Each year in the Creative Review Annual we choose a Design Studio of the Year. Our winner this time is an in-house studio which has consistently delivered powerful, original work that has revived a sector of the media industry
There’s some brilliant design work in this year’s Annual, as you might expect. Spin has several outstanding projects in our pages, while it’s great to see Brazil, Canada, Australia, the US and mainland Europe represented.
But we have chosen to recognise an in-house design team which has had an enormous impact on its industry. Under creative director Richard Turley, (not forgetting editor Josh Tyrangiel) Bloomberg Businessweek has trounced its rivals with a verve and energy that recalls the heyday of the printed magazine.
Set-piece editions in which the decks are cleared for total devotion to one topic have become a speciality of the magazine – its valedictory Steve Jobs issue being particularly successful. In our June 2012 issue our columnist Jeremy Leslie revealed the working process of the Bloomberg Businessweek team as it put together the issue (images above, you can read his piece here).
Last November, the team did it again with its Election Issue, shown here and chosen as one of our Best in Book winners for The Annual.
The Election issue takes as its starting point a famous speech by Ronald Reagan in which he asked the American people whether they felt better or worse off than they had been four years ago and applies that test to Obama’s period in office.
It opens with a double-page, black and white shot of the President’s inauguration on January 29, 2009 overlaid with facts about the state of the nation at that point.
From there, using the full range of modern visual storytelling weaponry, it takes a long hard look at what has happened to the US since. The cost of living, the changing nature of employment, financial, security and housing issues are all investigated with enormous verve and invention.
This is a tour-de-force of brilliant, visually-led storytelling. It is magazine publishing at its best, flexing every muscle of the editorial process to deliver a depth and quality of content unmatched elsewhere in the news weekly sector.
But it’s not just in these special editions that Bloomberg Businessweek delivers. It consistently produces powerful covers and features which offer a compelling case for the future of print media and the vital role that design has to play in that. Congratulations to creative director Richard Turley and all his team. With its combination of editorial and visual punch, Bloomberg Businessweek has, for the moment, given a sector of the media industry new hope.
Election Issue design team: Creative Director: Richard Turley. Design Director: Cynthia Hoffman. Art Director: Robert Vargas. Graphics Director: Jennifer Daniel. Director of Photography: David Carthas. Deputy Photo Editor: Emily Keegin. Designers: Shawn Hasto, Chandra Illick, Tracy Ma, Maayan Pearl, Lee Wilson. Graphics: Evan Applegate, Christopher Nosenzo. Photo Editors: Alis Atwell, Donna Cohen, Jamie Goldenberg, Diana Suryakusuma, Jane, Yeomans, Meagan Ziegler-Haynes. Art Manager: Emily Anton
The Creative Review Annual is published in association with iStockphoto.
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
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
The cover image for this year’s Creative Review Annual (out this week) was created by Morag Myerscough in her inimitable hand-crafted style. See how she did it
Here’s the final cover – the issue will be out tomorrow
Myerscough, as well as having work selected for The Annual this year, is also the subject of a major profile piece in the magazine this month. You can buy a copy direct from us here
Students can now save 30% off a subscription to Creative Review
Yes, we know, finally, right? Students can now get a discount of up to 30% on a print subscription to CR. All you have to do is go to our Shopify page here
UK-based students now pay just £49.70 (instead of £71) for 12 issues of Creative Review delivered straight to your door (there are also discounts for European and rest of the world-based students). No longer will you miss out on special issues such as our celebration of 150 years of the tube or our CR Annual
And of you subscribe for longer, the savings get bigger: £83.30 for two years (instead of £119) and £117.60 for three years (instead of £168).
And all subscribers receive our award-winning Monograph booklet each month for free, featuring projects such as James Jarvis’s Amos graphics (below)
April cover featuring a character drawn byJim Stoten in The Layzell Brothers’ Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight video for Adam Buxton
Our April issue presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital
In the new issue we pick out three animators and animation teams to watch: the Layzell Brothers, who regular readers might remember are the (warped) minds behind Adam Buxton’s Livin in the Moonlight video. With characters by illustrator Jim Stoten.
