Facing Sideways

Moved!

2009-12-03T22:12:00.002+10:30

Facing Sideways has moved. Find it at it's new home here.

Re:collection

2009-11-17T12:44:00.004+10:30

Re:collection is an inventory of Australian graphic design produced in a period circa 1960–1980, that has been set up by Dominic Hofstede of Melbourne design firm Hofstede.The project was borne out of frustration at the lack of Australian graphic design reference material available, specifically from the decades mentioned above. While there's not much up on the site yet, the samples that are there so far are excellent and will obviously grow, as there is a wealth of material to mine. Surely the time has come for a printed compendium as such work to be published? The above example is by Brian Sadgrove.

Type it write Vol. 2

2009-11-17T12:24:00.006+10:30

Adelaide design firm Voice have released a second edition of their reference guide to punctuation 'Type it write'. This edition introduces additional topics in acronyms, emphasis and italics and places more emphasis on examples. While there are many similar reference guides around, few are as concise, easy to use and specifically geared towards the designer. As an added bonus, and typical of all the work produced by Voice, it is beautifully designed as well. From professionals to students just starting out, I advice investing in your own copy of this handy reference if you're planning on setting type (or even consider purchasing a copy for your clients to save them and yourself time on cleaning up punctuation and type inconsistencies :) Voice have also updated their site with some great projects on display since I last looked. Love the work for Back label Wines.

Sector 7g Updates

2009-11-09T12:05:00.004+10:30

I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of my favourite local design firms, sector7G, headed by Nic Eldridge, has updated the look and content of their website. It features and interesting 'side scrolling' interface that I haven't really seen in use before (but would be familiar to all you Iphone users out there) and also integrates the studio's Twitter posts into the home page and the Outpost section. The Home page collects the Tweets from sector7g's design account and is focused mainly on design and branding where as the Outpost section collects all the studio members individual Tweets and is therefore more irreverent and 'lively'. Nic says he's thinking about opening that section up to other people as well as a 'friends of sector7g' sort of thing. Future plans for the site include integrating posts from their Vimeo and Flickr accounts. It's great to see a local design firm pushing the features and use of their site beyond just a place to view their portfolio (though there's plenty of brilliant design work on design on display there as well) What I've always admired about sector7g's work is their ability to turn something that may seem stodgy and uninspiring into beautiful and effective design solutions (see their work for Assist Finance, Core Energy and Systembuilt as great examples of carrying a design vision across a broad range of applications) Take some time to have a good look through the site for some inspiration.

Designing Design: Kenya Hara

2009-10-19T13:20:00.016+10:30

I love perusing through the images in a design annual or designer's monograph (design porn as my wife calls it) as much as I'm sure most designers do. Seeing the work being produced by extraordinary talents lights the fire to instigate your own attempts for design immortality in such a tome. After a while though, it does feel as my good wife described 'design porn' page after page of beautiful images, one upon another, with little reference point to where the work comes from and what it sought to accomplish. I find with my work these days I'm really trying to look for that substance behind an idea to really motivate me, that unique outlook that pushes me to create beyond this years fashionable typeface and colour trends. Designing Design by Kenya Hara is that rare book that has totally redefined the way I think of and approach design

Japanese designer Kenya Hara is one of the truly unique voices in the design field, the book the has created is a paramount of elegance, simplicity and superb creative force. This is a white book, a volume of information and illustration that embraces the purity of white as the matrix upon which everything blossoms and emerges.

In an introductory essay by John Maeda the author states `Kenya Hara is a complex man. He views the world through his many lenses of seeing, tasting, smelling, erasing, evaporating, and all the forms of construction and deconstruction.' And after those appropriate words this pristine book opens into the genius that is Kenya Hara. `Verbalizing design is another act of design....To understand something is not to be able to define it or describe it. Instead, taking something that we think we already know and making it unknown thrills us afresh with its reality and deepens our understanding of it.' The book contains examples of work that goes beyond what we may define as graphic design, or design in general - paper, bowls of white cabbage leaves, signs, images of Swatch watches that come down through projected air onto any surface presented, unique signage for public spaces, soft ice cream shapes, furniture, spaces, lamps, posters - any object that requires rendering is treated and discussed in concept and philosophy by a man of great wisdom as well as endless creativity. The illustrations accompanying the text are clean and as well placed on the page as any creation by Hara. This is a seemingly endless array of fascinating subjects.

More than just a treatise on design for the initiated, the book contains powerful philosophical concepts that are applicable to anyone. `The human brain likes anything that entails a great deal of information. Its extensive capacity waits eagerly to perceive the world by completely exhausting its great receptive powers. That potential power, though, remains today in a state of extreme constriction and is a source of the information stress we're all under.' Hara approaches this conundrum by dividing his book into sections that approach answers to these problems: RE-DESIGN, HAPTIC (Awakening the Senses), SENSEWARE, WHITE, MUJI (Nothing, yet Everything), VIEWING THE WORLD FROM THE TIP OF ASIA, EXFORMATION (Rivers, Resorts), and finally WHAT IS DESIGN? It's difficult to put into words, and I admit, if the previous phrases were presented to me out of context from having read the book, I would see it as just so much wank! Believe me though, if you have the slightest interest in design, this is a book worth thinking upon, to be read again and dipped into when the need for inspiration calls. Though the information may come across as complex, the writing style feels very approachable, not academic or dry.

As you can tell, I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you are the type of person interested in astute observation, finding the beauty in simple solutions to complex problems, looking beyond surface decoration, or just like to have really cool looking design books on your shelf, this is an indispensable addition to any design book collection.

It was only a matter of time.....

2009-10-06T12:49:00.004+10:30

Apple demands Woolworths drops new(ish) logo.

On Software Gone By....

2009-08-30T18:21:00.007+09:30

Is it particularly sad of me to sometimes pine for obsolete software? I've been doing some tidying up in my designated home studio space and store-all of stuff, sorting through dog eared C4 envelopes and battered archive boxes, in the process rediscovering the 'fruits' of 20 odd years of design work. Like most of our ilk, I'm somewhat of a pack-rat, I've hoarded just about every piece of design I've contributed anything to, now matter how embarrassing (and believe me, there's been plenty of 'the embarrassing'). with me it's been a case of, if I put the effort into producing it, then there should be some evidence that it was produced. This attention to keeping every piece of work will no doubt prove to be an invaluable resource when the time come for my inevitable retrospective exhibition and/or biography to be produced, but I digress.

Besides the often cringe-worthy assessment of the ghosts of design work past, I can't help but reflect upon the tools that went into producing said pieces. I come of age as a designer in the first dawnings of the huge switch over from rubber cement and bromides to the early Apple Mac and associated design programs. My first introduction to the new medium came through a program called Ready Set Go! I I can't remember if the exclamation mark was included). Basic, to say the least, even at the time I remember reading with envy about a program called Quark Xpress-the mystical 'do all' program for professional designers, not second year design students. Ready Set Go! and myself. We were both out of our depths at the time it seemed, but on reflection it seems as though it's very limitations often led me to some interesting runarounds in search of that sort after perfect result. I'm sure it also stopped me from going overboard with the 'freedoms' that today's programs allow the professional and would-be designer. Ready Set Go! wasn't going to let you fake anything.

It would be difficult for young designers to appreciate the revelation that came from using something like Ready Set Go! and then discovering Aldus Freehand. With Freehand, suddenly all things seemed possible and (more easily) achievable. Until you've spent hours using french curves and a technical or ruling pen(!) to draw up a logo and then another few hours bromiding it to the right size and pasting it down with rubber cement o board with a tracing cover-leaf with printers instructions scrawled on it, can you appreciate the 'magic' of this drawing program. To me, never has a design program been so perfectly named - now you had a tool that gave you a 'free-hand' to design and draw shapes to your hearts content, easily and intuitively. In my mind it was (and still does) seem so much more an expressive tool than the often bogged down in the technical Adobe Illustrator. There has not been an update to Freehand since 2005 when Adobe acquired Macromedia, but a quick search around the internets will uncover a plethora of well known designers who still strongly stick by it's use.
Only a couple of years ago a local printer told me of a designer who was still using a very early version of Freehand, a version that did not allow multiple pages in a single document. A 100+ page annual report would be duly delivered as 100+ separate Freehand files, each a page of the report, as you can imagine, not an ideal delivery solution.

Even though it has been years since I've last used it, it's ghost lingers on in my daily disdain of Illustrator, a program I will go to some lengths to avoid using if possible - a program that seems to sneer at me and say, 'so you want to be all intuitive and creative do you? Not on my watch! Let me show you how many drop menus you need to go through to get to that, and don't even think about trying to paste something inside an object!'

I'm sure I still have a copy of Freehand on some dusty CD somewhere, sharing kilobytes with my copy of Wolfenstein and Disk Doubler. If I came across it I don't think I'd have the heart to throw it out. Like my early amateur design work, it doesn't serve much purpose other than to remind myself of where I have been to get myself here, but isn't that the point of any treasured memento? Don't get me started, unless you want to hear about my first Apple LC with 4meg of RAM and a 40mb hard drive that I would never fill up!

Royal Adelaide Show Posters

2009-08-25T14:02:00.011+09:30

With all due respect to the creators of these posters and all their photo-shoppery brilliance, as someone who is slightly coulrophobic (fears clowns) and has to pass by and see these hanging on bus shelters every morning, they scare the hell out of me. The first one in particular reminds me of the film clip for Aphex Twins 'Come To Daddy', and don't start me on the too human eyes, following you everywhere. So I guess the message is, 'Have fun at the show kid and welcome to hell!

Blog Watch

2009-08-17T12:38:00.003+09:30

This is an idea I had been mulling over for a while, now someone has actually realised it, feel the superior power of your design skills compared to these monstrosities over at You Logo Makes Me Barf. The title says it all really.

Fusion Update

2009-07-15T12:41:00.004+09:30

Adelaide design firm Fusion have revamped and updated their website, including a new 'blog' section and some new case studies. They are always producing interesting work both in interactive media and print, so well worth a look into what they have been up to lately.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 17

2009-07-15T12:26:00.004+09:30

It's great to come across a familiar name in a previously unknown incarnation, such iwas the case when I stumbled upon the website of Adelaide design shop Sage, the current guise of graphic designer Damian Hamilton. I remember Damian working at Adelaide design firm Ian Kidd Design (now KSD) and that pedigree is certainly evident in some very well produced wine labels on display in his folio. I was particularly impressed with his design for 'Just Add Wine's' Emu Bay label, some really beautiful hand drawn typography. Also on display in the folio is work that Damian produced while living and working in the UK for some impressive clients including Knight Frank, Pantene and Virgin Books. His current work covers a broad selection of disciplines, including art direction for fashion icon Jimmy Choo. It's also nice to see there's a bit of a sense of humour at play in the design of some of his own promotional items.

Blog Watch

2009-05-19T12:18:00.014+09:30

One of my favourite designers, JP Williams of MW Design has started a blog to dcument what he describes as his 'manic collecting' at Amassblog. His collections are varied but generally have to do with typography or design. With the blog he is endeavoring to find what’s special in the mundane and highlight what makes it so to him. Having visited JP on a couple of occassions at his New York studio, and been fortunate enough to look through some of his amazing collection, I'm looking forward to reading about it in his own words, and would urge anyone who has an interest in the history of graphic design to pay a visit. JP is also one of the most impeccable graphic designers you will come across and a visit to his studio MW's website is also well worth your time. You can read the interview I did with
JP Williams at his studio in 2007 here.

Judging Albums By Their Covers 14

2009-05-16T16:43:00.009+09:30

Radio Retaliation: Thievery Corporation

I confess that when it comes to buying music that sometimes I spend more time looking at the package than I do listening to the actual album. Mark me guilty as charged when it comes to the Thievery Corporation. The Washington DC duo have been serving up their particular style of 'polite grooves' for a number of years - inoffensive, perfectly produced sounds with all the rough edges sanded off, to burble away in the background. So what makes me keep returning to pick up their albums again and again? Nothing less than the fantastic album packaging they keep delivering with their releases from the brilliant talents of Neal Ashby. Radio Retaliation is no exception, and surprisingly, these time around, the Thievery Corporation also deliver something musically with a bit more bite.

I'm always on the look out for some handsome and different looking ways of presenting album covers. Not so much in those 'special edition' packaging sets for die-hard fans, but just your general consumer release. Radio Retaliation really stood out to me when I first saw it on the shelves at Borders - and it taps into what I think may be the future of physical album packaging. The CD is packaged in a jewel case or digipak. It comes bound in a cardboard folder - real industrial stength cardboard box cardboard. Folded within this is a giant sized poster designed with a really nice 'cut and paste aesthetic on recycled stock, that contains all the lyrics and details. The CD is nestled within this, no foam nub to hold it or anything - outside of the actual CD it's all paper, no plastic whatsoever. Plus, it has a ninja on the cover and everybody loves ninjas.

