Hasta La Ideas

For the month of May, Toronto’s Studio Gallery presents the work of world-renowned artist Richard Kern with his first solo exhibition in Canada and his first full-career retrospective, “Kern: A Retrospective Exhibition Featuring the Photography and Films of Richard Kern.”

Kern, a photographer, occasional pornographer, former filmmaker and video director, is most importantly a portrait artist. The retrospective documents his works over the past two decades, from his early short films to photographs from the ’90s, which illuminate the early stages of his voyeuristic style of photography.

Kern has published nine books to date and regularly contributes to a variety of international publications such as Purple, Vice, V Magazine and Italian GQ. His work has been featured in numerous books and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art and in more than 30 solo shows around the world.

The show runs through 30 May 2010. In addition to the print works, Studio Gallery will screen films by Kern 15 May and 22 May 2010. The $5 admission includes the full exhibition and curator introduction and runs 7pm – 10pm.

Although Felix Sockwell had likely already realized all of his hopes and dreams when he both designed a banner for us and appeared with Stephanie at a mediabistro event all in the same year, he reached another career milestone by landing the gig illustrating the cover story for the latest issue of New York. The essay is all about the branding of politician/talking head/rogue Sarah Palin and for Sockwell was tasked with dropping her name within a number of iconic business brands, from Ford to Visa. A handful can be found sprinkled throughout both the print and online edition, but you can also take a look at Sockwell’s Drawger post, where he shows off some behind-the-scenes work, including more than a dozen other logos he Palinized but didn’t make it into the magazine.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

When a certain volcanic eruption put the kibosh (kibash?) on our transatlantic trip, frog design was good enough to dispatch a plump and determined carrier pigeon to bring us the new design mind magazine. The latest issue, launched last week at a special TED salon in London, tackles the theme of work-life (a term that is sure to soon shed its vestigial hypen and become “worklife”). “What we do for a living and how we do it has become such an important part of our lives that we wanted to ask some fundamental questions,” says design mind editor-in-chief Sam Martin. “Is work-life balance possible anymore? Is it even that important? Work bleeds into life far more than it used to, so it’s critical that we allow life to become part of work as well. That’s the hard part.” Articles in the issue tackle topics including sabbaticals, stress, clean energy, food, China, and becoming your own boss in the “me-conomy,” but our first stop was Allison Arieff‘s illuminating peek into the brain of Steven M. Johnson.

The inventor and artist has a lot to say about, well, everything. When Arieff asks Johnson to develop some concepts around the work-life theme, he gets right down to business. “From 6:30 to 9:30 this morning, I turned on my idea faucet (which I usually keep somewhat tightly turned off) and have 55-60 rough notes as a result,” he e-mails her. “Of course, just like Blackberry’s push email, my ideas keep coming out even after I have stopped generating them.” Johnson, who spent nine years working in R&D at Honda, points to a couple of ideas as those that he would most like to see realized. First up: an Intercontinental Solar-Electric Highway, a “narrow, smooth, and gracefully rolling highway stretching from coast to coast, dedicated solely to ultralight vehicles.”

There are already proposals for an intercontinental trail that could be hiked from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so there should similarly be an intercontinental highway for solar, electric, and ultralight vehicles, one that also provides a lane for bicycles. It would be a beautiful road, and very quiet…lined with solar-powered underground buildings. Billboards would be illegal. There would be hikers’ huts, youth hostels, cafes, and battery-swap services. Highway lighting would be powered by solar panels. The highway itself would take up far less space than a freeway, cost comparatively little, and foster the design and production of new, efficient electric- and solar-powered vehicles, the kind that are now in danger of being blown off the road by 18-wheel semi-trailer trucks.

Also high on Johnson’s to-realize list? His own line of multiuse furniture, which he would prefer to invent, design, and manufacture himself. “There would be a line of chairs that become desks, sofas that become showers, and sofas that become sturdy dining tables.” he says. “I would love this kind of business because it would combine my interest in utility with my softness for humor and whimsy.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What do the old water tower, gutted apartment building and eclectic bar have in common? Good Magazine recently asked photo narrative fanatic Pictory to sort through their expansive library of images for a visual walkabout of an ideal neighborhood. We’ve picked our some of our favorites, showing the variety of places and people on the average neighborhood block.

Staying with magazines for a bit longer, though a decided British staple, it’s certainly not difficult to find the latest issue of NME over here at even your middle of the road magazine stands. But the next time you’re out to pick up a copy, you might need a few more seconds to track it down, given that they’ve just undergone a big redesign, from the cover to the interior to even an update of their iconic acronym title/brand. The new look has been rolled-out with that familiar magazine move, with the release of ten different covers, featuring musicians like Jack White, Rihanna, and a bunch of other people/groups that you might not have heard of, but are wildly popular in the UK right now (meaning they’ll probably be big hits here by 2012 or so). The redesign, intended to be more “mature” and keep a grip on non-teen readers, comes thanks to the magazine’s new 28-year old wunderkind editor, Krissi Murison. From a great piece in the Guardian about her, here’s a bit about her involvement when the revisions started up:

The redesign is the result of listening to a large number of focus groups. “I sat in the corner and took notes and pretended to be a work experience student.” “Heavyweight” was the word that was fed back again and again and Murison has strived to showcase the magazine’s strengths. She wants to pack so much value into the weekly that it becomes “unmissable”. The aim is for the front section to be topical while the features will reflect Murison’s keenness to retain older readers. When she returned as editor, she was terrified that the NME was too focused on the young and not serving its 18- to 24-year-old core readers.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.