A replica of the newsstand magazine that features briefly in John Carpenter’s 1988 film, They Live, is now available from two Swiss publishers. And readers don’t need special sunglasses to see ‘the truth’ contained within…
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Carpenter’s classic sci-fi film, everyedition and fold in Switzerland are publishing a replica edition of the magazine that the film’s protagonist Nada picks up while first realising he can – while wearing the sunglasses – ‘see’ through the gloss of consumer society and even the ‘aliens’ who control it.
The black-and-white view through the glasses is not a pretty one. Here’s the sequence where Nada looks at some innocuous-looking hoardings, flicks through said magazine and encounters a few of the extra-terrestrials. (Warning – contains various attempts to convey ‘astonishment’):
The newsstand as featured in They Live, viewed through the special sunglasses
Spread from This is Your God
They Live follows Nada as he uncovers how the ‘aliens’ have been controlling human society through mass media. Imagery from the Carpenter-penned story also famously inspired the artist Shepard Fairey to develop the “Obey” concept into an ongoing theme in his work.
Designed by Piero Glina, This is Your God is named after the slogan which appears on the dollar bills (which feature in the newsstand scene) when viewed with the sunglasses. According to the publishers, the replica edition makes use of the film version’s “iconic typography with all its flaws and special characteristics”.
*UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments below, Spanish magazine Belio had a similar idea in 2011 and also published a version of the They Live publication, which can be seen here on their site and is available as a PDF here.
Published alongside the everyedition/fold edition of the magazine, a second volume features images of the places where the billboard and signage slogans originate in the film.
This is Your God is available from everyedition and fold (from 27 CHF).
A kaleidoscope of cats, the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage and an app invented by three tax drivers are among the winners at this year’s Lovie Awards, celebrating the best in European digital creativity
Matthew Serge Guy’s Catleidoscope! which, you guessed it, generates kaleidoscopic images of cats (see aove), took Gold in the Weird/Experimental category at the Lovie Awards, the European counterpart to The Webby Awards.
Other big winners this year include The Big Internet Museum (Gold in Education & Discovery) by TBWA, an ever-expanding archive of the Internet’s most influential websites
Nike for FullFest Beats by Dr. Dre (Experiential Advertising – Gold) which transformed a gig into a game. The harder a 4,000 crowd at Battersea Power Station danced, the more points were earned, powering the experience with live, real-time data aggregated from each person’s Nike+ FuelBand
The BBC’s Digital Glastonbury which featured six live video streams delivering over 250 hours of performance from six stages, plus on-demand content from 120 artists, won Gold in Music & Entertainment Video
In the media section, Nowness took Gold in Lifestyle
In Utilities & Services, Gold went to Hailo, the taxi finding app devised by three London cabbies and has now gone global (web page for New York version shown below)
The Tiny Times , Karla Courtney’s blog, ostensibly written by her son Marshall, took Gold in the Personal Website category
Gold in Viral Advertising went to All Eyes on the S4 by Heimat Werbeagentur. People in Zurich were challenged to stare at a sceen for as long as they could in order to win a Samsung Galaxy S4 which has a function which enables it to sense when someone is looking at it and pause video when they look away. This video explains all
Vice Media’s Istanbul Rising report on the Gezi Park protests won Gold in Documentary Video
The Monster , a charity Christmas campaign for ING Direct and UNICEF by Ogilvyone Worldwide won Gold in Financial Services. The interactive short film tells the story of a monster that went around the world stopping children from going to school. Users are asked to send a text at certain points of the story the help the child.
And SoundCloud took Gold in Best Media Streaming Service
This is just a selection of the award winners this year. The full list is at the Lovie Awards site here
Weekly music magazine NME has been given a makeover by art director Mark Neil. We asked Neil about the reasons for the redesign – and its strong resemblance to iconic style mag The Face.
When we were sent a cover shot of the new-look NME this week (on sale today), it made us – and a lot of you – think immediately of The Face. The white out of red logo, plus signs, underlines and type treatment look a lot like Phil Bicker-era covers of the late style and culture mag.
