Tuesday, December 9, 2008








Yves Netzhammer: A Swiss designer artist who lives and works in Zurich, studied architecture there and later obtained a diploma at the Hochschule für Gestaltung and Kunst Zürich’s department of visual design. Netzhammer has been working with video installations, slide projections, drawings and objects since 1997.

Laurent Fetis: A graphic designer. Born in 1970 in Orsay, France he studied at the College of Architecture in Versailles and the National College of Decorative Arts in Paris. His work has been seen in Les Inrockuptibles, Jalouse, The Face, Studio Voice, and Escape. He collaborated on Roman Coppola's first full-length film, CQ.

Jonathan Ellery: (British) Ellery's work hints at the heritage of London and stereotypical notions of Britain, while the context suggests something more modern. In 2001 Ellery designed the book Coney Island, featuring the photopgraphy of Bruce Gilden, with a typographical language that recalls letterpress posters and ads from carnivals, cruises, and theaters from early Twentieth-Century.

David Carson: (American) Best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the nineties. In particular, his widely-imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge" era. Carson became interested in a new school of typography and photography-based graphic design and is largely responsible for popularizing the style; he inspired many young designers of the 1990's.

Stephan Sagmeister: Is among today’s most important graphic designers. Born in Austria, he now lives and works in New York, where he formed Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed branding, graphics and packaging for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner. Nominated five times, Stefan won a Grammy Award for his design of the Talking Heads boxed set. He also earned practically every important international design award.

April Greiman: (Swiss) April Greiman (born 1948) is recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a designing tool early as 1984 and, to a lesser extent, for introducing the New Wave aesthetic to the US. Presently, she heads Los Angeles-based design consultancy Made in Space.






Rene Knip: Dutch designer. Brilliant at melding letterforms and their immediate environment, making each a part of the other. Knip studied with the renowned Dutch letterer and type-designer Chris Brand, at the St. Joost Academy of Art and later in private lessons at Brand's home.

Ken Tsai-Lee: A university professor and principal of a prestigious Studio in Taiwan.

Chaz Maviyane Davis: (Zimbabwe, Africa) Has been described by the UK's Design magazine as "the guerrilla of graphic design". For more than two decades the controversial Zimbabwean designer's powerful work has taken on issues of consumerism, health, nutrition, social responsibility, the environment and human rights. His credentials include an MA in Graphic Design (with distinction) from the Central School of Art and Design, London, and an Advanced Diploma in Postgraduate Film-making from the Central St. Martins School of Art and Design, London. His design work has been published in numerous International magazines and newspapers, and acknowledged in "Who's Who in Graphic Design", "First Choice: Leading International Designers", "Rewriting the Rules of Graphic Design", amongst others.

Fumio Tachibana: (Japan) Winner of the Grand Prix at the 21st Brno Biennial, 2004. Born in 1968 in Hiroshima, Tachibana graduated from the Visual Communication and Design Division of Musashino Art University, and completed a Master’s Course in Design at the Fine Arts Research Department of the Graduate School in the Tokyo University of Art and Music. Tachibana participated in the "Artists in Residence" project at the Vermont Studio Center, USA in 1994. He held his "MADE IN THE U.S.A." exhibition in the Sagacho Exhibit Space in 1995.





Adbusters: A non profit, anti consumerist organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in British Columbia, Canada. They describe themselves as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age."

Tom Gauld: Tom Gauld (b. 1976) is a Scottish cartoonist and illustrator. He studied illustration at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art. His published books are Guardians of the Kingdom, 3 Very Small Comics (Volumes One to Three), Robots, Monsters etc and Hunter and Painter.

Universal Everything: Matt Pyke is the director of Universal Everything, a design studio based in Sheffield, in the north of England. UE has collaborators everywhere in the world and work as a large team of people creating animation, programming and processing, web designing, illustration. UE works across i-chat or email. Pike worked with Designers Republic for 8 years and finished there about 2 years ago. He started UE in September 2004.

Martin Woodtli: (Swiss) Martin Woodtli is perhaps the most accomplished representative of the new design scene in Switzerland, where the joy of the design process (as opposed to monetary reward) seems to determine the direction of the studios.

