I had planned on writing an enlightening piece about design for the World Day of Design, which is today. Inspiration was hard to come by for this event. Aside from having the honor of my design(above) selected for the poster contest, I don’t have many positive things to say about the poster contest and the national AIGA involvement in this day.

I admire the fact that the AIGA is recognizing the World Day of Design and doing something about it. Unless I am missing something, the effort seems to have stopped at the idea phase. Ever since I signed up to design an entry for the contest, I have been less than impressed. A few days before the submission deadline I sent a question to the provided email and expected a response. I never even received a simple reply. The posted deadline to notify the winners was March 9th. After the day came and went I just assumed that my poster didn’t impress Paula Scher and company. Then on April 6th I received a PDF attachment of a form letter. The PDF letter didn’t have any indication that it was to me other than it was sent to my email address. It said, “Congratulations! The World Day of Design Committee is pleased to inform you that your poster has been selected for the first World Day of Design celebration in the United States…” I was pumped, but confused as to why it took them an extra month to notify me. All of these things are annoying, but not really a big deal.

In order to have a little more information for my upcoming HOW Conference session reviews, I have been reading books by some of the presenters. Hatch Show Print: The History of an American Poster Shop is my second installment. My own experiences with letterpress printing is one of the many reasons that I am attending Mr. Sherraden’s session.

I have only been doing letterpress printing in my spare time for less than a year, and currently I have only done small and precise work. Hatch Show Print’s posters have spurred me into getting a 1920’s 12”x18” Chandler & Price letterpress and four trays of wood type. I am already looking for an excuse to print a letterpress poster.

Have you ever surfed foreign sites just to look at pictures? I do. Sometimes I use Google’s translate tool to see what they are talking about, but other times, I just blindly surf. I follow link after link not understanding a single word, and not knowing where I will end up. Today I found a foreign design blog called Oeil Pour Oeil and followed a link to a site showing the best posters of Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Maybe some of you understand German, but for the rest of us, it is pure eye candy.

This past weekend, the DesignOff! came to a close - almost…

When I saw the trailer for “Walk The Line” my heart leapt at the thought of a movie based on the life of Johnny Cash. This may be a bit dramatic, but Johnny Cash’s music has been consistent in my life since I was a child. Likes and dislikes came and went, but my enjoyment of Mr. Cash has remained constant. I don’t know much about Johnny personally, but I look forward to seeing how Hollywood will portray him. Hopefully it will be on par with The Doors and Ray.

When I went online to find out more about the film, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A movie poster that didn’t have a single photo or montage. It is refreshing to actually see a well designed poster amongst the sea of mediocrity that is the Hollywood movie poster. The design is very appropriate considering the rich poster history of Nashville and country music from the likes of Hatch Show Print and many others. Will this poster make it to the theaters or will there end up being an alternate compromised version? If it does survive the box office I have little hope that this graphic will make it to Blockbuster. Every decent movie graphic eventually gets watered down by the time it hits video, or at best when the original special packaging is sold out and the cheaper version hits the market.

Who better to design a poster so different than the rest of the industry than the underground and subversive Shepard Fairey?

My eyes were just stopped short by this incredibly captivating poster image as I was sifting through upcoming film releases on a number of sites. I was instantly reminded of the drawing and painting of Ben Shahn in the rendering of these three boys’ faces, but also immediately reminded of countless Polish film posters and other middle European poster images.

Both in its typography and in its imagery this poster calls eloquently to our collective memories of 1960s / 1970s paperback book covers we’ve likely seen in libraries and on the book shelves of our favorite literature professors…

It’s really great to continue seeing truly outstanding ARTWORK vs. simply photography showing up on American film posters of late - I know we’d highlighted another recent incidence of a film poster that showed major signs of reviving illustration vs. photography as a vital film poster production method. It seems that independent film productions are really leading the way in this production / promotion area as well now…

The film looks terrific as well, so thanks to whoever the artist / designer of this is (I was completely unable to find any mention of them anywhere on-line - probably the only major “shame-on-you-Loki-Films” in this whole post) for generating the image that stopped my eyes long enough to find out what this film was all about to begin with.

Find out more about “The Boys of Baraka” here.

Gig posters have been on my mind a lot lately, and I am really torn as to what I think of this whole scene. Through my week at Hatch Show Print (sorry, I am still working on the review), my stop at Hammerpress, the Sidekick podcast, upcoming Aesthetic Apparatus podcast and the traveling Graphic Noise show (which was great fun to see), I have some real issues I am working through. Let me share my hesitations and expectations on the whole gig poster scene.

My continued fascination with the successful and unsuccesful aesthetic “teases” of film posters led me recently to several new one-sheets that really caught my eyes. The first, teased further by this lead image, was a very recent “separated at birth” set of images that could spark a good discussion - an example of horror and surrealism finding fairly naturally bedfellows in one another…

or, I said the “F” word at Hatch Show Print!

As a preface, a portion of the history of Hatch Show Print is documented in a book, so trying to give you a history lesson would take several posts. I am going to focus on the present. For those that haven’t read the book or heard the history, Hatch Show Print is an old fashioned letterpress shop that has been in existence since 1879. The shop has had its ups and downs over its history, and their clientele has varied a great deal, but they are most known for their show posters for entertainment acts. Their history follows Minstrel Shows, Circuses, Country and Blue Grass stars and the list goes on. If you don’t have the book, it is a great addition to any design library and a very entertaining read for just about anyone (not just designers). Hatch has changed ownership over the years but it is now owned by the Country Music Hall of Fame. The shop is now a working museum and as the man (Jim Sherraden) that has taken Hatch to where is it today says … “preservation through production”. To keep Hatch alive they are a very active letterpress shop that prints posters (among other things) for a large variety of clients.

I recently spent a week down in Nashville to help out at Hatch and to learn from, and breath the rare air of a working letterpress shop. I will share a few of the things that I learned while playing the role of intern/volunteer. I will start at the very beginning.

What were they thinking?

I just spotted a copy of the 2007 poster for the Art Director’s Club show on a colleague’s desk yesterday and was morbidly curious to see what the ADC had done for their poster this time, immediately recalling last year’s bizarre and racist image combination.

Steven Heller took the 85th Annual ADC Call For Entries poster to task in Voice on the AIGA site last year at about this same time, and it looks like they’re serving an even bigger helping of the same this year…

I’ve been thinking lately, “If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is willing to continue opening up new awards categories for art direction, editing, sound design, costuming, etc., isn’t it about time they considered the “Best Movie Promotional One Sheet” category?

Maybe none of us really want to see designers, photographers, illustrators, and art directors also getting up on stage and thanking their Moms, third grade teachers, 2nd assistant directors, and favorite spices for everything they’ve done to bring them to this point…

Be A Design Group, and its founders/owners Adrian Hanft and Bennett Holzworth, would like you to know that Be A Design Group does not officially support or endorse any political cause, candidate, or issue, and prefers Be A Design Group readers feel free to discuss graphic design when they visit this site without being pressured by any author’s personal political views. Any political views expressed by authors of Be A Design Group should be taken only as that person’s views and not as a representation of Be A Design Group. Furthermore, I distinctly believe they would prefer that I not post the following, however my sense of civic duty compels me to do so:

Oh to hell with BA’s official rules on posting about politics. Get out there and vote for Barack Obama! He has better posters and is good for the country!

(A reminder that Nebraska holds it first-ever caucuses on Saturday, which will mark pretty much the first time Nebraska had a say in, well, anything.)