Becky & Joe, creators of Tame Impala promo Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
And Julia Pott,whose disturbing tale Belly has been a hit on the festival circuit
Elsewhere in the issue, NIck Asbury goes in search of the elusive Australian commercial artist John Hanna, illustrator of a series of beautiful covers for Country Fair magazine
Mark Sinclair looks at the transformative power of art and design when used in hospital environments.
Anna Richardson Taylor explores the claims of a new app to have discovered a formula that guarantees viral advertising success.
And Paul Rennie delves into the archives of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and discovers a rich design history
In Crit, James Pallister reviews Anna Saccani’s new tome on typographic installations, Letterscapes
In his regular column This Designer’s Life, Daniel Benneworth-Gray writes on the perils of working with academics and Gordon Comstock discusses the perils of creating YouTube-friendly advertising
Jeremy Leslie asks what makes a superior – and successful – independent magazine?
And Paul Belford argues strongly that the craft of writing and art directing long copy advertising must be preserved while Patrick Burgoyne reports from the Design Indaba conference, where the scope for designers to make a difference to society was vividly illustrated
Plus, in our subscriber-only Monograph supplement, we celebrate the work of art director and designer Gerald Cinamon
The Design Museum’s Designs of the Year show is its usual eclectic self, marrying the gigantic (The Shard) with projects of more modest ambition. We pick out some highlights from the exhibition
The curatorial methodology of Designs of the Year, where various ‘experts’ in the field are asked to nominate projects for final selection by committee, is guaranteed to produce diverse, if not quirky results. The criteria for selection are very loose, trusting in those submitting nominations (including me) to come up with content that genuinely reflects the industry. The overtly commercial tends to get overlooked (not withstanding the likes of Apple’s iPad having featured in previous years). So you won’t find many corporate identities for big companies or much mainstream packaging design. This is, by and large, design as the profession would like us to think of it rather than the bits that really bring in the revenue.
But the role of an exhibition such as this is to inspire and to showcase – to reflect the ambitions of the profession perhaps rather than the day-to-day. As such, in most categories, it does that very well.
There are a lot of projects, for example, which illustrate design’s ablity to tackle ‘needs’ rather than ‘desires’.
ESource by Hal Watts for example is a bicycle-powered waste recycling system that separates the materials within electrical wiring so that they can be more effectively processed with fewer harmful fumes.
And the 3D Printed Exoskeleton ‘Magic Arms’, designed by Nemours/Alfred I du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware US, allows parts to be individually 3D printed and tailored to children suffering form musculoskeletal disabilities who need upper body support.
In the Child ViSion glasses designed by The Centre for Vision in the Developing World and Goodwin Hartsom, the prescription can be adjusted by injecting a fluid into the lenses, thus extending the life of the glasses significantly as a child can keep the same pair as he or she grows and their eyes change.
Other projects reflected efforts to ‘democratise’ design, such as the Free Universal Construction Kit by Free Art and Technology Lab and Sy-Lab
While the Gov.uk website was a welcome nod to design’s role in public service provision (see our article here)
Its inclusion also helps address a perennial problem with the show, that visual communications can be overshadowed. Talking to some graphic designers after the show opening, many felt that their particular sphere suffered in comparison to some of the ideas above or to a project on the scale of, say The Shard
This has consistently been a concern with the Designs of the Year show, not always helped by the curatorial process which, as mentioned above, tends to veer in the case of graphics toward what we might call the ‘arty’.
But there are some strong graphic and digital projects included this year. Gov.uk will probably have more of a direct impact on British people’s lives than anything else in the show and who can deny that the Olympics Wayfaring by TfL /JEDCO / LOCOG was an important, major work?