But whatever your thoughts on its resemblance to the Face, the new NME looks sleeker, brighter, sharper and a lot more exciting than the old. Neil has introduced a new size, structure and colour palette – and says he was influenced by Barney Bubbles and Bauhaus as much as Bicker.
When did you start work on the re-design and what was the brief?
I started discussing it with editor Mike Williams in June – two or three months after I joined NME. From our discussions, we formed a brief that accurately pinpointed what the NME is: timely, informative, credible, inclusive, essential. We felt it had lost its attitude a little over the years, and we wanted to make it an iconic brand again and one that people are proud to be seen with. It was more than just changing a few fonts – we needed to change our design and editorial approach.
What particular features did you set out to address with the re-design?
NME had become a little confused in its visual language. It was still using a very text heavy, newspaper-like design and readers in focus groups said it was bland. My mission was to inject a bit of energy into it and connect the visual language with the editorial – something magazines like Bloomberg do fantastically well.
What major changes have you introduced?
One major aspect we changed was the structure. NME has sections like any other but it’s these sections that really give it its value for the reader: there’s The Week (everything that matters in music), Radar (new bands – the heart of NME); Reviews (the definitive verdict) and NME guide (what’s on, going out and staying in). It made sense to group these together at the front of the book and end with a meatier features section, stuff you can archive and read forever. This is bookended with a new From the Vaults feature, one that we pick out from the past and try to bring into context today.
We’ve also downsized – the magazine has been reduced to 215mm wide by 280mm high. This was the first major design decision: before, NME had an uncomfortable width and was awkward to carry around. It was still grasping on to its tabloid days. But times have changed and we need to move with it. It now feels more like a weekly and will sit better on a newsstand. It works well on iPad format, too, which is no bad thing.
What about the new colour palette and typefaces?
The colour scheme before was really dull so we’ve brightened things up using CMYK alongside greens and purples, celebrating the fact that we’re still in print. We’ve kept the red for NME but there are regular flashes of magenta, the guide section uses shades of green and the reviews a lot of cyan and yellow. The reviews section in each issue will open with an illustration by Jimmy Turrel (see this month’s, below).
The new display font is Lucas Sharp’s Sharp Sans, sans serif is Calbre by Klim’s Kris Sowersby and serif is Sowersby’s TeimposText. The typefaces are all modern font designs that celebrate old classic neo-grotesque/geometric aesthetics. Sharp Sans was perfect for the main display font as it has a fun retro character but used in bold, it adds a maturity that can be applied well to features.
What were your main sources of inspiration?
You have to look back to go forward – working for a historic brand such as the NME, my first stop was the archive cupboard. My favourite time in NME’s history is the Barney Bubbles era – I’m a big fan of his original stencil treatment to the masthead and his illustrative attitude towards the paper during a time when production was so limited.
I then started to look at old magazines that represented that timeless, iconic, being part of a club look, along with other graphic design that connects in the same way – classic album covers and posters for example. I’m a massive follower of Bob Newman’s blog and one of my favourite inclusions was covers of NY Rocker from the late seventies/early eighties. This was the kind of thing I needed to inject into this project – a cut and paste illustrative fanzine kind of feel that can be produced effectively in a modern, weekly publication.
Moving on through time, style magazines such as ID, Dazed & Confused and The Face maintained an identity that became a statement for its readers. The period of The Face I remember most is the late nineties/early 2000s, when my passion for editorial design started.
Some people have said already that the new NME looks like The Face because of the nature of the mast. It is a homage but I must add that it’s a dollop of homage with a twist of coincidence too. The classic, iconic identity that is created with block white type on a red box is one that has existed for years. The Face mast is no more successful than the likes of Life, Picture Post, Ebony and many more. It’s a statement, it’s a stamp and it works well – it will always work well. And it’s going to work for NME.
Another obvious inspiration is the graphic design of the Bauhaus movement, with its solid primary colours and geometric shapes and angles. 45 degree angles are used throughout, from the page folios to the franchises.
The underlines and highlighting stem from the cut and paste, punky/DIY look I was trying to achieve and from what Mike told me about NME being the definitive guide. I was trying to think of ways to make things look definitive, authoritative and immediate. The stencil feel of the Rader, Reviews and Guide headers is supposed to add to this graffiti-d notebook feel, as is the sticker on the font – ***About $%#£ time***. It’s little bits of character like this that help re-inforce the older NME attitude.