Jop van Bennekom: (Dutch, 1970-) has emerged as one of Europe's most influential magazine designers. When Jop van Bennekom launched Re-Magazine as a graphic design graduate in 1997, he did so with the intention of developing a new form of personal communication. Having cast himself not only as designer and art director, but as editor and publisher, he has since conceived and executed each issue as a single story line from broad concept to the tiniest typographic details.






Chris Ware: (1967) An American comic book artist and cartoonist, best-known for a series of comics called the Acme Novelty Library, and a graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth.

Die Designpolitie: A graphic design agency, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Its members were brought up in the Dutch design culture and rich tradition of Dutch art, design and tolerance. Their working process often ends in a stripped image which is a critical but always communicative solution.

E-BOY: A pixel art group founded in 1998 by Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital, Kai Vermehr. Based in Berlin. Their work makes intense use of popular culture and commercial icons, and their style is presented in three-dimensional isometric illustrations filled with robots, cars, guns and girls.

Eric&Marie (Éric Gaspar and Marie Bertholle): They teamed up in France, 2002, but have known each other and worked together since the early days of their graphic design education. They have carried out commissions for the French Foreign Ministry ADPF, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the Royal College of Art, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, le Musée de la Mode in Paris, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Akadêmia.

Barnbrook: (British) Founded his studio in 1990 and Virus Foundry in 1997. He's best known for his provocatively named fonts, such as Mason (originally released as Manson), Exocet, Bastard, Prozac, Nixon and Drone. The controversy surrounding this work stems from its subversive nature and strong social commentary. Barnbrook multi layers meaning and style – working with language and letterforms in an ingenious way.









Jan Lenica: Jan Lenica (1928-2002) belongs to the so-called "slime-and-gore" period of the Polish poster. Lenica's art was associated with film and theater. He studied in the Faculty of Architecture at the Poznań Technical University. He worked in satirical cartoon drawing, illustration, graphic art and graphic design, exhibition design, scenography, posters, animated films.
Roman Cieslewicz: Roman Cieślewicz (1930-1996) was closely associated with the Polish avant-garde theater, transformed the poster into a metaphysical medium to express ideas that would be difficult to articulate. He brought a number of techniques to graphic design: enlarging, montage, halftones images to a scale that turns the dots into texture, setting up an interplay between two levels of information: the image and the dots they create.
Franciszek Starowieyski: Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930-Born in Cracow and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He works in graphic design, drawing, theater, television scenography, murals and posters. He was the originator of the "Theater of Drawing."
Waldemar Swierzy: Waldemar Świerzy style draws on folk art and Twentieth-Century fine art. He often incorporates acrylics, crayon, and watercolor into his designs. His Jimmy Hendrix posters are famous for its swirling psychedelic designs.
Henryk Tomaszewski: Henryk Tomaszewski (1914-2005) was born in Warsaw and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He taught there from 1952-1985 and was granted the title Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts, London. Though he studied commercial art, satirical illustrations and stage design, he devoted himself to poster design for most of his career. He was highly influential as a professor and many of his students went on to become influential poster artists in Poland.




Cook and Shanoski: Roger Cook is an internationally known American graphic designer, photographer and artist, president of Cook and Shanosky Associates, a graphic design firm he founded in 1967. The firm produced all forms of corporate communications including: Corporate Identity, Advertising, Signage, Annual Reports and Brochures. His graphic design and photography have been used by IBM, Container Corporation of America, Montgomery Ward, Bristol Myers Squibb and many more.

Saul Bass: (American) Bass has done films, packaging, products, architecture, corporate logo. His work surrounds us. Pick up the telephone and you're hard-pressed not to recall Bass's ubiquitous Bell System symbol and look. Take a plane—United, Continental, Frontier: Saul Bass. Go to a film—Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Spartacus, The Man With the Golden Arm, Advise & Consent, Such Good Friends: Saul Bass. In the supermarket or in the kitchen—Wesson, Quaker, Alcoa, Lawry's, Dixie: Saul Bass. Relax with a magazine, read a book, watch TV, take some pictures—Saturday Evening Post, Warner, Minolta: Saul Bass. Give to charity—The United Way, Girl Scouts: Saul Bass. Strike an Ohio Blue Tip match. Bass images are too urgent to refine, too strong and emotional in their effect to fuss with. At the distant other end of the axis is the attention to numbing detail and mastery of formidable scale best exemplified by the Bell System program, the largest and one of the most successful corporate identification design programs ever conceived and implemented.

