Mar 24

Offset 2014: Day three

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The final day of Offset 2014 featured talks from Marian Bantjes, Richard Turley, Jeff Greenspan and I Love Dust (to name just a few), who provided some amusing, thought provoking and inspiring reflections on their craft.

After talks from Genevieve Gauckler and fashion stylist Aisling Farinella, Johnny Winslade and Ollie Munden from I Love Dust discussed the studio’s culture and its work for Nike, Karl Lagerfeld and London burger restaurant Meat Liquor.

I Love Dust designed illustrated interiors for the venue and its sister restaurants Meat Mission, Meat Market and Meat Liquor Brighton. Meat Liquor London is designed to “look like the building has been tattooed”, while Meat Mission’s murals reference religious iconography (a nod to the building’s former use as a Christian Mission site). Meat Liquor Brighton is inspired by Miami – “another seaside location full of colourful characters” said Winslade.

The pair also discussed a series of self-initiated projects, from a custom motorbike it designed with Boneshaker Choppers to celebrate the studio’s 10th birthday, to ‘Black Valentine’s’ voodoo donuts, coffee cups and coasters.

As well as surprising clients (and making their way on to art directors’ desks), the pair said these kind of projects allowed the team, and its new members in particular, to try out new styles and techniques.

What is good design?

Next up (and sadly clashing with what I hear was a very entertaining talk from John Burgerman) was a debate on the notion of ‘good design’ – what exactly is it and how can it be measured.

Hosted by Studio AAD creative director Scott Burnett, the panel included Johnny Kelly, Richard Turley, Oran Day from Dublin studio Atelier David Smith and Brenda Dermody, who teaches graphic design at Dublin Institute of Technology.

Dermody said good design could only be measured based on its context: it might be a project where someone has worked outside of their comfort zone, or something that is simply beautiful. “But if the designer hasn’t learned much from it, is it still good?” she asked. Day, who also lectures at DIT, said that when teaching students, it could be just as valuable to critique examples of bad design, and Turley said for a design to be ‘good’, it must provoke a visceral reaction.

Johnny Kelly’s The Seed

The panel also touched on whether the public is becoming more aware and critical of design, but Turley said it’s not the only discipline to suffer exaggerated critiques on personal blogs and social media these days, while Dermody said that public outcries over logos, marques or branding were often just masking discontent over the brand itself or a wider issue. “The design is just a soft target,” she said.

The group also discussed the importance of awards: Turley said he felt there was little value in them, other than impressing his bosses in America. Kelly said he had felt it made people take notice of his work, but claimed he had also noticed a culture of ‘this is definitely going to win awards’ among agencies. “It’s a bad place to start any project,” he said.

Day said that they’re still of value, even if there are many other ways to gain recognition online now, because of the positive psychological effect of receiving praise from your peers, while Kelly pointed out that they can also stimulate important debates within the industry.

Richard Turley

Richard Turley took to the stage again after lunch, discussing his work for Bloomberg Businessweek, his thoughts on editorial design and his work for The Guardian.

While other talks this weekend have spoken about the importance of originality, or praised craft intensive projects, Turley spoke about creating powerful covers on a weekly basis, sometimes in just a few hours. Most of the ideas for his covers come from Google image searches, he said, adding: “a lot of what I do is copying. People are a bit angsty about the fact that you must have your own ideas, but I think it’s good to admit where we’ve taken things from.”

Of course, Turley didn’t mean he actually copies anyone’s work, but was referring to the fact that he is constantly seeking and adapting ideas that confront or inspire him – the cover of the election issue was inspired by the Halifax X, and the cover image for an issue on Bitcoin currency by an image of a unicorn he found online.

Talking through Bloomberg’s visual structure, Turley discussed his use of Helvetica and a grid structure based on multiples of 1.3 Despite these restrictions, however, he likes cover spreads to be as inentive and “expressive” as possible. “I dislike polite modernism…the Apple-ification of design,” he said. “Magazine design is really just about attracting attention: [cover spreads] are like little adverts, and you are selling the writer’s articles.”