We’re also using a 15 column grid with 12 horizontal modules, which again adds to the cut and paste feel while adhering to some rules and structure. This approach allows us to have fun with the content, because fun is important here. My favourite design is design that makes people smile.
Were you concerned people would liken it to The Face? There are a lot of similarities?
I think the cover shot makes it appear more like The Face than usual – we won’t always use an image of a subject shot against a neutral background. The Face was a huge influence but it’s in no way a direct copy. We’re just trying to be iconic like so many other magazine brands before us – it makes me laugh that no-one has mentioned Life magazine, [also a key influence].
How will the changes be applied online?
It will be mostly subtle changes at first and a lot less radical than the magazine, as the website is more about being clear and immediate. It’s all about the news on NME online so we’ll be experimenting less with the site but some changes are going live today.
Charlotte Raven’s feminist magazine Feminist Times, originally planned as a re-launch of 1970s title Spare Rib, launched online last week. We asked art director Lucy Newman about designing for the controversial anti-lifestyle title.
In a ‘manifesto’ published on the newly launched Feminist Times website, editor Charlotte Raven asks: “Where have all the interesting women gone? And what happened to all the interesting magazines? There are over forty women’s titles on our local newsagents shelves but they all look depressingly, uniformly bland.”
Raven describes Feminist Times as “a place where people can detox from mainstream media and meet interesting like and unlike minds”. She originally planned to re-launch the 1970s feminist magazine Spare Rib but Marsha Rowe, who co-founded the publication with Rosie Boycott, applied to trademark the name in June, stopping her from doing so. The Feminist Times name was announced in July after an online poll and the site and soon-to-be-launched magazine will be ad and celebrity-free and funded by supporters.
The magazine and website are designed by art director Lucy Newman, who attended school with Raven, and designer Neni Almeida. “Charlotte texted about a year ago to say she had a new project, “an old fashioned feminist mag”, and I was on her list to consult about it. We met in a coffee shop in Whitechapel and then visited The Women’s Library where we looked at Nova and Spare Rib,” she explains.
While primarily aimed at women, Newman says the site aims to appeal to “non-conformists of all ages, genders and backgrounds” and bring feminism to a wider audience. It’s a sparse design: strong deep colours are coupled with greys and black, sans type and a grid layout. Embellishment is kept to a minimum, presumably to let the controversial editorial do the talking.
“The overall concepts that needed to be embodied in the design and imagery were: daring, radical empathy, warmth, inclusive (not aspirational), home made (around the kitchen table), iconoclastic, irreverent fun, punk, political. A movement that you can join and join in. It meant designing a look and feel which is anti-lifestyle and in someway anti-taste, if that is the right word, which is an interesting challenge in itself,” explains Newman.
The colour scheme is inspired by a Victorian wall paint colour chart which included Scheele’s green, which was poisonous and made of copper arsenic. Sans type was chosen for its legibility online, although serif may be used for the print edition, and Newman says there was “a conscious decision to steer away from curved shapes, soft wafting, lyrical marks and purples, which are considered feminine.”
Imagery on the site ranges from 3D headlines to collages and photographs depending on the content, and Newman admits that finding the right illustrations to balance controversial editorial can be tricky. “Hard hitting ‘edgy’ imagery is not the first choice at all, as the magazine is about raising consciousness and being inclusive. Solutions can be found with illustration and typography if need be, [and] the editorial team have lots of visual ideas too,” she says.
While not a Spare Rib reader, Newman says the magazine was an influence when designing Feminist Times. “The issues from the 1970s are hugely inspiring with their use of off set litho technology, duotone images, collages and drawings. We took from it some colours, bright pink on the aging paper cream background,” she adds.
The Feminist Times logo was inspired by weekend newspaper supplements from the 1990s, which Newman studied in Central Saint Martins’ library. “It comes in four colours and is set across three lines. It’s like a mark or a stamp, so relates back to older trademarks and banners. I’m fond of arial for its plainness, but Neni [designer] suggested Ubuntu and it seemed a more interesting choice,” she adds.
