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).

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.

‘~600 photos, >100 photographers, >40 countries’

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

‘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.

Posters from the Good 50×70 Competition.

Found via Robert L. Peters

The work of Robin Rhode.

Below, image from Rhode’s Variants.

‘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

‘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?

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

‘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.

Factory mistakes become art. Curated by Jeremy Hutchison.

Details here.

Found via Gregg Berryman

‘It’s an amalgamation of ‘sign’ (Korean written language) and ‘space’: signs become spaces, and spaces become signs’

The South Korean pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. Designed by Mass Studies. More info here.

Found via Poketo

‘Contemporary artists interpret the iconic Playboy Bunny’

Pictured, detail of Vincent Cacciotti’s ‘Peek-A-Boo’ from Playboy Redux II.

More here.

‘Seven feet tall, weighing 265 pounds, humanoid in appearance, he could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words, smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons and move his head and arms.’

Westinghouse’s Elektro from his appearance at the 1939 World’s Fair.

More info (and construction diagram) here.

Meat Beat Manifesto: I am Electro, feat. Elektro

‘decades worth of the milliner’s designs and to get inside the head behind the hats.’

Fashion blogger Tavi headed to Antwerp in September to review Stephen Jones’ career retrospective exhibition, Accent of Fashion.

Review (with more photos) here. Monograph available here.

‘As in years past, there are No Pants Subway Rides happening in cities around the world on January 9.’

Info above, more detail here.

Found via Shandi Pierzina, who’s organized the Vegas trouser drop

‘In a huge space of 15m in width, fine feathers are blown up by the wind’

The work of Tokujin Yoshioka.

Found via Design Scene

‘The world’s first 4-dimensional experience featuring 3D imagery, digital sound effects and scents from Ralph Lauren fragrances.’

On November 10, Ralph Lauren celebrated the 10 year anniversary of its website with new media ‘feasts’ at its retail flagships in London (above) and New York (below).

‘Making of’ video here.

Found via Jake Favour

‘The installation consists of a paint-bucket and a reversed, continuous world map cut from polyester-coated aluminium.’

This piece by Jørgen Craig Lello and Tobias Arnell illustrate the disconnect. See more of their work here.

Aside from the breasts, ‘Reverse View’ is one of the main images used for The 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Slovenia.

‘We’ll explore the hot button topic of web fonts; antique type and lettering of the textile trade; the typography of Disneyland; making smart fonts even smarter; the influence of Charles Eames; liquid typography; west coast ‘Cholo’ style graffiti; and so much more.’

typecon 2010: babel
Big typography conference next week in Los Angeles. Wood Type preview in Carson today. Designer talks, workshops, dealer room, font makers, stuff.

and me
I’ll be giving my first ever TypeCon talk as part of their Type & Design Education Forum. My title is Tell Lies in the Classroom and Get Away With It. It will be as weird as what I normally do in a classroom.

Promise.

the wind down
I’m also coordinating TypeCon’s after party – Sunday August 22 – at the International Printing Museum in Carson. This great storehouse of vintage type and presses – which I first visited back in 1994 – will be doing live typecasting from period handmolds, running original Linotypes and more.

They also have a working reproduction Gutenberg press – where one can print their own Bible page.

preview
Though TypeCon is next week – the museum is hosting 100 Years of Wood Type TODAY – Saturday August 14, 2010 from 10 am to 4 pm. Not a TypeCon event, but a teaser for what’s coming. If you’re in the area, do check it out. Details here.

News video about the museum below. For more about TypeCon, go here.

The work of Alida Rosie Sayer, now on exhibition in London.

Articles here and here. Blog here.

The great Jennifer Jacobsen has kept me in the loop on this: The Corporate Wrath Art and Poetry Show at the Marco Fuoco Gallery in Sacramento. The show starts at 7 tomorrow night, Saturday July 24, 2010.

Artists featured include Brianna Lea Pruett, Keely Sadira Doran, Sue Dedina, Patrick Drayus, Bari Kenned, Willie, Sir Lucy Foot, Marco Fuoco, Shaw Reed, Gene Avery and more. Spoken word, music, interactive, live art  . . . .

Info here. Facebook page here.

‘Tho all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door, theres no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for.’

Animation by cronogeo, featuring late 1920s woodcuts by ‘image novelist’ Franz Masareel (1889-1972).