I was also pleased to see that the Occupied Times Of London by Tzortzis Rallis and Lazaros Kakoulidis made it in to the show (see our interview with them here)
And as for ‘commercial’ projects, you can’t get much more so than the Wiindows Phone 8 interface
And there’s still room for great projects which, while they may not change the world, are brilliantly done examples of their genre. In such category I would place The Gentlewoman by Veronica Ditting and Jop van Bennekom
APFEL’s Bauhaus book and exhibition design
Identities for the Strelka Institute by OK-RM
And for the Venice Architecture Biennale Identity by John Morgan
Plus Serviceplan’s light-sensitive Austria Solar Annual Report
It was also good to see Uniform’s Digital Postcard and Player in there which uses printed circuitry to combine print and digital (slot the cards into a player to hear music ‘printed’ on them)
And Indian design publication Dekho: Conversations on Design in India by CoDesign
As mentioned, I was a nominator this year, so in the interests of disclosure, here’s what I put forward and the texts I wrote for the catalogue putting forward my reasoning. I also nominated Occupied Times but wasn’t needed to contribute text for that as others had also nominated it
Windows Phone 8 Skeuomorphism in interface design is the digital equivalent of a Mock Tudor house. Why is the database of contacts on a smart phone rendered in faux leather with a tiny ringbinder down its spine? Because it makes us feel comfortable and, in the early days of GUIs, linking digital functions to their real-world counterparts was a very useful means of introducing users to their screen-based future. But it’s time to move on. Windows Phone 8 leaves the world of fake chrome behind. Its ‘live tiles’ and flat graphics are a digitally-native environment which represents a genuinely innovative step in GUI design. Will it be commercially successful? Who knows. Today, Android and Apple dominate the smartphone market: there may not be room for a third player. But this is a design exhibition and Windows Phone 8 proposes an elegant and thoughtful aesthetic and functional alternative to an increasingly frustrating and clumsy status quo.
www.gov.uk Grand public projects feature large in the graphic design canon. Kinneir and Calvert’s road signage programme, Harry Beck’s London Underground map, Massimo Vignelli’s work on its New York counterpart: such projects reassure practicing designers that, yes, what they do does matter and can genuinely improve our lives. The gov.uk website is perhaps the digital equivalent of those great public projects of the past. It may not look particularly exciting or pretty, but that is not the point. This is design in the raw, providing vital services and information in the simplest, most logical way possible for everything from renewing a passport to understanding your rights as a disabled person.
2012 Olympics Wayfaring The London 2012 logo will forever divide opinion, but even its most implacable detractors were forced to admire the consistency and rigour with which the look of the games was applied across London and the other 2012 venues. LOCOG claimed to have taken the development of a comprehensive graphic language for the 2012 Games further than any previous Olympiad, liaising with local authorities, the GLA, TFL, sponsors and all other interested parties to ensure ‘One Look’ applied from the airport all the way to the venues. We were promised a brand and not just a logo, a comprehensive visual experience to an extent not seen in previous Games. LOCOG and its design partners delivered just that.
The Design Museum’s Designs of the Year show is its usual eclectic self, marrying the gigantic (The Shard) with projects of more modest ambition. We pick out some highlights from the exhibition
The curatorial methodology of Designs of the Year, where various ‘experts’ in the field are asked to nominate projects for final selection by committee, is guaranteed to produce diverse, if not quirky results. The criteria for selection are very loose, trusting in those submitting nominations (including me) to come up with content that genuinely reflects the industry. The overtly commercial tends to get overlooked (not withstanding the likes of Apple’s iPad having featured in previous years). So you won’t find many corporate identities for big companies or much mainstream packaging design. This is, by and large, design as the profession would like us to think of it rather than the bits that really bring in the revenue.
But the role of an exhibition such as this is to inspire and to showcase – to reflect the ambitions of the profession perhaps rather than the day-to-day. As such, in most categories, it does that very well.
There are a lot of projects, for example, which illustrate design’s ablity to tackle ‘needs’ rather than ‘desires’.
ESource by Hal Watts for example is a bicycle-powered waste recycling system that separates the materials within electrical wiring so that they can be more effectively processed with fewer harmful fumes.