Turley said working on the Guardian and its G2 supplement provided invaluable experience for his time at Bloomberg, and said the pressure of working for daily and weekly titles means “you have to become instinctive. It’s very immediate ad you can’t over think it,” he said.

Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes followed Turley and spoke about her need to “say something” with her work, showing examples of designs with embedded codes, concealed type and an installation for the Chicago Design Museum which spelled out the word sorrow in flowers, and died towards the end of the show.

“You have to make sure a project is worth the time and effort you will bestow on it,” she said, adding that she had a pet peeve for things like alphabet posters which are pretty but have little purpose. “If you’re going to the trouble of creating a beautiful alphabet, use it to say something,” she added.

Bantjes also discussed her monograph, Pretty Pictures (read our blog post on it here); personal projects including her yearly Valentine’s gifts and a recent project with Adobe, where she customised an Eames chair with wood veneer:

She also spoke about collecting and said that she often photographs sidewalks and hotel rooms: a poster she recently designed for the National was inspired by the structure of the skyline from her room in Hong Kong. “Grids and structure are a key part of my work,” she added.

Jeff Greenspan

Up next was freelance creative Jeff Greenspan, formerly a communication designer at Facebook, chief creative officer at Buzzfeed and creative director at BBDO.

Greenspan discussed how his self-initiated and side projects gave him the confidence to build a successful freelance career, and spoke of the importance of “finding your own individual voice and speaking it very loudly.” He is the creator of the ‘hipster trap’ (below), New York’s Tourist Lanes (which started out as a simple prank and attracted global media attention), and the Bush Booth (booths where people sick of seeing George W Bush campaign for a second term as President could voice their discontent at a video loop of him just listening).

Greenspan also created Selfless Portraits, a site where internet users are given a profile picture of another user somewhere in the world and asked to draw it, and “The World’s Most Exclusive Website“, a site where users must have a certain number of Twitter followers to access rooms, only to be met with another locked door. A satirical swipe at fame culture, those who did manage to access the site were offered nothing but confirmation of their followers, but the promise of exclusivity attracted Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and Jerry Bruckheimer, among others.

Each of these projects were self-initiated yet became viral successes: Greenspan had the idea for Selfless Portraits when working at Facebook, but couldn’t persuade the company to fund it, and said if he’d approached brands with many of these ideas, he would have been turned down, yet they have attracted millions of hits and huge levels of user engagement.

“If people don’t trust me, I keep trying,” he said. “I refuse to listen to people who try to diminish that voice in my head. I know we’re not changing the world – I’m usually advertising pizza and coffee – but it’s important to be true to yourself,” he said. “If you start something, put energy into it and be bold with your ideas…then other people will join you.”

Chris Judge

The last talk of the day was delivered by Chris Judge, an Irish illustrator, former member of The Chalets and author of award-winning children’s book The Lonely Beast.

Judge presented some charming, funny and bizarre illustration projects and discussed his forthcoming work for a teen novel by Kirsty McKay and an illustrated ‘danger manual’, Danger is Everywhere, written by comedian David O Doherty. He also talked about his spin-off Lonely Beast counting and alphabet apps, which were recently featured in an Apple ad campaign.

This was just a few of the events happening each day: the schedule also included a talk from Nobrow artists on getting published, a panel debate among Irish architects and one from a selection of Irish illustrators.
Le Cool Dublin has also been running a series of stylus wars – interactive pictionary duels – as well as portfolio reviews, and their have been regular talks on building brands in various industries. With a line-up so diverse, it’s little wonder Offset has become a sell-out events with over 2,500 attending.

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Mar 22

Offset 2014: Day two

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Day two of Dublin creative conference Offset featured another packed schedule, with talks from Sarah Illenberger, Tom Hingston, Neville Brody and Richard Mosse, plus an exclusive video interview with Milton Glaser.

After a talk from Norwegian illustrator Bjørn Lie, who discussed the landscapes and visuals that inspired his illustrated childrens’ books and commercial commissions, Sarah Illenberger spoke about her work making sculptures, installations and editorial illustrations using a diverse range of materials.

