Hasta La Ideas

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival gets underway next Thursday in Utah, and festivalgoers have Todd Oldham to thank for taking this year’s merchandise in a fresh new direction. The designer not only developed a line of ‘Todd Oldham for the Sundance Film Festival’ gear, including bags and wallets made from recycled festival banners, but also acted as curator for Sundance Film Festival Editions. For the new initiative, he invited Sundance alums such as Morgan Spurlock, Amy Sedaris, and Parker Posey to design a product–a button, a t-shirt, a tote. “It wasn’t hard to get them on board,” said Oldham in an interview with the Sundance Institute. “I did curate, but the art was really in asking the right person for the right task. And they are so talented–Mike White is a great graphic designer as well as filmmaker, Stacey Peralta is an artist, so I knew I had good, wildly creative people.” John Waters whipped up a subversive t-shirt (pictured).

In addition to whimsical apparel and recycled accessories, Oldham also brought his editorial expertise to the festival with a new book, Sundance Film Festival A to Z. He invited 26 illustrious illustrators–including Caitlin Heimerl, Chris Silas Neal, Michele Romero, and Yuko Shimizu–to have their way with one letter, with each letter representing festival films and artists (yup, “R” is for Redford). “We got very sophisticated, learned efforts. Some don’t tell the story at first glance. It’s super fun to try and decipher what the artist saw,” noted Oldham. “Illustrators have vivid imaginations and are usually forced into linear systems with tasked briefs. But we just let people do whatever they wanted and they were delighted to be unedited!” And if you detect a hint of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in the cover art, that’s because it’s the work of Wayne White.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As part of the celebrations for London Underground’s 150th anniversary, the Royal Mail is to release stamps featuring famous artwork created for the network

One set of six stamps, designed by Hat-Trick, forms a timeline of the development of the London Underground from the early Metropolitan Line service with its steam driven trains to the most modern Jubilee Line Station, Canary Wharf. Hat-Trick’s Gareth Howat says that “Our approach was to deliberately use a mix of photography, graphic art and illustration as it’s such a rich visual subject. The only one that was commissioned was the shot of Canary Wharf, which was shot by Paul Grundy, the rest are originals, some of which we had to enhance slightly.”

A graphic device at the foot of each stamp, rendered in the colours of various LU lines and style to recall the LU map, links the stamps together and forms the timeline.

Lithograph one of the first underground passenger trains depicted near Paddington station (Praed Street), 1863

Construction work in progress at British Museum Underground station, Central London Railway. Unknown photographer, January 1898

Detal of illustration used on poster publicity encouraging underground travel.

Detail of poster illustration by Tom Eckersley showing Boston Manor station, built in 1934

AN Wolstenholme drawing of 1938 rolling stock which appears on the cover of an Ian Allan ABC spotter’s book

Canary Wharf London Underground Station, Jubilee Line Extension designed by Foster and Partners. Photographer Paul Grundy

NB Studio meanwhile was commissioned to produce a sheet of stamps, a presentation pack and a coin pack, featuring two specially minted £2 coins for the anniversary.

The coins were designed by Barber Osgerby

and Edwina Ellis

The set of four stamps by NB each features three classic London Underground advertising posters.

“There’s a wealth of beautiful posters to choose from [in the TFL archive] so it was difficult to choose just four in total,” says NB’s Nick Finney. “So, we played with multiple posters in a row across a longer format horizontal stamp. We wanted to evoke posters being displayed in the tunnel of the underground station (the modern train speeding past) and the windows of a carriage.”

Posters featured (l to r): Golders Green, by unknown artist, 1908; By Underground to Fresh Air, by Maxwell Ashby Armfield, 1915; Summer Sales Quickly Reached, by Mary Koop, 1925

“Once we had the concept down it was a case of researching specific styles, eras and artists in order to ensure we were representing the best set of 16 posters over 4 stamps we could,” Finney continues.

Posters featured (l to r): For the Zoo Book to Regent’s Park, by Charles Paine, 1921; Power, by Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1930; The Seen, by James Fitton, 1948

“We explored different ways to select our final posters and give a fair representation of the posters’ history. We started by looking at themes; distinguishing each set of four posters by colour, by topic. Chronologically? While these were good starting points, in the end it became a decision based on what worked best visually as a set, reduced down from over a metre in height down to around 20mm. We had to be careful to cross-check our sources and gain the necessary permissions. That’s where the team at TFL came in handy; providing the expertise on choices, sources and facts,” Finney says.

