Hasta La Ideas

In a neat twist on Ikea’s space-saving appeal, German agency Thjnk Hamburg has created a billboard ad which displays three different headlines thanks to the use of coloured bulbs

As this film explains, the billboard’s three headlines are printed in different colours which are switched ‘on’ and ‘off’ using coloured bulbs attached to the top of the poster site:

<object width=”560″ height=”315″><param name=”movie” value=”//www.youtube.com/v/DzmTv3DruQ4?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”//www.youtube.com/v/DzmTv3DruQ4?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”560″ height=”315″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

A very neat and appropriate idea which also gives us the chance to feature once again a project that has generated more page views than anything else featured on the CR Blog over the years – the RGB wallpaper by Italian studio Carnovsky which revealed different paterns depending on the colour of light shone on it

see the full post here (if you haven’t already)

Ikea credits
Agency: Thjnk Hamburg
Client: IKEA Germany
Executive Creative Director: Armin Jochum
Executive Creative Director: Bettina Olf
Creative Director: Georg Baur
Creative Director: Torben Otten
Art Director: David Lasar
Art Director: Nicolas Schmidt-Fitzner
Production Company: I Made This
Director: Dominic Repenning

For GraphicDesign&’s latest book, Golden Meaning, 55 creatives were asked to interpret mathematical concept the golden ratio. Responses include some witty and inventive work exploring how graphics can be used to convey complex or abstract theories…

Golden Meaning is the second release from GraphicDesign&, a publishing venture set up by Lucienne Roberts and Rebecca Wright. The first, Page 1, featured 70 designers’ interpretations of the first page from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and offered a look at the effects of typography on reader experience (you can read our blog post on it here).

The golden ratio – also known as the golden mean or divine proportion – was first studied in Ancient Greece and has been used for centuries by artists, architects and even composers to create work with harmonious proportions. Contributors to the Golden Meaning were asked to create work based on this theory and have produced illustrations, mnemonics, typefaces and interactive software.

Malika Favre created a silhouette of a woman using a golden ratio grid (above), while Bibliotheque devised a mnemonic to help people remember the golden ratio as an angle:

Oli Kellett doctored a portrait of himself in accordance with a template devised by a retired US surgeon that uses the golden ratio to determine how a beautiful face should look:

Other designs consider how the golden ratio relates to our everyday surroundings – such as Mark Hudson’s, which compares the proportions of everyday objects, from a Mars Bar to a pack of playing cards.

And some involved a creative approach to coding: Face37’s Rick Banks and Tom Duncalf used Processing and the Fibonacci code to generate a typeface, and Sennep used coding to create a visualisation examining the relationship between the Fibonacci code, the golden ratio and the patterns on the head of a sunflower:

Not all of the works are entirely mathematically accurate but each presents a thoughtful, creative way of visualising a complicated theory. By choosing contributors from a range of countries, disciplines and age groups, Roberts and Wright have compiled a diverse collection that challenges traditional notions of how we can visually convey abstract ideas.

Illustration by Rose Blake highlighting the short period of time when the height of a parent and their child equals the golden ratio.

Julia’s submission, which matches numbers in the Fibonacci sequence to words in the Oxford English Dictionary.

“We invited contributions in batches,” says Roberts. “This allowed us to see how the book was progressing and ensure we had a real mix of work.

“We were keen to include illustrators, who are lateral thinkers by trade, but we also wanted plenty of contributions from typographers and some from creatives with a more mathematical or scientific background, such as The Luxury of Protest [which specialises in data visualisation],” she adds.

George Hardie chose to represent the golden ratio using wine.

The book was compiled with help from Guardian blogger and mathmetician Alex Bellos, who suggested using the golden ratio as the key concept.

“We  discussed a few options with Alex and thought this was a fitting choice, as it’s often associated with aesthetics and creating things of beauty,” explains Roberts. As Roberts points out, the standard dimensions of a paperback also use the golden ratio – something Erik Spiekermann addressed in GraphicDesign&’s first title.

Homework drew a ‘golden ass’…

As well as providing an interesting read for designers and mathmeticians, Roberts hopes the book will help make maths more accessible.

“As with all GraphicDesign& projects, our ambition was to show how the knowledge and practice of graphic designers, typographers and image-makers is uniquely capable of shedding light on ideas,” explain Roberts and Wright in their introduction to the book.

The pair are already working on a third title about religion, and hope to release a range of books marrying design with a range of subjects.

And Jessica Nesbeth used hair to illustrate the golden mean.

Golden Meaning is available to buy now at graphicdesignand.com at an introductory price of £15.

Roberts, Wright, Bello and selected contributors will also be discussing the project at London’s Design Museum on Wednesday, February 26 – see designmuseum.org for details or to book tickets.

Typeface by Adrian Talbot, made using golden ratio proportions..

A new exhibition at Zürich’s Museum for Design showcases more than six decades of Japanese poster art, exploring changing aesthetics and attitudes towards the medium…

Japanese Poster Artists – Cherry Blossom and Asceticism includes more than 130 posters dating from the 1950s to the present day. These works are also featured in accompanying book Japan – Nippon; the latest addition to Lars Müller Publishers’ poster collections.

As the book and show explain, the poster’s role in Japan’s visual culture has changed significantly since the Second World War. In the 1950s and 60s, the Japan Advertising Annual Club – the country’s first association of graphic designers – held annual exhibitions of hand drawn and painted designs inspired by modernist ideals, which won international awards and recognition.