The package aesthetic all relates perfectly to the (subtle) political messages that The Thievery Corporation are delivering on the album, a swirling world music mixture that leaves you mostly unaware of the social contexts upon a first casual listen. A plethora of world music greats guest on the album including daughter of sitar master Ravi Shankar, and sitar virtuoso in her own right Anoushka Shankar, as well as Nigerian afro-beat star Femi Kuti, respected Brazilian vocalist Seu Jorge, Slovakian singer and violinist Jana Andevska, and DC-based "Godfather of Go-Go" Chuck Brown. There's a reason for the prominence of these artists, mostly of 'Third World' heritage. The mission statement seems to be to deliver humanitarian and politcal messages through these global voices, emphasised beautifully by the packaging as a direct response to the often vapid irepetitive pop music so often delivered over the airwaves, Radio Retaliation indeed

KSDesign

2009-03-14T21:07:00.003+10:30

Nice to see that local design company KSDesign have had a much needed update to their website. The revamp includes lots of new work on show as well, including a superlative array of their wine label designs. KS (IKDesign) is one of Adelaide's longest running and most respected design comapnies, and virtually wrote the book on Australian wine label design, definitely worth your time to take a browse through their portfolio.

AGDA Awards Show in New York

2009-03-08T15:30:00.009+10:30

I've just gotten back from a trip to New York and apart from my usual drop-in to see designers of note, the city was also hosting an exhibition of the 2008 Australian Graphic Design Awards at the AIGA headquarters. I've made a flickr set of the exhibition that you can view here. They were taken after a long hike down Broadway to reach the building on a particular snowy morning. Please forgive also the less than sterling photography, the interior was less than perfect for photography and I was trying to get as many shots off as I could before getting in trouble over the AIGAs 'no photography' policy! :) Obviously, all work is © of the respective creators. It's a pity that the AIGA chose to hold the exhibition at the same time as their own annual design show, (pictures of which I'll post shortly). The AIGA show was in the main area downstairs while the AGDA show was relegated to the upstairs mezzanine area - I saw quite a few people come in and peruse the AIGA show but few (if any) venture upstairs to look at the AGDA show, even though the work therein outweighed a lot of the AIGA pieces in creativity and quality (in this humble authors opinion!) Some good signage directing people to what was upstairs would have been a start!

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 16

2009-02-16T11:21:00.004+10:30

Adelaide Design Group and winners of design awards a' plenty, Mash, have finally put up some of their fantastic work for us to look at. From the site they describe themselves thus:

"Take a few well-chosen brand creators, designers, simplifiers and solutionists; with a passion for what we do (by definition a Branding Agency). Put in the awkward position of having to define ourselves, and feeling a little like we are putting an ad in the singles column, Mash is an agency that creates truly memorable work without the ridiculous theories and processes. We cater specially to clients who truly want to build their brand with creativity and originality.

Mash was founded in 2002 Adelaide, Australia by Dom Roberts & James Brown. This seems a lifetime ago now, and since 2002 Mash has done some growing up, working in many facets of branding, design, visual identity, web design, photography, art direction and copywriting.

Mash also thrives on collaborating with like-minded creative individuals and bodies to construct, present and represent all that is visual. Mash has developed a circle of photographers, copy writers, illustrators and stylists, which means Mash can develop specific teams to handle a variety of projects."

Being an Adelaide design firm, there's lots of nice wine work, but also some excellent identity pieces and their great 'Wolf and Cub' album cover to peruse.

Friendly Fires: Skeleton Boy

2009-01-24T11:58:00.007+10:30

It's amazing what you can do with some double sided tape and billions of Styrofoam balls as this amazing monochrome film clip demonstrates!

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 15

2009-01-15T16:35:00.002+10:30

University of South Australia Alumni Jeremy Matthews is VP of Graphic Design at Product, Interaction and Brand Agency Ammunition Group in San Francisco. Jeremy Graduated a year below me and is married to designer Mia Daminato (who was in my year at University).

Jeremy has over a decade of experience in brand and identity design. Prior to joining Ammunition, Jeremy was Design Director at MetaDesign, San Francisco. At MetaDesign, Jeremy was responsible for creating identity and communications for clients as diverse as Kohler, Johnson & Johnson, MTV and Shangri-la Hotels. Prior to MetaDesign, Jeremy founded Mia&Jem with his wife. Specializing in identity design for the hospitality industry, they designed and implemented award-winning identities for several prestigious restaurants in Australia, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Jeremy’s work has been widely published in North America, Spain, Germany, Asia and Australia. In 2008 his work was included in the “Sex in Design/Design in Sex” exhibition at the MOS in New York, alongside the work of famed designers such as Karim Rashid, Kiki de Montparnass and Pentagram.

Needless to say, the work on The Ammunition Group site is mouth-wateringly brilliant, done for some top name clients and worth a lazy browse through.

Fables Covers: The Art of James Jean

2008-11-25T19:01:00.005+10:30

James Jean is the kind of illustrator that I only ever dreamed of becoming when I was younger. With an exemplary draughtsman's skill, a nod to early 20th century American illustrators and a designers eye in use of colour composition and new technology, this book is a great start to see some of his beautiful work. His lavish covers for the Vertigo comic book series, "Fables," that he has produced monthly for the last eight years are always eye catching and it's great to see them all gathered here in one place.

The great thing about the book is that on one side you get part of the process he uses to get to the finished product such as preliminary sketches and drawings. My only complaint would be that Jean does some commentary on his covers for the trade paperbacks of the series, but he doesn't do any commentary on the individual covers, and an interview at the back by Fables writer Bill Willingham with Jean does little to draw out the character of the individual behind the work (Jean comes across as a very humble artist, it seem he prefers to let the work speak for itself. That said, the work is so beautiful, perhaps it is enough on it's own.

The unfortunate thing is that this volume is not easy to come by in Australia, I ordered mine for an arm and a leg through my local comic book shop, your best bet may be ordering through Amazon, even with the exchange rate and cost of postage.

James also runs a blog called Process Recess which always features fascinating looks at how he goes about producing his illustrations, not only for The Fables covers, but other commercial and private work as well.

Local Design Firm's Updates

2008-10-28T16:26:00.003+10:30

Some Adelaide Design firms have made some interesting updates since I last checked them (which is more than can be said for this site in the last month or so!) Voice Design have the latest Adelaide Symphony Orchestra season brochure up, once again they take it in interesting directions with splashes of colour and woodblock type in heavy use, also check out their publication design for local artist/photographer Mark Kimber. Nicknack have their rather splendid LMC identity work up (complete with handsome custom typeface) and some more excellent hand drawn Nike material. Jorgensen Design has become Thiink with a new website and lots of great work on display. Fusion's 'Adelaide Lantern' was finally unveiled to great acclaim and excitement, it really is quite a beautiful and exciting edition to the inner city. Both Sector7g and Detour both appear to have some updated work as well, some excellent work coming out of this little town.

James Gulliver Hancock Updates

2008-09-29T18:46:00.005+09:30

One of my favourite designer/illustrators has added quite a few updates to his site since I spoke to him a while back. As you would expect it's all pretty amazing including his recent work for musical artist Lenka as seen above. Click here to go to his site. While your at it, why not vote for his t-shirt designs at Threadless as well?

Rod Thomas - Same Old Lines

2008-09-14T13:39:00.003+09:30

Homer Simpson fears them, I'm fascinated by them - a great 'sock puppet' video clip to Rod Thomas' song 'Same Old Lines'.

The Rundle Lantern

2008-08-27T13:21:00.004+09:30

The city of Adelaide (much to many residents shame) isn't really renowned for it it's architectural excellence or forward looking development projects - 'change' and 'progress' seem to be dirty words to the powers that be around these parts - it's surprising then that the following project has made it through to approval. The Rundle Lantern will be contructed from 748 square panels, each with a LED light system on it, on the corner of Rundle and Pultney streets, where on the moment stands the fascade of a particularly ugly parking station. The piece was conceived by local design firm Fusion as a cultural canvas to showcase colourful interactive and moving imagery at night and as a unique art form during the day. Fusion were the only non-architectural firm to pitch, their concept requires no major re-building, landscaping or form. Beautiful in it's simplicity, Fusion states "our vision was to add beauty to people's lives without affecting the environment, to work with current structures, and to put Adelaide on the global map. If the concept picture is anything to go by, mission accomplished. The Rundle Lantern should go into operation later this year. You can read more about it and Fusion's other great projects here.

2008 SALA Festival

2008-08-03T21:12:00.016+09:30

The 2008 South Australian Living Arts Festival has begun and as usual, contains lots of interest for those inclined towards the visual arts, there's a lot of great stuff on, but here's a list of some of the things that have caught my eye from the program.

Still: Amalia Alpareanu - An installation of works in hand-made and recycled Japanese paper @ Artlab, 70 Kintore Avenue, Adelaide.

Wonder Stuff: Various - Messy Assemblages, delicate linework and banal black & white paintings, ust my sort of thing @ FELTSPACE, 12 Compton Street, Adelaide.

Thong Cycle: Gerry Wedd - My pick of the festival. Gerry was a lecturer when I was at Uni and in my humble opinion, one of the best designers (and most underated) in the country. The exhibition covers his work acrossthe disciplines jewellery, graphics and ceramics and coincides with the launch of a monograph on his work (which is a little dry layout wise, but well worth picking up @ JamFactory Studio Works Retail Gallery.

Mango SALA Salso - A Display or works created by the current and former staff of Mango Chutney Design, the designers for this years festival @ Malcolm Reid Building, 2nd Floor, 187 Rundle Street Adelaide.

IAmMe - This looks really cool, it's an exhibition of young artists from across the state aged between 5-18. The artists were directed to illustrate what matters to them, the results are consistently insightful and refreshing @ Nova Cinema, Rundle St, Adelaide

Open Studio: Angus Rayner - Really like the work, adoration of the female form, non conforming, unrestricted, emotional, bold, intense, random, tribal etc (as the program will tell you @ Raynart Studio Gallery, 194a Wright St, Adelaide

The Artisans - One of my favourite local acts from the 90s, featuring Gerry Wedd on vocals, back together for this gig to celebrate the launch of his monograph, it's free too, good deal! @ The Jade Monkey, 8pm, Aug 2, Twin St, Adelaide.

Black & White In Focus: Brian Morris - Graphic Photography in monochrome using authentic silver-gelatin processes, sounds promising, well worth a look @ Burnside Council - Atrium Gallery, 401 Greenhill Rd, Tusmore.

Dreams & Visions: Various - An Amalgamation of Australian and Indigenous Art @ Marie Hart Galleries, 11 Marina Pier, Holdfast Shores, Glenelg.

Mexico Moments: Barb Cawthorne - I saw a lot of Mexican inspired artwork on a recent trip to Los Angeles, I've become a big convert to the style, hopefully this exhibition will capture some of that @ Cafe 101, 101 Lipson St, Port Adelaide

Learning To Walk: Harry Koch, Jacky Spencer - Exhibition of photography using plastic cameras, sounds like fun and I'm a fan of the equipment @ Shutterbug Studios, 142 Commercial Rd, Port Adelaide

Cartoonists Let Loose! Various - I work (and in the case of Don Hatcher have been taught by) with a lot of the talented guys in this exhibition, sure to be spectacular and a lot of fun @ Aldgate Village, 232 Mt Barker Rd, Aldgate.

So that's what I've come across after a quick skim through the program, I'll maybe add more as I see it. Let me know anything you've seen that was fantastic, anyway - lots to get amongst there, pick up a program and go see some stuff.The Artisans

Judging Albums By Their Covers 13

2008-07-21T14:38:00.005+09:30

Beck: Modern Guilt

Well this was unexpected. A new Beck album, for someone interested in album cover art like myself, is always cause for interest. After the graphic excess of his previous release 'The Information', with its' DIY sticker set, what was in store for the next cover? Bet you weren't thinking it was going to be a rip on Bob Dylan's 'Highway 61 Revisited', can't say I saw that coming.

So what to make of this rather sombre presentation. Beck has always been about the subtle re-invention of himself and his music. He's come a long way from the twenty something dude singing about being a 'Loser'. With the truly creative artist it's always about growth, in whatever medium they choose to work in. There comes a point (it's usually a mid 30s thing) where the artist reaches a plateau in their output - creatively they've achieved much of what they set out to do - the audience has also come to expect a certain amount from the artist, where to from here then?

