Hasta La Ideas

CR’s February cover, illustrated by Letman

The February issue of Creative Review is out on Wednesday 21 January, with features on Luke Hayman, Letman, Indian advertising, The Guardian’s new home, The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms and more…

Our Work section features first sight of the logo for Condé Nast’s forthcoming Love magazine, Dougal Wilson’s puppet-tastic video for Coldplay and Spin’s identity for Argentina’s PROA gallery

Features include an interview with Pentagram’s Luke Hayman in which he reveals the secret of his success – CR, of course (ahem)

A profile of Job Wouters, aka Letman, hand-lettering artist extraordinaire and brother of our former Creative Future, Roel. Job also designed our cover this month, which carries on our theme of basing the design around a listing of that month’s content. Also, our guest typeface this issue (as seen here) is Dessau Pro Stenzil Variant by Gábor Kóthay, distributed by Fountain

How The Guardian’s editorial design has grown, almost accidentally, into an all-encompassing visual language for the paper, which now includes signage at its new home (by Cartlidge Levene)

A look at why The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, shunned by the mainstream gallery world, has given street art a home

And an examination of the role that advertising can play in ensuring that India doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the west in the face of growing consumerism

Plus, in Crit, we have all the usual discussion and comment including a look at advertising’s love of pain

And the all-important findings of our research into studio snacking and listening habits

Plus, subscribers will notice a change to Monograph this month. We are now using this rather beautiful Stephen Sultry Grey cover stock

Inside this month we feature Paul Belford’s collection of vintage Bollywood posters

And here’s the back cover with a key to the various pens that Letman used to design the front

It’s out on Wednesday 21 January. Enjoy.

La photographe Mikel Uribetxeberria a mis en scène des animaux dans des situations très décalées. Une série de 8 images commanditées par Animalia, à découvrir dans la suite.

South African photographer Henrik Purienne produces gritty, sexy and nostalgic fashion photography. He has successfully blurred the lines between fashion and erotica in a way that seems somehow less pornographic than most mainstream fashion shots. (NSFW)

The Swedish director of this haunting vampire tale replies to news of an American remake in the works by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves and sci-fi producer JJ Abrams:

Remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong. I’m very proud of my movie and think it’s great, but the Americans might be of an other opinion. The saddest thing for me would be to see that beautiful story made into something mainstream. I don’t like to whine, but of course – if you’d spent years on painting a picture, you’d hate to hear buzz about a copy even before your vernissage! 1

Last evening we saw Let the Right One In. It was a great, and yet somehow, an underwhelming experience for me. Perhaps my expectations were too high. It had all the elements that I want in a good movie: character, story, photography, yet something was still missing.

The photography tends to be mostly blues, greens, grays and the cool whites of fluorescent lighting. The framing is highly composed and stationary, with very, very (very) short depths of field. The architectural setting is decidedly modernist, buildings which are trendy by today’s standards, but in the early eighties were tinged with institutional/socialist qualities.

Despite how great it is, the photography isn’t what makes this film good. (Also, it is certainly not the typographical selection for the subtitles, which makes you work harder than you should to read the dialogue.) It is the story that does it. It is the complexity in its characters.

I failed to have a close connection to the cultural dimension of the film though and this is where I think a good film can be a great film to an audience. I felt foreign to it. I experienced the same thing when seeing Ringu, the Japanese predecessor to the American version, The Ring I liked the remake better. I’m curious to see if an American version of Let the RIght One In will do the same.