Paul Rand: (American, 1914-1996) Is best known for his corporate logo designs. Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. One of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design, Rand was in charge of Directions Magazine during the 1940’s. He taught design at Yale University and conceived many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS, ABC and many more.

George Lois: (American, 1931-) Called the enfant terrible of American mass media. Lois believed design- a harmony of elements- had no place on a magazine cover. Instead, he opted for the cover as a statement capable of capturing the reader with a spirited comment on a major article. An ability to stay closely ion touch with one's times is a vital requirement for visual communications. He designed over 92 Esquires covers in collaboration with Carl Fischer. These covers helped recapture the magazine's audience and by 1967, Esquire was turning $3M profit.





Alexey Brodovitch: (Russian, 1898-1971) Art director of Harper's Bazaar from 1934-1958. He had an affinity for white space and sharp type on clear, open pages. He rethought a modern approach to editorial designs, a sort of musical feeling in the flow of text and picture.
Herb Lubalin: (American) "What I do is not really typography, which I think of as an essentially mechanical means of putting characters down on a page. It's designing with letters." Lubalin was a brilliant, iconoclastic advertising art director—in the 1940s with Reiss Advertising and then for twenty years with Sudler and Hennessey.
William Golden: (American, 1911-1959) CBS director for two decades. He brought uncompromising standards and keen insight into the communications process. Golden designed one of the most successful trademarks of the 20th Century for CBS.
Alvin Lustig: (American, 1915-1955) Lustig created monuments of ingenuity and objects of aesthetic pleasure. No single project is more significant in this sense than his 1949 paperback cover for Lorca: 3 Tragedies. It is a masterpiece of symbolic acuity, compositional strength and typographic craft that appears to be, consciously or not, the basis for a great many contemporary book jackets and paperback covers.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Final Exam

I'll be posting the review for the final exam shortly.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Your turn #10

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Design/Miami 08


(Chair by the Campana Brothers for Albion)

Hey you, designers!
You can't miss this. This year the Design Award goes to the Campana Brothers, represented by Albion Gallery in London. First there are a bunch world renown galleries exhibiting modern and post-modern furniture and design products inside the Moore Building. Then, the are talks, featuring world known designers. The fair includes Satellite Exhibitions with exhibitions and installations hosted by individual designers, cultural institutions and other cutting-edge design businesses.

Fumio Tachibana





Fumio Tachibana is the winner of the Grand Prix at the 21st Brno Biennial, 2004. Born in 1968 in Hiroshima, Tachibana graduated from the Visual Communication and Design Division of Musashino Art University, and completed a Master’s Course in Design at the Fine Arts Research Department of the Graduate School in the Tokyo University of Art and Music. Tachibana participated in the "Artists in Residence" project at the Vermont Studio Center, USA in 1994. He held his "MADE IN THE U.S.A." exhibition in the Sagacho Exhibit Space in 1995. Tachibana is a recipient of the Gold Prize at the 17th International Biennial of Graphic Design, Brno 1996 and Grand Prix at the 21st Brno Biennial, 2004.

Juliette Cezzar

I discovered Juliette Cezzar, a young designer from New York. Her portfolio is impressive.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Graffiti








The general visual style of modern graffiti evolved from the confluence of sociological and material elements. The sociological element is that of young people, originally of under-class demographics but now extending beyond class barriers, who want to leave a public signature (a tag), but quickly, so as not to get caught. The material element is the spray can. The reason that writers use spray cans for anything beyond a small tag (markers work well for those), is that the spray can, easily concealable and portable, can cover a large area quickly yet with control. And even though now there are legal forums for public art, where spray painting may be done in a relaxed manner, the stylish and often spontaneous look of the finished product comes from the roots of this movement. Something that stands out in the best work is the authority of technique and “pulp” energy that results from often having time limits and the knowledge that the work being done is illegal and will probably be gone in short order. A central goal in graffiti is the development of a distinctive visual style, same as it is for most any artist. The development of this individual style is the single determining factor in how a writer is judged among his peers, the ultimate audience to impress. Various writers may be known for other attributes such as can control or color palette, but without an inspired creative letter style, a writer will never be considered in the top tier. Just look up at the billboards and buildings around you to appreciate this other kind of high art. More about this interesting article in AIGA, here.