The immediate reaction is usually a certain amount of reflection upon what has gone before, and what can be done to make it fresh and unexpected again. The first step is tearing done all those accumulated expectations - getting back to basics as it were, to build something up again. Looking at the cover for 'Modern Guilt' - it seems like Beck's call to tear it all done and start anew (much like Dylan did with 'Highway 61 Revisited' - it all starts to come together now! The cover looks like a combination of a Reid Miles Bluenote album design from the 50s mixed with the ultra minimalism of a Tom Hingston designed 'Spiritualized' album. Musically, that's probably not a bad analogy as well - the sounds are very back to basics, rootsy and mellow, but flourished with a typical dash of techno, drum & bass twiddling. Seen in that light, the cover works a treat, it's seemingly 'off-the-cuff' design aesthetic actually being a lot more considered than you would think. It's therefore a very interesting representation of an artist cutting back the extraneous, the expectations of years of releases, to find some footing for where his music will take him next.

AGDA Awards

2008-05-22T14:31:00.018+09:30

This years Australian Graphic Design Awards Have been announced and will be presented in my good ol' hometown of Adelaide. They've taken an interesting and some might say, controversial approach in their call for entries promotion - here is how the awards website describes the concept:

It has been said that the only people who bag Adelaide are those who have never been there and those who have never left. When the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, dropped his famous “backwater” comment about Adelaide, blog sites lit up with all manner of interstate opinion about our little town. Nine of the most popular opinions were taken directly from these blog sites, posted by real people, and given to Adelaide artists to interpret. Yes, we know that Adelaide can be a little weird, but that’s what makes the place interesting. We also enjoy having a laugh at ourselves.

It's true, Adelaide seems to be the butt of jokes for the rest of the nation, especially those darn eastern states highbrows! :) What the denizens of Melbourne and Sydney often fail to realise is no matter how much you keep telling everyone how cultured and sophisticated your town is in comparison, it doesn't actually make it so. In Adelaide, we just tend to get on with things and leave the bravado to those with the insecurity problems! We can take it, how about the rest of you guys?

Anyway, the promotion for the awards came to members by way of one of nine A1 posters created by Adelaide artists, shown here with the 'quote' they based the artwork on. All the images were taken from the AGDA site and are of course © to the respective creators.

Daniel Noone
“Ah Adelaide, ya gotta love it, like a boring relative. A quaint little stop over on way to Perth. Full of Church’s, Fish’n Chip shops and Lesbians.” Posted by: Brad of Syd

I'm sure this poster looks great and lush at full size, it seems a very Advertising Awards solution which may not be a bad thing, it reminds me of something they might have done a few years ago, though the days when an image like this would truly shock anyone are long past.

Sam Barratt and Chris Edser
“No problems with Adelaide. I go there whenever I need Torana or Cortina parts.” Posted by: Bobby Bling of Bris Vegas

This is probably my favourite of all the posters and the most difficult of all the quotes to illustrate. Sam and Chris have run with it and created a wonderful, leftfield concept incorporating imaginary creatures that are 'unique' to Adelaide, unpretentious and fun.

Samantha Jarrett and Mash
“Adelaide is like that pathetic friend you can’t get rid of. Sure you go to his house ‘cause he’s got a ping pong table, but he’s a loser and a bit weird!” Posted by: Boxed Head of Ballarat

A great photo and really captures that 'not quite right' quality of the quote and an 'otherness' that Adelaide seems to embody to the rest of the country. No surprise that Mash are involved with the concept, as they seem to be becoming masters of portraying a uniquely Adelaidean off-kilter design aesthetic, ie: their work doesn't look like it could come from anywhere else.

Danny Snell
“LOL ... you must be kidding! Beautiful, peaceful Adelaide? That’s why it’s got the nickname “The Murder Capital” of Australia! SA’s you are pathetic bogans!” Posted by: Samantha Jones of Melbourne

Danny Snell is one of the best illustrators in Australia, and he doesn't disappoint here. You don't often get to see his work on such a large scale, so this must look fantastic at A1.

Benzo
“Cost of living is low, drug supplies are high.” Posted by: Wildcoug of Adelaide

Interesting style and nice inclusion of the eponymous Adelaide icons, the frog cake, Farmers Union Iced Coffee and Pale Ale. I really hate the shadow silhouette around the edge of the artwork though.

Nahum Ziersc
“The city that always sleeps.” Posted by: Ron of Sydney

My least favourite of all the concepts, this style of illustration just does nothing for me, and I'm not sure I see the connection between the quote and the artwork - I'm probably in the minority there though!

Fontaine Anderson
“Adelaide is like an annoying small dog that yaps, barks, jumps around and makes alot of noise about nothing, trying to be like a big dog.” Posted by: Vic of Melbourne

I love Fontaine's artwork, but there's something about this that doesn't quite gel for me. There's obviously a lot of work gone into it, maybe it comes across better viewing it at full size.

John Engelhardt
“Thought people in Adelaide were living proof Tasmanians could swim.” Posted by: The Swanny from Sydney

John Engelhardt is quickly becoming one of my favourite illustrators and pulls off a blinder with this fantastic single colour illustration. I would say he had the hardest quote to illustrate and executes it beautifully. I want him to design my full back tattoo when I finally become senile/pathetic enough to actually get one.

Timothy Ide
“It’s pretty much a small going nowhere town with a lot of dark seedy murders/child mollestations/rock spiders/ etc etc not the sort of town one would move to in a hurry. It has nothing going for it and is boring and gossipy. Turn the clock back to the 80s is what this boring town is all about. Who wants to go there? Delta Goodrem’s mother lives there and Lleyton and he’s a mindless jerk. Who else? A few nobody celebs might call Adelaide home. Why is anyone’s guess.” Posted by: Vic lover of Vic

There's always been something a bit creepy about Timothy Ide's work, so he seems the perfect choice to illustrate probably the most controversial of the quotes, he falls just short of crossing the line. If any of these pieces are likely to raise an uproar, this one's it.

So there you have it, at the very least, some nice illustrations and a pretty interesting concept. Kudos to Voice as well for their 'boots 'n all' logo for the event, at first I thought it looked too 'alchohol promtion' but it has since grown on me.

If this has picqued you're interest in the Awards, you can get all the details at the AGDA website. It's always an interesting event, despite there being too many categories, too many awards, too many judges, too self inclusive and too damn expensive to enter - but that's another article! :)

Interview With James Victore

2008-05-12T12:31:00.014+09:30

James Victore Is a Nice Guy!

For some reason James Victore has garnered a reputation as being 'the angry man of graphic design' so it was with a little trepidation that I contacted him about the possibility of meeting and talking to him while I was recently in New York (I know, I'm a pussy!) Let me dispel the myth. As well as being one of the most talented designers plying his trade today, he's one of the nicest and most generous individuals I have met on my travels. Maybe this 'reputation' comes from his unwillingness to compromise his ideals or the honesty with which he speaks about the profession. In discussing his 'bad boy' image with him, he seemed to take some pleasure from the perceived 'rock-star attitude' persona. So my apologies James if it's burst anyone's bubble and you find your doorstep inundated with design graduates now reassured that you won't spit on their folios and make them cry. Following is a transcript of a brief interview I did with the great man - and he only says 'fuck' once.

Chris Bowden: With some of the most recognised design names in the world residing in the New York environs - how do you get yourself noticed and bring in clients?

James Victore: I've never really thought or concerned myself with that much, partially because one thing that I think goes on in the city is that there are a lot of graphic designers and they all do the same sort of work that looks alike to a certain extent. All I have to do is try not to be a graphic designer. I don't consider myself an artist but I think a lot of designers would think that I lean more towards that side than to the graphic design side, so I really don't worry about it that way. Because they 'look like a duck and smell like a duck', they probably get more of the 'graphic design work' than I do. It's something that I shy away from but also something that I probably suffer from - not being the quintessential graphic designer.

CB: Is New York as a market so big that it can encapsulate all of these designers and still provide plenty of work?

JV: There's nice work if you can get it. A lot of it seems to me to be too easy, big money work. Take work for land developers for example, there's tonnes of work and I'm sure it pays extremely well, I just can't figure out how to get it! If I did get it, it would probably be the kind of work I wouldn't do too much to. I don't think there is much I could do that would be that much different from anybody else. I would just get Shawn (designer in James' studio) to do it and he would do an excellent job. There are a lot of designers in the city, there's a lot of clients, but the thing I've found with those clients and with the city is that it's actually all pretty conservative out there. They're not really concerned with new or interesting, they're just concerned with work.

CB: When I spoke with Paul Sahre, he thought a lot of the most interesting work was coming from the 'young guns' working out of their bedrooms.

JV: It's true, but once they have bigger bedrooms and higher rents and mortgages, then their work will change, that's what happens.

CB: A lot of your most recognised work tackles particular social and political issues, they obviously express a personal viewpoint , is it important for designers to express themselves in this way?

JV: No, it's a personal calling. You either view it or you don't. In general, I don't think designers are particularly qualified to express those opinions. To a certain degree, I don't think it is something that you can be asked to do. A lot of those things I did were self initiated – just something I thought of or felt and got it done. Either I went and spent my rent money doing it, or I found some client who was interested in my opinion and got them to distribute the stuff. It isn't really in the designer's job description to be socially active.

CB: At design school we were sort of pushed towards believing that you shouldn't see too much of the individual designer in the work, that the work should be produced for the needs of the client.

JV: That's hogwash. I spent a little bit of time in design school and I felt that we all went in with this empty shoe box and we were handed out these particular tools and these particular answers and as soon as we got out of school, we would be a success if we looked alike and acted alike. I thought that was the job. I think you could work in New York city and be very successful doing that, having no opinion, having no look, just melding to the client. It's just not something that I can personally do. You've spoken to Paul (Sahre), Paul would probably err towards not having himself in the work, but he's all over his stuff whether he knows it or not.

CB: I brought that up, he doesn't see a particular style in his work.

JV: He must have been drunk! :)

CB: He did concede to having a certain 'character', I always see a subtle irony at play there.

JV: I think my work has too much character at times and looks too much like me. It's hard for me to get away from that, it's hard for me to remove myself unless I just did flush left, Helvetica on a white background all the time.

CB: Your work would never be mistaken for that of anyone else, unless they are directly copying you.

JV: I actually like the feeling and ideas in Paul's work so much, that we've actually started working on the big book that says 'Victore' down the spine. Paul is designing it because I want that from him and I don't want to see my own 'handiwork' in my own book. He can put the 'aggressive' in there but he can also put the 'smart'.

CB: Do you get offered work that you just won't do?

JV: No, I wish I got that! I don't get it too often. I think that for better or for worse, 15 years ago I kind of professionally shot myself in the foot in doing this poster with a dead indian on it. I've said this before that because of that poster and subsequent work, I've gained a certain reputation. I would actually be happy to die with that reputation, rather than have the money from those 'other' jobs in my pocket. We get to take cabs, have nice wine, etc. I sleep really well. I would like a new this or a new that, but there are trade offs. There's this great line about getting work and getting certain types of work. It's from an E. E. Cummings poem: "There is some shit I will not eat." We sometimes get a call from a big agency for work, so we give them an estimate. All they want is a price, they don't can't so much about the work as much as who is going to do it for what price. Then we never hear back from them. I don't know what it is that keeps me from the big money stuff, but so be it. I also think that those are jobs that I really don't want to do, but there are enough zeroes in them to make them interesting. What I'm trying to do instead of doing those jobs is a lot of other things. For instance, this school I'm doing with Paul Sahre and Jan Wilker, product designs I'm doing with surfboards and plates. I'm starting another program with the school that I teach at, The School of Visual Arts. We're starting a retail store for them, I'll be the director of that. Instead of going out on my knees and trying to get those clients with 'that money', I just figure out other ways of doing it. That way I can love the project, it can be my thing. I can still have an opinion, I can still have my attitude and just diversify.

CB: Can you tell me a little about your plates project.

JV: The plates are just a funny thing that came about a bunch of years ago. As a young designer I was a bit of a barfly and I would always have paint markers or sharpies with me. I would draw on the plates, glasses, wine bottles etc, when I had finished with them. In my heart, I'm a customiser, I just change everything. I draw on my equipment, I've got type on myself. I would use them to start conversations, or give them away as gifts. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who has a small gallery in Brooklyn asked me if I wanted to do a show of my work. He meant the posters but I really didn't want to see them up anywhere, it's not that interesting to me. I told him that I would think about it. Laura (James wife) and I took a vacation to Austin where she's from and where we like to spend a lot of time. I went to a friends studio and on his wall was a tiny little plate with a funny little drawing on it. I saw it from across the room and my immediate reaction was 'That's fucking nice'. Then it dawned on me that I had actually done it for him when he had been in town previously. I went back to the gallery guy in Brooklyn and told him that I had an idea for a show, I draw on plates, I've done it forever. He said "great, how many do you have?" I said "none, I give them all away, but I know where I can find some blank plates". I drew up some plates and did that show. When that show came down, it went up again at a big retailer called Design Within Reach. There are plates up now in a gallery called Future Perfect which is down in Brooklyn. I was just talking with a museum in the Netherlands to do a show there at some time. I haven't been pushing it really hard or looking for a retailer to carry them, but it moves along at it's own funny little pace. If I just dropped everything else and just concentrated on the plates, we could probably make an interesting go of it, but it's not what I do. I'm involved in a lot of different projects, the plates are just one of them.

