Here’s a roundup of advice graphics.

I’m always frustrated when beginning students give up prematurely, when there are those who see being ‘creative’ as either a job or something not important and/or not realizing the more a creative works at what they’re doing, the better they will get; collaboration is great, rules get in the way, others will never understand you and that’s okay, work should be fun (especially hard work), breaks are important and a zillion other things.

Click to view larger/jump.

Found via hyenabonz

Many creatives are introverts – some famous ones include J.K. Rowling, Eleanor Roosevelt, Clint Eastwood, David Letterman, Howard Stern, Steve Martin. The trick is most introverts are annoyed just enough by the banalities of everyday societal demands that one typically doesn’t want to get bogged down by the bullshit. Introverts have important thinking to do – typically, introverts are out to change the world in one way or another.

There’s a graphic that’s been bouncing around the interwebs (below) that doesn’t quite hit the mark. Shyness is something totally different.

Above, a list that nails it (and yes, the type is stretched. Typographers: Deal.) – it came from this cool post. And here’s an article with more detail (book available too).

When I’m in quiet mode, I’m busy. Then I come out and play when in a classroom or social situation. Even though the second part is a learned behavior, it is also quite fun and a great balance. Wouldn’t change it for anything.

Bullshit

Found via Lindsey, Jes

‘Perfectionism is exhausting’

I’ve watched my students push themselves so hard to get an ‘A’ that they’ll overlook what it really takes to come up with creative work.

Here’s another take on the concept – by author Michael Nobbs, with a pitch for his book Sustainable Creativity.

‘Creative people across all genres, it seems, have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable  . . .  [and we've] accepted collectively the notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked’

Creativity = a horrible life? Anxieties, fear, alcohol – ?

In her TED Talk from 2009, Author Elizabeth Gilbert throws out some diversionary concepts to keep going – be undaunted.

What really motivates us to do the things we do? I’ve read studies like these over and over – it’s not quite money. And it’s not very simple either.

Found via Bill Mead

‘For our first release, Alphabuild for iOS, we wanted to pay tribute to the process of building letters (which is the other fun work we do here at our studio). We wish building letters for our clients was as zany and colorful as it is in Alphabuild. On the other hand, we’re glad we don’t have aliens, glue bottles and sawblades trying to mess up our letter drawings.’

Featuring types from the great Psy/Ops library (including my own Jeanne Moderno) as well as a few tikis (see below) – James Beall’s Alphabuild is a fun, quirky educational alphabet game for iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Snag it in the App store. Website here, Twitter here. And free goodies here.

Happy alphabuilding!

‘Between 1939 and 1944, the OWI and the Farm Security Administration made thousands of photographs, approximately 1,600 of them in color’

Despite what my dad told me, the 1930s and 40s were actually in color.

More pics here, here, here and here.

‘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 rectangles on top of each label represent main ingredients, and bars on the bottom provide a quick thumbs or thumbs down for a breakdown of fat content, carbohydrates, etc. Icons of spoons and scoops are used to supplement serving size since no one knows what 182 grams looks or feels like.’

Above, Renee Walker’s food nutrition label redesign, winner of UC Berkeley School of Journalism’s Rethink the Food Label competition.

Her work was originally part of an interdisciplinary topic studio focused on contemporary health issues; she has her original versions posted here.

Below, a few of my favorites from the competition:

Corinne Pritchard

Fabius Leineweber

Bradley Mu

Found via FlowingData

Final project from my beginning typography course at American River College: Futura Condensed Extra Bold, crafted as iced chocolate cake by student Lilie Matyuk.

Food-based type is always a tricky undertaking, but luckily we had Teresa Urkofsky teaching next door – in the culinary classroom. Teresa had recipes and techniques ready to advise.

I’ve been drawing some form of type since the 1980s. And have been teaching type for several years now.

It’s hard to ‘go digital’ when introducing typography, since letterform history goes back hundreds (and thousands) of years.

So I still use 15th century era handtools in my introductory type courses.

Good fonts still contain elements from long ago – and today, all we really do is recreate what was once done with broad pens – using digital tools.

font games!
To get a taste of how ‘us professionals’ render type these days, check out Mark MacKay’s brilliant Shape Type (pictured above) and Kern Type. Both are nutshell adaptations of today’s process – kerning being a majorly overlooked, but necessary typesetting skill.

digital type tools
Fonts today are vector-based, so a mastering the basics of Adobe Illustrator is the start.

