‘His most famous title sequences include the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho’

Last night, Google doodled this (above).

Last week in my history class, I presented footage of the original titles that Saul Bass designed that Google doodled this (above) was based on.

Dave Brubeck came along for the ride.

More info here.

Found via Alice Woodruff

Modern graphic design has roots in Russian Suprematism and Constructivism. Here’s a trailer for a film by Sergey Shanovich that looks at what’s been happening since.

Facebook page here.

Found via Motioncollector

‘Voiced by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her, Pillars Of The Earth) Typesetter Blues is written in the nonsense poetry tradition of Edward Lear and Shel Silverstein’

Crafted by Toronto-based TOGETHER – part of their silly rhymes series Beastly Bards.

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

Exquisite lettering by Luca Barcellona and Francesca Biasetton for ELITA, Milan.

Found via Cátedra Bardelás

From last year: The bold choices ad. Starring Willem Dafoe and directed by Dante Ariola for StrawberryFrog.

Behind the scenes here.

Lady Gaga performing Just Dance from last year’s HBO special.

Caught the rerun this week.

I think I’ll post this here.

About fifteen years ago, when Titanic was in full swing and everyone was trying to cash in on the concept – books, exhibitions, games, sequels – I came up with this idea for a tee vee series: The Titanic Boat.

It would be the same concept as The Love Boat (1977–86) where every week new stories revolve around guest stars. The only difference, all would take place on the original Titanic. And the guests would either be saved (via lifeboats) or die some sort of gruesome death.

revolving doors
Anthology series serve a great purpose on television. They provide out of work actors a part time job and (sometimes) a place to stretch their acting abilities.

By the end of the 1970s, Love Boat and Fantasy Island were the weekly haven of fun under the sun for the likes of Barbi Benton, Charo, Shelley Winters, Jim Backus, Bert Convy, Dennis Cole, Sonny Bono, Cathy Lee Crosby, Betty White, George Kennedy and The Landers Sisters. After the Boat’s heyday, Murder She Wrote (1984–96) made it possible to keep guests such as Eddie Albert in the limelight. Today, it’s the universe of Law and Order.

high concept
So for The Titanic Boat, each episode would take place on the very same cruise – leaving Northampton, spending a day at sea then slamming into the fatal iceberg.

Guests such as Elizabeth Berkley, Ben Affleck, Michael Richards, Shelley Stringfield, Michael Ian Black, Shannen Doherty, Eva Longoria, Matt LeBlanc and Joe Piscopo would fill out the hour; either falling in love, partying in sterrage, eventually fighting for the lifeboats or dying in many different, terrible ways.

Footage from the film (ship flybys and sinking) would provide transitions, just like on the original Love Boat. And Fred Grandy can again be the ship’s Gopher – why the hell not?

All new each week. Drama, pathos, the guy who played Urkel, the actress that was Jack Bauer’s girlfriend, dinner music, fireworks – The Titanic Boat, a ratings bonanza!

Beautiful short by Anne Labadie.

‘You’ll see Playland, our oceanside amusement park which was closed in 1972, very rare footage of the SkyTram (an extinct ride over Seal Rocks and Sutro Baths), and a brakescreeching ride down the Crookedest Street in the World.’

From 1955: Color Cinemascope footage of San Francisco by Tullio Pellegrini.

Found via Boing Boing

Film for the New Zealand Book Council, produced by Colenso BBDO and animated by Andersen M Studio.

And you can snag a copy of Maurice Gee’s Going West here.

Found via Daniel Will-Harris

The photography of Neil Krug.

‘Death does determine life  . . . .  Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalised by reason. For me death is the maximum of epic-ness.’ –Pier Paolo Pasolini

Luca Finotti’s The Last Obsession. Featuring Tom Ford’s Fall/Winter collection.

Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller in The Artist.

Finally saw it last weekend. Beautiful little nouveau ‘silent’ film.

‘On one occasion, referring to Benguiat as a ‘printer,’ Allen asked him what a good typeface was. Benguiat had an affinity for Windsor and suggested it to him that morning. He’s used it in every film since.’

Woody Allen and the Windsor typeface. Since 1977. Story here.

The photography of Alex Prager.

Last month, Prager completed a 13 ‘cinematic villain’ piece for the NYT Magazine. View Touch of Evil here.