CB: Do you think designers self initiating projects and putting them out in the market is a good strategy for having more control over their work?

JV: I think there are so many people doing that these days, designers and illustrators - to me, the plate thing partially started when I was a kid. My mother showed me the work of Fornasetti and I really liked it. Then when I was about 28, for the first time I went to Paris and visited the Picasso museum. I first saw his plates there and from that the idea blew up in my head. The plates have been sort of a lark, but if they turned into something professional, that would be awesome, and a complete surprise to me!

CB: Of all the projects you've worked on, which have given you the most personal satisfaction?

JV: It would be today's project. I'm not one who is easily satisfied. We have a project that we just finished today, the new Yohji Yamamoto fashion stuff and I really like what we came up with for that. We've also just finished this thing for a museum in Florida, it was a totally free job and it was just dragging me through the mud, I couldn't figure out how to do it. When we did finally solve it, it was just awesome. I think it just comes from my personality. The ones that interest me the most are the ones that are just over the 'stoop'. Like this wine job for Chris Ringland at the moment. I'm like, "My God, what am I going to do?" It has to be great, which is kind of scary, but we'll see what happens.

CB: Is it for export to the US market?

JV: No, it's a wine offering. He's got his 2002 Shiraz coming out, he sends it out, I don't know how many pieces, whether it's 1,000, 5,000 or 500. I have to make that mailing. When we've done that, we'll probably roll that over into some other labelling for his stuff. That will be interesting for me. Wine labels are such a cliche, how do I make something that's not completely outside of the cliche, but something that is still interesting, still sexy and marvelous. Something where people will stare and think that they have to look at it.

CB: South Australia is known for it's wine regions, and subsequently, some excellent wine labels from the likes of Tucker Design, Parallax and KS Design, you'll often see them in the design annuals.

JV: I keep saying that I did design the easy way, I came to New York. If I was really good I could do it from Minnesota or Adelaide or wherever. I think there is always room for good.

CB: Any projects or clients that you haven't worked on that you would like to?

JV: The answer is always the same for that. I like doing work that real human beings see. I don't like doing work that just graphic designers see. If I do a book project, I want to do a book that gets out there. Even if I'm designing surfboards, there are probably like 3 people on the planet who are interested in my surfboards, but I want everyone to see them. I did this crazy ass job for Esquire magazine recently, it was a big full page with a big thing on the other page. The fact that a lot of people will see that interests me. These past couple of months have been crazy. The job I really want to do now is any job that is worth $100,000 and would take me 15 minutes just to do a little doodle! The Yohji Yamamoto stuff is kind of interesting. The problem is that they don't advertise in magazines. To get a full spread in a fashion magazine would be wonderful. It doesn't matter what it pays, I like to put stuff out there and make people go "Oh my God, that's nuts!" Like Paul Sahre's work, he can do something with Helvetica that makes people go, "What the hell? Nobody has the balls to do that!"

Thanks once again to James, Laura and Shawn for their generosity in giving up their time to talk to me and for taking me out to lunch as well. Hopefully we will see James out here in Australia some time soon (if you're listening, get onto this AGDA!) As was mentioned in the interview, James, along with Paul Sahre and Jan Wilker are conducting a week long workshop this summer in New York. Applications have closed for this year, but he school will be conducted again next year, so start saving now. I'll be sure to have the details up on the site as soon as they are available. In the meantime, you can look at the workshop site here. All images are from James' website and you can browse some of these items for sale at his online shop, (US residents only, unfortunately!) James even finds time for a blog!

He's The Greatest Drummer....

2008-05-11T17:43:00.008+09:30

If only we all had as much passion for our work as this guy.
From The Strange Attractor.

Central Station

2008-05-11T14:19:00.004+09:30

The design work of Peter Saville is synonymous with the output of legendary record label Factory, but his work is only part of the story. The covers that Central Station designed for The Happy Mondays encapsulate the bands heady, trippy, go for broke attitude and seem the antithesis of the cool refinement that Saville was producing at the time. The Creative Review site has an interesting look back and interview with Central Station (still going strong) discussing their work and influences here.

Leisurama

2008-05-07T19:30:00.005+09:30

Speaking of Paul Sahre, while I was in New York , he showed me his latest self-initiated book project called 'Leisurama', which he describes as such:

"What kind of idiot buys a house at a department store?

Sounds crazy, but then again, why not? Even if a prospective owner didn’t succumb to the smartly designed, full-size, fully-furnished Leisurama model on the 9th floor of Macy’s at Herald Square, or swallow the advertising (which boasted the ultimate in convenience, “Just pick a few colors and start enjoying your new life of leisure"), or be convinced by the price tag ($490 down and $73/month), a well-designed house this cheap--and by the beach--could hardly be believed.

And so (in 1964) 200 people did just that, and if the company who sold them hadn’t gone bankrupt during the construction of the first phase, many more would have followed. The initial development plan called for 800 Leisuramas in Montauk, Long Island alone.

Since being built, these identical (and identically furnished) houses have been in a constant state of change. I was introduced to these odd little buildings as a renter in the summer of 2001 and almost immediately began research for this book, which was conducted almost exclusively door to door".

Naturally I purchased a copy, and as you would expect, it's fantastic, not only well designed but well written. I'm not sure whether it's available in Australia yet - I'm sure it will be eventually at your local 'design bookshop' at the usual steep markup. It is available on Amazon at a more reasonable rate I've sure here.

Ghostly Swim

2008-05-07T15:39:00.003+09:30

My fondness for all things music albumy should be pretty apparent by now. While trolling through the inter-web I came across this great little compilation album of electronica and ambience called Ghostly Swim. I love the cover (above) and best of all, the compilation is free to download, which you can do here.

Time 100 Covers

2008-05-07T15:25:00.005+09:30

Speaking of James Victore, he designed one of the covers for the latest issue of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people (above). There are five covers in all, the other designed by Neville Brody, Euro RSCG, and two by Chip Kidd, you can see all of them here.It looks like you can only get the Chip Kidd cover in Adelaide, a pity, because I think James' is the best - it's an excellent graphic but not at the expense of not looking like a 'Time' cover ( a bit of a failing on the part of the other covers in my humble opinion - Time magazine has one of the most recognisable cover identities around). So congratulations to James, one of the nicest people I met while away - it's great that his work will get to be seen by such a wide audience as the Time readership.

Home Again

2008-05-07T15:20:00.003+09:30

......annnnd, we're back! Yes it's been a long time between posts, not that it should be all that unexpected periodically from moi. Back from the big apple having tied the knot and having a wonderful time there as usual. I met up with some fantastic designers once again, so in the coming weeks expect to see interviews with the likes of Paul Sahre and James Victore (once I get off my lazy arse and get to transcribing them! Hopefully the trip has given me a kick up the backside, creatively speaking, hoping to turn that into some 'design gold' over the coming months - we'll see.

The Overseas Experinece II

2008-04-01T11:48:00.003+10:30

I'm off travelling to the US again, I'll be away in the US for 3 weeks or so - significantly to get married! My itinerary mainly includes New York, so you can be sure that I will once again be visiting and talking to some designers of note once again, looking for things designer-ish to discuss and also heading off on a tangent and visiting the New York Comic Convention (but, hey, Chip Kidd is gonna be there!). I'll have my laptop with me there, so hopefully I may be posting a bit more often - and if you're a designer living in the New York area, I'll be there between the 8th and 18th, so drop me a line!

AGDA Website

2008-03-05T12:38:00.003+10:30

AGDA are about to launch a much needed website refresh, you can see the 'just about ready to relauch' site here. In other AGDA news, looks like the AGDA Awards are set to be hosted in little old Adelaide this year, might even be worth me considering joing up again.

Design Studio Debaser

2008-03-05T12:30:00.003+10:30

Frequent visitors to my blog will know of my unabiding love for album cover design. One of the best design studios in Australia specialising in that, is Debaser who have just updated their website with some snazzy new work and a new look. Looking through their portfolio you'll notice the covers for some of Australian musics best known albums of recent years, as well as some really fine work for artists that you might not be so familiar with. Congratulations to the guys as well for picking up the ARIA for best cover design for Powderfingers 'Dream Days at the Hotel Existence', they also won the previous year's award for Powderfinger lead singer Bernard Fanning's 'Tea & Sympathy' abum artwork.

Womadelaide 2008

2008-03-04T14:52:00.006+10:30

Looking to re-ignite that fading creative spark, here some new and different sounds, or just relax to the sombre tones of a world of music? Then do yourself the proverbial favour this weekend if you're in Adelaide and get down to Botanic Park to soak in the atmosphere of the always fantastic and eye-opening Womadelaide World Music Festival. I've been every year since it's inception and it's never failed to enlighten my (sometimes) diminished creative soul with something either really different or really beautiful. Some of my favourite moments have been sitting under a tree at Womad and soaking in the sounds and atmosphere of this event (and it is an event in the true sense of the world). True to form, Adelaide always turns on the hot weather for Womad, but don't let that stop you from getting down there. Even if you have no interest in world music, it's worth it just to watch some hippie 'tree dancers' strut their stuff, it's also very kid friendly and my (future) father-in-law gives a big thumbs up to the coffee and pancakes on sale :) Also worth checking out is the Womadelaide Website to not only get a run down on this years event, but check the archives for past years' line-ups, including my 'dream-team' lineup and all time favourite poster from 1995! As you can also see from above, nice poster this time around as well!

Illustrator Fontaine Anderson

2008-03-04T14:13:00.001+10:30

Adelaide Designer/Illustrator Fontaine Anderson has a new website to display her stunning work. I really like the ink and soft pastel/limited colour palette she incorporates into her work, there's a sort of 1960s - 70s aesthetic gotting on there as well, just not as kitsch as that sounds. As you look through the gallery of her work, she's quite versatile as well, demonstrating some nice full colour paintings and even logo designs, be sure to check out her sketchbook section as well. I believe she is currently working at Adelaide design firm Designcentric, a good place to check out more of her work.

Adelaide Fringe 2008 Poster

2008-02-11T16:05:00.000+10:30

Having reviewed the poster design for Adelaide's forthcoming arts festival, it would be some what remiss of me to not also take a look at the poster for Adelaide's other big arts event, The Fringe. As always, the poster was decided through an open design contest, this year's winner was Hat Morgan. While I haven't always been that pleased by the poster contests results, you can say that at least the winning poster is usually fun an colourful whuch I guess goes a long way to putting the appropriate face on such a lively and popular event. I think Hat has done an excellent job this time around. There's nothing too cereberal about the 'mind-blowing' image, it's quirky but not so much as to be off putting to the average punter. The two characters on the poster are quite iconic and usefully versatile when translated to other mediums such as TV spots and online applications. I like the way Hat has gotten across the 'mindblowing' image without being out-there gross or cliched, it hasn't been rendered in a trendy, fashion-following style, but follows it's own unique path. I'm not entirely sure the green stripes add much to the design, I imagine a bit of space around the figures would have only added to their impact, and the type feels a little design-school default in it's choice of font and setting. These are pretty minor quibbles though, overall I think it succeeds and portrays the Fringe as an exciting and much anticipated event.

Recent Surfing Highlights 13

2008-01-09T11:52:00.000+10:30

Welcome to 2008! Some more links of recent note that I've tracked down so you don't have to.

Pitchfork media in their 'oh so clever-er than you manner' have listed their 20 worst album cover of 2007. I actually really like the 'Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!' cover, so what do I know!

I'm a huge fan of hand drawn type, the forthcoming film Juno has a beautiful hand drawn title sequence by Shadowplay Studio. By all reports, the film sounds like it will be pretty good as well, if you're into that whole Napoleon Dynamite feel in your movie watching.

I guess it's that time of year if you're into making New Years reolutions (though I guess most people have already broken theirs by now). Jim Hargreaves has set out his own set of design resolutions for the year on his blog, so good luck with that I guess.

In the why didn't I think of that? department name your design studio after you're favourite band, though in my case, 'Starland Vocal Band Design' doesn't really roll off the tongue.

Soon to find their way onto my business card, pithy design quotes.

My business card is a ball of putty. I know some people who think of me that way!

Thw worst of Perth is a fantastic site that points out just that, I'm especially loving their graphic design section.

James Jean is the kind of illustrator I dreamed of being while I was growing up (a work still in progress). Check out his fantastic illustration skills and weep.

I loves me some work from local animation gurus The Peoples Republic of Animation checkout their fab Mitsubishi Lancer commercial here.