And the 3D Printed Exoskeleton ‘Magic Arms’, designed by Nemours/Alfred I du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware US, allows parts to be individually 3D printed and tailored to children suffering form musculoskeletal disabilities who need upper body support.
In the Child ViSion glasses designed by The Centre for Vision in the Developing World and Goodwin Hartshorn, the prescription can be adjusted by injecting a fluid into the lenses, thus extending the life of the glasses significantly as a child can keep the same pair as he or she grows and their eyes change.
Other projects reflected efforts to ‘democratise’ design, such as the Free Universal Construction Kit by Free Art and Technology Lab and Sy-Lab
While the Gov.uk website was a welcome nod to design’s role in public service provision (see our article here)
Its inclusion also helps address a perennial problem with the show, that visual communications can be overshadowed. Talking to some graphic designers after the show opening, many felt that their particular sphere suffered in comparison to some of the ideas above or to a project on the scale of, say The Shard
This has consistently been a concern with the Designs of the Year show, not always helped by the curatorial process which, as mentioned above, tends to veer in the case of graphics toward what we might call the ‘arty’.
But there are some strong graphic and digital projects included this year. Gov.uk will probably have more of a direct impact on British people’s lives than anything else in the show and who can deny that the Olympics Wayfaring by TfL /JEDCO / LOCOG was an important, major work?
I was also pleased to see that the Occupied Times Of London by Tzortzis Rallis and Lazaros Kakoulidis made it in to the show (see our interview with them here)
And as for ‘commercial’ projects, you can’t get much more so than the Wiindows Phone 8 interface
And there’s still room for great projects which, while they may not change the world, are brilliantly done examples of their genre. In such category I would place The Gentlewoman by Veronica Ditting and Jop van Bennekom
APFEL’s Bauhaus book and exhibition design
Photographs: Luke Hayes
Identities for the Strelka Institute by OK-RM
And for the Venice Architecture Biennale Identity by John Morgan
Plus Serviceplan’s light-sensitive Austria Solar Annual Report
It was also good to see Uniform’s Digital Postcard and Player in there which uses printed circuitry to combine print and digital (slot the cards into a player to hear music ‘printed’ on them)
And Indian design publication Dekho: Conversations on Design in India by CoDesign
As mentioned, I was a nominator this year, so in the interests of disclosure, here’s what I put forward and the texts I wrote for the catalogue putting forward my reasoning. I also nominated Occupied Times but wasn’t needed to contribute text for that as others had also nominated it
Windows Phone 8 Skeuomorphism in interface design is the digital equivalent of a Mock Tudor house. Why is the database of contacts on a smart phone rendered in faux leather with a tiny ringbinder down its spine? Because it makes us feel comfortable and, in the early days of GUIs, linking digital functions to their real-world counterparts was a very useful means of introducing users to their screen-based future. But it’s time to move on. Windows Phone 8 leaves the world of fake chrome behind. Its ‘live tiles’ and flat graphics are a digitally-native environment which represents a genuinely innovative step in GUI design. Will it be commercially successful? Who knows. Today, Android and Apple dominate the smartphone market: there may not be room for a third player. But this is a design exhibition and Windows Phone 8 proposes an elegant and thoughtful aesthetic and functional alternative to an increasingly frustrating and clumsy status quo.
www.gov.uk Grand public projects feature large in the graphic design canon. Kinneir and Calvert’s road signage programme, Harry Beck’s London Underground map, Massimo Vignelli’s work on its New York counterpart: such projects reassure practicing designers that, yes, what they do does matter and can genuinely improve our lives. The gov.uk website is perhaps the digital equivalent of those great public projects of the past. It may not look particularly exciting or pretty, but that is not the point. This is design in the raw, providing vital services and information in the simplest, most logical way possible for everything from renewing a passport to understanding your rights as a disabled person.