‘This film was made by his company as a presentation to AT&T executives. It would have extended to be shown to the public, but a number of his ideas in the film were not ultimately adopted, like his phone booth designs, and men’s and women’s uniforms.’

Complete pitch by the master. It’s everything anyone ever wanted to know about how good logos and visual identity systems work. From 1969. Historical details here.

Found via Scott Stowell

‘Watch the definitive documentary on the husband-wife design icons’

A new biography on Charles and Ray Eames is airing on PBS this week. Powerful and unflinching, more than just chairs. Playful optimism, powerful clients, amazing budgets, odd obsessions. Narrated by James Franco, titles feature the incredible Eames fonts.

Watch it online here.

Above, the IBM Pavilion at the 1964 Worlds Fair.

Below, Eames’ complete short film The Information Machine. Commissioned in 1958 by IBM, it was designed to get a fearful population to trust this perceived-dangerous, unknown mechanical variable: Computers!

The work of China-based Raydesign.

Poster for the Polish release of Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (1966).

Found via Hipster Thor

‘In an effort to win Cully & Sully’s Cheffactor, a cooking competition in Ireland, Alan Travers created the Stop-Motion Biscuit Cake video of his girlfriend Dee’s legendary chocolate biscuit cake’

Found via Laughing Squid

‘the terror of suffocating to death in a closet’

May visit a few stores today just as a behavioral study.

Title card and trailer for Black Friday (1940).

Found via nineteenfortyone

Audrey Marnay photographed by Mikael Jansson for Longchamp, Fall 2011.

Interactive video trip below.

More posters from my room.

In early 1977, Marine World Africa USA was giving away these Coca-Cola promo posters. Their elephants were used in the first Star Wars movie as the banthas – and I ended up with some free wall hangings.

Knew nothing about the movie and I knew nothing about droids, the old guy with the Jesus circles around his head or why something was called a ‘SEE-THREEPIO.’ Also thought Chewbacca the Bear seemed a bit odd.

A few months later, went to the drive in and saw Star Wars. The previous year, saw Logan’s Run at the drive in. Star Wars was something much different.

In 1977, this poster hung on my bedroom closet door – and was eventually eaten up by use of that same door.

It came as an extra large ‘freebie’ in the Star Wars soundtrack, which I bought thinking it was this album. It wasn’t. It was the symphonic score; for me, an introduction to classical music. What I learned from the free poster – as a young impressionable creative – is abstraction, when done right, looks great.

It was painted by artist John Berkey – who used quick brush strokes that up close were a gloopy mess, but at a distance create energy and implied motion.

Berkey’s work influences me to this day.

And for my iTunes-loaded tracks of the Star Wars radio program, I’m using some of his art as my ‘album covers,’ below.

As for Star Wars’ ‘terrible lizards,’ these are them.

Poster found via KlaatuCarpenter

‘play loud’

Unflinching, beyond disturbing. The work of Douglas Burgdorff.

Audio interview here. More videos here.

‘My graduation film at La Cambre, Bruxelles 2011.’

Julien Regnard’s JUMP.

Found via Zach Moreno

Art Nouveau meets Russian Constructivism. Motion design by Matt Duplessie.

Constructivism by Ukraine-based video art/vj collective, Shifted VJs. Music by Evol Intent.

Images from the Weimar blog post ‘From Calgari to Hitler,’ named for Siegfried Kracauer’s book on German cinema (1910-40).

Jakob Steinhardt, The City, 1913

Robert Wiene, Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, 1919

Original sketch for a scene in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari from Lotte Eisner

Erich Godal, Die Straße (The Street), 1923

Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box” (G.W.Pabst, 1929)

Rudolf Klein Rogge in Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1933

Otto Dix, The Actor Heinrich George, 1933

George Grosz, John, the Lady Killer, 1918

Art director Erich Kettelhut & crew create the futuristic city set of Metropolis


Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Head (Spirit of Our Age), c. 1920

John Martin, Illustration to Paradise Lost, 1825

Magnus Zeller, The Orator, 1920

Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, 1934

Ever wonder what Germany may have looked like if the Weimar Republic kept going?

I like to think answers to this question could be found in the wonderful image sets posted over at kraftgenie’s Weimar blog. Each post is a collection of seemingly related imagery that is simply  . . .  Weimar.