Rapid economic development in the 1960s led to the introduction of new printing techniques, and an increase in the quality and quantity of posters being produced. In an essay for the book, Kiyonori Muroga cites Yusaku Kamekura’s work (above) for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo as a milestone in Japanese graphic design, “as it represented the intense visual impact achieved by art direction and well-executed typography, rather than pictorial graphic design.

“The poster was the most authentic and successful “advertising” for the national event, though the total design for the Olympic Games — including the pictograms — were recognised as a monumental achievement of, and an effort realised through, modern graphic design,” notes Muroga.

In the decade that followed, designers also embraced silk screen printing, creating limited editions works for artists, musicians and cultural venues and re-defining the poster as an autonomous artwork instead of a vehicle for advertising. “The development of posters sold upon their own inherent merit “generated a wave of public astonishment and fascination…helped along by the advent and quick ascension of the psychedelic poster spawned by the American Hippie counter/subculture,” explains Muroga.

A consumerist boom in the 1980s saw another new wave of designs, where fashion brands, photographers and artists collaborated on experimental artwork and many designers employed “allusive image-based pseudo-narratives” in their posters.

Posters from these decades have since become sought after collectors’ items in Europe and the west, and now feature in many foreign museum archives. In her introduction to Japan – Nippon, Bettina Richter says this probably due to their conceptual, experimental style and exoticism.

“These artworks possess an unusual visual aesthetic that is utterly captivating, and yet seems to refute all the conventional rules of visual communication…What is actually being advertised is often unclear, and the Japanese poster tends to be viewed instead as a visual embodiment of philosophical ideas of the Far East,” she says.

Today, however, Richter and Muroga say the poster no longer holds the same prestige or prominence in Japanese visual culture.

“The Japanese poster scene seems to be at a standstill. The same designers who invigorated the format generations ago now make “artistic” posters detached from any criticality in terms of content or subject….the “old masters” of the Japanese poster tradition, individuals with established reputations, dominate both poster competitions and commissions, while younger unproven designers have little opportunity and much less interest in the making of posters,” she says.

The allure of the poster may be fading in Japan but as the book and exhibition demonstrate, it’s a format that should be cherished. The range of artistic styles on show is astonishing, and the collection includes some beautiful, intriguing and innovative designs.

Japanese Poster Artists – Cherry Blossom and Asceticism is open at Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich until 25 May. For details, see museum-gestaltung.ch. Poster Collection 26: Japan – Nippon is published by Lars Müller Publishers and priced at £24.00. For details or to buy a copy, click here.

Photo (top) by Regula Bearth, ©ZHdK

Each February since 2005 Marian Bantjes has sent out handmade Valentine’s gifts. This year, she posted a series of rather unusual letters – ones originally sent to the actor Robert Wagner in the late 1950s…

Two letters turned up at CR this week, postmarked ‘Canada’. Inside both were envelopes containing other letters; both of them were addressed to Robert Wagner. These had postmarks from Santa Fe in Argentina and Mandaluyong in the Philippines and were dated – four days apart in fact – June 1957. What was going on?

After turning the letter around and studying the envelope things became a bit clearer: a red “Timeless Love” was stamped on the paper and “Marian” was handwritten alongside. The stamp, I realised, was in the shape of a fan.

Over the years, artist and designer Bantjes’ Valentine’s Day efforts have included sending out artworks printed on ‘glassine’ (2005); making 150 hand-drawn hearts (2007) and 300 names made out of a heart-shaped alphabet (2008). In 2009 she mailed out ‘found’ fragments of hand-written love letters; the following year it was used Christmas cards laser-cut into intricate, lace-like hearts.

As unconventional as this year’s approach was, it did get me thinking. Had these letters ever reached the actor, who at the time they’d been sent had just appeared in The True Story of Jesse James (he was 26 then). Or had the letters at least reached someone who looked after his fan mail? (One has an officious ‘Not at MGM Studios’ stamp on it). If so, did the senders – Viviana and Conchita – ever receive their signed photos?

That we had two letters, posted from opposite sides of the world, made me think that someone who worked for him had kept them.

Twitter confirmed that the actor was the link in Bantjes’ latest project: there were Instagrams and Twitpics of letters from Germany and South Africa, each one sent to Wagner. Scrolling the tweets also made me think how relatively easy it was to send a message to someone famous these days. Do people even still write letters to film stars?

This is the 10th year Bantjes has been sending out her Valentine’s gifts; Wagner’s 84th birthday was February 10. Coincidence? Only the sender can say. Either way, it was a nice surprise to receive a hand-written letter – a very rare thing these days. Even if the letter wasn’t originally meant for me.

All of Marian Bantjes’ Valentine’s projects are collected on this page at bantjes.com.

Via eBay

Visitors to Showroom, the University of the Arts London’s gallery space, are now safely guided into the site thanks to a painterly neon sign created by Alphabetical studio…

Last year UAL converted the ground floor of its Holborn headquarters into a new exhibition space but soon after its launch, says Alphabetical’s Tommy Taylor, the gallery realised visitors were having trouble locating the entrance.

Alphabetical’s brief was to create a piece of signage that was also a piece of art. “Something that could appear in the window functioning as a directional aid but also be a creative piece in its own right,” says Taylor.

“Taking inspiration from the themes and artistic mediums regularly appearing in the arts space, we had the idea of bringing paint to life,” he says. “We fabricated a glowing neon paint drip to spell out the way to the gallery entrance to all who passed by.”

See alphabeticalstudio.com and arts.ac.uk/about-ual/ual-showroom.