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I found these graphic washing machines (below) on the blog at aphic.com, and also over at Print and Pattern. It reminded me that about a year ago I was helping Johnny with a freelance job, and had to make a washing machine in 3D. I must have had some down time, because I started putting patterns on the washing machine and at the time thought I was going mad. Obviously not that mad, because as you can see below, LG and the Designers Guild in the UK have got together and put out this colourful range of white goods. Above are the one's I did. (I got the below image from aphic.com)
Today is World Graphic Design Day - and I celebrated by buying a new font, called 'Kelvar Slab' (which I've used above) from the fantastic design and typography studio 'Letterbox'. They took festivities to a whole new level, by putting a font for sale on eBay. I haven't checked the auction results yet, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes - it's never been done before.
Anyway, it's been fun posting about different designers all week. I've learned heaps and have new found respect for some designers I didn't know much about before. A highlight for me has been Paula Scher's maps. When I've finished my freelance job I might do a map of my daily walks in Bondi. Also next week is Fashion Week in Sydney. Won't be posting every day but will post my favourites.
xxxx
I decided to post on Deanne Cheuk today for a number of reasons. She’s a protégé of David Carson’s, she’s an Australian export, she’s female - and I feel a personal connection to watching her career. It was almost a decade ago that I picked up a copy of MU magazine from my local newsagency and was curious as to who was creating this unusual publication.Since then, she’s risen to stardom, being named one of the top 50 creative minds in the world by Face magazine, as well as many other accolades such as the ‘most influential designer’ by Yen.She started out in the late 90’s in Perth, Australia, where she art directed Mu magazine from her bedroom. She then headed overseas – to New York, working with David Carson, before art directing for Tokion Magazine. She's compiled Neomu, a self published ‘zine’ showcasing creative work from designers and artists - donating profits to charity. Also an illustrator, she contributes to magazines such as Nippon, Vogue, Flaunt, and Dazed and Confused. These days she’s involved in a clothing label called Liness with Rilla Alexander from Rinzen and Yasmin Majidi, a New York fashion designer.Her style has always been experimental, becoming more collage based and illustrative as time goes on. Above are some images of her early design work from MU, and a collage based work from the Liness website. Images of her creative use of typography at Tokion can be seen at Design Sponge.
David Carson is the first of the graphic designers I’ve looked at this week that isn’t formally trained in art or design. He has a sociology degree, during which he did a three-week graphic design course. His career started as a high school teacher, where he experimented with graphics and became part of the underground scene in North Carolina. He then began art directing a skate-boarding magazine, while also working as a professional surfer. His links to the surfing world helped land him an art directing job at the surf magazine Beach Culture. The design was so experimental that many advertisers stopped working with the publication, however his time at the magazine won him over 150 awards in the graphic design community. In 1992 he launched Ray Gun magazine. It’s cutting-edge style attracted public notoriety, with articles on David Carson appearing in Newsweek and New York Times. It can be said that after Ray Gun, design became equal to content in segments of the magazine market.
Since then he has published many books, including ‘The End of Print’, the largest selling book on graphic design. He now runs David Carson Design, which works on photography, film and web based projects with clients such as Nine Inch nails, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Quiksilver, David Byrne and Pepsi. Recent work by David Carson can be seen in the book ‘Trek’ (image above), which is published through Ginko Press.
Images above are from typogabor.com and davidcarsondesign.com
Today I thought I'd post on Neville Brody - one of the 'rock star' designers who we can thank for a creative flare in typography that didn't exist before him. A London designer, he studied at the London College of Communication, and went on to create independent record covers at Fetish Records. He was influenced by rebellious styles of music such as Punk and aesthetically he was drawn to movements such as Da Da and Pop.
His work received a larger audience when he worked as an Art Director at Face, and then Arena magazines in the 80’s. In the late 80’s the book ‘The Graphic Language of Neville Brody’ was published along with an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. From this exposure his client base grew and since then he has worked on major projects in Berlin, Japan and the Netherlands.
He opened Fontworks in the 90’s and became a director of FontShop International, who is responsible for FUSE magazine – a publication dedicated to experimental typography and graphics. He now runs Research Studios which is responsible for FUSE publications and conferences. Designers from Research Studio’s continue to work with exploratory design ideas have opened offices in Paris and Berlin.