She presented a series of 3D illustrations for German magazine Neon, including one for which she used vegetables, toilet roll and balloons to depict the results of a survey on sex and beauty:

And another for a feature on plastic surgery, for which she presented the subjects of classic paintings such as the Mona Lisa to plastic surgeons, asked them what changes they might make to their bodies and faces if they were living patients, and modified the artworks to reflect the results: an inventive and provocative idea.

Illenberger focused mainly on editorial and self-initiated project, as while she does create work for ad campaigns, she said this is mainly to pay the bills and fund her experiments. “Play is a huge part of what I do. It expands the mind and helps you problem solve,” she said.

She also spoke about a need to innovate to avoid being pigeonholed. After completing a papercraft project for the cover of Papercraft magazine, she was inundated with requests to create paper sculptures, culminating in a series of elaborate window displays for a Hermes store in Berlin, which took a team of six aroud four months to create. “It was fun, but that was the climax. I didn’t want to be known as ‘the paper artist’,” she said.

Since then, Illenberger has been regularly experimenting with new materials, including foam, fake nails, pretzel dough and rubber. She also created a series of objects using food, which were sold as prints and have been exhibited at galleries in Europe and Tokyo alongside installations including origami popcorn and lights that look like ice cream.

While she has an incredibly imaginative approach, Illenberger described herself as an observationist: while living in London, she took a camera with her everywhere, building up a visual inspiration library, and said she inspired by people like Paul Smith and Martin Parr, who find beauty or colour in surprising places. She also likes work to have a tactile feel and said that big budgets don’t necessarily make a great project, as this hand crafted feel can often be lost when an artist is given endless creative opportunities.

Tom Hingston

Next up was Tom Hingston, who spoke about his many creative influences and the key principles they embody which have shaped his work.

Citing Mick Jagger, Prince and David Bowie as inspirations, he said what makes those performers so successful is that they are uncompromising in their approach. “They are very different but they each perform with passion…it seems spontaneous but their is a clear intention in their work…an organised chaos…a desire to take you out of your world and into theirs,” he said.

He also noted the work of German painter Gerhard Richter and Czech photographer Miroslav Tichy, whose techniques provided visual inspiration for Hingston’s recent video for David Bowie’s I’d Rather Be High (see our blog post on the video here), and said he is inspired by the ways in which Martin Scorcese, Jean Paul Goude and Samuel Fosse explore their identity through their work (Fosse in his self portraits, Goude in his work with Grace Jones and Scorcese in films such as Mean Streets, which drew on his own New York upbringing).

This notion of embracing personal identity was the guiding concept for Hingston’s artwork for Grace Jones’ album, Hurricane, he said, which featured images of the singer inspecting a production line of chocolates in the shape of her own head. “The project was making a statement about Grace being entirely in control of her own identity,” he said (more about the artwork here).

Hingston’s third guiding principle was “be playful with the language of colour,” and he cited Paul Smith, Luis Barragan and Spring Breakers director Harmony Korine as creatives who use colour to powerful effect. For those of you who haven’t seen Spring Breakers, about a group of teens on holiday who become involved with arms dealers, the film uses colour as a narrative device, beginning with sunny blue skies and, as events take a darker turn, a deeper and more ominous colour palette.

Projects inspired by this principle include Hingston’s work for Danish mobile brand Aesir, he said, for which he undertook a residency at a litho printing workshop in Copenhagen (one of only a few left in Europe) to learn the craft:

 

Richard Mosse

Following Hingston’s talk was one from Irish documentary photographer Richard Mosse, who recounted shooting plane wreckages, US army bases inside once palatial ruins in Iraq, and communities in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 5 million people have been killed since 1998.

Mosse said he was drawn to the region because of the complexities of the conflict there. “It’s a profound tragedy but it doesn’t make it into the papers very often… [partly because] it’s a horribly complicated war, with various groups fighting each other and a remote, inaccessible landscape,” he said.

His series, Infra, features images of soldiers, communities and victims of civil war shot using Kodak Aerochrome film, which was once used by the military to detect camouflage and turns plants, trees and vegetation a vivid pink. The powerful use of colour creates a beautiful, surreal and unsettling effect:

In using the infrared film, Mosse said he wanted to defy conventional approaches to war photography, which is often shot in grainy black and white to avoid aestheticisng human suffering.

