the stencil of a defiant penguin who also wears a gas mask (above right) symbolises the media corruption in Turkey. Penguins are now associated with the self-censorship of the mainstream Turkish media after CNN Turk, a major news channel, broadcast a documentary on penguins while the civil protests and police violence were at their peak – instead of covering what was happening on the streets.

 

Digital poster depicting a protester throwing a tear gas canister. The text reads ‘Mr Officer You Dropped Something’

Turkish police have been harshly criticized by the protestors due to the use of an unprecedented amount of tear gas, as well as the police violence witnessed during the protests.

Yet, among the images that are circulated in the social media which support the protestors and criticise the government or the police, humour dominates. The text in the digital poster above reads ‘Mr. Officer You Dropped Something’ – it is written on a blurred photo in which an activist is throwing back an active tear gas canister back at the riot police.

Two posters featuring portraits of the Turkish Prime Minister

The street art shown, above left, plays with the image of Sex Pistols’ iconic album cover by inserting the portrait of the Turkish Prime Minister in place of the Queen’s.

The word ‘Queen’ is changed to ‘Sultan’, a reference to the absolute monarchs of the Ottoman Empire, the ruling state of Turkey before the modern Republic. It is also a testament of the international legacy of punk and its relevance today in the midst of public rebellion.

The digital poster shown, above right, uses Prime Minister Erdogan’s portait by the photographer Platon in the background and displays the phrase ‘Keep Calm And Be Capulcu’. The Prime Minister had used the word “capulcu” – which means looter – to describe the activists after the protests grew in magnitude on May 31.

The word capulcu was quickly adopted by the protestors who started to define themselves as such. This has a humorous irony because the protestors did not see themselves as looters, since the dominant majority of them were well-educated urban middle class people who abstained from looting and other acts of vandalism.

The images above are also reflective of globalism today, since they refer to international icons to convey their messages.

As the Gezi protests developed, artists, designers and other creatives quickly responded to the photographs circulating on social media. Some of these images now enjoy an iconic status since they have been used over and over in different media.

A woman in red being sprayed with pepper spray in Gezi Park and a street stencil reproducing the image

The image of a policeman blowing pepper spray on a woman in a red dress (above left), rapidly became the most recognised symbol of the protests and was transposed to the city walls, streets and roads with stencils.

The girl in red in the stencil image (above right) is considerably larger than the policeman – symbolising the growth of the resistance as the police violence got rougher.

A whirling dervish wearing a gas mask while performing in Gezi Park and a street stencil reproducing the image and the phrase ‘Come along!’

The image of a whirling dervish with a gas mask (above), who performed in the occupied Gezi Park was also taken up by street artists.

The phrase ‘Come along!’ was added in the stencil. ‘Come along’ is a reference to a poem by Jalal al-Din Rumi, whose followers had founded the Order of the Whirling Dervishes. The poem was written in the 13th century and it still makes a very powerful and moving statement in the context of the Occupy Gezi movement:

Come, come, whoever you are, come again. / Whether heathen, zoroastrian or idolatrous, come again, / Ours is not a caravan of despair, / Come again, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times.

A girl in Istanbul being hit by a water cannon

Another image which rose to prominence during the protests was the girl who stood in front of a police water cannon opening her arms, exposing her torso (above).

Her image became a symbol of non-violent resistance against police force and is displayed on a variety of printed or digital posters about the protests.

Below are two digital posters created to be used in the social media. The phrase written as a hashtag in the posters – ‘Diren Gezi Parki’ – means ‘Gezi Park Resist’ and this has become one of the favourite hashtags of the Occupy Gezi movement.

Two posters depicting the iconic image of a girl hit by a water cannon

The colourful yet simple graphic design below, which states the demands of the protestors, reflects the youthful energy of the activists.

The design is clean – each demand is symbolised by a single visual, with distinct background colours. The specific words of each demand are also emphasised by an increase in font size of certain words. This helps to convey the message clearly by avoiding a wall of text.

Graphic listing the Taksim Square demands

Considering that these images, which are only a handful among many, are a result of the past 15 days (since the protests began), there is going to be a lot more as the protests and the occupy movement continue.