Beyond this, there are a bunch of applications on the market for drawing fonts. FontLab is the big one, Fontographer is the old one with the easy interface – and TypeTool is a barebones student-discounted alternative. Unlike Illustrator, these font tools take into account how letters are drawn, with built ins that make it easy to adjust edges. Karen Cheng’s Designing Type is also a must resource to have.

And I do all my logo drawings directly in FontLab – after multiple sketches in pen and ink. It’s just easier that way.

Shape Type found via Mark Nutini

Change to Win’s animate of ‘The End of the American Dream?’ – done in the style of RSA Animate.

Found via Occupy San Francisco

‘New landscape for big banks’

Mother Nature Network looks at today’s banking landscape. Original post here.

Found via Shandi Pierzina

‘I’ve been doing posters for tons of cities across America’

In the past few weeks, one of my former students has found herself cast as the visual heart of the Occupy movement. Raina Dayne started with offering to do a poster and it’s blossomed into something much bigger.

Raina’s images can be downloaded for use at the Occupy Together website. Facebook page here, shirts here.

‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.’ –Steve Jobs

Intuition is very powerful, once one knows how to trust it. It involves turning off the insecurities of ego and concentrating on pure feeling. And it works wonders.

The news of Steve Jobs’ passing came in via social media. I saw a Facebook post right after I gave a design history lecture on early modern artists and how they’d managed to change the world.

I was fortunate enough to both go to school and work in and around Silicon Valley where Jobs’ approach reverberates and inspires. Playing it safe, following the status quo will not lead to new things, will not improve life as we know it – and Jobs knew how to get the best work out of Apple’s creative team.

He knew that details are excruciatingly important. Leveraging design, using good typography, giving us what we really want – instead of what we think we need – was all part of the package.

Thinking different makes the world a better place. That’s the legacy he leaves.

Image by Dylan Roscover, using Apple’s suite of fonts from over the years

‘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

‘Having many food and chemical sensitivities has been a largely trial-and-error process for what can be tolerated and what can’t, and has resulted in many creative kitchen science experiments’

Web designer/cartoonist (and former student of mine) Annie Hero has developed some major health problems. Recently, she’s taken to blogging about her approach to reclaiming her life from years of processed food intolerance.

Annie’s WTF are you eating? can be found here.

‘Spice up your design’

Hanging on the walls at Ai Sacramento: AIGA poster, designed and photographed by student Devon Cloutier.

At one point, there was a text change and in lieu of starting over, Devon fixed it – orally, swallowing a lot of the saucy rooster.

Designers do suffer for their art.

‘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, read here or here. Exhibition catalog here.

Art, ideas, original thoughts: All dangerous.

This past weekend I watched 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?

Harry Potter makeup tutorials. Drag option at bottom.

Found via Trendhunter

Above, advice from artist Tom Sachs for anyone starting work in a studio. Interns, PAs, gophers. Art, design or otherwise.

Below, Sach’s iconic Prada Toilet, Chanel accessories and the Hermés Value Meal.

‘Before there were photocopiers, scanners and printers, there was the Ditto Machine (a.k.a. spirit duplicator), produced by the Illinois-based Ditto Corporation; originally introduced in 1923.’ -mnn

Clifford the Big Red Dog was supposed to be red. But in the handout I got in kindergarten, he was purple.

So was my introduction to the Ditto Machine – a device used to replicate most of the paperwork I’d used in elementary school.

Some of my earliest experiences as a ‘graphics’ guy was playing with one of these machines – seeing what it could reproduce and what it couldn’t. It couldn’t reproduce much. The copies were so smudgy, Dittos were grunge before grunge was grunge.

And the smell of the purple ink was incredible. Fruity and chemically at the same time! Tho it turns out ink ingredients – isopropanol and methanol – are toxic substances. Who knew?

Cept for a few high school teachers who were holdouts (‘I don’t trust that newfangled photocopier thing’) all the dittos in my life were gone by end of grade 12.

Snag a tee here.

Images found via They Always Come Back, a tree grows in brookline, Zazzle, Jean&Vic

‘Paul Renner’s Futura interpreted in metal’

Handmade model with engine. Cesar Santos Perez’s final project from my most-recent experimental typography course at Ai Sacramento.

‘What I did on my summer vacation’

Last week, I spent four full days with a handful of some really cool teens.

I found myself saying, ‘Yes, I’ll do it. What is it?’ to teaching a week-long Summer Studio workshop at Ai Sacramento.

