Hasta La Ideas

Sometimes the work that never made it is more interesting than the work that did – Thanks But No Thanks is a show of rejected work gathered from designers and illustrators in Europe and the US. On Sunday May 6 the work will be auctioned to raise money for Battersea Dogs’ Home

The exhibition, which is at the Beach Gallery, London E2 until May 6, was put together by final year Kingston students Alex Brown and Ben West. They contacted a hit list of designers and illustrators asking them to donate a piece of rejected work – some rejected internally by the designers themselves, either because they contained a mistake or just weren’t right for the project – some rejected by clients.

Among the work on show is a series of three posters by Julia for a play by Stefan Golaszewski, Sex With A Stranger.

Ken Garland donated this logo which he proposed for the Camden Arts Centre in London but which was rejected by the client

Wally Olins has given two posters which his agency Saffron unsuccesfully pitched for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics

And Rob Ryan provided an unfinished illustration rejected by Girl Talk magazine

While this piece by Rose Blake was rejected by the New Yorker

And Rudy Vanderlans sent one of several rejected covers for Emigre 70

Others taking part include Stefan Sagmeister, Marion Deuchars, Experimental Jetset, Milton Glaser, Fuel and Ian Wright. See all the submitted work at the ehibition website 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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

It’s the biggest issue in our history – our 216-page double May issue with all the winning work in this year’s Creative Review Annual, in association with Bigstock, plus great features on George Lois, Ways of Seeing, Flatstock, British Design at the V&A, the future of the book and much much more

The Annual is our showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months as selected by our judges. The best of the best is featured in The Annual’s Best in Book section, which include’s Johny Kelly’s fantastic Chipotle animation

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

A wonderful identity for a children’s hospital in Peru by Dutch designer Rejane Dal Bello

The Greenpeace A New Warrior website by DDB Paris

And, unlike some award shows (cough, cough) we have also honoured the Comedy Carpet by Gordon Young and Why Not Associates

The rest of the Annual showcases our judges’ picks (on which we will post more soon) according to the month in which the work launched.

Turn over the magazine, start again from the front and you can enjoy all the features in our May issue, which include an examination of the lasting importance of Ways of Seeing as the TV show and book marks its 40th anniversary

Eliza Williams interviews the indefatigable George Lois on the eve of publication of his new book, Damn Good Advice

Plus we have features on why digital technology represents both a threat to and a possible saviour of the high street and the museum

A look at the future of the book

And some intriguing examples of the book in the present, with the release of this year’s list of The Most Beautful Swiss Books

And we look at the growing importance of storytelling in advertising

In our Crit section, Rick Poynor bemoans the lack of graphic design in the V&A’s British Design show

Gordon Comstock praises the ad campaigns produced in-house by the Greater London Authority

Michael Evamy looks at the new identity scheme for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum

And Bonnie Abbott reports on the US gig poster scene at the Flatstock festival

This month also sees a reinvention of our subscriber-only Monograph booklet, with  fresh editorial approach. In this issue, Barcelona-based design studio TwoPoints.net give us a guided tour of the creative scene in their city. We will hook up with local creative companies to do similar surveys in other cities around the world in the coming months

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 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

Illustrator Richard Hogg worked with graphic designer Anna Fidalgo on the exhibition design for the current Measuring The Universe exhibition running at Royal Observatory Greenwich until September 2…

The exhibition coincides with June’s Transit of Venus event – during which Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a tiny black dot that will appear to move across the sun. This event won’t happen for another 105 years and, says the Royal Observatory, in centuries gone by these rare cosmic events were used to accurately measure the distance to the planets, giving astronomers an idea of the truly mind-boggling scale of space.

The idea then for Measuring The Universe is to showcase the history of measuring distance between objects in space and demonstrate the various methods used by astronomers in doing just this.

While Fidalgo worked on the graphics and typography side of the exhibition design, Hogg produced illustrations to be incorporated into the exhibition’s poster (above) and also created a 4 minute animation as part of the exhibition. The animation explains, thankfully in layman’s terms, how there are various ways to measure the distance between objects. Here are some stills:

“Because the concepts involved in measuring the universe are pretty tricky to comprehend, interactive designer Henry Holland who was working with the Royal Observatory on the exhibition got in touch with Dick if he could create an animation that would simplify it all,” says Fidalgo of the project. “That was the starting point for us working on the project as Dick then got me involved because we’ve worked together before.

“So we collaborated on a look and feel for the animation,” Fidalgo continues. “I chose a typeface and created a colour palette which Dick used for the animation. Then I took some graphic elements from the drawings Dick was creating when designing the animation, such as the wavy lines, and incorporated them into the exhibition identity.”

“The script for the animation really was an evenly split collaboration with astronomer Olivia Johnson and Henry at the Royal Observatory,” explains Hogg.”It was a really amazing way of working, collaborating with a scientist and trying to understand the science and draw diagrams that were technically correct,” he continues. “I was a little worried that I was doing the dumbing down role, trying to edit what Olivia was saying down to four minutes, but actually it was really inspiring working like that and trying to capture these things in a way that makes sense but is still fun.”

Because of the animation’s importance in the exhibition, the whole show is in a low lit room and all the information is presented on backlit light boxes:

Measuring The Universe runs until September 2 at the Royal Observatory, Blackheath Avenue, Greenwich, London SE10 8XJ

rmg.co.uk/royal-observatory

The full four minute animation (which Hogg created working with animators Robert Milne, Ross Phillips and Kwok Fung Lam, and sound designer George Thomson) will appear in the next week or two on the CR iPad app

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

Illustrator Isabel Greenberg’s series of concertina Fold Out-Fold Up products are designed to cover kitchen- or bookshelf shame…

“If you have an embarrassing bookcase with lots of Mills and Boon or the Twilight books or something, you fold out my book shelf cover and put it in front!” says Greenberg on her website. “The kitchen one [below] has lots of foodie feastables and you can pop it over your kitchen shelf when you have nothing but pot noodles and stale crackers.” Greenberg’s fake library includes such tomes as Toilet: Faeces in Art and Design and Granny Chic, and also reveals a penchant for studies on cake art.

Clocked on boingboing earlier today, the fetishistic card products were shown at Comica’s Comiket show in London on the weekend.

Check out more of Greenberg’s work on her website, complete with url inspired by the ‘classic’ dad joke, isabelnecessary.com.

Want to design a poster for New Order? De La Soul? Stevie Wonder? Bestival, Screenadelica and CR are offering readers the chance to design a poster for one of the headline acts at Bestival 2012 which will be sold for charity at the event.

Each year Bestival and Screenadelica stage a show of screenprinted gig posters by UK and Irish illustrators and designers at the music festival (CR subscribers will have seen some of these in our December Monograph).

For this year’s festival, Screenadelica and Bestival are staging an open competition to create a poster for one of the headline acts: Stevie Wonder, New Order, The xx, Sigor Rós, Bat for Lashes, Justice, Orbital, Gallows, De La Soul, The Horrors, Roots Manuva and one more headliner still to be announced.

The winning design, as chosen by a panel of Bestival head honcho Rob da Bank, Creative Review editor Patrick Burgoyne, Bestival programme editor Sean Bidder and the good folk from Screenadelica, will be printed and sold at the festival with 100% of profits going to the Bestival Foundation.

All details are here. Deadline: June 1.

Here are some of last year’s posters by way of inspiration:

Brian Wilson poster by Lesley Barnes

British Sea Power by Telegramme

Eagles of Death Metal by Gav Beattie