After posting on two very neat, minimal designers I decided to add the extremely loud and experimental designer Paula Scher. One of the most well known female graphic designers of our time, she studied at the Tyler School of Art, and has a doctorate degree from the the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She has been art director for Columbia records, designed well known logo's such as Tiffany's and Citibank, and done work for The Public Theater, Target, Bloomberg and the Botanic Garden to name a few. She has received numerous graphic design awards, taught for at the School of Visual Arts for over twenty years, and has work in musuem collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
She is currently a partner at Pentagram, and has been crossing over into fine arts with paintings of huge, colourful maps. (above), exhibited at Maya Stendhal Gallery New York.
Images (above two) from noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com and underconsideration.com. Middle image from mayastendhalgallery.com and
bottom image from expositions.bnf.fr
The internet was down all afternoon Ggrrrrr!!%$#?>*>**!!! so I had to choose my next designer the old fashioned way - from a book!! A jump back in history this time. I looked through a few of my design books and settled on Jan Tschichold from my book "Graphic Design in Germany 1890-1945".
Jan Tschichold (1902 - 1974) did some really important work in both design and the education of design, publishing books such as 'Die neue Typographie' and 'The Form of the Book'. He was a practitioner of Modernist design and his books advocated methods such as the Van de Graaf canon (above), and the Golden Section, (both ways of dividing a page into visually pleasing proportions). A section of Jan Tschichold's historic 'The Form of the Book' can be found here, complete with diagrams.
His most well known work was with Penguin, where managed the redesign of over 500 books, mainly from the Pelican series, leaving behind the 'Penguin Composition Rules'. Ace Jet 170 has a great range of Pelican and Penguin books on display.
Images from wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold, and the book Graphic Design in Germany 1890-1945, University of California Press, 2000, Thames and Hudsonxxxx
I found this beautiful graphic design blog last night. It's really informative and has some gorgeous graphical found objects too: acejet170.typepad.com
xxxx
Derek Birdsall was born in 1934 and remembers as a child he was obsessed with stationery and writing-pads, particularly graph-paper he found at his grandfather's office. A school teacher noticed his beautiful handwriting and recommended him for a three year foundation course in lettering, which he began at age 15. Upon finishing there he began a scholarship course at Central School of Art and Design in London which launched a strong 50 year career, for which he's won a lifetime achievement award for book and magazine design. His most well known works are Penguin book covers and magazine design for historic magazines such as Nova. His signature style is simplicity and clever grid based design, which even today is executed on the standard graph paper he coveted as a child.
Images from the British Library, (www.bl.uk/learning (top), and www.dexigner.com (below).
Today I'll jump to the late 50's early 60's with the iconic design work of Saul Bass. Many of us know his movie posters such as - Anatomy of a Murder, Vertigo, West Side Story and The Man With The Golden Arm. He was born in New York and lived from 1920 - 1996. He spent most of his career working in Hollywood but also did well known logo work for companies such as AT&T. Influence from his graphic style can be seen today, for example the title sequence for the 2002 Speilberg film Catch Me If You Can. Above images from designmueseum.org and allposters.com
It's not a well publicised celebration, but Friday 27th April is World Graphic Design Day. The date was chosen because on this day in 1963, Icograda, the world body for graphic design was founded. There's a gallery on the Icograda website of current design from around the world which is worth checking out.
Leading up to next Friday I thought it would be fun to post images from famous designers. Most will be well known to graphics people, but artist and illustrator friends might find them interesting.
I'll start with FHK Henrion, who was one of the founding members of Icorada. He was a German born designer who studied in Paris and spent most of his career working in France and England. During the 1950's he was an art director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
Images above: 1. Future Magazine (www.rennart.co.uk) 2. Fortune Magazine (www.fulltable.com) 3. Both images 3 & 4 are from www.lwl.org
After being so charmed by the Montessori School cook book (two posts down) I decided to pop my head in and see if they have playgroups for toddlers. Unfortunately they don't take kids until they're 3 years old. Lukas is only 5 months so a while to wait. At the front of the school they had a huge poster of Gandhi, with a nice little quote from him. Rather than creeping around the school taking photographs I did my own drawing of Gandhi and added the same quote.
Cute stuff for little kids. xxxx
After reading about the Chicken and Coca-Cola recipe (post below), I got a bit obsessed and searched for other Coke flavoured dishes. I found these and was quite inspired:
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COKE and KETCHUP SPARERIBS
2 to 3 lbs. country style spareribs (pork), fresh or frozen
1 cup ketchup
1 cup coke
Combine ketchup and cola. Place ribs in crock pot. Pour mixture over ribs. Cook 2 hours on high and at least 2 hours on low. May cook for several hours on low. Baste occasionally if desired. Serve with a side dish of cauliflower in cheese sauce.