“To de-aestheticise is still a conscious aesthetic decision, so I thought why not just embrace it?” he said. “I was angry with generic photojournalism, and I wanted to smash it up…and find my own genre,” he added.

Mosse also worked with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten on a haunting 40 minute video installation, The Enclave, in which his footage from the region is displayed on six double sided screens in a darkened chamber, set to music by Ben Frost. The result is an intentionally disorientating and hugely compelling piece of work, and one which left much of the audience in awe.

Neville Brody

After a break for lunch, Neville Brody delivered a talk on the power and future of design, and the need for designers to take risks, defy convention and create meaningful, impactful work that people can engage with. He also showed examples of his work for the BBC, the Royal College of Art, Fuse, Wallpaper and the Anti-Design Festival.

“We are stuck in a place of fear – fear that we will lose our jobs, that we’ll lose our clients, or people won’t like our work…we’re in such a rush to get stuff out that we’re defined by input and output…but when we play and experiment and things go wrong, you get new ideas and ways of thinking,” he said.

Brody also expressed concern that the global nature of communications and the need for simple, universal messages was leading to homogenised branding at the expense of individuality and local identity. “Complexity and difference…are not the friends of brands, who want us all to think and behave in the same way,” he said.

Imploring designers to think about the value and potential impact of their work, adding “we do not exist in a vacuum, and our translation of invisible ideas can change the world,” Brody said it was vital that creatives “take risks, trying something new and empower others to do the same.” This was the driving fore behind the Anti-Design Festival, he said, which featured various experimental installations and artworks made “without market restrictions”.

An interview with Milton Glaser

Next up was an exclusive video interview with Milton Glaser by Steve Heller. Glaser, who is 85 and still designing, spoke about his iconic work for Pushpin, his iconic I Love NY logo and his love of making things.

“The desire to make things is a profound life time commitment. It becomes the most important thing in your life…[and] gives you a sense of being alive,” he said.

Glaser also expressed concern that today’s creative industry is growing increasingly concerned with making people think a certain way, rather than “making them aware of what’s real”, creating an industry more concerned with persuasion than communication.

He also questioned our obsession with branding – “the idea that it is the highest form of design is reprehensible,” he said. When asked what advice he’d like to give to the next generation of designers, he said that we need to abandon the notion of “the heroic, individual genius” and focus on working with others to create work with real social value. “There are very few geniuses – but we only need a few – what we need more is people working together,” he added.

It was a pleasure to hear Glaser’s reflections on his life and work, and the passion he still has for his craft after decades of designing. The film will be made available online (along with all the talks from the conference) later this year.

 

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Mar 20

CR April: the photography issue

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Our April issue is a photography special. In it we talk to photographer Nadav Kander abourt his new TV ad for Age UK; discuss the enduring appeal of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work with the curator behind a new retrospective; and also talk to four photographer’s agents about how they help their artists to make great work…

We also look at how the GoPro camera sells itself and how leanin.org and Getty are to change the perception of women in stock photography.

The April issue of Creative Review will be 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.

On top of all that we talk to the client, agency and packaging designers behind the Marmite brand and have reviews of the Richard Hamilton exhibition at Tate Modern, the Muriel Cooper retrospective in New York, and Cape Town’s Design Indaba. At the back of the issue, Paul Belford wonders why it is so difficult to make a great poster for an exhibition.

Opening the issue, our Month in Review section looks at the controversy surrounding the new identity for the city of Amsterdam; spotlights an inventive digital subway poster from Swedish agency Akestam Holst; and examines the story behind the creation of the ‘ultimate selfie’ at this year’s Oscars.

In the columns, Gordon Comstock bemoans the lack of time for outside artistic projects in today’s ad agency culture; Michael Evamy looks at the new ‘inflatable’ identity for Darling Harbour in Sydney; while Daniel Benneworth-Gray dismisses the old ‘work/life balance’ adage in favour of embracing the fact that, as a designer, he has little need for other hobbies.

