Blue Lights
Covers for Kenny Burrell’s Blue Lights. Reid Miles, design; Andy Warhol, illustration. Blue Note Records, 1958.
Just because.
entries Tagged as [illustration]
Sunday Rock, analog Cyrillic
‘Specialization of our school is contemporary music teaching for kids and teenagers’
Modern Dog recently created this poster for Sunday Rock, a music school in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
And I provided Robynne and Co. some quick Cyrillic type the old fashioned way: Scanned in from early 20th Century sources, pieced together letter by letter.
Four different scripts combined to have similar weight, rough edges, heavy caps. I’ve been doing a bunch of work this way lately – sometimes one has to go back to basics.
And on weathered days (like today) vinyl sounds better than digital.
Born, Raised, David A. Smith and John Mayer
‘David A. Smith is a traditional sign-writer/designer specialising in high-quality ornamental hand-crafted reverse glass signs and decorative silvered and gilded mirrors. David recently produced a wonderful turn-of-the-century, trade-card styled album cover for popular American singer/songwriter John Mayer.’
More on David A. Smith here.
Monty Python moves
‘The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn’t really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use.’
Terry Gilliam on animation. From 1974.
Found via Cartoon Brew
She said
‘The very first rock and roll Music Video. A stop motion film of the Beatles singing ‘I Feel Fine’ drawn by Stephen Verona and hand colored by Verona and John Lennon’
Modern Dog takes on Disney, Target: and needs your help!
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years. –Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Years ago I knew a head general counsel who worked for a legal department for a rather large corporation.
When it came to lawsuits, he explained to me that their approach was they ‘never settled’ and ‘would use all of our resources – millions of dollars at our disposal’ to fight any suit that came in. Whether they were right or wrong. “If they’re going to go up against us, that’s what they’re going to get.’
Years later I sat in on a ‘business ethics’ class where this ethic was explained in detail: ‘it is okay to destroy the competition. That’s good business ethics.’ And throw in that businesses today operate to ‘keep shareholders happy’ over everything else – we live in a very frightening world. One that squashes innovation and creativity in favor of ‘good competition.’
Good competition is fantastic – when the tables are ‘fair and balanced,’ a term – even today – that’s not used for what it actually means. There’s a lot we CAN be doing as a race – in terms of social, political and humanitarian causes – but we don’t. There’s a great scene in An Inconvenient Truth where Al Gore points to an illustration of a pot of gold. It’s our motivation. It’s what we live for. A pot of gold. A shiny pot of gold we can hide from others, shower with, rub on our bodies if it makes us feel better.
the battle
Right now there’s a David v. Goliath lawsuit going on. It seems simple open and shut: Large corporations profit from stolen artwork. So artists who created artwork get a lawyer and take on the corporations.
In this situation, the corporations are our darlings: The fantastically wonderful Disney and the ‘god I love what they do for design’ Target. And I spent an afternoon recently going thru the case files – which are posted at Friends of Modern Dog – and to me it seems it’s another bury the little guy response.
You’d think it would be Urban Outfitters doing this – it IS their modis operandi – but no. It appeares Disney and Target are poised to destroy Seattle’s very own Modern Dog.
Ashamed is not a word I use much. Though I think it applies here: BOTH Disney and Target should be ashamed. They are BOTH corporations that benefit from creative innovation. BOTH should be working WITH Modern Dog, not – as this lawsuit seems to be doing – putting them out of business . . . [Read more →]
Roman Cieślewicz, graphic designer
‘Cieślewicz always compared himself to a journalist; but he referred to himself as a visual journalist. So Graphic designer, as a profession, is very close to that of journalism; except that it is about articulating clear ideas through the justaposition of imagery and layout – it’s a question of wanting to say something.’ –Professor Andrezej Klimowski, Royal College of Art
Above, a BBC overview of the work of Roman Cieślewicz (1930–96), which was part of a retrospective this summer at the Royal College of Art in London.
Click image to view video/jump.
Found via BBC News
Graphic design: Training one’s eye
Still from Ingre Druckrey: Teaching to See
As an educator, I’ve broken graphic design into three components: Message, Typography, Layout.
I’m not the first educator to do this – just happened to constantly notice these three elements staring back at me in all the student pieces I evaluate. In my opinion, careful appreciation, understanding and implementation of the three can lead to beautiful work.
message
Graphic design is a communication field, so Message should always drive the project. Today we are bombarded by thousands of Messages on a daily basis, so being on Message is critical. And yes, this usually involves language and writing – which is why I love when students take their written studies seriously.
typography
I’ve seen an (often not cited/supported) statistic that graphic design is 95% typography. Scientific or not, I agree with this. Type is important. I like comparing the exploration of lettering to that of music – there’s enough complexity for it to become a lifetime endeavor. And most of what I teach is type, from multiple angles.
form
Graphic designers are taught to use grids for layout – though relying on ‘grid’ as a catch all way of handling form can be misleading. Grids provide support, a fallback position for dealing with massive amounts of information. Though important, grids have their limitations. Building structure using symmetry, asymmetry, balance, color – some elements obvious, some not – involves continuous practice, a trained eye, instinct.
These three are not formulas, can’t be added together. They need to work in tandem, like cooking a great stew where the ingredients are based on what feels just right.
Click to view/jump
On a related note, the above film – Edward Tufte’s Ingre Druckrey: Teaching to See – found its way into my Twitter feed. It’s about graphic design and beauty. And much more.
In January I’m going to be teaching my first non-type course on Form and Space. I’m starting prep now because I consider form so important – so powerful, so delicate.
And beautiful when done right.
Video found via ayana baltrip
Today
‘annular solar eclipse and pleiades alignment tonight. frequency shift. reset.’
Found via Jes Cellophane
25 things you should know about other people
Former student Alice Woodruff posted this list on my Facebook page.
It was written by writer and model Sovereign Syre, co-founder of Darling House. Syre’s ‘Things you should know’ was originally published on blogcritics.org back in 2009.
It’s good thoughts and will probably offend some. Turning off one’s ego long enough to connect with others is often difficult. I have to enact #25 before week’s end. A good, unexpected apology for something I didn’t expect to occur will make someone else’s day. Fingers crossed.
[1] Most people hide their suffering better than you think, you pass dozens of people a day on the street without any idea how well they’re wearing their tragedies.
[2] People’s names are the sweetest sounds they hear. You should make a point of being good at learning and using them.
[3] People love to spread their misery around, but not as much as they enjoy being lifted out of it.
[4] Being young is not in and of itself an achievement. Neither is being beautiful. But people often treat you as if they are.
[5] For a lot of people, music is a reflection of who they are and their relationship to life. Remember that before insulting someone’s favorite band.
[6] The Golden Age never existed. People are always trying to get back to a time when things were simpler and better. The world was a far more dangerous place fifty years ago, especially if you were black or a woman or gay or diagnosed with cancer. [Read more →]
handpicked posts
a piano falls in old manhattan
tetro and typography
it’s typography: film, song and dance
ghosts of gustov klimt
the great times new roman controversy
picking fonts
kapitaal
defining terms: design is not decoration
garcia's 'pure design'
'enhance that image!'
magic highway remixed
the cynic
rad anthem
Brought to you by man dom-
buy my fonts
go shopping
mehalloreads
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Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art
Gaberbocchus Press: An Experiment in Publishing, 1948-1979
Advertising Art in the Art Deco Style
Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture
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