I called the whole thing ‘Designer Mashup’ – and set about having my students mix contemporary designers with historical luminaries.

Design history, research, handmade collages, form studies and handing work off to other students (to reinterpret) were part of the process.

Pictured, some of the final pieces.

Designers studied included Paula Scher, Georges Braque, Josef Albers, El Lisstizky, Rick Griffin, Jessica Hische, Raoul Hausmann, Marian Bantjes, Hannah Höch, Alvin Lustig, Shepard Fairey and David Carson.

Sybil Andrews’ Speedway (above) is a linotype print commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1934 to advertise what was a new spectator sport, Speedway Racing.

The final piece – like the famous ‘keep calm’ poster – was never used for its intended purpose.

Found via Gunther Stephan

‘Metzinger celebrated the salutory effects of exercise on the male population in his ‘Cyclist,’ which focused on a sport that historian Eugen Weber has described as a French creation, and one affordable to the French working class by 1900.’ -Mark Antliff, Patricia Leighten

In 1913, Jean Metzinger (1883-1956) created his Cubist Cyclist to depict audience, participant and the interaction involved.

(Been doing a lot of reading on early modern art)

‘Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation’

Found via Lucy Cook

‘For his thesis, Dong Yoon Park, a Masters student at Parsons, built an iPad app designed to teach pros and novices alike the arcane world of typography.’

Details here.

Found via Taxi

Designing for use is something often overlooked by designers. What happens once the design is in the hands of actual people?

Stewart Brand takes a long look at design AFTER it’s implemented – in this case, the design of buildings. Does ‘form follow function?’

6-part, 3-hour BBC Documentary. Based on Brand’s book. Music by Brian Eno. From 1997.

Posted in its entirety on Google. Part one above. For part two thru six, go 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.

Tonite this link just sort of popped in from former student Campbell BrownKorbel. It’s secrets that every creative – from illustrator (the focus) to designer to comedian to (hell) anarchist – should know.

Phil McAndrew’s Super Obvious Secrets That I Wish They’d Teach In Art School. Read the whole thing here.

Dmitriy Antropov’s final project was a Gill Sans maze, hand crafted from foam.

After we tried to actually do the maze (and failed), Dmitriy reached down and carefully removed a small partition – near the bottom of the a – and we were able to complete.

‘escaping the norm’

Just finished up my Friday night beginning type course – and final projects can take any form. Last night, Christopher Gianni-Embrey showed up for class with an old computer monitor.

Inspired by a recent viewing of The Shawshank Redemption, Christopher visualized the word ‘escaping’ using Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic.

Not on screen, but in screen.

The final piece was Christopher’s first ever attempt at model making. It was crafted from mostly found materials. As he put it, ‘driving around town, there’s a lot of stuff people throw away.’

In the process, he ended up with a bunch of dead computer monitors – just in case the first attempt didn’t pan out.

My next Friday night type course is scheduled for Fall 2011 at American River College. Course number: ARTNM 303.

The work of Skyler McDonald, London Hairdresser of the Year 2010.

More award winners here.

Nicky Bradwell survived my typography and design history classes and is now making music. Each month, he’ll have a new FLAVOR on Soundcloud.

Facebook page here.

MarchFLAVOR by superhumanyouth

TripleRainbowMix by superhumanyouth

‘Here are four contenders for future moral condemnation: Our prison system; industrial meat production; the institutionalized and isolated elderly; the environment’

Often I just look at the news and wonder how fucking stupid we’re going to look to future generations.

We have a lot to answer for. I found a great breakdown in The Washington Post. Read it here.

and
Above – just to contrast – is Walt Disney’s original plan for EPCOT, outlined in a 1966 short film. Made a couple months before Disney’s death.

‘Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2,053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998.’

Over the years, the US has set off over a thousand nukes. Something I never really knew.

Skip thru to the early 1960s and the multiples of blasts end up looking like Christmas lights.

Found via Marian Bantjes

‘I was working on maintaining the quality of Bernhard’s handdone type while taking a new and different approach to it’

Student Lesley Gaesser’s large scale final project from my experimental type course at The Art Institute of California Sacramento.

Lesley did an 11 week study on the work of designer Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) – which culminated in a final linocut-inspired project.

Bernard’s Antiqua type was traced onto Speedball carving blocks, cut by hand, inked and printed on large sheets of watercolor paper.

My next experimental course begins April 8.