The Feminist Times name is a dry alternative to Spare Rib, but Newman’s logo gives the name a more playful, youthful feel. Her design for the site is not feminine or polished, which reflects the brief and brand values she was given.
But Newman’s comments raise an interesting question: surely a magazine can be beautiful without being seen as ‘girly’? Of course, Feminist Times wants to communicate a grassroots, non-conformist, old-fashioned punk aesthetic, so the decision to keep the website as stripped back as possible makes sense. But there’s no reason why a site that opposes the values and ideals put forward in traditional women’s consumer mags has to abandon all of the design features employed by those brands, or extra details that could make a richer and more enjoyable reading experience.
It will be interesting to see how these values are communicated in the bi-monthly magazine, and just how the print edition will compare to Spare Rib. And as last week’s reaction to Elle’s decision to “re-brand” feminism with the help of top ad agencies proved, it seems we are just as divided on what feminism should look like today as we are on what the word actually means.
In Creative Review’s October issue Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja of Massive Attack discusses the artwork he created for the band, from early flyers to data-driven stage shows. Oh, and he designed the cover for us too…
The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy 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.
Our interview ties in with new Vinyl Factory book 3D and the Art of Massive Attack, a retrospective of Del Naja’s artistic output from the Wild Bunch days to this year’s Adam Curtis collaboration. The piece features sketches, paste-up artwork and previously unseen material from the Massive Attack archives over nine pages.
Readers can win a copy of the limited edition version of the book (worth £350) in our Gallery competition this month
Robert also designed our cover which has been printed on Curious Matter Andina Grey board from Arjowiggins Creative Paper. We’ve been stroking our house copies all day….
Here’s a running sheet with the back cover also
The inside back features a charge sheet from 3D’s grafitti days, amended by the artist himself
Plus, we you can bring the pages of this month;s CR to life with a series of Blippable Gifs from JWT London’s recent Loop show. Just download the Blippar app onto your smartphone, open it up and hold it over the page to animate the image of your choice
Rachael Steven reports on Football Type, Rick Banks’ new book on the typography of football
Rachael (she’s had a busy month) also profiles illustrator-turned-artist Jonathan Zawada
And, to tie in with the Festival of Marketing Punch event, we look at the impact of Big Data on creativity – can algorithms really determine whether or not an ad campaign will be any good?
While Mark Sinclair has written an in-depth case study on the work that Browns has done for international finance company, Invesco – proof that major work for global organisations does not have to be the preserve of the big international branding firms
In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Power to the People, the Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter Culture 1964-1974
While Hamish Muir enjoys a survey of the highly influential Swiss typographic journal Typografische Monatsblätter
For regular columnist Mr DA Benneworth-Gray BA MA PgC, the onerous admin tasks of the freelance designer are made more palatable when they involve great stationery while Paul Belford lauds the great art direction in a classic 80s ad for Woolmark
Plus Gordon Comstock reviews a new documentary film by Robert Opie of the Museum of Brands
And, for subscribers only, our Monograph supplement features a selection of work from the recent Glory Glory project in which designers created posters based on the football chant of their choice
The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, get Monograph and make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
Covers of the first two issues of the redesigned RIBA Journal
Matt Willey’s redesign of the RIBA Journal is a complete overhaul of the 120 year-old architecture title; from cover to typefaces via a new logo and format. The designer and editor Hugh Pearman talk us through the project…
Established in 1893 by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the RIBA Journal has the largest circulation of any architectural magazine in the UK and prints around 30,000 copies each month.
Cover tests looking at various colour combinations, and how the new design will work over a series (option to run portrait images shown, bottom right)
For its redesign the journal’s editorial team, led by RIBA Enterprises head of media Jonathan Stock, wanted to offer its designer a clean slate. “We did a complete rethink of the magazine’s content and structure,” says Pearman, “so that it worked from the inside out: content strategy first and only then the design”.
Willey appealed to the RIBA team because of his ideas and attention to detail, Pearman says, and the fact that he had seen through the launch of his own magazine, in the shape of Port.
“It was also in his favour that although an enthusiast for design and architecture, he had not previously designed an architecture title,” says Pearman. “We were clear that we did not wish the new RIBA Journal to resemble any other title in our sector.”