We also talk to Dave Sedgwick, the founder of the BCNMCR initiative that is bringing designers from Barcelona and Manchester together for another exhibition (work from which appears in this month’s Monograph, see bottom of post).

The features open with our photographer’s agent round-table – Mark Sinclair grills four of the best about just what their multifaceted job entails and how they help to get the best work out of the artists on their books. Plenty of advice for new photographers, too.

Eliza Williams talks to Nadav Kander about his work on a new commercial for Age UK featuring models aged between 0 and 100 – a behind the scenes shot by Calum Head also features on this issue’s cover (see top).

Jean Grogan interviews Clément Chéroux, the curator of a new exhibition on the work of legendary photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

And Rachel Steven talks to CR readers about their experience of the GoPro camera, and looks at some of the brand’s forays into content marketing via video sites and social media.

Antonia Wilson looks at a new initiative from Getty and leanin.org which aims to shift the ways in which women are portrayed in stock imagery.

And we also look at stock trends from the last 12 months – Shutterstock delve into their data to tell us what you’ve been looking for on their website.

In Crit, Adrian Shaughnessy enjoys a detailed retrospective in New York on the work of pioneering US designer Muriel Cooper…

And Rick Poynor takes in two London exhibitions dedicated to the work of British artist Richard Hamilton. Rachel Steven also reports back from Design Indaba in Cape Town.

Finally, this month’s Monograph (spreads shown below) features a selection of the artwork produced for the BCNMCR show, bringing together the work of design studios from Barcelona and Manchester, which opens next week.

The April issue of Creative Review will be 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.

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Mar 17

Merseyside Neon: Jake Tilson’s signage for the Everyman

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Liverpool’s Everyman theatre reopened earlier this month following a £28 million rebuild by architects Haworth Tompkins. The new signage was designed by artist and graphic designer Jake Tilson, who also created two typefaces for the venue.

Tilson was asked to create an illuminated sign for the new façade and after meeting with the architects, decided it should reference the theatre’s original neon signage.

The brief was to create a basic lowercase a-z font with numerals but Tilson designed a full typeface, Merseyside Neon, based on the characters in the old sign, below.

“Designing a typeface from just a few characters is something I first did back in 2003 in the book 3 Found Fonts,” says Tilson. “The process is like a piece of forensic anthropology, reconstructing…from a few bones.”

To create the font and accompanying bold version, Tilson photographed each neon character from “every conceivable angle” under various lighting conditions before drawing and scanning them and researching similar typefaces.

“It became apparent that the design of the neon characters wasn’t an existing typeface, but came from the hand of a neon sign maker. So when I transposed the thin neon tubes into a typeface I kept the short line lengths and what looked like serifs, [but were actually] glass-cased electrodes,” he says.

Rather than create an exact replica of the existing neon sign, Tilson then worked with Haworth Tompkins and the signage firm to create an LED lit channel sign with a red perspex face.

“The original sign was bare neon tubing but it cast a significant glow, which made it appear larger. The new sign when seen from a distance looks almost identical, as the channel sign occupies the same physical space including the neon glow. [The LEDs are] a greener choice with lower operating costs,” he explains.

Keen to ensure the character of each letter would be preserved in the large-scale design, Tilson used cardboard prototypes and life sized print outs to determine final line widths and proportions.

“A full scale working prototype was made of the “e” to test onsite,” he explains. “From the bar and balcony (see above) the back of the sign would be visible so an extra element was added – a character, matching the old neon typeface, was cut out in holes to reflect red light back into the building…the reflection in the glass behind is of the old sign, a thin neon line,” he adds.

The new typeface has also been used inside the building, including the theatre’s basement bistro, and the glowing ‘e’ appears on labels for Liverpool Organic Everyman Ale, says Tilson.

The project is one of several collaborations between Tilson and Haworth Tompkins: he was also commissioned to create external signage for Battersea Arts Centre and is currently working on signage and way finding for the National Theatre.

Tilson used a stencil typeface to create BAC’s glass signage (above). He also worked with the centre to create a new logo, visual identity and internal signs inspired by the different architectural styles around the building. The sign for the grand hall, for example, is inspired by the frieze around the dome above it, while existing toilet signs have been retained.