Whatever the outcome of these events, it is certain that the artists, designers and activists have responded rapidly, with a highly creative and humorous body of works to the Occupy Gezi movement. It will definitely have a rich visual legacy for future generations.

Yaman Kayabali is a postgraduate student in the Art History and Museum Curating program of the University of Sussex. Prior to his studies at Sussex, he worked as a project coordinator in an exhibition design company in Istanbul. His area of interest is the relationship between art and politics. He is currently researching on the effects of political ideology on the early republican architecture in the new capital of modern Turkey with a comparative perspective of Turkey’s Western European counterparts. Yaman is currently an intern in the Research Department at the V&A.

This post was originally published on the V&A Museum’s Posters blog, here. It is reproduced with permission.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

Found creates engaging mixed-media campaign film

Motion studio Found has collaborated with film director Richard Curtis to create a striking film for grassroots advocacy organisation ONE, charting the history of popular music and protest in a visually arresting mixed-media collage.

Part art installation, part documentary, it combines a range of media including music, speech, video, animation and motion graphics to recall some of the most potent quotes, speeches and individuals from protest movements of the past century – from Civil Rights, Apartheid and Occupy to the current urgent issue of extreme poverty.

Aimed to grab the attention of a younger demographic and get them involved at One.org, the film was launched at a live music event on London’s Southbank last weekend, on the eve of the G8 summit. The 30-minute film (see below) was projected onto the Tate Modern following performances by music artists such as Tinie Tempah, Jessie J and KT Tunstall.

agit8 – From Protest to Progress from Meagan Bond on Vimeo.

The final version, agit8: Protest = Progress, recalls speeches by Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Dwight D Eisenhower, among others, as well as well known protest songs, such as Marlene Dietrich’s rendition of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, all set to a combination of archive images and original graphics and illustration.

Found had six weeks to turn the project around, investing a lot of time researching video footage and audio, with the help of Curtis and ONE. “Four of those weeks were spent with Excel Spreadsheets and YouTube writing things down,” says Mike Sharpe, creative director of Found. “We knew that we would deal with a whole bunch of mixed media, and there was a lot of research to be done to find out which ones to pick. We watched over 30 hours of footage and had archivists working around the clock in the UK and the US sourcing obscure footage.”

Around 15 minutes of footage were spliced together, with hundreds of tracks whittled down to just over 50, for the final piece.

Mixing up the graphic and illustration styles was vital, says Sharpe. “To keep the attention of the viewer [when projecting] on the side of the building you need to have a variety of looks up your sleeve rather than just one look. That’s what we realised at the beginning when I did the original design.”

Above: artwork of the Strange Fruit segment of From Protest to Progress, by Sweet Crude

Artwork by Found for the Apartheid section of the Tate Modern projection of agit8: Protest=Progress

Above and below: Two stills from Sweet Crude’s interpretation of an Eisenhower quote from 1953

Illustration by Ian Wright to accompany Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

The visuals were created in-house at Found with additional contributions from Sweet Crude, Ian Wright and Olive Johnson who illustrated Dietrich’s song (see below).

Securing the rights to – as well as the necessary quality of – material was the biggest production challenge. For example, the audio of Mandela’s speech at the Rivonia trial was of such poor quality, that the team transcribed it and used it performed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Above: artwork for Sweet Crude’s interpretation of Mandela’s Rivonia trial speech

The film is part of the wider agit8 campaign, a call to action to end extreme poverty. On the agit8 website visitors can support the campaign, and performers – from high profile musicians to buskers – can add their own protest songs.

For those who missed the live performance, the film will also be shown during the summer at various festivals, and will continue to support the campaign online – and it is definitely worth catching up with. As Sharpe concludes, “Every now and then a job comes along that you just can’t turn down and this was one of those occasions…”

Credits:
Global Creative Director, ONE Campaign: Roxane Philson
Writer and Executive Producer: Richard Curtis
Production Company: FOUND
Creative Director: Mike Sharpe
Producer: Sue Dhaliwal
Art Director: Ben Collier-Marsh
Associate Producer: Hannah Cameron
Animators: Christopher Shone, Tom Langton, Jonathan May
Editor: Mike Prior
Sound Design: Ade Pressly
Projection Consultant/Producer: Sam Pattinson
Music Consultant: Toby Slade-Baker
Contributors: Ian Wright, Sweet Crude (Fraser Davidson, Simon Tibbs and Dina Makanji), Olive Johnson

 

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

See USSR: two sides of Soviet Union propaganda

New gallery GRAD in London stands for Gallery for Russian Arts and Design, and in keeping with its aim of presenting this art from a refreshingly new angle, its inaugural exhibition presents a fascinating insight into Soviet Union propaganda.