Extensive reader research revealed that print was still valued very highly by RIBA members and the “feel” of the journal was something that needed to be addressed. “Everything changed with this relaunch,” says Pearman, “including repro house, paper sourcing, and printer.”
Even the format has changed, slighty – the journal remains the same height but is a little wider, allowing for better use of the imagery across inside pages. The job also ran to redesigning the PIP supplement and to designing a letterhead, business cards and postcards, the latter in place of comp slips (below) .
“We improved the printing and changed the stock to a very good uncoated stock, the same as Port’s,” says Willey. “Making the format wider was to do with various things – not least to do with getting space and breathing-room in to the spreads, but it also makes the magazine fold open nicely, it lies flat.”
There is also a fairly radical approach to the design of the cover, which adopts a graphic approach instead of, what Pearman considers to be an industry-norm, the full bleed image of a building.
According to Willey, the RIBA Journal covers from the mid-1960s and early 1970s were “graphically more interesting and successful when restricted by the printing limitations.”
RIBA July 1970, on left, and July 1965 covers
For the contemporary redesign, he says he “wanted to set up a cover template that didn’t depend entirely on an ‘astonishing’ ‘cover-worthy’ architectural image, which is a difficult thing to achieve month in month out. Actually I think it’s part of the problem with many architecture magazine covers; an over-dependency on a stand-alone cover image.”
“I wanted this to work in a more graphic way,” he continues. “The images still need to be good, and better than before, but the success of the cover depends on other things as well now – the crop, the use of colour – and that’s a huge help.”
“The cover ‘is’ the logo for the magazine,” he adds. “The masthead, and a box and keyline that are the exact same dimensions as the magazine, so the business card for example is like a mini-magazine.”
Cleverly, the ‘two halves’ approach will enable the journal to also use full bleed imagery beneath the logo if a portrait image is used (retaining a colour tint), and allows a landscape format picture to be used – a staple of architectural photography, Pearman adds.
The journal also boasts a new bespoke font, RIBAJ Condensed, created in collaboration with Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK.
“It’s a condensed Grot typeface to compliment Henrik’s Grot 10 that I’m using in the magazine,” says Willey.
“Grot 10 is not dissimilar to a typeface that was being used in the RIBA Journal in the 1970s, and whilst it was interesting looking through the archive of journals, I wasn’t interested in this design ‘reflecting’ old issues too much – this needed to feel distinct and modern, but not ‘of the moment’. I wanted it to feel like it’s something that has been around a long time; authoritative and confident.”
RIBAJ Condensed is used for small text as well as a headline tyepface, while other typefaces used include FM for body text and standfirsts; and PIP has a different family of typefaces, Typewriter and Outsiders, each of which is designed by Kubel.
Cover and spread of the PIP supplement
“One of the joys of working with Henrik was being able to tweak things like the Grot 10 typeface,” says Willey. “The type is often locking-up tightly to a rule and so he did a version of Grot 10 for me where the ascenders and descenders are the same – so you get nice clean lines when the type sits close to a rule.”
The new issue also features a series of new icons for the ‘core curriculum areas’ in the Intelligence section of the magazine drawn by La Tigre (above), byline portraits by Holly Exley (editor Hugh Pearman, below) and photography by Carol Sachs, whose work has appeared in Port and YCN.
For the first two issues of the Journal, September and October 2013, Willey has worked alongside RIBA Journal art director, Patrick Myles.
“This was a hugely exciting project for me,” says Willey, “because it wasn’t simply dressing up what had already existed and choosing a few new typefaces, there was an opportunity to address everything – how it behaved editorially and how the content was structured, word counts and ‘breathing room’ on the pages.”
“This is less of a redesign,” adds Pearman, “more of a completely new magazine.”
The October issue of the RIBA Journal is out soon. More details at ribajournal.com and more of Willey’s work can be seen at mattwilley.co.uk.
A strong line-up is taking shape for The Modern Magazine conference, which will take place in London on October 16…
The event marks the publication of Jeremy Leslie’s book of the same name and promises to be “a celebration of the best of current editorial creativity”.
