the mehallo blog. beta.

Edward Johnston (1872-1944) developed the ‘look’ of the London Underground – thru type and image.

These are snaps of the work of student Grady Fike. Grady spent eleven weeks jumping thru many hoops in my experimental typography course at The Art Institute of California Sacramento.

For the class, I’ve set up an evolving work process – where students are assigned a ‘famous typographer’ (one that I pick, so they have to work within these limitations) and interpret their work thru both loose and strict design iterations.

It’s similar to Project Runway, but for much of it, students often only have about an hour to produce their work. And based on the outcome, their solutions dictate what the next homework assignment will be. It’s all very fluid. [Read more →]

Tags: design, design history, education, illustration, typography by steve
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One of the first modern icons of the 20th century, The London Underground’s ‘bullseye’ passed the 100 year mark recently – and to celebrate, 100 artists were brought in to interpret the symbol and its legacy. [Read more →]

Tags: art, design, design history, education, illustration by steve
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Theatrical trailer for Fuel, ‘The unofficial sequel to ‘An Inconvenient Truth.”

Found via Chelsea Wolfe

Tags: education by steve
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Student-made trailer for a mock exhibition at the MoMA. Featuring Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.

Tags: design history, education by steve
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The Sacramento International Film and Music Festival is underway – and this Friday night, my students’ type film (above) will be shown as part of the Art Institute’s Student Showcase, 6 p.m., July 30 at The Crest.

Festival details here.

Official It’s Typography website here.

Tags: design history, education, events, fonts, typography by steve
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‘The pairing and combining of different typefaces has always been a particular graphic design challenge  . . .  Emigre has its own take on this typographic technique. But instead of providing rules, which often render safe but bland results, we believe that ultimately any font can be successfully combined with any other font. It’s not so much a matter of which font combinations to pick, it’s a matter of how you use the fonts in combination.’

The latest Emigre font catalog – Historia – is a bit like an old issue of Emigre magazine. Strong concept, interesting point of view, wonderfully designed.

The 64-page specimen highlights battlefield locations of the Mexican-American war, 1846-48; specifically, the battles that took place in what is now California. [Read more →]

Tags: cool finds, education, fonts, typography by steve
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‘the stuff we’re really made of’

King Corn (2007) is a look at the very, very powerful corn industry in the United States. And how corn is in EVERYthing.

Trailer above, watch the entire film via iTunes.

Official site here. And here’s a previous post on the subject.

Found via Shandi Pierzina

Tags: cool finds, education by steve
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‘For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong – and how we can fix it.’

Great article in Newsweek. Read it here.

I have my own take, which has to do with how difficult it actually is to be creative. How society does its best to discourage and strip creativity from us so we can be good worker bees. Sit down, shut up and do your job.

what is creativity
As the article mentions: ‘To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).’

Today, divergent thinking is often discouraged – but if it does take place, it can be so divergent, it can’t be implemented as a convergent – or coherent – plan.

And at the college level, I’m at ground zero teaching this stuff.

Sometimes it creates wonders, sometimes it only goes halfway. Other times, it’s so frightening to attempt something new  . . .  creativity finds itself at a standstill. The work veers back into mediocrity. Because that’s safe.

Pictured above: The incredible work of Graham Roumieu, visit his portfolio site here. Twas more creative than the trite crayon flag that came with the Newsweek article. Found via swissmiss. Article found via Adam Helweh.

Tags: art, cool finds, design, education, thoughts by steve
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‘The 40-hour workweek was born in the industrial age, when people made widgets in factories. The modern world is a much different place than the one we used to work in, and smart individuals are discovering that time doesn’t equal productivity.’ -Everett Bogue

Was in the North Bay recently and picked up a copy of the North Bay Bohemian. Great article by Leilani Clark on simplifying one’s life.

Read it here.

Resources mentioned include NEF’s 21 hours report, the books Plenitude: The New Economics of Truth Wealth by Juliet Schor, The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and blogs by Tammy Strobel and Everett Bogue – plus Shareable.net.

Above: Illustration by Yamauchi Kazuaki; which had nothing to do with the article, just liked it a tad better than the stock image they posted. Found via Pomegranita.

Tags: cool finds, education, thoughts by steve
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‘Renowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and director Luc Besson just released ‘Home’ – a documentary on climate change  . . .’ –Cult of Green

Narrated by Glen Close. Beautiful cinematography, like one of those 365 earth from above books. Shocking statistics, good solutions. Entire film available free on YouTube.

Click the above image to watch/jump.

Official website here. Watch it as a double feature with Avatar and this little ditty.

Tags: education, photography by steve
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Graphic by GraphJam.

Found via Shandi Pierzina

Tags: design, education by steve
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