Was recently reading about Masareel in David Berona’s beautiful edition, Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels.

Found via Oded Ezer, Belkind Scheps Osnat

Thomas Bernard and Florian Chevillard have invented The Printing Machine.

Presented at the Festival de l’Affiche in Chaumont, France.

It helps if you understand French. If not, that’s okay too.

Found via Monsieur Bandit

Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) opened today at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Show details (and video) here.

Found via Blair Barton

‘Depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world’s oceans every hour. All of the plastic in this image was collected from the Pacific Ocean.’

From Chris Jordan’s Running the Numbers II: Portraits of global mass culture. Details here.

‘if graphic design did not exist, information would suffer, you’d die, and things would be ugly.’

This weekend, my alma mater – San Jose State University – is putting on their 2010 senior graphic design show – with two receptions scheduled.

Tough school. Even Businessweek thinks so – SJSU is one of their top 60 D-Schools worldwide. Always incredible work.

receptions
Friday May 21 and Saturday May 22, 2010 at art ark gallery in San Jose, CA. Details here (click on the people to see their work). Blog here.

Exhibition runs just under a week. Ends Thursday May 27, 2010.

Photos taken April 10, 2010.

‘The Italic Room’ is an installation created by student Linna Xu – shown at the Bauhaus University in Weimar.

Opening April 8, 2010 at the Bayside Church in Granite Bay, CA is ‘From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America,’ an exhibition featuring five pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Also on hand will be some rare Bibles including (reportedly) an original by Gutenberg.

More information here. SacBee article here.

Found via Susan Poirier

One of the coolest printing history finds in the Los Angeles area is The International Printing Museum in Carson.

Tucked away in an industrial section and run by the incredible Mark Barbour, the museum hosts an amazing collection of rare equipment, The Book Arts Institute (Hi Rachelle!), The Wayzgoose Gazette, a gallery, library and more.

And now they have a new RSS-friendly blog-based website – sporting a new logotype (above) created by Gina Pirtle Simpson.

Click on any image to visit the museum’s website/jump.

Museum photographs by April Rocha

‘Canada’s home grown electro kings Holy FUCK lend their funk to this incredible snippet of the digital graffiti out of the olympic village. A huge backlit projection was set up in conjunction with photoshop and given to a group of anti-athletes’

Presented by Chairman Ting and Tangible interaction.

Snag Holy Fuck’s tracks here. MySpace here.

Found via YRB Magazine

Like ripples in a pond.

The legal battle resulting from the 2004 Superbowl Wardrobe Malfunction (above) – which led to rampant censorship across the United States, Howard Stern leaving his radio show and pixelated faces on late night tee vee – is STILL going on.

Read more here.

New work posted, installations and a new shop. Go here.

The photographic work of Daniel Gordon.

Website here. Interview (video) below.

Found via Oded Ezer

Jeanne’s gotten herself hooked on this thing called SuperPoke! Pets.

And she’s turned it into a major playground, building elaborate constructed environments. With pets at the center. Grendl is her dragon. The whole thing has a manga-like feel.

My Valentine from my wife (above) took hours to build and features my absolute favorite food, crab. (It’s a San Francisco thing. And tearing thru all the shells, with one small fork, I consider an art form.) Each black dot is a piece of coal, each white and blue flower carefully placed. See the completed environment (animated) live today by clicking on the image.

Sort of watching from the sidelines, I’ve seen how elaborate this SPP universe has become. I have a few observations:

[1] Just like the real world, SPP has all the personalities one would expect. As users, there are nice people, pet lovers, shy folk, artists, housewives, obsessives, elitists, religious nuts, freaks and the downright sadistic. The users take this stuff really seriously. Like real life.

[2] There’s a Facebook version of the game and a MySpace version. The MySpace version is better.

[3] I had a pet named ‘Baby’ because I clicked on something in Facebook and everything just started happening. Since, Jeanne’s adopted Baby and turned him into a puppy named ‘Steve.’

[4] There’s this thing called playdates. That are really important or something. Personally, I avoid anything that has the term ‘playdates’ in it.

[5] Somewhere along the way, the users know that the original SPP artist is no longer involved. So the newest images they release is seen as ‘not as collectible’ as the older stuff. If, by a small chance the original artist is reading this: You are missed and loved.