The conference will take place at Central Saint Martins’ state of the art Platform Theatre and will feature the following speakers (with others to be confirmed):
Tyler Brûlé – Editor-in-chief and Chairman, Monocle (London) Joerg Koch – Editor and Creative director, 032c (Berlin) Omar Sosa – Co-founder and Art director, Apartamento (Barcelona) Richard Turley – Creative director, Bloomberg Businessweek, (New York) Patrick Waterhouse – Editor-in-chief, Colors (Treviso)
According to a post on Leslie’s magCulture site, “there will also be panel discussions including one looking at women’s magazines and a series of presentations about smaller, independent titles.”
There are 200 tickets available, with a reduced rate for students: Day ticket – £140; Student ticket – £90. Additional speakers will be announced on magCulture.
More details on Leslie’s forthcoming book, The Modern Magazine (£28), at laurencking.com.
The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy 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.
It’s your final (final!) chance to enter the Creative Review Photography Annual, our showcase of the year’s finest images in commercial imagemaking
Each year CR publishes a special double issue showcasing our judges’ pick of entries to our Photography Annual in the following categories:
Advertising Work commissioned by advertising agencies including posters and press ads. In addition to the image/s you would like to submit for judging purposes, it would also be helpful to submit one image showing the images in context to give the judges a greater depth of understanding of the work.
Conceptual Photography shot specifically for and/or art-directed by photolibraries.
Design Work commissioned by design consultancies for packaging, annual reports, record sleeves, books and any other use. In addition to the image/s you would like to submit for judging purposes, it would also be helpful to submit one image showing the images in context to give the judges a greater depth of understanding of the work.
Editorial Commissioned photography for magazines and newspapers including fashion. In addition to the image/s you would like to submit for judging purposes, it would also be helpful to submit one image showing the images in context to give the judges a greater depth of understanding to the work.
Moving Image Moving image pieces by photographers (no film directors please) that were either shot as part of a wider project involving both still and moving image, or were standalone pieces.
Personal or Non-published Self-initiated or experimental work which has not been commissioned or published.
Entries deemed to be of outstanding quality in the opinion of our judges will be further honoured as ‘Best In Book’*. All work will be considered for this accolade and there is no additional entry fee. The selected work will be published in our December 2013 issue.
A blissful August weekend brought an attentively curated line-up of sights and sounds, to a glorious northern location, for the arty, musical haven of Beacons festival. With an atmosphere bursting with positive vibes and creative passion, it soon became clear that Beacons was the type of place where you are just as likely to have a chat with a stranger about the who’s who of 2013 need-to-know bands as you are about the what’s what of the latest and greatest design studios.
With the rise of the independent festival scene, and boutique festivals evolving and diversifying to incorporate an increasingly varied bill of creative acts, more festivals are also beginning to place emphasis on a sharper arts programme running alongside the music. Just three years in, with a washout first attempt after severe flooding, Beacons is already starting to establish itself as a frontrunner on the small festival circuit, with an impressive, eclectic bill of art and music, curated with several fingers to the pulse of local, national and international talent.
The compact site on Heslaker Farm, near Skipton in the beautiful rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales, attracted local creative folk and hipster city types alike. And for four predominantly sunny days, Beacons offered a dreamy, arty alternative festival experience to the mainstream branded big guns on offer the same weekend.
With an arts programme that combined artists and organisations from Yorkshire and beyond, The Space Between was home to a variety of projects and creatives, with films, performance, exhibition space, workshops, demos, talks, and design focused stands, along with other attractions and installations around the festival site.
A enticing selection of handmade products from Yorkshire based artists – including screenprinted posters and cards, bespoke t-shirts and illustrated badges – were on offer at The Pop Up Box (below), a retail project developed by Leeds based creative agency Temp Studio. The project stems from an earlier venture, Retail Ready People, a pop-up creative retail space in Leeds city centre, offering volunteers a chance to ‘redesign their high street’, with a training programme helping develop skills in marketing, retail design and visual merchandising.
The project, a partnership with charities vInspired, Retail Trust and The Empty Shops Network, mixed work from young designers and artists based in Yorkshire with more established local designers, acting both as a shop and social space, with a café and performances from local bands.