“The main reason for creating different signs…was to reflect the way Battersea Arts Centre use their spaces for performance,” explains Tilson.

“As well as rooms they’ll use corridors, staircases and the surrounding streets as part of a performance. In many cases the rooms bare their original names, such as Council Chamber, Town Clerk’s Room, Porter’s Mess – so a generic design seemed inappropriate.

“I wanted to add to this sense of fiction and theatre, as if the building had been abandoned and taken over by a theatrical group. There were five styles of sign added to the existing signage that we left in place,” he adds.

National Theatre signage is a work in progress, but will be inspired by the original steel signs designed by Ken Briggs, who passed away last year. Tilson trawled the National Theatre’s archives in South London and has photographed and collated boxes of old signage as well as correspondence between the sign manufacturers and architect, Denys Lasdun.

“It’s a huge project: [we’re] re-designing the internal way finding, place naming, amenities and back of house signage and adding external signage to the building for the first time,” says Tilson.

“Both the Everyman and the National Theatre signage projects are as much about stewardship as they are about design. It’s not a piece of conservation, it’s more about preserving visual spirit,” he adds.

See more images of Tilson’s work on his website.

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Mar 13

Ken Sequin’s Polish Adventure

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Showing at the Kemistry Gallery in London is an enticing display of Polish posters from the 1960s. The collection belongs to designer and artist Ken Sequin, who acquired the works in 1964 having secured £200 for a student research trip to eastern Europe…

Sequin went to Poland and on to Czechoslovakia using a travelling scholarship from the Royal College of Art, as he explains in the booklet that accompanies the Kemistry show, which is on until March 22.

Franciszek Starowieyski, Heatwave

F. Trokowski, The Quest for Green Metal, theatre production

As a third year student his intention was to research the animators and poster designers, such as Andrzej Wajda and Jan Lenica, whose work had fascinated him while studying in London.

Having bought a camera, Sequin reckoned he had enough money for a three week trip. He caught a ferry to the Hook of Holland and from there travelled by train to Berlin and then on to Warsaw where he arrived during celebrations for the 20th anniversary of Polish Socialism.

Marian Stachurski, The Man from the First Century, Czech film

Jan Mlodozeniec, 20 Years of the Polish Arena, pageant

While attempting to meet his idols proved fruitless, Sequin did manage to get his hands on a selection of posters from Warsaw’s poster shop – along with a handful of editions from the basement archives of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Prague.

His haul included work by Lenica, Roman Cieslewicz, Waldemar Swierzy and rare posters by two of the most prolific female designers from the period, Liliana Baczewska and Anna Huskowska.

All the posters made it back to London and were either kept in storage or on display in Sequin’s flat. When he later moved north to take up a teaching post in Yorkshire, the posters formed a single exhibition at the college. Sequin returned to London in the 1990s and now in fact lives very close to the Kemistry Gallery.

So this is the first outing that his collection has had for a long time – and it is well worth a visit.

Jerzy Flisak, Where is the General, film comedy

A special mention must also be made of the way that the gallery has framed Sequin’s collection. While the technique, sandwiching the fragile printed works between two panes of glass, isn’t new, it certainly works beautifully here – suspending the fraying paper towards the ‘front’ of the frame so that visitors can get a closer look at all the detail and colour.

Ken Sequin’s Polish Adventure is at the Kemistry Gallery in east London EC2A 3PD until March 22. More details at kemistrygallery.co.uk. Mike Dempsey’s blog contains a good selection of Sequin’s own design and illustration work for Corgi and Penguin, among others – see mikedempsey.typepad.com.

Franciszek Starowieyski, Thérèse Desqueyroux, French film

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Mar 12

Bridgeman Studio Award: Bring us joy!

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CR has partnered with Bridgeman Studio, a new online platform representing contemporary artists, to launch the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014. You could win £500 and a year’s subscription to Bridgeman Studio offering professional representation for your work. Just show us what ‘joy’ means to you

Bridgeman Studio is a new Image licensing and managing platform for contemporary artists, including illustrators and photographers, offering copyright clearance, reproduction and marketing services for your images.