Eugenio Recuenco

Yuval Yairi

Sabine Pigalle

Chantal Michel

Mikel Uribetxeberria

Bill Brandt

Madame Peripetie

Brooke Shaden

Brooke Shaden

Marilyn Minter

Inez van Lamsweerde

Tamara Lischka

***

‘In her 2010 documentary about the Berlin cabaret scene of the interwar period, Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir includes archival material, excerpts from German cinema classics, rediscovered promotional and institutional films, rare modern art experiments as well as documentaries of the time – all restored in high-definition.’

Above, the first five minutes of Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir’s Cabaret-Berlin: Die wilde Bühne (The Wild Stage) 1919-33. This 2010 documentary is loaded with incredible images from an era that went away in the 1930s.

Watch the entire untranslated film here. (Note: Veoh player download required)

Berlin of the 1920s was considered by many to be the cultural center of Europe; home to innovative art, music and a bawdy nightlife – all squashed when the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Above, Walther Ruttmann’s silent (add your own music) Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), which ‘portrays the life of a city mainly through visual effects and music, not narrative content. The impression it conveys of daily life in Berlin is dynamic, anxiety-ridden, cacophonous – and a helluva lot of fun!’ -Jessica Glaser, MoMA

Below, visual highlights from MoMA’s recent exhibition, German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse. Additional commentary here.

‘Kit Kat Klub, Berlin 1931  . . . .’

The great Joel Gray. From Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972).

Muppet version, below.

‘Just a huge fan of this movie. Wanted to make a exciting trailer with a modern feel’

A reimagined trailer for the original TRON (1982). Reedited and updated by DrewboiX.

‘A short film in paper by Leo Bridle & Ben Thomas’

More info here.

Video for Pig With The Face Of A Boy’s A Complete History of the Soviet Union as Told by a Humble Worker, Arranged to the Melody of TETRIS. Directed, animated and edited by Chris Lincé.

Spotted in Soho.

Found via According to G

The 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car: The model for the 1966 Batmobile. The car originally appeared in the motion picture It Started With A Kiss (1959).

George Barris did the conversion, video below. And (just cause I found the link) here’s a quiz on the most recent Bat vehicle.

Driving thru Bronson Canyon (1966)

Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford in It Started With A Kiss (1959)

Found via Batmania UK and The Invisible Agent

I’ve been to a few tapings of television shows. The tapings are free, since tee vee is (supposed to be) free. Getting in, however, can be a struggle. Especially if a show is popular.

I saw a few tapings of The Tonight Show the final year Johnny Carson was hosting. But Carson wasn’t working much, mostly on vacation. His contract gave him Mondays off and several weeks vacation per year. Supplementing as ‘permanent guest host’ was this guy named Jay Leno.

My dad often referred to Jay Leno as ‘Jeno.’ I always liked that.

I remember Jeno was funny. Really funny – when he worked for Carson. Things changed after Carson retired. Today, don’t like that Jeno isn’t really the sweet guy he pretends to be.

Tee vee is pretend.

how shows tape
If it’s a ‘live’ show – recorded or performed live, the tapings go by really fast. During commercial breaks, one listens to the house band – Carson’s was incredible.

Sitcoms take longer – and have a warm up comedian to keep everyone awake during setups and multiple takes.

Part of the experience was getting tickets (mostly only available at 8 am the day of a taping) and then later standing in line with tourists – awaiting seating.

The ticket designs are utilitarian – cobbled together using whatever equipment is available. Mimeograph, photocopier.

Found this website. It’s all about vintage tee vee tix. The aesthetic is basic, everyday. Obscure ephemera, classic shows.

In the 1970s, old Abbot and Costello movies were on channel 44 on Saturday afternoons; followed by The Bowery Boys.

At one point, I actually had the entire ‘Who’s On First’ routine memorized (and this Carson version was a great update).

But I digress.

Bumpers for the afternoon movies were licensed portraits from Al Hirschfeld, with Dr. Don Rose doing the intros. The movies were a different world of in black and white, with complex set ups for the comedy.

In the 1990s, I knew former child star Joe Cobb (1916-2002). Joe was famous as the chubby kid (above, click to view larger) in the original silent Our Gang comedies. Somewhere along the way, I was watching a documentary and saw that because of his girth, Joe was actually the inspiration for a character called Porky Pig.

I never could figure out how to tactfully bring that up in a conversation. So I never did.

dinner with joe
One afternoon, I found myself part of a discussion with Joe about a local steakhouse.

