Hasta La Ideas

Manchester music company Quenched has teamed up with artists, illustrators, musicians and comedians to launch a new campaign, Xpress, on behalf of male suicide prevention charity the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

Led by Quenched creative director and freelance illustrator Ben Tallon, the company has produced an album with tracks by artists including The Strokes, The Libertines and Reverend and the Makers; and a magazine-style website featuring interviews with comedian Stephen Merchant, retired WWE wrestler Mick Foley and writers, illustrators, designers and photographers including Waldo Lee, Tom Gauld and Andy Thomson.

As well as raising awareness of male suicide- the biggest cause of death in men under 35 – the campaign aims to highlight the positive effects of creative expression.

“We wanted to get across just how empowering being creative is but we also wanted the campaign to be accessible, and we wanted people to know that they don’t have to be skilled or educated in something particular – even just watching an independent film or going to an open mic night might help them find something they love doing or get chatting to someone with similar interests,” explains Tallon.

Tallon has been working on the campaign since late last year, along with art director Sam Price (who has worked on layouts for the Big Issue and Dennis publications), photographer Danny Allison and web designer Ryan Addams. It has cost around $6,000 – $1,600 of which was raised through crowdfunding site IndieGoGo – and as the album (curated by DJ and poet Danni Skerrit) has been paid for in advance, every penny of sales proceeds will go directly to CALM.

The striking album artwork was designed by artist Hannah Ward. “I met Hannah a while ago and loved her paintings right from the start. When I told her about the album, she wanted to be involved and when I saw the final painting, I thought it was perfect. It’s quite a powerful statement, and something I think people will be drawn to – I couldn’t stop looking at it,” says Tallon.

Whatever your musical tastes, Xpress deserves support: on a small budget, Tallon and co have created a campaign that could directly help and inspire the people it is asking for money to support, while showcasing a range of UK talent and encouraging more people to take an interest in the arts. It’s a great looking website with some impressive photography and illustrations and it’s all for a worthy cause.

“When I found out the statistics on male suicide, I was shocked – I think it’s tragic that people aren’t aware of just how big a problem it is. I hope that with Xpress, we’ve managed to use our skillset to do something positive for CALM and something that’s different,” adds Tallon.

Xpress: the album is on sale from May 24. For details, visit xpressofficial.com

Images (from top): Xpress: the album, designed by Hannah Ward; The Xpress website; The Xpress team (from l-r Sam Price, Ben Tallon, Danni Skerrit and Danny Allison); and an illustration of Stephen Merchant by Tallon.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Biggler Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

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 will also update with new content throughout each month.

D&AD is hosting an event at the University of London next week to discuss the future of creative education.

Speakers will include award-winning producer David Puttnam, D&AD president Neville Brody, Creative Education Trust director Emily Campbell, Hyper Island founder David Erixon and Dave Birss, founder of creative training agency Additive.

Chaired by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, the panel will discuss the potential impact of changes to the national curriculum on the UK’s creative industries. Speakers will also compare education programmes to industry-led training schemes in a look at whether the industry itself might be better suited to training future generations of creative talent.

Arts education has been a subject of fierce debate under the coalition government: since its election in 2010, university tuition fees have tripled and a proposed English Baccalaureate scheme is in danger of marginalising creative subjects in favour of traditional academic ones.

As a result, parents are now concerned that £9,000 a year would be better spent studying ‘safe’ subjects rather than exploring their creative side at art school, and Brody believes this could have catastrophic implications for the UK’s economy.

“This country’s core businesses no longer manufacture goods – they manufacture ideas. The UK is the creative capital of the world. But if we squander our economy’s future on an education system based on dogma and nostalgia, rather than pragmatism and aspiration, we can kiss our reputation as the global centre of creative excellence goodbye,” he said in statement condemning the proposed Baccalaureate.

A future for creative education? will be held at Logan Hall on May 21. To find out more or to book tickets, click here.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

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 will also update with new content throughout each month

If you’ve seen our May Annual, you will have noticed a humorous call for entries ad for the Art Directors Club. The same DDB team behind that ad has produced the 91st ADC Annual, which continues to send up the creative industry

The awards annual is the work of DDB New York. Book designers Juan Carlos Pagan and Brian Gartside introduce each section with an illustration by Rami Niemi on a different aspect of creative life. Niemi’s work also appears on the cover in a cheeky reference to ‘big agency dinosaurs’.

Here’s Niemi’s take on the long haul to success.

Spread from the ‘motion’ cageory

Illustration

Digital

Photography

And more from the book

And the back cover

Credits:
Agency: DDB New York
Creative direction: Matt Eastwood and Menno Kluin
Art direction: Carlos Wigle
Copywriter: Aron Fried
Book design: Juan Carlos Pagan & Brian Gartside
Illustrations: Rami Niemi

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Biggler Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

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 will also update with new content throughout each month.