CR has partnered with Bridgeman Studio on the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014. The idea is to uncover emerging creative talent who might benefit from the services Bridgeman can offer.

We want to see your images representing the theme of Joy.

To enter, submit up to five single pieces of original artwork on the theme of joy, which will be assessed on their ability to be licensed on all three of the following products:

Book Cover • CD/Album Artwork • Standalone piece of art

Deadline: May 20. Send entries to competition@bridgemanstudio.com

 

Prizes

Our winner will receive: £500, the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014 Certificate/Award, and a one-year free subscription to the Bridgeman Studio portal.

Five runners-up will each be given a free one-year subscription on Bridgeman Studio or £100 (at Bridgeman discretion to decide which)

The judging panel will consist of the Bridgeman Studio manager / CEO, a Creative Review representative and an industry professional from either publishing, art, design or music.

Results will be announced in the CR’s July Issue and across all Bridgeman social channels, website and newsletter.

This is your chance to get professional representation for your work. Good luck

 

Details

• Maximum of 5 entries per artist.
• All artwork entered into the competition remains 100% copyright of the artist.
• All artwork can be used in marketing and advertising the competition from Bridgeman and third parties (Creative Review) .
• Entrants must give permission for their names and photographs to be used for publicity.
• The entry can be photography, illustration, digital art or fine art.
• All artwork must be 100% original copyright owned by the artist and not use any third party copyright material.
• Entries must be supplied as two files, one high resolution .jpeg sized between 3MB and 5MB, and one low resolution version, sized between 250KB and 500KB
• By submitting an entry, each entrant agrees to these terms and conditions

Entries/queries to: competition@bridgemanstudio.com

 

Further details here

 

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Mar 07

Buy fonts, save lives

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Haymarket creative director Paul Harpin has teamed up with Typespec to launch a campaign selling fonts in aid of Cancer Research UK and MacMillan Cancer Support.

Buy Fonts Save Lives is selling three fonts through typespec.co.uk – one designed by Harpin, another by Matt Willey and one created by Paul Hickson and commissioned by Haymarket for its founder, Lord Heseltine. Proceeds from each will be donated to the cancer charities and Harpin says other designers will also be taking part.

Harpin decided to launch the project after the death of his 26-year-old niece Laura and has spent 14 months creating a type family named after her. Available in four styles and 12 weights, Laura is Harpin’s first font, but he has been making hand lettering for children’s books since around 2010.

 

 

“My old bosses John Miles and Colin Banks told me that type design was the holy grail of communications and I know they were right,” he says. “My niece would have laughed, if she realised that her name has the most difficult kerning problem: an L followed by an A,” he adds.

To make Laura, Harpin cut letters out of A4 paper before scanning and tracing them in Illustrator and using Fontographer. He was helped by Paul Hickson, Eichi Kono and Typespec founder Joe Graham, whose brother passed away aged 34.

 

 

“Paul kindly helped with the dark arts of kerning and metric. Joe…has done a thorough check and helped with hinting, and I realise now that I should have used Font Lab. I had done all 5,142 drawings for the weights and Joe and Paul told me that if I did 192 more that they, with Font Labs, could help make it Pan European,” he explains. “I learnt so much…and feel I have found a secret art,” he adds.

Heseltine’s font is available in two styles, text and titling, and was produced as a gift from Haymarket Media to Heseltine on his 75th birthday. It was recently updated for his 80th to include italics.

 

 

 

 

Willey’s contribution, Mfred, was originally drawn for Elephant magazine and has since been used in Port and the US edition of Wired. Henrik Kubel at A-2 Type assisted with the design, and Willey donated the font in honour of his father, Nick.

 

 

 

Harpin says the team are looking to raise as much money as possible, and two more typefaces have since been donated. To buy a font, visit typespec.co.uk/buyfontssavelives. To donate one, contact  paul.harpin@haymarket.com or joe@typespec.co.uk

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Mar 05

Four fonts walk into a bar…

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Illustrator Andy Smith has created a range of joke-themed prints, books and coasters for a new solo show at Bristol’s Soma Gallery.

