Be Aware 18
For the 18th installment of our Be Aware series we are proud to introduce a new Be A Design Group author. A very warm welcome to Stephanie Murg. We could tell you all about the fact that Stephanie writes for ARTnews and that she went to Harvard, but we will just let you read her bio for yourself.
Donovan Beery: Happy 30th
With Apple Computer turning 30 today, take a moment to celebrate by kicking a PC, cranking up your iPod, and looking at some of Apple’s old ads courtesy of wired.com.
Drew Davies: Seen and Noted in the Design World
As most of you know, I have been an outspoken advocate of educating both creators and purchasers of design on the damaging and insidious nature of spec work. I am happy to announce that a wide range of colleagues and associates have banded together to create No!Spec – a repository of great resources and dialogue about spec work. To quote the eloquent ICOGRADA: “the mission of the blog is to educate both clients and visual communication designers…about the nature of speculative, or “spec” work. It also serves as a vehicle to unite designers who support the notion that spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client.” I’d encourage you all to visit the site early and often.
Travis Gray: TypeWatch – Type as Art
More and more often, it seems like I browse across one clever art installation or another. Usually I look at them once and then move on. But when I unearth gems like Belgian artist Fred Eerdekens’ amazing “semantic landscapes*” I feel compelled to share them with others.
Most of Eerdekens’ installations use light and shadow, strategically placed elements, and specific frames of reference to create playful word forms and phrases. As a designer I appreciate the ingenuity and creativity that goes into each of his pieces, many of which seem somewhat simple at first glance. Click here to view Fred Eerdekens’ site.
Adrian Hanft: Alternative Photography
Retouching photographs is skill that doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. The phrase “Photoshop it” is thrown around by people who have little to no understanding of the difficulty involved in even the simplest retouching. For some great examples of photo retouching, visit Taylor Jame’s site. Make sure to visit the case studies where you can view several examples of Photoshop mastery layer by layer.
Tom Nemitz: Awesomely Bad Website
Brother, I’m going to smack you over the head with this ladder…in the name of the Lord! Later, I will break a table in half with your torso! And then piledrive you into the mat! All in a church gymnasium in front of an audience of church-goers!
Not to be confused with the slightly more popular UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) its UCW (Ultimate Christian Wrestling). What is it with pro wrestling and acronyms, incidentally? WWF, WWE, WCW, UFC, and now UCW? Check out the photos page here, its worth the trip. You bet.
www.ultimatechristianwrestling.com
Stephanie Murg: Read This
Hi BADG readers. As you might have inferred from its title, my Be Aware post will focus on recently published books of interest to designers. Many of these books will be about (you guessed it) design, but I also hope to introduce you to some titles that you might have otherwise have walked right by at your local Barnes & Noble (or local independent bookseller, as the case may be). This month, two fresh titles from the international art publisher Steidl: V-Best: Five Years of V Magazine and Fields
First up is V-Best: Five Years of V Magazine (Steidl), a book that designers should check out to see how the sumptuously-designed fashion and culture V Magazine has learned to make the most of their daringly large format (about 12‚Äù x 16‚Äù, I think). Led by editor-in-chief and creative director Stephen Gan, V is a magazine that doesn’t fit on most bookshelves or newsstands, and when you try to read it on a plane, the person next to you is apt to start making increasingly loud sighing noises until you close it and turn to smaller-sized reading material that will not keep bumping him or her.
V was originally inspired by the idea of a wall of 44 television sets, each tuned to a different station; to the editors’ credit, this concept didn’t make for schizophrenic design. V is fearless. It is one of the few magazines that has learned how to use design in dialogue with jaw-droopingly great photography. The type and design are neither overpowering nor subservient to the images. The fonts are looking a little stale lately, but its disciplined, purposeful use of color and impressive design consistency still makes V one of the best-looking magazines out there. Paging through the magazine’s five-year history will make you think critically about issues of size and balance while sharpening your sense of how to scale up design for larger formats that pack a visual punch.
The second title that I recommend that you peruse is Fields by Michal Rovner; however, it is difficult to explain why. Fields is a book of video stills, paintings, and photographs by Israeli-born Rovner, who messes around with biological forms (humans, animals, bacteria) to create works that from a distance seem to read as logos or text. But they aren’t. Even when looking at these works up close, your eyes strain to “read‚Äù the images. It makes for an interesting, unsettling experience, more comparable to the unfamiliar feeling of playing a new video game for the first time than the frustration that comes with trying to interpret text on billboards written in a language that you don’t understand.
This book will have you asking, “Wait, is that a…[bird/man/chromosome/flower/line of people playing Red Rover]?‚Äù The answer is usually “maybe.‚Äù And that’s the fun of it. Rovner’s work will get you thinking: what is the minimum amount of information that we need to make associations, particularly when biological forms are concerned? What are the characteristics of fields (of color, patterns, etc.) that make them appear instantly readable, like words written in some sort of universal language? Enjoy!