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MICROWAVE COCA-COLA CAKE
Cooking time 11 minutes. Utensils, 11 x 7 inch glass dish, 4 cup and 2 cup glass measuring cups. 2 c. sugar 1 c. miniature marshmallows 1/2 c. Crisco 3/4 c. Coke 3 tbsp. cocoa 1/2 c. buttermilk 1 tsp. baking soda 2 eggs, beaten Mix flour and sugar together. Stir in marshmallows. Set aside. In a 2 cup glass measuring cup, put Crisco, Coke, and cocoa. Heat in microwave until Crisco melts, about 2 minutes. Pour over flour mixture. Stir in buttermilk, soda, and eggs. Pour into greased glass dish. Cook on high for 11 minutes. Turn dish every 3 minutes.
COCA-COLA FROSTING
6 tbsp. Margarine
3 tbsp. Cocoa
6 tbsp. Coke
2/3 box powdered sugar
1 c. (or more) broken pecans
Mix margarine, cocoa, and Coke in 4 cup glass measuring cup. Bring to a boil in microwave. Boil for 1 1/2 minutes. Pour cocoa mixture over powdered sugar; add pecans and mix well. Frost cake while hot. Decorate top with pecan halves.
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My grandmother would have loved these meals. I'm not joking but she drank only Coke, (she kept a case under her bed) and ate only meat and potatoes - no vegetables at all. The weirdest thing is that she outlived most of her healthy friends. Dinner party anyone? Above image from posterclassics.com
Look at this gorgeous star patterned dress by Biba from this spring's runway show (image from Style.com). They have the best logo, a beautiful website, and the most incredible history. The original Biba began in 1964 as a fashion boutique in Kensington, London and by the 70's grew to be a department store that was frequented by the likes of Freddy Mercury, Brigitte Bardot, Princess Anne, Twiggy, the Jaggers and David Bowie. It housed a tea room, the Rainbow Room where bands played and roof gardens, that according to the website, was home to 'a menagerie of birds, including ducks, doves, flamingos and penguins.' What a pity it closed in 1975 and why can't all retail be like Biba! These days it's fashion label that pays homage to it's heyday. Here's a couple of images from it's past:
While I'm having so much fun with patterns I thought I'd do another one and put in on a t-shirt template. I'm also getting obsessed with the colour yellow and purple. I might have to move on from there soon.
Today I went and got a copy of Italian Vogue that has a special edition booklet that showcasing the spring runway shows of Milan, Paris, New York and London. I got it specifically to look at the patterns. Here's a couple of my favourite's from the Chloe show. Images are from style.com
Mum subscribes to Modern Painters magazine and passes them on to me once she's read them. An article in the February 2007 issue describes an exhibition at the Pinaakothek Der Modern, Munich, called 'The Poetry of Architecture'. It's about writers and poets who create fictitious architecture, and, in turn architects who are influenced by the work of writers. It showcases sketches, film, paintings and book illustrations by writers such as Flaubert, Tolkien, Kafka, Grass and many more.
The above image is by the writer Anna Seghers called 'Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves', 1925.
I thought I'd post a 3D version of this, then I promise I'll leave these spikey images alone for ever.
I decided before moving on to the next arbitrary drawing that I should give the puffer-fish shape some personality. Amazing what two eyes and a pair of lips can do....
I did this drawing through the week. I was gonna add eyes and fins to make the spikey thing a puffer-fish, but I thought it looked better just as a shape.
I've always been a huge fan of Yayoi Kusama, so I was really excited when I saw these images from her 'KUSAMATRIX' exhibition at the Mori Art Musuem, Tokoyo, 2004. These cute dolls she's made seem to have the same fashion sense as the 3D girls I made (two posts down). I reckon they could share clothes!!
I got the images from a book called 'Drop Dead Cute', Chronical Books, 2005
Easter this weekend. Yay! Good chance to eat lots of chocolate.
Looking at all these Harajuku images reminds me of the 3D girls I made over a year ago. It's a good reminder to make some more to add to the collection. Perhaps some little boys could be cute, especially now that I have a real life one to get inspired by. xxxxx
