the mehallo blog. beta.

As a side project, Irish graphic designers Mark Shanley and Paddy Treacy turned a bunch of client feedback (the bad kind) into a series of posters. They then put them up for sale and ended raising a bunch of money for charity.

Pictured, a few. More here.

Of course, the goal is always to work with clients that know shit. And are willing to go thru a creative process that leads to the best work imaginable. This usually involves understanding that good logos typically involve letterforms (I’ve heard poster #1 before).

Tags: design, exhibitions, typography by steve
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Last week I attended TYPO in San Francisco and noticed that my notebook was full. No room for notes.

My solution was the #typo13 hashtag, Twitter, plus big fingers and cranky iPhone. Everything I attended I tweeted, autocorrect had other ideas, TYPO ended up meaning typo.

Typically if I go on a tweeeeting binge like this, I lose ‘followers’ and get bitched out a bit. Instead I ended up meeting some cool people from around the planet.

Sol Kawage lives in South Tyrol, a ‘german speaking region in northern Italy.’ Her tagline on her Twitter account states: ‘Annoying people since 1980.’

Pics are from her blog, cool holdings of a small Museum of Modern Art in the City of Rovereto. More here and here.

Tags: art, design, design history, education, exhibitions, thoughts, typography by steve
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‘~600 photos, >100 photographers, >40 countries’

New Vintage Digital Vernacular Letters runs thru March 31, 2012. Mota Italic Gallery, Berlin. Details here.

Tags: design, exhibitions, typography by steve
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‘Give a Wall Street banker enough rope and he will hang himself’

The work of Miami-based street artist Above. Video by Peter Vahan and Hermes, location provided via Primary Flight and White Walls Gallery. Article here.

Tags: art, design, exhibitions, typography by steve
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‘It’s a competition to raise awareness amongst the creative community of the power we have to be a force for good.’

Posters from the Good 50×70 Competition.

Found via Robert L. Peters

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The work of Robin Rhode.

Below, image from Rhode’s Variants.

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‘handprinted and unique posters in A0 format, printed and digital invitations and adverts in various Dutch magazines   . . .   woodcut printed.’

E-flyer for Alban Schelbert and Christopher West’s End Exam Show at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. From 2009.

Found via manystuff

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‘Avant-garde German artists were now branded both enemies of the state and a threat to German culture.’

In 1937, the Nazi party hosted ‘Entartete Kunst.’ This traveling exhibition showcased modern art as the work of madmen, ‘degenerates’ out to destroy the world.

Confiscated art – works of Kirchner, Nolde, Beckmann, Ernst, Chagall, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Klee, Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Grosz and many others – filled the show. After, the pieces were either destroyed or auctioned off.

For more about Entartete Kunst, watch David Grubin’s powerful 1993 Degenerate Art documentary here. Read more here and here. The show’s exhibition catalog is posted here.

Art, ideas, original thoughts: All dangerous.

This past weekend I saw a documentary on The Inquisition. Things such as inquisitions, persecutions – Entartete Kunst, McCarthyism – cycle throughout history.

What beliefs, doctrines and laws exist today that limit freedom, individuality and progress?

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Above, artist Sherrie Levine’s Fountain (Buddha) (1996) with Duchamp’s original (1917). From the exhibition, Keeping it Real (2010).

Below, ‘a  personal note from Queen’s Roger Taylor’ (2011).

Roger Taylor: Dear Mr Murdoch

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‘Vorticism was a radical art movement that shone briefly but brightly in the years before and during World War I.’

A few months back, I picked up Black Sparrow Press’ reprints of Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist journal Blast Magazine. Vorticism was the British entry into the realm of modern art.

There were only two issues – which ‘blasted’ old Edwardian forms in favor of the new machine aesthetic that was about to take over the world.

Out with the old, in with the new, as it were.

The two issues of Blast – there were only two – are available for browsing at issuu. Check them out here and here.

I see a connection between Lewis’ work and the original production design of TRON. But that may just be me.

There is also a retrospective now going on at the Tate. Video referencing the work of Vorticist practitioner Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), below.

Tags: art, design, design history, education, exhibitions, illustration, thoughts by steve
2 comments  . . .   

Factory mistakes become art. Curated by Jeremy Hutchison.

Details here.

Found via Gregg Berryman

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