The Pop Up Box built on this idea, with a giant handmade wooden box housing projects from young local designers, providing access for emerging brands to sell in a physical space, rather than just online. Beacons was the first stop for the box, and all the profits – after designers have their cut on a sale or return basis – will go into the next space.
As we see a growth in similar projects in Leeds and other cities, despite the need to engage creatives and communities outside of a city’s cultural quarters and in more rural regions, supporting independent retailers and actively encouraging regeneration through creative partnerships in inner city areas still remains integral to projects such as these.
‘We’re still fighting against too much empty space, sky-high rents and the dominance of the usual big retail players,’ says Isla Brown, director of Temp Studio. ‘We just want to help both young people and young designers not to have to knock doors down to get their products noticed and into customers hands.’ Through this portable project, work can be trialled with new audiences and reach a wider market, whilst hopefully sparking some discussion over the temporal nature of many creative spaces.
New for this year, Dawson’s Arthash House, was a space for festival goers to kick back and enjoy independent films, digital art and animation, along with work from local designers and crafts people such as Tony Wright (above), from Oldfield Press, a letterpress workhop based at Altered Egos gallery in Haworth. The stand offered a chance to press your own Beacons poster from a set of woodcut blocks, including a pointing finger dating back more than one hundred years, alongside letterpress prints from local artists.
Wright, (incidentally also Terrorvision’s frontman), had turned his hand from painting to printing, aiming to create work that was still individual and handmade, but ‘easier to let go of’, creating posters and other commissions from greetings cards to labels for chilli sauce. He has also experimented with less conventional letterpress techniques, including creating prints by etching designs onto vinyl records and running them through a mangle.
Having also been involved in a pop-up creative space in Skipton – Derdlab Press, a traditional Victorian printshop and exhibition – the work stands testament to a growing popularity in ‘hands-on art’, as Wright calls it, as despite a demand for cheap, fast, mass-produced print, networks of craft-led design is finding support from local communities, councils and charities.
From woodcut printing to wood carved portaiture with Kyle Bean (below) in the Things to Make and Do Tent, with a drop-in workshop using reclaimed wood to create portraits of icons linking to the festival theme, ‘Visions of the Future’. Bean’s imaginative work as an artist and designer, with clients including Selfridges and the Design Museum, often reappropriates everyday materials and rethinks handcrafted techniques. The portraits were originally a commission for Wallpaper*, when Bean was approached by the magazine and asked to illustrate the contributors for the Handmade issue.
To create the portraits, a black and white contrast image of the face is printed onto carbon paper and traced onto reclaimed wood, and highlights are then carved out with varying sizes of chisels and knives. Carving into the dark weathered surface to reveal light fresh wood underneath creates a stencilled, contrast effect from a distance, with lots of interesting twists and scratches close up. Inviting festival goers to ‘take a tactile approach to making the portraits’, Bean’s alternative illustration workshop gave participants a taster of his inventive handcrafted techniques.
A collective of zine makers from Yorkshire, Loosely Bound, brought zine making workshops to Beacons, sharing techniques on how to create various styles of the self-published books/pamphlets, and recording memories of the festival. The collective are supported by Fabric, a charitable organisation for artistic development in Bradford and the surrounding areas, where the group originally met at an artist networking dinner event. Coming together to share, swap and learn from each other, the group both create new collaborative zines and organise events and workshops to engage a wider audience of people in zine making.
Their name highlights the diversity of zines that members produce, from perzines (personal zines), to photography led, graphic art inspired, written or drawn, with both lo-fi and handmade methods and digital online zines, and covering a huge range of subjects. Take a look at the video below of the workshop in action …
Other attractions and creative activities included DIY t-shirt screen-printing in the tearoom, a series of films including shorts from Aesthetica magazine’s short film festival, and projection bombing across the site with animation and videos from local, national and international artists. Featured in several locations, 12 Months of Neon Love by Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater, a sequence of lyrical statements from well-known songs recreated in red neon signage, accented the festival with a nod towards amalgamating the artistic and musical elements.