Adelaide Festival of Arts 2008 Poster

2007-11-25T18:02:00.000+10:30

The Adelaide festival of Arts 2008 Poster has been up and around for a few weeks now, probably the biggest art orientated design item going in this city, I thought it was time to once again take a look at what they've come up with this time around. This is what the blurb on the Festival website has to say about it:

In 2008 we celebrate the artwork of a South Australian visual artist for the Festival’s ‘look’. Our motto, What are you seeing? begins with our cover design – the ambiguous, biomorphic sculpture by Michael Kutschbach (go, you little dynamo, go!). After a tradition of a two-dimensional image representing the Festival, we take you for the first time into the third dimension with a sculptural object to surprise, confound and delight.

"I like the idea of the sculpture being thought of as a peculiar kind of Alien. An Alien that is fresh and new to this city, yet at the same time entirely formed by it and its people.

The work is essentially intended as a very tactile object whose final form is the result of an attempt to embody, in abstract formal terms, the strength, dynamism, beauty, confidence and playfulness that will be the upcoming 2008 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts.

It is a friendly and uncertain form designed to appeal directly to the viewer's senses, to deliberately entice the viewer to come closer and to ask what it is and what it might be doing here. This positive uncertainty and desired curiosity runs through the Festival's theme of What are you seeing?"

While I would argue that this is the first time that the image of the Festival has been represented by a three dimmensional sculptural object (both the posters for 2002 and 1978 both feature sculptural items as their focus) it's never the less an interesting visual - kind of a cross between a triffid and a sunlamp from my perspective, I don't know if my interpretation says nothing or everything about the event (encompassing the literate and the vain perhaps? :)

It's obvious from the poster that like the 2006 piece, this comes across as very much a branding exercise, a centrepiece to offshoot all of the Festivals communication requirements rather than just a stand alone, though they have gone back to incorporating a piece of fine art as was the norm previous to the 2006 poster.

It's a pity then that the Festival site doesn't mention the contributions made in this regard by the design firm, Fusion, who are handling the branding of the 2008 event. The most impressive aspect of the poster to me is the typography (though I guess you would say I'd say that!) It's beautifully organic and flowing, playing off those elements of the sculptural piece and implemented across the entire range of the Festivals promotional items. Fusion are an excellent choice to carry this out, their expertise in new media, online applications and video are second to none, and where this branding really comes to life is when you see the typography move and grow across the screen in television commercials and online. It's been really well thought out to work across all mediums rather than pandering to the needs of one or the other - quite a task for such a large event that covers just about every promotional medium.

As a poster it does it's job effectively, it's nice to see all that white space for the beautiful type to stand out in, and the sculptural piece is a 'have to take a second look' sort of proposition', As is typical with this kind of thing, the only off-putting element for me is the size of those logos at the bottom, something I'm sure is out of the designers hands and a neccessary evil, but for some reason looks all the more obtrusive this time around.

Separated at Birth?

2007-11-09T17:49:00.000+10:30

Can anyone explain to me why these posters for the Adelaide Film Festival (first) and The Durban Film Festival (second) are so similar? Not pointing the finger at anyone, but they are both really similar to each other - not just from an idea standpoint but stylistically similar as well, they could all have been produced during the same photo shoot. They both must have been produced at around the same time, was there some 'consensus of vision' as far as the promotional material for both events? I tend to think not because of the difference in how the typography is handled. There were more in the series for the Adelaide event, but these two presented here were they only ones I could find online, sorry about the quality of the 'set of 3' below for the Durban event, I took a screen grap from a pdf giving a sneak peak of a book soon to be released by Durban design firm Disturbance. I seem to remember there being an Adelaide one similar to the Durban 'hair salon' one as well. Maybe it's just a case of the collective zeitgeist clashing in the same idea at the same moment - you don't know how long I'e been waiting to use the word zeitgeist in one of my posts! Regardless, they have both 'borrowed' heavily from avante-garde music and visual art group The Residents, though clarification on the matter would be appreciated.

***UPDATE***
Monica from the Durban Film Festival was kind enough to reply and shed some light from their perspective on the whole scenario - seems it is just a case of synchronisity at work! She does raise a good point about where I sourced the images though, and if you're interested at seeing more of the Durban Eyeball guy, go to their site here to check it out.

Redundant!

2007-10-10T09:53:00.000+09:30

As you can probably tell from that rather dramatic title, yeah, I'm no longer employed at Martins (which also goes a little way to explaining why I haven't posted much in the last few weeks other than my usual laziness with these things ;) So at the moment consider me a 'freelance designer'. That thing that all agencies and design firms dread happened - losing that one big client, has resulted in myself and a large chunk of the Martins team looking elsewhere for gainful employment. It was a hard blow at the time, I loved working at Martins, it ticked all my boxes, great work environment, forward looking company, great people to work with and the chance to do some nice work, so believe me, walking out of those doors of the final day was one of the hardest things I've ever hd to do. And I don't hold any animosity towards Martins, they had the most difficult decision any company ever has to make - it's a dilema many an agencies faces, your client grows quickly so you have to grow with them to keep the work, then they pull the wool out from under you and take the account away! So I'm cool about it now, it wasn't like I was the only one to go and considering the quality of talent I was in company with that they had to let go, I'm not taking it personally. As I said, I loves me some Martins, you won't find a better group of people anywhere. In a lot of respects, they're probably better off without that particular account, working on the same thing you can get caught in a creative quagmire of repetition, Martins are better than that, a very forward looking company, so while this is a major setback, I expect within a year or so at least they'll be doing bigger and better things. As for me, I'm doing ok, I'm lucky I've got the grace of a few month (at least) to look for another position somewhere I really want to be. In the meantime I've got some ongoing freelance which pretty much matches my previous salary while I look, and a little bit more spare time to update some skills, do some of my own work and update this blog more often I guess. But hey, if you're reading this, living in Adelaide and need a designer in some capacity, drop me a line, I'd be happy to talk to you and show you my folio :) Onwards and upwards!

Recent Surfing Highlights 12

2007-09-24T12:04:00.001+09:30

Hey! What a crappy week I've had! Let's brighten it up with some recent highlights from the old inter-web.

I like to think that I thought of it first, but I'm sure it was an idea that has been floating around for a long time. The good folks at Sleevage present a whole website full of similar album cover reviews to my own infrequent 'Judging albums by their covers' post and do so with a much better name and more frequent posting :) Keep your eyes out in the comments section and you might even come across some words of wisdom from yours truly!

Interesting article about a NY advertising exec who lost his job, developed a brain tumour and went to work at Starbucks serving coffee behind the counter - ta-dah! He's written a book about his experiences (of course) which is soon to be turned into a film starring Tom Hanks (obviously) Don't let that put you off though, it speaks a lot about our priorities and puts into perspective what may or may not be the most important things in life, check it out here if you feel like being a little 'heart-warmed'.

Just thing to brighten my crappy, crappy day, beautiful, beautiful typography by the very talented Marian Batjes for Saks Fifth Avenue. It's worth popping over to the pentagram to check out their rebranding of Saks if you haven't seen it, one of the best I've seen in recent times.

The crappy new Photoshop logo manages to incorporate just about everything I hate into one mark, so well done, I guess.

My fiance bought me a beautiful Jack Spade messenger bag for my birthday which I absolutely love, despite it's magnetic ability to pick up all of my white doggies fur! Anyway, I love this video of a Jack Spade impromptu fashion show Very funny and very cool.

The most amazing thing I have seen in a long time. Dutch artist Theo Jansen makes kinetic skeleton sculptures which actually walk in the wind. You have to see them in action to believe them.

Judging Albums By Their Covers 12

2007-09-11T20:30:00.000+09:30

Massive Attack: Mezzanine

The mono album cover obsession/examination continues, this time looking at Massive Attack's Mezzanine. I can't say I've ever been a big fan of the whole 'trip hop' scene, but Massive Attack are a whole different animal, as ably demonstrated by the cover to Mezzanine. If listening to the album conjures anything immediately, it's a creeping menace that builds as the music progresses. The heavy metal beetle on the cover certainly qualifies for the creepy bit, it's also a brilliant way to express what you can expect from the music. It's an amazing graphic representation of the juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, calmness and anxiety, the brooding intensity of the songs. Both graphics and sounds are confrontational, perfectly complimenting each other.

The artwork is a collaboration between designer Tom Hingston, fashion/art photographer Nick Night and Massive Attack band member 3D. Tom Hingston had this to say about the collaboration.

"The band's collective philosophy was born out of hip-hop and club culture. 3D, a former graffiti artist, was looking for a different way to work. He came up with themes and words applicable to the project, so that designer, photographer and band could push and pull each other in different directions until we were in a place we were all happy with."

Happy seems an unusual choice of word for such dark and menacing imagery. Like the music though, there's a lot to discover when looking deeper into the cover. It may not be immediately apparent that the 'beetle' is actually an intricate organic/metallic sculptural piece. I also have to mention that this beautiful overall mono colour concept is topped off inside with a plain vibrant orange CD disk. It juxtaposes nicely against the rest of the graphics, a concept I have stolen/borrowed on many occasions for my own work :)

Judging Albums By Their Covers 11

2007-09-02T17:11:00.000+09:30

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run

I've been thinking a lot of late about just what are my favourite album cover designs of all time, and while an oredered list of my preferences seems to change daily, one thing that has become apparent id that a lot of my favourite covers are monotone. Just what that says about me, I don't know, but I thought that over the next couple of weeks I'd discuss some of my favourite 'monotone' covers of all time.

First up, Springsteen's 70's classic 'Born To Run'. We're probably all familiar with the superstardom he reached in the 80's, but that wasn't always the case. Up to the release of Born To Run, he had released a couple of albums that had received critical praise, but weren't doing much on the charts, he had yet to transfer the energy and popularity of his live shows into any significant album sales. This was all about to change though.

With his new album, photographer Eric Meola wanted to capture the character of Springsteen from his concert persona, but not with a traditional live shot. By using a black and white photo and a plain white backdrop, there would be nothing to distract from the figure of Springsteen the performer, the eye would go straight to his movement and shape.

Meola was right on the money, the album cover has gone on to be one of the most iconic images of rock. It's a beautiful introduction to the music on the album, Springsteen leans on Saxophonist and E-Street band member Clarence Clemens, illustrating how he had come to depend on his bandmates to help him encapsulate the full scope of his songs. The stark black and white photo and a white background of a cheeky grinned Springsteen looking back at Clemens is a perfect accompaniment to the grandeur of the albums lyrics used to describe the seemingly mundane and every day events of his songs protaganists. Ultra thin lettering lets the photo tell it's story in an elegant understated manner, a type treatment seldom used at the time, but now a design classic.

The album is over 30 years old but still stands the test of time both musically and grapically, certainly benefiiting from the larger canvas of the vinyl album era.

Interview With Jonathan Wallace of Alter

2007-08-16T19:20:00.000+09:30

I try to keep tabs on what's happening that's new and interesting as far as The Australian Graphic Design scene goes. If I see something that impresses me I'll usually dig a little further to find out who did it. Such was the case while watching Foxtel one evening when I saw the advert spots for the Australian Music Video Awards. Not only were the spots pretty funny, poking fun at some of Australia's best known musical artists, they also had a fantastic retro graphics style that immediately appealed and stood out. It wasn't long before I recognised that this was the work of the same talents behind a lot of the great graphics of ultra hip local record label Modular. I'm talking about Melbourne design studio Alter. I talked to Jonathan Wallace about his work and aspirations for the studio,

Chris Bowden: When did you first decide to become a designer. Was there the proverbial 'pivotal moment'?

Jonathan Wallace: I'm not sure how to pull history apart, so I'll say that it's more a succession of smaller moments. I'd left Melbourne University because the philosophy students were really annoying me. I loved the idea of philosophy, but in practice there were too many people talking about themselves. Then I worked in quite a few unrelated, menial areas. In one (an exhibition hire company) a friend told me 'art' at Tafe was great fun. I tried it. He was right, Tafe was fun, so I decided to continue to University. The Design people didn't talk about themselves as much, but at times they did look at themselves in mirrors, windows, etc. Maybe I did that too.

I'm not sure that I ever really decided to be a designer. Though I do think of it as a very lucky job to have. I began to believe a career in design might be less implausible midway through my second year studying it at Monash University. Prior to that I was really just kidding myself with ideas that it could be a way of earning a living without working hard.

CB: Who or what inspires you at the moment?

JW: The usual suspects I'm afraid... art, film, music, pop culture, etc. I'm often inspired by the guys I work with (I know that's really cheesy, but it's essential really). Dan, Rick and Dion are all doing interesting things both on and off the field. I really loved some aspects of Daft Punk's Electroma, it brought Eno back for me like a weird, romantic vision from memory. We've had some old Talking Heads on lately anyway, some German stuff and Ariel Pink. I've really enjoyed seeing people jumping at sold out Cutters shows and standing quietly watching a sold out Sly Hats show (I was slightly awed and think there might have been a few tears amongst the crowd). We're also checking out the new Cut Copy release.