A large-scale solo show by printmaker and illustrator Paul Catherall features the latest of his distinctive linocut prints. Many recent commissions for the likes of the Southbank Centre, long-standing client Transport for London, Google and law firm Pinsent Masons will be on show.

The work of Catherall is eminently recognisable in the simplicity and boldness of its composition and linocut execution. Inspired by mid-20th century travel posters and designers such as Tom Eckersley and Tom Purvis, Catherall developed his own style, increasingly informed by his printing method.

It’s about a “quality that’s fairly abstract, where elements are missing and your eye does your work for you”, he says. “I’m exploring what to leave out rather than what to leave in, and getting the negative shapes to do the work.”

While studying illustration, Catherall also started to enjoy the “laborious, messy method” of linocut printing. Initially, he appreciated the way it would allow him to recreate an old litho style, but gradually he became obsessed with the process. “The more you get into the print process, the more you become obsessed with the sheet of the ink and the finish you get,” he says. “The whole feel and textures just becomes a slight obsession.”

Paul Catherall’s take on Portcullis House

His work graces numerous London institutions, not surprising given his inclination to depict the capital’s landmarks – the celebrated and despised alike – including the new Shard (see ‘Pink Shard, above, created as a one-off artist’s cover for Wallpaper magazine).

From top: Telecom Yellow by Paul Catherall, commissioned by Google; Telecom and Barbican, commissioned by Pinsent Masons; East Finchley, commissioned by Transport for London

Each print takes several weeks to complete, and Catherall enjoys the fact that the process combines the physical and the creative. “I think it does show. With everything you can generally see the time that’s gone into it.”

And as for those landmarks, Catherall says he will never get bored of them: “It’s usually that I want to revisit something; you  become less bored and far more involved,” he says. “I’ve become a bit obsessive.”

Paul Catherall at the Gallery@OXO (Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London SE1) runs from May 1-19. A limited edition of prints is available for sale.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Biggler Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Beter yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

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 will also update with new content throughout each month.

Our May issue is the biggest CR ever, weighing in at over 230 pages. It’s our Annual special, with over 100 pages of the best work of the year in visual communications combined with a regular issue containing our usual mix of interviews, opinion and reviews

The CR Annual, in association with iStockphoto, is our round-up of the best work of the year, as chosen by our panel of judges. The judges also choose what they deem to be the best of the best in our Best in Book section.

We have also chosen our design studio, client and ad agency of the year – details in the issue.

Once you’ve finished perusing the Annual, turn over for a regular issue of the magazine where you will find a host of features relating to the work selected for the Annual this year. This includes a major profile piece on Morag Myerscough, whose Cathedral Café project features in The Annual and who also designed our cover this month

Here’s a film of Morag and her team making the cover:

We also interview Christian Borstlap from Part of a Biggler Plan in Amsterdam, whose work for Louis Vuitton has featured in several of our Annuals

One thing our graphics jury noticed about the work entered this year was how nostalgic much of it was. In particular, there was a trend for what we termed ‘Austerity Graphics’ – post-war British replete with sugary pastel colours. We explore the rise of this trend and look back at graphic design’s abiding addiction to referencing the past

Another trend discussed by our judges was the increasing importance of the ‘PR stunt’ in advertising: we explore what effect this is having on ad agency creative departments and the skills of those who work there

And, in our final profile piece, we met Human After All, the creative agency formed by the design team behind Little White Lies magazine

In our Crit section, Wayne Ford reviews Jo Metson Scott’s new book of photographs of soldiers who have opposed the Iraq war

James Pallister looks at how microsites have become a new platform for protest, Gordon Comstock discusses the tensionbetween branding’s desire for consistency and advertising’s search for originality, MIchale Evamy discusses brands which play with concealing their identity, Daniel Benneworth-Grey ruminates on the difficulties of working for that most demanding client (yourself) an Paul Belford applauds the risk-taking in a classic ad for Alexon produced by the combined talents of Richard Avedon, Paul Arden and Tim Mellors

And, if that wasn’t enough, our subscribers can also enjoy a fabulous collection of Cuban posters produced by the Organisation in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, in this month’s Monograph

You can buy the May Annual issue direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe and you will not only save money but will be guaranteed to receive CR (and Monograph) every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

Thanks to everyone who entered The Annual this year, our judges, and to all our sponsors: iStockphoto, Microsoft, Shadowplay, Cake Factory, Streamtime, Agency Rush and Fasthosts Internet