2012 Olympics Wayfaring The London 2012 logo will forever divide opinion, but even its most implacable detractors were forced to admire the consistency and rigour with which the look of the games was applied across London and the other 2012 venues. LOCOG claimed to have taken the development of a comprehensive graphic language for the 2012 Games further than any previous Olympiad, liaising with local authorities, the GLA, TFL, sponsors and all other interested parties to ensure ‘One Look’ applied from the airport all the way to the venues. We were promised a brand and not just a logo, a comprehensive visual experience to an extent not seen in previous Games. LOCOG and its design partners delivered just that.
The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital
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, or 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.
The New York Times is currently redesigning its website and trialling a new layout, offering a preview of the first phase of the project which focuses on the “look and feel of articles”. We asked a few editorial designers to assess how the NYT’s new look is shaping up…
But before we look at the new design, here’s a quick look at how a story looks on the current version of the site:
And here’s how an article viewed on the new site (you can see more online here) will look:
It’s clear to see that the new design approach minimises the previous clutter, with main stories clickable across the top of the page with a “sections” button top left offering the chance to navigate to different sections of the paper:
“I’m really impressed by the demo, it’s the latest in a number of projects pushing towards a calmer, more reflective online reading experience,” says regular CR contributor Jeremy Leslie of magculture.com. “Matter, Aeon (a client of mine) and others are looking to provide an elegant reading environment: less interuption but with neccesary elements (commenting, ads, sharing etc) appearing as required rather than jumping at you,” he continues. “Taking advantage of the retina resolution, they are typographically fine-tuned and are built and designed to take longform content and make it legible and accessible across multiple devices.”
Leslie hints that this approach is now the way forward for newspapers’ online offerings. “Not so long ago all the ‘broadsheet’ newspaper websites looked the same,” he says, “sporting system fonts, familair grids, common design tics. The Guardian, for instance, was very influential when it relaunched years back (it’s taxonomy etc) and other UK papers followed. It now looks very dated, as this latest NYT demo establishes.”
“The big decisionn seems to be to streamline the reading experience,” says Mark Porter, principal at Mark Porter Associates who worked on the editorial design of the Guardian newspaper and also its iPad app. “The article pages look as if they will have a lot more space, and a lot of the clutter will be hidden away until activated,” he observes. “In most editorial websites the content on the article pages is swamped by navigation, links, promos and marketing material, which makes it hard work getting to the story, and after all, that’s what you came for.
“The NYT appears to be taking a lead from the kind of design we’re seeing on touch-screen tablets and smartphones, making the content the hero, and trusting the reader be smart enough to invoke the naviagtion, comments and links when they want them,” adds Porter. “This also unlocks the possiblity of making the site much more responsive, and a better expereince on a wide range of devices.
“On this showing, it promises to be pretty revolutionary. In recent years, the New York Times has been one of the densest and most cluttered editorial sites on the web; but if they get this right they will become one of the cleanest and most usable.”
Above: a small speech bubble and counter top right of an article’s page can be clicked to open a side panel revealing comments actually alongside the article
Jon Hill, design editor at The Times is also positive about how the NYT’s online articles are looking in the proposed redesign. “For a while now we’ve seen websites care more about typography, grids and layout – for want of a better word,” he told CR. “The early indications are that the NYT site will adopt their elegant and recognisable palette of typefaces and page furniture from the print edition and bring them to their website,” he continues.
“This has to be a good thing for the reader and commercially as I think it stacks up to be a more valuable product, and not just another news site.”
This longer section of a news story shows how links to related content can be neatly flagged up alongside a story, and also how image captions too appear to the right of the main text and image column
Hill is also impressed with the thinking behind the redesign approach: “Editorial design aside, I think the most exciting developments here are ideas like the navigation changing depending on what you’re reading and if you’re logged in. For me, some of the most exciting aspects of digital editorial design is thinking about the conditions in which the reader is looking at your site / app. For example, can you give them related stories or updated stories because you know they’ve logged in previously and read these subjects. Or can you provide an abbreviated version of a story because you can tell they’re reading on a smartphone.