[6] Everyone seems to hate the company that owns SPP. It’s sort of a ‘hating the man’ kind of thing.

[7] Building new environments out of odd things is cool. Like taking chili peppers and making a boat out of them.

[8] There’s no way to design your own environments, you have to use the supplied art. So  . . .  lost me right there.

[9] Spite can be a really powerful tool in SPP world. There’s this elitist club called ‘Gifting Nijas’ who don’t give decent gifts and are obsessed with playdates. Kind of reminds me of the Holy Roman Empire. My wife is now running a club that does everything the Gifting Ninjas don’t do. It’s called ‘Decorators Gone Wild.’

[10] If I hear profanity spewing from the other room, I know someone in SPP world is being a weasel. There are a lot of weasels in SPP world.

[11] Everything is traded using coins, though users can buy things with real money. True sport is to not spend real money, just the fake stuff. Facebook banned extra coins or something like that. Now people hate Facebook or something.

[12] It’d be really cool if there were a way to make real money off SPP. The founding company is netting a fortune. Which is probably why they’re hated so much.

You can find my wife’s universe here.

The images in this post are from her scrapbook. Click to jump/view larger.

Happy Valentines Day Jeanne!

It’s a shame that department stores nationwide have mostly converted to printed advertising posters in their store windows. Money’s tight, of course.

In NYC, the window display tradition lives on. Here’s a 2009 gallery of great visuals. Including an SNL 35 year tribute at Barneys.

Found via Ashley Simko

‘with particular emphasis on culture and politics’

Check out the online exhibition of the poster work of Israel-based Guy Saggee.

Graphic designer Danny Gibson doesn’t do things the way he’s supposed to.

And last we spoke, I think he said he’s not even using a computer anymore.

Based out of Kansas City, Danny is a prolific experimenter. Artist. Something like that. Has an eye for composition and his work is fresh, unusual and fun. I’m not even sure how I found him. Few years back, I’d shown his poster work in two local design exhibitions; one group show and a solo show at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center.

danny’s own take
Limited editions is the best way to describe what he does. Low budget, obsessive constructs. Mixed-media would be a good term too – since Danny uses anything he can get his paws on; used paper, envelopes, newspaper, stencils, handlettering, rubber stamps, yarn, hardware products – I’m pretty sure he’s got some rotting food in there too.

putting on a show
For the SFAC show poster (above), I sent Danny an email describing what should be on the poster. My actual email became part of the final product, his cat is at the bottom saying, ‘stop designing and feed me!’

The sheer volume of pieces in the exhibition was staggering, a few hundred framable band and club collateral, CD packaging things. I was glad we had a lot of room. A few months later, ADAC had a slient auction of some of the work. They went for really high prices.

what’s up
Today, Danny’s busy. Many shows.

This month, he has some new self-portraits (below) at a bar. Details (and many more images) here.

He also made band posters out of the self portraits. And made some dinosaurs with fall colors.

Been doing sheep stuff too.

And for fun, Danny entered a poster contest for Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, entry below:

advice to students
Recently, we ended up in a conversation about the expectations of graphic design students. I often talk in my classes about how one has to define their own career, not just expect things to suddenly happen.

He gave me some advice to pass on – for students fresh out of school:

‘it depends on what avenue they wish to sail. if they find themselves disconnected and out of bounds from a typical design job/atmosphere, be the parent of their work and have the means to machete their own path  . . .

‘also keep in mind that from a certain perspective, school isn’t over. whether in a creative area or not, a person should keep filling up their wagon on their walk. just keep in mind it’s not always a cake walk to go solo. be prepared to starve, scrape, work a thousand times harder and more passionate and even sometimes fall out of your own wagon. just be mindful of that machete.’

Follow Danny here. Website here. List of current and upcoming exhibitions here.

‘Transparent plastics and wooden veneers were mixed and colour schemes were limited to tones of pure whites and greys, the only splash of colour being allocated to switches and dials’

Designer Dieter Rams’ work for Braun inspired Jonathan Ive at Apple. And just opened at the London’s Design Museum is a Rams retrospective. Details here.

I finally made it over to the Depero 50 exhibit at the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco. Discovered many of Fortunato Depero’s originals were an interesting mix of ink washes. Above is his view of NYC from 1930. When he finally visited the overgrown metropolis, it wasn’t the Futurist utopia he’d imagined. Also below, the number composition is a sketch for a series of Futurist pillows.