If student hangs roughs low on the wall, one can only critique if lying on the floor; Photo by Daniel Mendez

‘This is an experiment in carving one linocut letter per day in an attempt to complete an entire alphabet by March 31st. Chosen typeface: Champion Gothic by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Lightweight was chosen based on a deep rooted affection with its ampersand.’

And so concludes Aymie Spitzer’s March of Letters. Blog here. Calendar archive here.

Found via Campbell BrownKorbel

‘Hillbillies, long misunderstood and maligned as isolated and backward, actually have a 300-year history of achievement and success that has contributed significantly to our national identity.’

I caught this doc last year on the History channel.

Hillbilly: The Real Story (2008) – hosted by Billy Ray Cyrus – is a great overview of the ‘Appalachian American’ subculture that brought us moonshine whiskey, labor unions, NASCAR and country music.

Stream Hillbilly here. DVD here.

Pictured up top: An original ‘painter’s piss’ runner, found via theTHROTTLE

related
Also, Hillbilly does a pretty good job of setting the stage for Oscar nominated Ozark kin drama Winter’s Bone (2010). Incredible performance by Jennifer Lawrence, below. Review here.

Former student takes design class. Former student notices my work in his textbook. Sends me an email. Photo, above.

Mike Dunkl spotted my 2003 ‘Make Jobs Not War’ poster in his copy of Design Basics: 8th Edition – with some academic text explaining how my visual works (below). Aside from the pencil illustration, I lifted the gothic type directly from a 1912 American Type Founders specimen book. (The green color means ‘money,’ btw) (And there are two ls in ‘mehallo’)

In 2003, jobs were drying up and we were about to go to war on some really flimsy evidence. I felt I had to say something, so I did. My poster – among others – became available for free download at Another Poster For Peace.

At the time, anti-war statements were not the popular thing. Though for me, it was the right thing to do. When the war started, I was following a young Iraqi’s ‘live from Baghdad’ blog up until he stopped posting. Never knew what happened to him – another innocent lost to history.

I still stand behind my poster. Evidence of why we ended up in Iraq in the first place has turned out to be far more flimsy than imagined  . . .  and today, we’re still at war. And the jobs have simply gone away.

‘AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s’

Website here.

Found via Daniel Will-Harris

‘The Influencers is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.’

Trailer above. Watch the film here.

‘Published posthumously in a limited edition of 250, features 142 sets of roman and italic typefaces, a wide selection of borders, ornaments, symbols, and flowers, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Phoenician, Armenian, Coptic and Tibetan alphabets.’

My birthday was last week and to my surprise, my wife got her hands on Taschen’s limited edition reprint of Giambattista Bodoni’s masterwork, his Manuale Tipografico (1818).

Bodoni had almost unlimited funding and resources at his disposal – so the details in his large body of types (he just kept going) is beyond what is seen in most revivals of his work. ITC Bodoni comes damn close, but a lot of Bodoni’s original designs end up on the cutting room floor.

My Jeanne types (named for my wife) have roots in Bodoni – and I used some digital resources to research his Manuale. But it is great to now actually have a print edition in my collection – cause I’m not done with tinkering.

A look at the letter A. From Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways.

‘Why you should know your shit’

Above, a look at how inspiration from multiple sources work better than tunnel vision. And design school tends to help with this.

Good design influences are everywhere. Ignoring it is like cutting off a limb. Or two.

Illustration by Jessica Hische. Click to view larger/jump.

‘Chance favors the connected mind’

Steven Johnson pieces it all together. Interview here. Book here.

TED talk, above. Animate by Andrew Park/CognitiveMedia, below.

‘This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert’

Another RSA Animate. Illustrated by Andrew Park.

Found via Robynne Raye

Student Mike Thomas went back to basics with his work for my experimental type course.

As part of an 11-week study, Mike explored types created by the originator of italics, Francesco ‘Griffo’ da Bologna (1450-1518).

Mike’s work was produced using a stack of 20 year old, aged paper – and involved media ranging from paint to ink to digital.

His final project (above) was realized by cutting Griffo’s italic directly out of pieces of lead and creating a ‘soot proof’ of the carved letters. Not quite to spec, but challenging nonetheless.

I teach an experimental typography course at Ai Sacramento. And this past quarter, student Joyce Tabujara ventured into song.

For her final project, she wrote and preformed This Is To Mister Bell (above) – a tribute to typographer John Bell (1745-1831) and his types.

Below, a few of her studies.