Smith has worked on campaigns for Cadbury, Sony, Orange, Penguin and the Guardian and specialises in cheerful typographic illustrations with a hand drawn feel. He came up with the idea for his latest exhibition while designing the cover of a children’s joke book for MacMillan.

“Flicking through all these cheesy puns and one liners, it occurred to me that they’d make great prints – I really like the way they are very sharp and succinct in their delivery and how they play with words,” he says.

“I’ve tried to use old ones that we’ve all heard before and that are familiar to us. Even though they are obvious, it’s difficult not to smile a little,” he adds.

Most of the works on display are available to buy at Soma Gallery’s online shop – including a set of coasters featuring a range of ‘walked in to a bar’ jokes.

The show is open until April 19 at 4 Boyces Avenue, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4AA and you can see more of Smith’s work on his website – or read our post on his previous Soma exhibition, Sunny Side Up, here.

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Mar 04

A poster a day for Earth Hour

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Pentagram, WWF and environmental charity Do the Green Thing have launched a poster campaign to promote Earth Hour on March 29.

Pentagram partners and creatives including Paula Scher, David Shrigley, Quentin Blake, Marion Deuchars and Neville Brody were asked to produce a poster promoting sustainable living. The first designs were unveiled on March 1 and a new one will be released each day until March 29, when people around the world will take part in a ‘lights-out’ event at 8.30pm local time.

The posters encourage taking up simple activities such as walking to work, sharing bathwater and eating seasonal food or less meat (see Rankin’s design, top).

Marion Deuchars

 

Hudson Powell

Pentagram launched a similar campaign last year, with contributions from Olympic logo designer Patrick Cox, illustrator Andrew Rae and photographer Dean Chalkley.

Paula Scher

Harry Pearce

This year, creatives aged between 16 and 25 were also invited to take part (we published a call for entries back in December). Six finalists were offered a session at Pentagram to refine their designs and the overall winner – 22-year-old Rebecca Charlton – was decided by a public vote.

Charlton’s design (above) will be released on the final day of the campaign and will appear at advertising sites around the country. Runners up Matthew Elliot and Jamie Eke’s work will also be featured online.

David Shrigley

Matthew Elliot

Neville Brody

Quentin Blake

Posters are available to buy as an A3 print for £12 and all proceeds will go to Do the Green Thing. You can also see last year’s designs – and follow this month’s new releases – at dothegreenthing.tumblr.com

Phillip Treacy

Vaughan Oliver

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Feb 27

Oliviero Toscani’s ADC speech turned into newsprint

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Last year, photographer and Colors co-founder Oliviero Toscani gave a speech at the 92nd Art Director’s Club festival. The text has now been turned into a newspaper and a series of four typographic posters by illustrator Ben Weeks and Underline Studio…

The paper now forms part of the Art Director’s Club‘s communications for its 93rd awards, which will take place in Miami Beach this April.

To make it, Canadian illustrator Weeks took Toscani’s ‘Creativity = Courage’ speech from 2013 and invited Underline Studio to work on a publication which would be sent out to 2,000 ADC members, and made available online to download.

The four posters are shown here, along with an image of the inside text (above) and also of a single page from the PDF version (bottom of post). Spot illustrations of elements from images Toscani has created in his career feature throughout the newspaper.

The ADC was keen to bring the speech’s theme of to life, says Weeks, and initially the illustrator thought it might be easiest to do so within a gallery space. But print won out and Weeks and Underline also created a series of four type-based posters to go with the newspaper, which were also printed by Newspaper Club.

The team also had a link with Toscani himself which no doubt helped the process along. “One of Underline’s principals, Fidel Pena, used to work at Pentagram with Fernando Gutiérrez on Colors,” Weeks explains. “Toscani had to personally approve our work, so Fidel’s deep intuition about the right tone was a huge help.”

The full text of the speech is here; while the 12 page PDF of the newspaper (one page shown below) is also linked on this page, here.

Design and art direction: Underline Studio; Fidel Pena, Claire Dawson, Emily Tu and Jack Choi. Illustration: Ben Weeks. The editions were printed by Newspaper Club. More on the ADC’s 93rd awards festival at adcawards.org/creativity.

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