The exhibition of posters, magazines and textile designs is jointly curated by GRAD and Irina Nikiforova, chief of the department of European and American Art 19-20th Century at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. It shows the external proganda by the Soviet Union aimed at selling an attractive vision of the USSR to the tourists of western Europe and America in the late 1920s and 30s.

A series of posters, commissioned in the 1930s by Intourist (the organisation responsible for foreign tourism in the Soviet Union), enticed the West with stunning visions of the country, advertising such pursuits as hunting and adventurous car journeys. See USSR brings some of them together for the first time after extensive research into the relatively short time-span of this particular approach to propaganda.

“Through Intourist’s posters you really see this country that never existed,” says curator and director of the gallery Elena Sudakova. “They used this European language, this very glamorous language. They are trying to attract European and American tourists, by means of the language that was familiar to them.”

Intourist poster by Aleksandr Zhitomirsky, 1939

When the organisation was established in 1929 it had no idea how to advertise travel to the Soviet Union, adds Sudakova. It first used a more avant garde design language that was familiar in Europe at the time, with the influence of Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky very much in evidence in the early artwork.

Early Intourist poster by Aleksandr Froloff, c 1930

However, the approach changed quickly, as the organisation’s artists adopted the art deco style that was used to advertise European destinations, drawing on European travel posters and other graphics for inspiration. “It’s interesting to look at them, because sometimes you can’t tell whether it’s the French Riviera or the Soviet Union,” adds Sudakova. “Although there are clues of course.”

Poster by Maria Nesterova-Berzina, 1930s

In 1931 Intourist launched a poster competition, which encouraged emerging artists to submit poster designs. Among them were Maria Nesterova-Berzina, Nikolay Zhukov and Aleksandr Zhitomrisky, and the See USSR exhibition brings them together for the first time under the term ‘Intourist artist’.

Nikolay Zhukov’s Caucasus poster, 1936

The Crimea by Sergey Sakharov, 1935

USSR poster by Nikolay Zhukov and Viktor Klimashin, 1935

Highlighting the Soviet Union’s cultural prowess was another key element of Intourist posters and its publications ‘Soviet Travel’ and ‘Soviet Land’, promoting the country as the land of culture through its festivals of dance and music.

The Leningrad Festival of Music poster by Joseph Šebek, 1934

Issues of Soviet Travel and Soviet Land

The propaganda also included travel guides, maps and badges

The external propaganda contrasted sharply with the imagery of the inward propaganda, a point highlighted within the exhibition. In contrast to the images of a Soviet land of leisure, elegance and glamour, these designs draw on imagery of miliary might, flight, the union of peoples and industrialisation, as exemplified in the below textile designs.

The Soviet Aircraft Industry, 1927, artist unknown

The Second Congress of the Textile Workers, 1930s, artist unknown

The art deco inspired posters of enticement were relatively short-lived, as towards the end of the 1930s depictions of the Soviet Union shifted towards the expressions of architectural and political grandeur more readily associated with the union. But, as Sudakova points out of the period explored in the exhibition, “neither of the propaganda, external or internal told the whole story – neither of them reflect any kind of reality”.

See USSR runs until August 31 at GRAD, 3-4a Little Portland Street, London W1W. GRAD also commissioned artist and model-maker Henry Milner to reconstruct the eponymous See USSR poster, designed by Nikolay Zhukov in 1930, which is on sale as a limited edition print (see image at the top of the page for Milner’s artwork).

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.

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 updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here.

Talent spotters: Camberwell Degree Show 2013

The Camberwell College of Arts degree show is open to the public this week and includes work from photography, illustration, design, drawing, painting and sculpture graduates.

