Hasta La Ideas

(Photo: Bill Simone)

Never underestimate the power of license plates (as Cosmo Kramer once reminded us). They did the trick for the Society of Design (SOD). When the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit wanted an effective and memorable way to invite letterer, illustrator, designer, and Daily Drop Captain Jessica Hische to be a part of its 2012-13 speaker series, they looked no further than the Department of Transportation. SOD members researched the state’s custom license plate program (eight characters max, including one space), convinced 34 people to change their vehicle registrations, and mapped out a multi-plate message to Hische, a Pennslyvania native who is now based in San Francisco. After filing and re-filing oodles of paperwork over the course of several weeks, they finally had their invitation, in the form of 27 freshly pressed license plates.

The next step was to take the charming analog project to the digital realm. A website was created (invitinghische.com), and called to the attention of Hische via Twitter. “Pennsylvania misses you tremendously,” tweeted SOD to the designer. “Please come home.” Her response was immediate, heartfelt, and, fortunately for those who are now driving around with the plates on their vehicles, in the affirmative. “I am crying at my desk. I’ve never been so touched by a group of people I don’t even know!” Hische tweeted in response. “And the answer of course is YES! I will marry you! I mean come to Pennsylvania.” And she’s bringing presents. Each of the SODers involved with the project will receive a delightful drawing: Hische’s hand-lettered version of his or her name.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Foundation Rwanda’s latest fundraising initiative, “Color Rwanda with Hope,” comes with a typographic twist. The nonprofit organization, founded in 2008 by photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik and former creative director Jules Shell, tapped members of creative agency LBi Syrup to design an original typeface for the multi-media campaign. Rather than whip up something in the studio, where they work on projects for artistically inclined brands such as Bottega Veneta and Puma, the LBi Syrup group traveled to Rwanda and used the artwork and writing of the children they met there as inspirational font fodder. The resulting typeface, “Color Rwanda,” appears on various campaign materials, including the limited-edition coloring books that are at the heart of the fundraiser. LBi Syrup also created a short film (below) for the campaign. All proceeds from the Color Rwanda with Hope effort will help to fund Foundation Rwanda’s work to provide secondary education for the 20,000 ostracized children born of rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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In a year studded with beautiful new volumes by and about artists and designers ranging from Alexander McQueen to Andrea Zittel, these are the five that we found most inspiring.

Autobiography of a Fashion Designer: Ralph Rucci (Bauer and Dean) by Ralph Rucci, with photographs by Baldomero Fernandez
Fashion designer and artist Ralph Rucci has been betrayed by key members of the fashion press, who should have made him a household name years ago, but critics, curators, and connoisseurs have picked up the slack. This just-published volume is a fascinating follow-up to Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness (Yale University Press), published in 2007 to accompany the Museum at FIT’s exhibition of the designer’s work. Like Rucci’s exquisite creations, Autobiography of a Fashion Designer rewards patience and close-looking, with pages of lush color photos and descriptions of the couture techniques used (and in some cases pioneered) in the Chado Ralph Rucci atelier. Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography (1980), a kind of exhaustive visual index of the artist’s life, this book also tells the stories behind 20 objects Rucci has collected in his lifetime. It’s a fitting tribute to an uncompromising designer with the soul of artist.

Alexander Girard by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee (Ammo Books)
Treat yourself to the amazing Alexander Girard mega-monograph by designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee. The product of nearly four years of research and, at 672 pages, an innovative scheme of printing and binding, this book is a must for any design lover. Oldham was granted exclusive permission to sift through the fastidiously kept archives of Girard (1907-1993), who is best known for his folk art-infused textiles for Herman Miller but also designed everything from buildings to typography. “I’d estimate that 90 percent of the work in the book hasn’t been seen,” Oldham told us earlier this year. “Wait ‘til you see the stuff from his early design career, in the ‘20s.” And take a closer look at the image credits: many of the archival photos were taken by frequent Girard collaborator Charles Eames.
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Watch out, Tangerine Tango, there’s a new hue angling for the title of Color of the Year. Global paints and coatings giant AkzoNobel has crowned “Terracotta Rose” as the it-color of 2012. The Dutch multinational, which also does a brisk business in specialty chemicals, has selected the “blushing, lively, juicy red” for its versatility. “The radiant shade is the most important color for 2012 as it is at once whimsical and serious, dynamic and soft, perfect for a tiny accent or a feature wall,” notes AkzoNobel’s latest Color Futures booklet (downloadable as a PDF here), which highlights key trends that emerge from the company’s annual Color Convention. “A color that can be many things to many people reminds us not to look for simple solutions, but to open our minds to new ideas that are waiting to be discovered.” The selection of a warm and robust shade as AkzoNobel’s Color of the Year comes after a string of pale tones, including “a light, airy, citrus yellow” that helped to make 2011 more “illuminating, cheering, refreshing, and uplifting.”

Previously on UnBeige: Pantone Names ‘Tangerine Tango’ 2012 Color of the Year

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(Photos: Christopher Burke, courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery)

What’s nine feet tall, twelve feet wide, and dangerously emotional? The face of King Kong, as depicted by Walton Ford in three massive new watercolors that will be unveiled this evening at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. The artist based the primate portraits on the 1933 monster adventure film starring a satin-draped, constantly screaming Fay Wray as Ann Darrow, who catches the eye of Skull Island’s mysterious gorilla-beast. “The Depression-era Kong was misshapen, not modeled on any living ape. He has an odd, ugly, shifting charisma like Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, or Bogart. Naturally his women screamed in terror,” says Ford in a statement issued by the gallery. “The grief of the original Kong is the grief of the unloved, and like Humbert Humbert or Frankenstein, the grief of the unlovable.”

When titling the works, the artist borrowed Wray’s line, delivered behind shielded eyes to her human lover: “I don’t like to look at him, Jack.” Meanwhile, Ford’s monumental Kongs are impossible to look away from, with impeccably detailed faces contorted in varying combinations of anguish and fury. “These paintings are about Kong’s heartbreak,” says Ford. “I wanted to reveal the monster’s grief, his enormous sadness, the sorrow that the original Kong kept hidden from view.” The solo exhibition, on view through December 23 at Kasmin, also includes six new, monkey-laden meditations on a passage from the memoirs of John James Audobon. The colorful paintings bring to life an episode from the ornithologist’s childhood in which he watched one of his mother’s pet monkeys snuff out another one of her pets, a parrot. “This made,” wrote Audobon, “a very deep impression on my youthful mind.”

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