Posters featured (l to r): A Train Every 90 Seconds, by Abram Games, 1937; Thanks to the Underground, by Zero, 1935; Cut Travelling Time; Victoria line, by Tom Eckersley, 1969

Posters featured (l to r): London Transport Collection, by Tom Eckersley, 1975; Zoo, by Abram Games, 1976; Tate Gallery by Tube, by David Booth and Malcolm Fowler and Nancy Fowler and agency Fine White Line, 1986

CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

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. Try a free sample issue here

Thanks to a post on boingboing earlier today, I’m now more familiar with the layered ink and white-out world of artist and animator, Jake Fried. And also in need of a lie down…

The Boston-based artist has just updated his Vimeo page with a sixth film, The Deep End, which also adds “coffee” into his list of drawing media. Fried refers to his animated work, which builds layers of ink and white correction fluid on top of one another, as “moving paintings”.

According to his biography at inkwood.net, Fried has exhibited work in Marseille, New York and Chicago, most recently showing as part of Starting Eyes #3 at the Third Party Gallery in Cincinnati. He has also worked as an educator and community liaison for The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston since 2007.

Here are animations Sick Leave (2012) and Nightfall (2011), another three are on his Vimeo page.

CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

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. Try a free sample issue here

Brand new covers for five of George Orwell’s works feature in a new series published today by Penguin and designed by David Pearson. The set includes a remarkable take on Orwell’s most well known novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four…

Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, and Politics and the English Language are also republished today in new ‘Great Orwell’ editions.

Pearson’s adept use of type – as demonstrated in his work on Penguin’s Great Ideas series of short, influential texts – is once again at the fore of each of the designs. And that includes what is perhaps one of Penguin’s most radical covers of recent years, for Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the title and author’s name are almost completely obscured by black foiling.

This brilliant, censorial approach to Orwell’s dystopian classic – referencing the rewriting of history carried out by the novel’s Ministry of Truth – wasn’t easy to achieve.

“It’s obviously the risk-taker of the series,” says Pearson, “and I can be very grateful to Jim Stoddart, Penguin Press’ art director, for safeguarding it’s progress in-house. It takes a fair bit of confidence to push something like this through and I can only assume that Jim had to deal with the odd wobble.”

Pearson says that the design went through numerous iterations “to establish just the right amount of print obliteration. Eventually we settled on printing and debossing, as per the Great Ideas series [Why I Write shown, above], with the difference being that the title and author name were then blocked out using matt black foil. This had the effect of partially flattening the debossed letters, leaving just enough of a dent for the title to be determined – though I can’t vouch for it’s success on Amazon.”

For the other books in the series, Pearson and his collaborators explored a range of different typefaces and design approaches. The deep foreboding red of the Animal Farm cover evokes the political charge of Orwell’s allegorical novel of 1945 – the type treatment managing to look jauntily cinematic and cartoon-like, and wholly unnerving at the same time.

For the cover of Orwell’s first book (1933), Down and Out in Paris and London, Pearson commissioned printmaker Paul Catherall to create a Vorticist interpretation of the two cities that the author submerged himself in. The final design incorporates Catherall’s screenprint into a Germano Facetti-era cover grid.

The manifesto-like appearance of Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, gave Pearson the opportunity to use an as-yet unreleased typeface front and centre in the design. “I’m extremely lucky in that I get to road test Commercial Type’s latest creations ahead of their release,” he says. “Caslon Great Primer Rounded is one of several forthcoming designs produced in collaboration with the St Bride Print Library and it proved enough to give us ‘Blast‘ off.” (The type is based on the work of Caslon & Catherwood, creators of the ornamental typeface, Italian, in 1821.)

Finally, for Orwell’s account of his experiences in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, Pearson used a repeating line-drawn image of a marching soldier to create an ominous design, complete with shadowed typography.

The Great Orwell series is out today, penguin.co.uk. More of Pearson’s work is at typeasimage.com.

CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

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. Try a free sample issue here

If you haven’t yet visited the Hi-ReS! interactive kitchen wall from the comfort of your own desk, then the studio’s special Christmas instalment also offers the perfect chance to check out the artists who have participated in the project to date…

Since last year, the London-based studio has been inviting creatives into the office to create something special on the chalkboard walls of its kitchen.

In October 2011 Estonian illustrator, Triinu Lille (above and below), drew a forest for a piece entitled Listen, while the following month saw artist Céli Lee create An Unconscious Walk – more of an intricate three-dimensional experience. This October, illustrator and filmmaker Johannes Helgelin unleashed his drawing, A Bottle of Worms, on the unsuspecting blackboard.

The creation of each piece is filmed and shown online as the launch event. Now, all the projects have been uploaded and the gestation of each one can be viewed in a kind of scrollable timelapse film. Visitors can whizz the action back and forth using the mouse – or the up and down arrow keys – and, stopping at any point in the artwork’s creation, the image will settle into a sharper picture (viewers can also move the size the film window accordingly).

For Christmas 2012, chalk was handed out amongst the studio’s own illustrative talent – and the results can be seen in the Merry Festivus compilation at kitchen.hi-res.net.

CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

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. Try a free sample issue here