CB: Which of the projects that you have worked on in the past are you most proud of and why? I've been really blown away by the work you've done for Modular - they seem to be very open to pushing the boundaries in how they present themselves from their music releases to their online presence, could you also speak a little on your relationship with them?

JW: Tough question. Lots of them had a little moment that made them 'real'. To single something out, Modular comes easily to mind. We've done quite a bit over a few years and there are certainly people whose perception of Modular is linked directly to the kind of coloured, layered and indiosyncratic work that we've produced. Who knows what the future will hold, but we've had a great run with them and made a contribution that we're really proud of. I guess the freedom we enjoyed in the creation of the artwork has conveyed something of the nature of Modular and Alter at the same time. At its best, that's how the relationship works... it's like, symbiotic. Yes, I am joking. The Modular people are cool, it has been fun.

CB: One of the highlights of having Foxtel was the seeing the spots you did for The MTV Video Awards. Could you discuss a little about the work, how it came about, the process, how much freedom you were given, was it as much fun to do as it looks? Any plans to expand in this area?

JW: Thanks again! It was kind of a crazy job to have, putting together all the creative for the AVMAs. We began with the logo and a video camera. In the end it was everything aspect from animation, print, live action to the MTV channel branding itself. The freedom was amazing, we we're suprised by the fact that the MTV guys were into our lo-fi cut and paste ideas. The 'red carpet relay' commercials with the bands was also a really simple concept to link in teaser band spots in the lead up to the awards. The idea was that we'd see the bands in less glamourous situations, sometimes just sitting doing nothing. Bands being boring... not something that's entirely that easy to sell. It was great fun doing the shoots... attempting to get something out of a few minutes with a band and then a crazy rush to another location. Thinking about Adelaide for a moment, The Hilltop Hoods were good guys, they put a fair bit of effort into it and had to be patient while we negotiated to shoot on the tracks with the local rail authority.

This kind of work is really fast and we learned that it pays to have various alternative plans laid out. We also learned to be adaptive to circumstance. There are some real advantages and some fun in the speed of production. We'd love to do more work in the area. I really enjoyed the challenge of project managing a creative brief on that scale.

CB: You've done a few album covers, and obviously you've got a pretty close connection with Cut Copy, any artists you would absolutely love to do work for?

JW: Maybe Daft Punk and Beck... I think we'd do something that'd work for them.

CB: What are some of the things you do to keep yourself motivated?

JW: I ran. Past tense. Then a snowboarding injury meant I needed an operation and... need I go on? I'm currently between exercise regimes. Beer and wine can only provide so much motivation, so I'm looking forward to a full recovery. I also try to get out and see things. It doesn't really matter what. I think once you're looking there's no shortage of inspiration. Cliché yes, but there's a reason for that. Another great motivation tool is a holiday, though I don't really have enough of them. I find different sources of motivation professionally, things like keeping up with the news and the odd good post on Design Observer.

I also think I need to spend more time with my family and friends. Again, simple things.

CB: How do you approach a new project? How do you overcome the 'dreaded blank page'?

JW: Quite often we don't do a thing once the briefing is over. We just keep working. And then the talking begins... maybe a week later. We've all been thinking about it. We've got quite few things on the go at any given time, some of it blends together, some ideas that we discuss together stay in the collective memory until they find a way into something we're doing. Or planning to do.

We try to do the empirical thing when possible. It works when the quality of the brief is right. But since we are often working on very open briefs, some just don't function in terms of empirical planning and execution. They require a period of gestation and don't really seem bound by the same logic as more defined jobs. The client might say 'do your thing, I just really love the Alter look'. We talk about what that might mean. Do we have a look? Is it Modular? We usually try to work away from a 'look'. If someone wants us to do something a little unexpected, which is our interpretation of 'do your thing', it might mean that they actually do not expect what we present to them. This can have very mixed results... but it's actually challenging for everyone in some way. That's a major factor in motivation. We like to feel like we have an opportunity for creative change. It's our name.

Lately we're working within tight deadlines and this is dealt with through management. We usually work to a timeline laden with requirements from the client, various suppliers and for ourselves. I'm sure this is a more 'real world' situation and it's something we're becoming increasingly familiar with.

CB: What project and, or client that you haven't worked on would you love to (go to town, think of this as your ultimate 'fantasy assignment :) and why?

JW: We've talked about Qatar... I think it would managing the entire process of developing a Museum of Modern Design in Qatar. Upon completion it would be inducted into the New Seven Wonders of the World. Say goodbye Mexican step pyramids of whatever...

CB: Alter's work seems to run the gamut from the very experimental 'arts inspired' projects to a nice range of more corporate projects, is this a conscious decision to keep yourselves open and flexible, or is it just how things have worked out? What direction would you like Alter to take over the next ten years or so?

JW: As I mentioned earlier, in the past the business has developed in a mostly organic way. These days we're actually consciously choosing direction a little more and have begun to pick the projects we're taking on. We're realistic about it as a business, but didn't begin for that reason. I hope that we can continue to grow. But not too much. I'd like to think that we can expand our own ideas and build the freedom to express ourselves even more. Our own projects... we have an idea for a book. But that's another story.

CB: Finally, you obviously enjoy and have a great affinity for the music design stuff, what music have you guys been listening to lately?

JW: Ariel Pink, Neu, Cluster, Hot Chip, Cornelius, J.P. Shilo, Mum Smokes, Fabulous Diamonds, Panda Bear, Brian Eno, Sly Hats, You Will Die Alone, Kes, Muscles, Ned Collette, Serge Gainsbourg... lots really. And, of course, that Cut Copy record coming soon...

Thanks to Jonathan for being so accomodating with his time and responses - one of the things I've found out from doing these interviews is that the most talented designers are more than often the most generous and friendliest! You can see more of Alter's work at their website here (it's a really nicely designed site as well). I'm sure we'll be seeing more of their great work around the place in the future.

You Lazy Bastard!

2007-08-14T19:39:00.000+09:30

Yeah I know - it's been a while since I last posted, all I've got to offer up as an excuse are the usual suspects around this time of year, a nasty bout of the flu (so much for that flu shot) and a busy work schedule. We're in the middle of a major pitch mode at the moment which is both exhilarating and some what disheartening at the same time. I've been an identity designing 'machine' for the past month or so on top of the usual day to day work - it's been busy to say the least. The disheartening bit comes in the possibility that it may be the complete opposite in a couple of weeks when we find out the results of these pitches - it's the nature of the business I guess. So anyway, I haven't really felt like going home and writing about what I think about the 'big feet' on the revamped Qantas logo (I like the redesign if you're interested :) I think I'm pulling myself out of the doldrums and ready to bullshit about design again on here, though for some reason I've had more daily hits by not posting anything over the past few weeks, I'm not sure what that says what I write! Back to pulling myself out of the work/illness doldrums, sometimes it's just the simplest things that can turn you around. I was lucky enough to see one of my favourite bands of all time the other week, the Cure doing their 'all hits' show. I've always been a big fan of their visual style, not to mention their music. They certainly delivered in that regard with a three hour show that offered enough hits for the casual fan as well as a few rare gems for the faithful, it was a nice balance. It reminded me of what I try to achieve with my design work - committ to the work, present what the client is expecting, but also present some stuff that surprises and excites them - and of course, leave them wanting more! :) So I should be posting a bit more often than the last few weeks, I've got a great interview with Melbourne design group 'Alter' coming up next and I'll also talk about why most of my favourite album covers are black and white - I can tell you're foaming at the mouth already! Remember, feel free to contact me if you've got anything interesting design wise to tell me or just to say hi. Now for your viewing pleasure below, an amazing re-enactment of me when I was sick.

The Man-Flu - The funniest bloopers are right here

Justice - D.A.N.C.E

2007-07-08T16:21:00.001+09:30

Some say video clips are the new 'abum cover', others may argue t-shirts are (and everyone knows that's where musical artists make their real money from :) Some bright spark has finally combined the two into this pretty cool film clip for Justice, it sticks around a little too long with the premise, but add it to the list of great clips that seem to be coming out fast and furious over the last year or so.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 14

2007-07-01T17:35:00.000+09:30

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've done one of these, don't take it as there not being plenty of designers out there who are better than me! keen observers may have noticed in my list over to the right of Adelaide design firms that 'IKD' has recently been changed to 'KSD'. Well, the reason for that is that following 28 years with IKD as senior designer and more recently Director, Karin Seja has purchased the business from Ian Kidd on his retirement in April 2007. Ian Kidd Design have become almost synonomous with Adelaide graphic design, it's pretty hard to throw a rock in this town and not hit something that hasn't been influenced by their design. The company is best known for their corporate identity and packaging work. From a corporate identity standpoint, they have had a strong influence on such industries as local real estate, their breakthrough work for Toop & Toop has influenced a plethora of local firms 'adopting' the look of the sales signs that IKD instigated for them. It's still a singular pleasure for myself to drive down The Parade and see the colourful Toop & Toop signs in front of their head office. While KSD have done a lot of strong identity work, I guess what they are most recognised for is their wine packaging. Along with Adelaide designer Barry Tucker, Ian Kidd's designs have had an amazing influence on the look of wine labels both nationally and internationally, one needs only to look at the Graphis and Communications Annuals for the last 30 years or so to see the evidence of this. Over the years many designers have branched out from the firm to start up their own companies, including Matthew Remphrey, Gerben Van Der Hoek, Sam Iannucci. While their website is nothing special, be sure to check out their 'Scribblings' section for pdfs of their 'newsletter' that comes out infrequently - it contains a lot of the amazing work they've done over the past few years.

Interview With The People's Republic of Animation

2007-06-19T19:33:00.000+09:30

When I was a wee young 'un growing up, my Saturday mornings from first light to noon were filled with watching cartoons. From watching the antics of my favourite 'Looney Tunes' I dreamed of one day working in animation and being able myself to bring these wild creations to life. Well, my life took a different path of course, but through these years I've maintained my love for the medium and my repect for any practitioneers of it. You think it's tough working as a design studio in Adelaide, then try running your own animation business. One group of talented individuals who have are The People's Republic of Animation. With a healthy mix of commercial and self initiated projects, they've built an impressive portfolio of work that has garnered a great deal of national and international attention. Producer Hugh Nguyen was gratious enough to answer some questions about his work, even though he was enroute to Shanghai to promote one of The People's Republic of Animation's Short Films.

Chris Bowden: When did you first decide to become a get into animatior. Was there the proverbial 'pivotal moment'?

Hugh Nguyen: Can't think of a time when I wanted to get into animation. My two best friends and I were intersted in it and when we were 14 started making animation experiments with clay models, drawings and a super 8 camera. It just evolved into what it is today. From then I was always interested in making animation. there was a moment when i knew for sure I was going to do this fulltime. By uni, we had set up a studio to work out of and had some commissioned work coming through the door. Meanwhile, I was studying Business Information Systems and had work placements at IT companies as part of my course which I found absolutely BORING compared to what we were doing at the studio. at that point I saw what it was like on both sides and decided to go with animation. I could start seeing how i could make a living out of it. For the reaminder of my course, all i could think about was getting out and making more animation.

CB: Who are what inspires you at the moment?

HN: That's a hard one. a lot of people do i guess. In animation, there are the aussies who have won/been nominated for Oscars - Adam Elliot, Anthony Lucas and sejong park. I'm always inspired by Pixar and Miyazaki who consistently make great films and never compromise on story or quality. In business, guys like Steve Jobs who continues to be innovative and drive great ideas that change the way we live and do things. In terms of humanity, guys like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are now using their enormous wealth to make a positive difference and set the bar for the rest of the world's wealthy, and Al Gore who shows that you can make an even bigger difference without having totake the highest office in the most powerful country in the world.

CB: Which of the projects that you have worked on in the past are you most proud of and why?

HN: Hmmm, i'm proud of a lot of the work we've done. but the ones I'm particularly proud of are:

1. Sweet & Sour - first Australian/China animated co-production
2. Carnivore Reflux - a very successful short film we made that we self financed
3. Errorism: a comedy of terrors - a short format series that was first rejected for its controversial subject matter, but ultimately got off the ground because it was a great idea

CB: What do you do to keep yourself motivated?

HN: Well I've always wanted to see us making long format TV series and feature films. so as long as we haven't made one yet, that's enough motivation for me. but generally, seeing the stuff we work on and working with the great people we have at PRA and beyond gets me out of bed every morning.

CB: How do you approach a new project? How do you overcome the 'dreaded blank page' (or screen)?

HN: LOL. i'm not really on the "idea generation" side, but as a producer I do help refine ideas into "projects". I work with great people that ensure that i am never short of a good idea!

CB: What are some of the unique challenges you've come up against plying your craft in a small town like Adelaide (and
finding work!) ?

HN: there's not a whole lot of demand for animation in town! this has made us look beyond our borders and try to win friends and work in faraway places. Of course the animators and artists face creative challenges everyday that I take for granted how great they are at solving. keeping a balance between risky projects and service work while keeping a business together is also quite challenging. but rewarding!