We were looking for a place to eat. And he went into great detail about how incredible this one steakhouse was. The food, the drinks, the garnishes, how the steak was cooked, the decor, ambiance, et cetera.

This of course led to the question, ‘Joe, so we’re going there for dinner?’

And he replied, ‘Oh no. I don’t like steak.’

The entire conversation was a set up for his punchline!

And his timing was perfect.

perfect points
When I think of Joe, I think of Drew. And vice versa.

Before I knew Joe, I fell in love with the work of pointillism master Drew Friedman. Friedman used dots to look at the dark side of the industry. Was one of the first to tackle obscure comedians, filmmakers and the Ed Wood cadre of oddballs. What happens to the talent after their star fades, when they’re only remembered on celluloid.

Not all Hollywood dreams end well.

His Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental is one of the best collections of his work – and he was a regular contributor to the old SPY magazine, among others.

He’s great at showing that the famous were really just human beings. Icons, but human icons.

These days, Friedman uses less dots – and more paint. His most recent book is Sideshow Freaks.

Interview here. Website here.

‘it took a week to do it’

For anyone who’s taken an intro to typography course with me – there is a fair amount of stippling involved as part of some really complex letterform studies.

And one of my former students – Freya Kiessling – who dotted her way thru letters – has gone national with her work.

Her color Conan O’Brien pointillism illustration (above) was used as a bumper on Conan’s show, April 11, 2011. The drawing was submitted thru their Coco MoCA page (many, many images abound).

And today – per show request – a print hangs in the show’s green room at Warner Bros. in Burbank.

Below, another Freya-produced Conan piece – from a beginning animation class.

‘Is that how you talk to your mother?’

The mother of all mothers: Tony Soprano’s mom calls Sears.

Prank call by Camp Chaos. More here.

Happy Mother’s Day!

‘Andy Warhol’s posters for the French film, Querelle, 1982.’

Found via Mom’s Basement

The work of Polish poster designer Jan Mlødozeniec.

More here and here.

‘The ‘ella’ on Barbarella was probably suggested by Feiffer’s Passionella, a brilliant satire on the Cinderella theme and much of American culture.’

In 1966, French scifi comic Barbarella was published in a the US in a translated edition.

Minimal color, racy stories. Robot sex.

The original, a serialized comic strip, was created in 1962 by Jean-Claude Forest for V magazine.

Pictured, images from the American edition – which designwise is rather Lichtenstein in its visual approach (see bottom).

Here’s The San Francisco Chronicle’s take on the book – from July 17, 1966 – the clipped review was found in my thrift-store-grabbed copy.

By 1968, Roger Vadim, Paco Rabanne and Jane Fonda made Barbarella into ‘something else.’ And up next, (allegedly) Anne Hathaway.

More original Barbarella here.

Video for Combustible Edison’s Vertigogo. From the film Four Rooms (1995).

C’mon, sing along  . . .

Do yah dot’n duy ba da dot’n duy yah oo-ee dot’n duy. Oo-ee zabba duy do yah zabba dot’n doo-ee dot’n duy. Zoo-ee bah,dabba do yah da da dwee-a-dabba da da ba-da da da DWEE-a dada! buh-dee,buh-die, buh-doy,buh-dot’n duy buh-dee,buh-dot’n duy. Buh-dee,buh-die, buh-doy,buh-dot’n duy buh-dee,buh-dot’n duy. Zoo-ee bah,dabba do yah da da dwee-a-dabba da da ba-da da da DWEE-a dada! Aaaaaaaaah. aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-ah. aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-ah. Ooh, ooh  . . .  Oooooooooooh. Do yah dot’n duy ba da dot’n duy yah oo-ee dot’n duy. Oo-ee zabba duy do yah zabba dabba doo-ee dot’n duy. Zoo-ee bah dabba do yah da da do-yah dabba da da ba-da da da DWEE-a dada! da da ba-da da da DWEE-a dada! AAAIIII!!

‘video del robot madison de antonia font’

‘Over in Missouri USA, yellow margarine remains illegal to this day’

A look at butter over margarine – animated by Kris Cook at Outside Line for the UK Friends of Butter folk.

‘In Kazakhstan we only have pepper and whole nuts in supermarkets’

While trying to understand the US, Borat Sagdiyev ends up in a large supermarket and asks a lot of questions.

This is my absolute favorite scene from Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006).

And it wasn’t even in the movie – it can be found as a ‘deleted scene’ on the DVD.