There are hundreds of projects to see – from graphic novels to pyrotechnic type experiments. Here are some of the highlights:

Illustration

This year’s BA Illustration exhibition showcases work from 51 graduates across a range of mediums.

Carim Nahaboo’s pencil and charcoal drawings of insects on blotting paper (above) are beautifully drawn and incredibly detailed. An avid insect collector, he also experiments with taxidermy and specimens in jars, and has been commissioned by the BBC, the Discovery Channel and entomologists at the Natural History Museum.

Lucy Swan’s illustrations of church sermons and religious symbols (above) explore Christian faith and ideals and are inspired by her visits to London churches including the Nigerian Celestial Church of Christ. “Faith fascinated me and it was refreshing to observe absolute conviction, devoid of irony or doubt,” she says.

The bible also features in Samuel Marot’s work but this time, it’s placed between the jaws of a lion: each of Marot’s blue, black and white screenprints reference an object or person from the British Empire, from Winston Churchill to Scottish missionary David Livingstone.

There were some excellent graphic novels and comic art on display, including Michael Maris’s 50-page comic Bitter, which follows a lonely publican through a post-apocalpytic England, and Emma Jane Semmen’s giclee prints of key scenes from the graphic novel I Didn’t Realise I’d Have to Be Naked. Jasmine Greenhill’s comic, Festival, has been published by Avery Hill and her degree show display includes near life size drawings of featured characters.

Above, from top: Michael Maris’s Bitter; Emma Semmens’s prints depicting scenes from I Didn’t Realise I’d Have to Be Naked and Jaz Greenhill’s Festival.

A range of prints and ceramics by Freya Faulkner explore science and the big bang theory using bold type, psychedelic swirls and ominous warnings of impending annihilation, while Rich de Courcy’s prints re-imagine London skate parks in multi-colour. Amber Anderson has also created some lovely illustrations including a pig dressed as a butcher for homeware brand Kitty Greenway.

From top: Illustrations by Freya Faulkner; Rich de Courcy & Amber Anderson

Graphic design

Camberwell’s graphic design class of 2013 has also produced some engaging and thought-provoking projects – two of which are soon to become window displays at the Wellcome Trust headquarters on Euston Road.

Phoebe Argent’s two-year display exploring paper folds and space (above) will be installed this summer and Peter Hudson’s will be installed in 2014. Argent’s was the winning entry in a competition open to students at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon entitled ‘Changing Perception of Images’.

Hudson’s (below), reflects the digital landscape and the changing way we view images through screens, and will feature pairs of eyes which appear clear from a distance but are pixellated up close.

Lucie Mauger explored materialism and image-obsessed culture with a distorted glossy magazine, Obsession and Kenny Foot examined consumerism in a collection of essays, photographs and videos, which look at the history of brands and our relationship with them (both below).

Experiments with visual perceptions produced some interesting results: Joanna O’Riordan’s project, Ways of Seeing (above), explores visual impairment, and Phoebe Phillips’s book examines the relationship between space, sound and colour (below).

I also liked Courtney Oneka’s hybrid type, influenced by classic typefaces such as Baskerville; Amie Cornwall’s Temporary Type using matches which are photographed and then burned and Patrick Beardmore’s risograph prints and instruction booklet detailing how to build a vice and sharpen a saw (below, from top).

Photography

The photography exhibition included stunning landscape, portrait and experimental work including Charlotte Epstein’s series, The Pursuit of Beauty – part of her exploration of traditional ideas of beauty and features partially blurred close-up shots (below).

Emily Rawley’s digital prints (below) are inspired by Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Stage theory and reference the notion of mirrors being a stage from which to perform.

Callum Hughes’s installation explores a life captured through Facebook photos, and Rosie Gill’s wall of photographs takes viewers on a journey along South Africa’s longest road – the 1,401 mile N2 (below).

These projects are just a few of the hundreds on display by Camberwell’s talented soon-to-be graduates. To view the full line-up from this year’s photography students, click here, for illustration, visit wellsaid2013.com and to view more work by Camberwell’s graphic design class visit mostlikely.co.uk

For degree show visitor information, visit the college’s website.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

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