A great exhibition catalog can be had for only 20 bucks – and thanks to the docents for all their help. Show details.

Exhibition ends December 4, 2009.

Composizioni Numeriche, 1927

Campari, 1933

Italia – Guerra, 1916

Plus
Here’s more Depero over at designboom.

”It’s a Haushold word, the Bauhaus, but a misunderstood one. Its influence is all around us, from Ikea furniture to glass skyscrapers, but it is credited – and blamed – for much more than it should be.’ -Candace Jackson, Wall Street Journal

The bauhaus was about advanced thinking in design, and it has its successes and failures. It was a great experiment and it changed the world. Its influence can be seen in everything today.

Workshops for Modernity: Bauhaus 1919-1933 just opened in NYC. And the exhibition is about going beyond the basics, show how far reaching the school actually was.

WSJ article here. Exhibition info here. Catalog here. TIME magazine video here. Show runs thru January 25, 2010.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe armchair, 1927-30

Modernism was optimistic. A utopia for the future! More than just a style to be pillaged. And even if you weren’t able to see Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939 at the Victoria & Albert Museum back in 2006, Marian’s commentary on the show says much. Go here.

Continuing in NYC is Barbara Kruger’s typography-based exhibition about media bombardment, Between Being Born and Dying. Show runs thru November 21. More info here and here.

Found via Michael Martinho

Claudia Pungaru, one of my students, turned me on to the work of Dr. Hyunju Lee. Lee’s work is typographic and she uses the Korean script Hangul as a starting point for expressive interpretations – about Korean life and culture.

Ongoing right now is Typographic Exploration in Hangul: An Exhibition of work by Hyunju Lee and Phil Choo (work pictured above) at the UC Davis Design Museum. In the show, letters evoke emotions – all tied to the tradition and sounds of the Hangul writing system.

For more information about the show, go here. The Design Museum’s site is here.

The museum is open limited hours Monday thru Friday, and on Sunday afternoons. Show ends December 6, 2009.

Image found via design in society

‘Futurism was an international art movement founded in Italy in 1909. It was (and is) a refreshing contrast to the weepy sentimentalism of Romanticism. The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than hypocritically enjoying the modern world’s comforts while loudly denouncing the forces that made them possible. Fearing and attacking technology has become almost second nature to many people today; the Futurist manifestos show us an alternative philosophy. Too bad they were all Fascists.’ -Kim Scarborough’s Guide to Futurism

Parole in Libertà book cover (1932), found via laura@popdesign

This year is the 100th anniversary of F. T. Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (1909) – and San Francisco has celebrations planned October 14th thru 18th.

Titled Metal + Machine + Manifesto = Futurism’s First 100 Years – events include a Fortunato Depero exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute, make your own print of Aldo Palazzeschi’s futurist poem ‘Let me have my fun’ (1910) at The San Francisco Center for the Book, a concert, a Futurist banquet, talks at the SFMOMA and much, much, more.

[1] To start, check out the event list here.

[2] For more about Futurism, visit the Italian Futurism site.

[3] Here’s some Futurist fonts at P22. And the Futurismo soundtrack to go with them.

[4] I’d be lying if I said the Geometrique version of Jeanne Moderno didn’t have Futurist roots. Here’s a direct link to this particular font.

[5] Here’s a post from this very blog, showcasing Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto interpreted as film, and a collection of early avant garde shorts.

Marinetti

[6] And as a kicker  . . .  here’s a cool article comparing Futurism to Punk, by Karen Pinkus.

Futurism was very Italian and over the top. And yeah, too bad they were actually Fascists.

Fortunato Depero, Depero Futurista 1913-1927 (1927)

From Tokyo: Click on the image to watch video/jump.

Found via Twitter.com/rockstaronline

 
Pop-up book master – and paper engineer – David A. Carter has been expanding his art into geometric abstraction.

Inspired by the work of Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Carter’s Red Dot series will be on display at the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville, CA [map]

The opening reception is this weekend: Saturday, September 19th, 2009 from 6:30 – 9 p.m.

Read The Sacramento Bee article here.
Show information here.
Exhibition runs thru January 9, 2010.

Found via Jonathan Weast

The Results Under Action Project. Details here.

from the netherlands
Driver on cocaine + police + high speed chase + corn field = art!

Found via The Daily Mail