The support for small arts organisations and emerging businesses, from festivals such as Beacons, is acknowledged by those involved as a significant opportunity to engage people in projects that they may not otherwise have contact with, and build sustainable networks, whilst providing exposure for creative projects in environments that test the boundaries of products and practices beyond online shops and traditional workshops and studios.
Although the arts field may be in its infancy aesthetically, and could perhaps do with a rethink in terms of location – currently situated away from the main arena, to one end of the campsite – Beacons is off to an impressive start when it comes to programming a more progressive and design-focused bill of creative projects and arts attractions, with unfamiliar forms of visual communication, process-led work and digital arts, rather than simply falling back on more traditional festival crafts.
The interest in the arts side of the festival was strong, and with the incredibly friendly vibe, chatting with various festival goers, amongst the indie-electro buzz band fans, underground music lovers and beatheads, there was a substantial rep from arty types, designers, directors and other creative professionals. In the temporary environment of a festival such as Beacons, those attending are often looking for an experience of escapism that is more than just a party, and the demand for a different type of arts programme like this is growing. The arts bill no longer acts merely as a sideshow to the main musical event, but with considered arts partnerships and well curated work, festivals such as Beacons will continue to flourish into cultural hotbeds of creative energy.
Eight top graduates are profiled in our September issue – each has a page with which to introduce themselves to the creative world, and we also take a look at some of their best work to date. It’s the CR Gradwatch class of 2013…
The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy 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.
Before the 20-plus pages of new graduate work, Patrick Burgoyne looks at the history of an institution that has, since 1952, represented the very best in graphic design: the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).
Once an elite club for the profession, the AGI has extended its membership to a younger generation of practitioners – and next month brings its Open conference to London for the first time. (This issue’s subscriber-only Monograph, see below, features a collection of AGI-related ephemera, collected by designer Ben Bos.)
Over the past three months, along with our online army of volunteer talent spotters, we’ve reported on a wide range of the UK’s art and design degree shows and have picked eight graduates to look out for.
First up in our Gradwatch feature is University of the West of England illustration graduate, George McCallum. A cake version of his Chest of Drawers furniture introduces his feature. (The cake also found its way to the CR office – yum.)
Chelsea College of Art graphic design communication grads Johnny Holmes and Charlie Patterson (aka Opposite) form our second profile. The pair also designed/stitched our September issue cover.
Next up is the otherworldly work of Royal College of Art visual communication graduate, Guilia Garbin. Her final MA project was an illustrated collection of four stories about the last generation of print workers of Fleet Street in London.
And School of Communication Arts team, Ran and Max (Roanna Stallard and Max Maclean), make up our fouth grad profile. They introduce themselves via a wordsearch, quiz and their Ten Creative Commandments.
A graduate of the design for publishing course at Norwich University of the Arts, Matthew Callaby has already designed the visual identity for Sony Music at this year’s BRIT Awards. His intro page is an abundance of juicy monsters.
And our final Gradwatchee is Rachel Dixon of Gray’s School of Art’s visual communication course. Her Reading and Leeds festival project won a YCN Student Award earlier this year.
Staying with our educational theme, CR’s Rachael Steven looks at various university-run enterprise schemes which enable students to work on commercial briefs while studying – but are the rewards fair to them?
And rounding off the features this month, Mark Sinclair meets Nick Asbury, one of the best branding and design writers working today.
Asbury discusses the rise of ‘tone of voice’, the importance of poetry in helping him write for brands, and how he has managed to produce an acclaimed series of products with his wife, Sue – including the Disappointments Diary 2013.
In Crit, Wayne Ford visits the Museum of London’s exhibition on the Radio Times as the magazine turns 90.
Jeremy Leslie looks at some magazines which aim to help young graduates and creatives, and talks to the founder of new title, Intern.
Paul Belford praises a Tampax advert from 1981 for its unpatronising stance; while Daniel Benneworth-Gray dons his outdoor gear to go looking for his own work in the wild.
Gordon Comstock ponders why finding new advertising talent can prove so difficult; and Michael Evamy salutes the longevity of the work of design agency Lippincott, which is 70 years-old this year.
And finally, in our Monograph supplement this month (for subscribers only), we have a special selection of material and ephemera produced for the AGI over the years from the collection of designer, Ben Bos.
The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from ushere. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
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