“The NYT site seems to be taking all of these ideas on board and, like any big site redesign, is thinking about creating responsive systems so the site works well across all devices and screen sizes.
“The most mind bending part of all of this for editorial designers is the idea that wysiwyg is dead,” Hill suggests. “The most sophisticated sites, particularly sites that contain lots of editorial components, like NYT.com, have to be built around the principles of responsive and fluid layouts. Hats off to the New York Times, they seem to be making some intelligent moves in this direction.”
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
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, or 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.
The new issue of PORT magazine landed on our desks today (guest edited by Daniel Day-Lewis, no less) and while having a somewhat quick initial perusal of its pages, an unusual fashion story shot by Joss McKinley caught our eye…
Usually, of course, a fashion feature works thus: the fashion editor will oversee a shoot in which models sport his or her selection of clothing and accessories from the current or coming season. Or the selection of items is gathered in a good ol’ grid on a page or spread.
However, in this issue of PORT a series of ten images – shot by McKinley and art directed by the magazine’s fashion editor Alex Petsetakis – presents various Spring/Summer 2013 items in a distinctly surreal fashion.
Shown over five double page spreads, the story, entitled This Is Not A Pipe, features items including Prada sandals, Armani shoes, a Dunhill chesspiece and a Brooks bike saddle – which all find themselves artfully arranged in still lives on a table’s edge in the company of objects such as eggshells, glass eyes, marbles and even cutlery.
Unsurprsingly art director Petsetakis cites the work of Magritte and Dali as inspiration for the shoot but also suggests that “motifs and symbolism from in films” were an influence.
“We decided to have fresh eyes interpreting products from the SS13 collections,” Petsetakis told us, “feasting on Giorgio Armani laces in ode to Chaplin’s performance in The Gold Rush, to nesting birds eggs in a floral printed shirt and blazer from Bottega Veneta, and shooting bananas as guns. We wanted to play on the viewer’s perception and interpretation of these portraits, plus create something a little absurd and comical.”
The new issue of PORT is out now. More info at http://www.port-magazine.com/
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
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, or 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.
Artwork for the front cover of the London Underground at 150 issue
For the cover of our London Underground special issue, we asked illustrator Robert Samuel Hanson to reference one of the tube network’s more esoteric posters and to envisage London in 150 years time. The full artwork is also set to be made into a print, available free with UK-based subscriptions to CR…
The March/London Underground at 150 issue cover
This is All in the Air by Montague B Black, 1926
CR approached Hanson with the idea of working from Montague B Black’s 1926 poster for the Underground; a vision of what London might look like in 2026. Black’s poster, This is All in the Air, suggested that Londoners of 1920s could enjoy the “solid comfort” of the Underground, while in 100 years’ time, well, just look at the crowded skies! Madness.
So as the tube is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year (and hence our special issue) we put it to Hanson that he imagine the city in another 150 years and, like Black, evoke the tube’s role within it. (Black’s poster is currently on show in the London Transport Museum’s Poster Art 150 exhibition.)
Hanson’s detailed cityscape includes references to the continuing – or relentless – success of the Rolling Stones, the rise of Pyongyang as a potential holiday destination, and to CR potentially carrying its own fleet of flying delivery buses, presumably as print still thrives. There are more river ferries on the Thames (itself cleaner and more welcoming to dolphins); while Boris’s Bike’s have also been redesigned for the 22nd century.
As in Black’s effort, Hanson’s vision puts buses in the air (see the fantastic North London Air Hub, above) while the Underground remains resolutely subterranean, albeit it with new fancy viewing compartments.
And we can also annouce that a print of Robert’s artwork is available, free, with all one, two and three-year subscriptions to CR (only in the UK). Printed A3 on 230gsm ultra smooth fine art paper by Print-Process, the print is available now – and readers can find out more about subscriptions here. Here’s what the print will look like:
Artwork for the back cover of the London Underground at 150 issue (and a close up of the left-hand side of the print)
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
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