CB: What project and, or client that you haven't worked on would you love to?

HN: I'd love to do a beverage ad! they're fantastic and have a lot of money behind them! any will do! i'd like to make a TV series for Cartoon Network, Disney or Nickelodeon too!

CB: What music have you been listening to lately?

HN: Pot luck as to what is on at the studio! there was a lot of folk/rock from the mid to late 60s the other day. I think it's because our creative director (who puts on a lot of the music) has been reading a book on Laurel Canyon. My housemate is listening to a lot of Tripod at the moment, and it's kind of inescapable at home!

My thanks, once again to Hugh for taking the time to answer some questions and enlighten us on some of the great work that The People's Republic of Animation are doing. You can see more of their work here at their website.

Recent Work

2007-06-19T19:23:00.000+09:30

I've just had a poster I designed accepted for the 3rd Annual Australian Poster Exhibition. The theme this year was the line 'When It Rains It Pours' which I chose to interpret through my graphic commenting on global warming. The poster will appear in the Australian Poster Annual along the banks of the Yarra during the Melbourne Design Festival from 5-15 July, so if you're in Melbourne around that time, be sure to go and have a peruse of all the finalists entries.

Recent Surfing Highlights 12

2007-06-04T13:11:00.001+09:30

More discussion on the topic of the incredible shrinking album cover, readjusting for the digital world.

Sgt Peppers by the Beatles turns 40 this year, this is an interesting article discussing the creation of one of the most influential album covers ever.

Another year, another global Art Directors Awards, you can see who picked up the gongs here.

The art of the hand painted Hollywood movie poster from Belarus, can you guess what film they're advertsising?

Recently, my girlfriend's brother's apartment was 'annexed' by a small furry 'Kitler', currently he's sitting at number three on 'Cats That Look Like Hitler's' website. Vote here to get him to number one!

Interview with James Hancock

2007-05-28T11:52:00.000+09:30

Previously I have reviewed the beautiful album artwork for Josh Pyke's 'Memories & Dust', I was so enamoured, I decided to get in touch with the artist, James Hancock, and throw a couple of questions his way regarding his work methods, ideals and ambitions. He's currently on a bit of a world jaunt, but he's kindly answered, and the interview follows below.

A bit of background on James from his bio. James is based in Sydney, Australia. His work draws together elements taken from found objects and hand-generated content from a variety of media such as drawing, collage, printmaking and painting. His work projects a naievety, and seek the fantastical and cute in explorations of the realness of objects and emotions and their macro and micro processes. He also explores animating his world into video works. He runs his own graphic studio and has exhibited in Australia and internationally. He is also very active as a curator of exhibitions of national and international work as part of the SPACE3 collective, which connects him to a strong creative community.

Chris Bowden: When did you first decide to become a designer. Was there a proverbial 'pivotal moment'?

James Hancock: Not sure there really was one, and not even sure I'd class myself as a straight 'designer'. I've drawn all the time, by myself, with other people, I've gone through design university which satisfied one part of my personality, but I also took subjects at art college and have always found myself somewhere in the middle of art and design practices. I consequently have loved people that are between disciplines; writers that draw, musicians that paint, collectors that make sculpture. I wonder if the 'pivotal moment' was the moment I accepted this dychotomy within myself.

CB: Who or what inspires you at the moment?

JH: I am consciously influenced by outsider art and ideas of hoarding and psychology. This outside observation of the world and psychological analysis of internal worlds.

Contemporary artists like Julie Mehrtu, and sculptors like Nancy Rubins, and conceptual artists such as Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla - google them, they do some really fun stuff. I find it much more inspiring to look at things outside of the graphic design world. I get easy sucked into trendy aesthetics and I feel much more satisfied if I draw my creativity from a personal world of experiences rather than referencing current design trends. I'm moving around the world a bit at the moment, with studios in different cities, trying to make work on the run, and I really think this studio-in-transit and being around new environments means I constantly re-address what it is I do. Sometimes this stops me doing anything at all, but I always come back to drawing as the basis of everything, as a way of releasing the buildup of creative need.

CB: Which of the projects that you have worked on in the past are you most proud of and why?

JB: From my client based work I guess the Josh Pyke stuff really stands out as a solid project, with print, animation, and new media applications all working together. This project also started an approach of applying a personal art practice to a client based project.

CB: Could you discuss a little about the work you've done for Josh Pyke, how it came about, the process, how much freedom you were given?

JB: I'd recently come back from an artist residency in Indonesia and was drawing all these people in a naive anatomy style, revealing the congestion and pollution and density of humanity I experienced there. So lungs contained buildings, crowds walked through the hair, and cars drove through the veins. So then when I came back to Sydney to work on Josh's first release I started reading the lyrics and saw all these references to things jumping through each other, holes being cut in each other, there was this grotesqueness to it, but on a cute kind of vibe. So after some initial sketches and talks with josh I started doing all these little animals with their insides showing little hearts and music inside. It was a real flow on from my artistic practice of the time, it also lead me to do more works on the theme on a larger scale, big canvases. These graphic elements then flowed on to other releases including the latest one, where it has all exploded outside and the new albums imagery of buttons and sewing stiches together a big mammoth plan. Kind of like an obsessive document, where an outsiders mind is pulling together all these ideas and making a big mind map on the table, using old craft techniques of sewing and stitching to pull it all together. The first album was relatively free, but of course as Josh became more well known there were more people interested in how the album art turned out so the recent album release had much more label involvement integrating his photo on the cover for example. Luckily it didn't get pulled in too many directions and came together as a very neat creative package.

CB: You have a very individual style in your work which has been used across a range of promotional items for Josh Pyke's Memories & Dust from the album to posters to film clip etc. With the album being such a success, do you have any concerns that that style will now be seen indelibly as part of Josh Pyke's image?

JH: I actually like it when artists works become recognisable through a music release, it provides people with an access point for people's art and the symbiosis of two creative individuals (art & music) coming together can be really interesting. I like it that behind music releases there is also this visual artist that is audibly silent but has their own creative voice on there, so the album speaks across two senses. This chain of creativity is great, and I always enjoyed finding out about artists through cd cover work. It can be a great promotional tool for the visual artist if the CD is successful, but it's not only a promo tool, it is two worlds coming together. A CD can be a little world when it works really well, a glimpse into all the artists involved, their world. I think my creative world is strong enough to stand within other creative worlds and still retain it's own identity, I think this is where coming from an artists perspective is important because you are not solely motivated by the client but by your own processes as well. This is what joins the two creative experiences together but also what separates them.

CB: You've done a few album covers, any artists you would absolutely love to do work for?

JH: I'm keen to work for any artist, I'm constantly making work and really love applying my world to the world of other creative people. I'm not sure it would be any different (apart from budget) working for bigger more famous artists.

CB: What are some of the things you do to keep yourself motivated?

JH: As I said before I really get a lot out of looking at other people's creative worlds. Jealousy of those worlds sometimes spurs me on to create something like what I like, but inevitably I create something of my own from that inspiration. Again I think the contemporary art world is great for this, where you deal with abstract and alternate views people have of the world. Objects and images that change the way you think or see, this is what keeps me motivated. At the moment I am surrounded by a friends amazing library, so I am reading and reading and the links I make from this in psychology, biology, fiction all serve to motivate me in new directions.

CB: How do you approach a new project? How do you overcome the 'dreaded blank page'?

JH: I don't really feel like I ever have a blank page, I always have images I have previously made around me, in sketchbooks, photographs, reference books etc. There is always a pile of imagery I like to sort through and draw from. I have a folder on my laptop with heaps of scans of drawings and collages I've made in the past that I draw from all the time. I really like Gerhard Richter's 'Atlas' project where he has organised all his reference material into one book - this kind of obsessive collecting really appeals to me, it almost strives for an end to imagery, to finish collecting, finish seeing. Then this contrasted with Francis Bacons studio chaos where there is a realisation that imagery will never end and juxtapositions of images amongst piles of images will constantly make new narratives and statements. I think collage is an amazingly powerful process for building narrative and generating ideas, simply by placing images next to each other. I sometimes am stunted by the realisation that the blank page holds the opportunity to go in infinite directions. This can be overcome to some extent by surrounding oneself with images that act as starting points. The infinity of the blank page is then reeled in by a process of accepting or rejecting what you have at hand at one particular moment.

CB: What project and, or client that you haven't worked on would you love to and why?

JH: I would love to have the opportunity to work with someone with unlimited budget, to be able to do all the things with printing and cross media integration that I'm not really able to because of cost. To do things like get origami folded by hand for cd covers on a small Japanese island, to make sculptural objects and installation sets for photo shoots in the desert... There are these amazing massive prop lots for film and advertising in LA I'd love to be able to go in there and make worlds from what they have. I remember going into the dungeon at the PowerHouse museum in Sydney and looking at their collection... thousands of toy cars, and old science machines, and bits of rocket, and typewriters, I'd love to be able to play with all that stuff creatively. Maybe I just need a massive house so I can start acquiring all this stuff, start making a set to live in that I can introduce other creative people into and work that way?... hmmm...

CB: What music have you been listening to lately?

JH: Just saw a Bjork concert in San Francisco, amazing live show with a brass band and super electronic triggering and improvised jazz drumming, like a weird, creative school concert! also myspacing LA artists such as Lenka and The Bird And The Bee.

Thanks once again to James for his time and generosity. I'm sure you will be hearing about him and seeing a lot more of his work in the future. You can see more of James's work here at his website.

Fionn Regan - Be Good Or Be Gone

2007-05-13T17:47:00.000+09:30

I've been listening to acoustic troubador Fionn Regan a lot of late and I really love his film clip to the song 'Be Good Or Be Gone'. The clip skips from location to location, with each location change, the tone of the song also changes to match the ambinece of the new place. It's a brilliantly simple and beautiful evocation of the artists style. he also sports a haircut circa myself age 11 in 1981, I knew it would only be a matter of time before it came back in style!

Seen & Noted

2007-05-13T17:41:00.000+09:30

I came across this sign while walking down the Parade in Norwood. It really stood out as a nice piece of typography down a pretty drab row of shops. It actually looks a bit cooler from a distance, up closer the twig forms are a little too precise. I'm not sure what the shop sells, it kind of looks like it's knick-knacky things for women - nice sign though.

Myspace is your space

2007-05-13T17:19:00.000+09:30

As I mentioned in the previous post, I now have a Myspace page, for myself and this blog. There probably won't be much there that I won't already post here, of interest to some might be a slideshow of some of the CD covers I have designed, other than that, you can see what bands, books and films I like, and check out my friends section to discover some great Adelaide bands. If you have your own Myspace page please introduce yourself over on mine and add me as a friend. You can check it out here.

Interview With Eugenia Tsimiklis

2007-05-01T18:27:00.000+09:30

I've recently become a convert to Myspace (as usual, hopping on the bandwagon when it has already just about passed over the horizon!) Anyway, I've found it an interesting source for creative people demonstrating their talents, some of them have even been kind enough to answer a few questions I've thrown at them out of the blue, and let me transcribe their responses right here on the little 'ol blog of mine.

First victim is Adelaide Illustrator/Designer Eugenia Tsimiklis. I was really impressed with her beautiful sinuous illustrations and pattern work on her attractive Myspace page (making your Myspace page look hald decent is a task in itself!) Eugenia graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Communications (Graphic Design and Illustration) and moved to London from Australia in 2001. After working as a Graphic Designer in an Architectural firm, she then turned her hand to fashion textiles. As a textile designer for womenswear her textile designs have been seen on a large variety of labels from high end designer labels right through to high street labels. She worked for a London studio initially and is now freelancing as a textile designer and illustrator.

She has worked on a variety of fashion graphics projects for 33south, FATAIM and theworldchico. In addition her illustrations have been featured on the cover and several issues of The Big Issue, The Sunday Telegraph magazine, Beautiful Decay, neomu, Noise, etisoppo, pagesonline, Moody Buddha, in an exhibition at the Australian National Gallery and on a Channel 4 documentary, The Thin Club.

Chris Bowden: When did you first decide to become a designer. Was there the proverbial 'pivotal moment'?

Eugenia Tsimiklis: Drawing and creating images are the things I'm most passionate about. I love patterns, decoration and colour. My way of working is at odds with most of the things I was taught at University, so it was only when I was approached to do freelance projects that I realised that there was a market for what I do. When I started working as a textile designer in London is when I became confident in my ability to be commercial as a designer.

CB: Who are what inspires you at the moment?

ET: I find travelling and leaving my comfort zone and being in a bustling city gives me a different perspective.

CB: Which of the projects that you have worked on in the past are you most proud of and why?

ET: Four portraits of girls with anorexia for a documentary screened on Channel 4 in the UK called The Thin Club.

CB: What do you do to keep yourself motivated?

ET: Try not to take rejection personally and stay optimistic.

CB: How do you approach a new project? How do you overcome the 'dreaded blank page'?

ET: I look through as much visual material as I can, from a variety of sources, then incorporate small aspects of what I consider successful design with the image I have in my head, to make it my own.

CB: What are some of the unique challenges you've come up against plying your craft in a small town like Adelaide (and finding work!) ?

ET: I think the biggest challenge is coming up against the lack of industry and resources to do something that is frivolous and fashion oriented.

CB: What project and, or client that you haven't worked on would you love to (go to town, think of this as your ultimate 'fantasy assignment :)

ET: I'd like to work for a label that I love and be sent on global assignments as 'inspiration trips' every season to source what people are wearing in different parts of the world and report back and base my collections on my finds. (This is a reference to a job I had an interview for and didnt land when I was in London. No, I'm still not over it.)

CB: What music have you been listening to lately

ET: The Pre-sets. I drive my husband mad by listening to the same cd's over and over. Repetition is a good thing. I design patterns afterall.

I always find it interesting the places a degree in Visual Communication can take you beyound the obvious 9 to five at a design firm, as Eugenia ably demonstrates with her work .Thanks once again to Eugenia for her time, you can see more of her work at her website here.

Shitdisco - OK

2007-04-25T22:38:00.000+09:30

Favourite band name of the moment would have to be the UK's 'Shitdisco', coincidently, my favourite film clip at the moment is for their song 'OK', a wonderful 'lo-fi' combination of paper pop up artistry and puppetry directed by Price James. Dig it.

Judging Albums By Their Covers 10

2007-04-25T22:11:00.000+09:30

Josh Pyke: Memories & Dust

It seems to happen a lot in my life that I'll be trundling along, designing away. I'll look at a CD cover that I've down and say to myself, 'yeah, that's not too bad Chris, give yourself a pat on the back for that one tiger'. So, reasonably happy with what I'm producing. Then something will come along and completely blow my idea of competency in this area out of the water. This is what has happened to me upon viewing the latest cover for Josh Pyke's album Memories and Dust.

What can I say? It's a beautifu piecel, and the cover doesn't even encapsulate half of it. It's only when you unfold the sleeve and view the meticulous hand drawn lyrics on the inside do you really appreciate the artistry that's gone into it's production. I could weep at the care and attention that's gone into producing this.

So how does the album measure up to such an accomplished package? Well, lets just say to begin with, that Josh Pyke had been served exceedingly well with this presentation of his debut album.

What can I say about Josh Pyke's music? As an earnest young man with an acoustic guitar, he's never going to be lacking for competition in the market. My exposure to him initially was through the excellent first single 'Middle of the Hill', nothing else on the album really comes close to the urgency and undercurrent of personal melancholy portrayed in this song, which is a shame - I was expecting more quirk, like the cover - while the rest of the album's songs seem to follow a more breezy 'Jack Johnson vibe - good for those who likes that sort of stuff, and it certainly has an audience.

The cover art was created by James Hancock, and he's only 29 as well (talented and much younger than me, usually a potent mix to raise my ire or my levels of depression. He obviously enjoys the music, his enthusiasm for it is evident, and he's listened and searched out well among the lyrics to find appropriate graphic meataphors. There's a recurring theme of 'sewing and 'mending'' that plays out through the album, hence the motif of buttons and 'twiney' lines on the album art. It's also confessional, as most solo artist albums are, so the use of hand drawn 'folk type' is appropriate. Printed on uncoated stock in subdued greys and browns, it's hand made enough to portray an independent artist, but professionally enough produced to signify what I'm sure the label hopes will become a major artist. It really stands out on the racks next to your latest Beyonce release.

First albums are hard - especially when you receive a lot of expectation from an initial successful song. The artist wants to establish a unique identity. You can tell James Hancock the artist has put a lot of himself into this work, and by the album's top ten success, received a lot of exposure for it - it may be an unfortunate ramification that this style of his is now going to be indelibly associated with Josh Pyke.

You can view some more of James Hancock's great work at his website, including some more music design work for artist Darren Hanlon. Below I have included the great film clip for 'Middle of The Hill' featuring his artwork, it has hand claps in it as well! (Hand claps are the 'new black')

Recent Surfing Highlights 12

2007-04-11T12:17:00.000+09:30

A collection of 'the greatest album covers from the 70s' as selected by a panel of distinguished art directors, designers, photographers and editors in a 1991 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Not too many arguments over the selection.

I love me some Mambo gear, one of the few companies that have been able over the years to portray an Australian perspective in art and design. They have a new site up, and as is to be expected, it's great.

Why design goes wrong, find out here why it all so often goes pear shaped.

And on a similar note, the top ten things they didn't teach you in design school here. I could probably add a few things.

The Adelaide Art Directors had their awards ceremony the other night, as usual, some nice work from design firms Parallax and Black Squid weren't enough to perk up a pretty lacklustre collection, especially from the advertsing side. Judge for yourself and download the 'winners' catalogue.

An Australian icon, the Sydney Opera house has had a rebrand courtesy of that clever English chappy Vince Frost.

Clever cat catches the bus daily to the local fish and chip shop. Your cat wants Whiting with minimum chips.

Real World, Real Cover Changes

2007-03-27T12:27:00.000+09:30

A couple of weeks ago I got myself out and about to a weekend of beautiful music and amazing atmosphere at Adelaide's now annual Womad Festival. Now I loves me some World Music, this from possibly the whitest guy in Adelaide! Anyway, as usual at the event, it's not long after being blown away by whatever throat singers or fife players are on this years bill, until I find myself at the onsite music retailer, flicking through the albums of the various performers. It was while perusing that I came across the latest release from Chinese performer Guo Yue, who was usually released through Real World Records, looking at the cover my immediate assumption was that this was no longer the case.

A little background information for the uninitiated. Real World Records was established by performert Peter Gabriel to provide talented artists from around the world with access to state-of-the-art recording facilities and to publicise them to an audience beyond their immediate geographic region. This was a fantastic idea, and a rare example of someone who was famous and wealthy actually using that fame and wealth to do something interesting and worthwhile. What drew me originally to Real World's albums was a singular and beautiful tratment to their cover designs. Whether the cover featured a stunning portrait of the perfomer or, more often, an abstract representation of the music, they all shared one feature. The covers featured neither artist and album title credit. This was a brilliant and subtle house style, what better way to emphasise that the music crosses geographic, cultural and language barriers than to feature no type on the front at all?

So the thing that surprised me about the latest Guo Yue release? It has the artist's name and album title (in English) on the front. When I went to the Real Word site, I discovered this wasn't a one off anomoly, all of their latest releases were the same. It's interesting to perhaps speculate on how this change in house style may have come about, though it's probably nothing more interesting than a demand from suppliers and artists themselves for better recognition on the packaging.

To me it feels like a great loss to the oft-times pretty boring music design landscape. The CD designs themselves are still ok, but they have now somehow lost that original allure and mystery to be discovered in the music beyond the cover. I've gathered a gallery of some of my favourite covers through the years here. You can check out their latest releases in their catalogue if you want to compare.

Interview With Rafael Esquer

2007-03-15T15:54:00.000+10:30

Finally the last in my series of interviews that I did while overseas! I must admit that I didn’t know a lot about Rafael Esquer when I contacted him other than loving the work he had done for musician Bjork and some other beautiful pieces of his work that I had seen in design annuals. I was absolutely blown away by Rafael’s work and dedication to the craft of graphic design when I finally got the chance to meet him. It’s rare to come across an individual in design that demonstrates such passion for their work and actually has something interesting and important to say with it. Rafael as a person was incredibly down-to-earth and humble about his achievements when we talked and was very generous with his time even though he was very busy. I could have talked to Rafael all day (as it was my tape recorder ran out!) This interview took place over lunch in a great little sushi restaurant .It somehow felt right to be an Australian designer talking to a designer from Mexico, living in New York and eating in a Japanese reataurant!

Chris Bowden: How did you get started in design?

Rafael Esquer: I'm from a very small town, very rural. I was always interested in drawing. When I finished High School, I told my mother that I wanted to move to Mexico City and pursue a career in art. In Mexico City I actually enrolled in photography first, I did that for a year and when I saw the graphic design students, I thought it looked really interesting. It was not only image, but type, a combination of things. I immediately changed form photography to graphic design. I was at the college in Mexico City for a couple of years, but then I moved to Los Angeles to study English. I thought it would be temporary¬—I really intended to go back to Mexico City to complete my degree there—but in L.A. I started working for a magazine and became the Art Director. Then I won a scholarship to go to The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. So I stayed. After I finished my degree at Art Center, I moved to New York for a job offer. I've been here almost eleven years now.

CB: I noticed on your bio that you also studied sculpture and painting, how has that influenced your work?

RE: It has made me aware of the place of 'dimension' in my work. I've done a little bit of work in film as well which brings another layer. I think my experience in magazine design, for example, has helped me to think in terms of 'telling a story' when I design, to work in a sequence. I think that happens a lot with a piece of sculpture as well. There as so many more ways to look at a three dimensional object rather than just a flat image. Now when I do animation work or things for television, those experiences in sculpture, in magazine design have really helped me to be able to define a piece, to be able to get the proper pacing with it. Painting I still do a lot of . I'm doing a project which may take me ten years or even longer. It's about painting with words, it's based on one of my biggest influences in what I do, literature. I read a lot, every day I have to read, so I'm doing paintings based on the writings of some of my favourite authors such as Marguerite Duras and Marguerite Yourcenar, which happen to be both Marguerites! I've collected a lot of things that I really like about their writing. It's become this obsessive job of making compositions from letters, I'm only on my third piece, each one takes months.

CB: Ultimately you will collect them in an exhibition or a book?

RE: I've given up trying to control the final outcome of such things. Stuff just happens, you go with the flow. The writing is really beautiful to me, they touch me in a way. To be able to express this in a different way and maybe touch other people in a way that they have touched me could be interesting.

CB: It's enough just to work on it.

RE: For myself, it's very important to have this relationship with what you do. If I'm creating a mural for instance, for me it's a just a matter of really loving the process, not only the fun parts but the difficult parts as well. If you embrace the struggles, put yourself into it, it is then reflected in the work.

CB: When you're doing so much client work, most designers do need another creative outlet, to produce something for themselves.

RE: I've been lucky that since I have opened my own design business, all the clients I have had, they have come to me because of the kind of work I have done in the past. They are really prepared to listen and respect what I have to offer them.

CB: I'm fascinated by the CD cover work you did for Bjork. I'm sure this would be a dream project for a lot of designers.

RE: It was great fun, really scary as well. I was working with Eiko Ishioka at the time, designing a collection for the Olympics at Salt Lake City. Eiko received an email from Bjork saying that she really liked her work and would she consider doing a music video. Apparently Bjork likes the same artist to work on everything, the videos, album covers, branding. Eiko told her that she was too busy to design the album cover, but suggested my name to her.Bjork trusted Eiko, so I met up with her and she said 'Ok, let's do it.' I had always been intrigued with Bjork visually, I had always thought she looked amazing, but I had never really paid much attention to her music. I've since become a big fan, when I listened to her music, I began to realise how brilliant and unique she was. She also happens to be avery nice person, very approachable, she wasn't a diva at all. What happened when I started the project was that I couldn't sleep for days! Looking at the legacy she has as an icon, I was worried about whether I would be able to contribute towards it. I showed her four ideas, she liked them all and ended up using them all. It was a great experience. I still sometimes get calls from people who want me to do their project in the style I did for Bjork. It's hard to say to them, well, you're not Bjork! This was done for her, it is what she wanted, she was very clear about what she wanted. I think the final product turned out very nice, I'm very proud of those images. I think they stand up next to what has been produced for her previously and since.

CB: Of all the projects you have worked on, which have given you the most personal satisfaction?

RE: I would say the laundry bags I did while working at @radical. The objective of the promotion was to spread warm wishes, remind various people about the company and most of all, remind everyone about the holiday season's true spirit. Instead of giving gifts, we asked clients to give clothing to those truly in need. The commitment included original design and manufacture of the bags, and continued with each of the company's offices coordinating pickup and delivery of donations to chosen charities. Just getting actual letters from some of the people who received the donated clothes, it makes you feel that graphic design can make a difference in somebody's life. It goes to show that self initiated projects can pay off, and it's given me the incentive to keep trying new things. The simple ideas are often the best, problems are everywhere. As graphic designers it's our role to solve problems for a client, for yourself, where ever there is a need.

Another dream project was the CD box set for Chavela Vargas. Chavela is legendary for her rancheras. She’s one of my all-time favorite singer, and literally the Muse of Mexico. Growing up, I remember my mother singing at home to Chavela’s music. So the CD was recorded at her Carnegie Hall debut in 2003—at the age of 84! The show was sold out. To me, Chavela is an artist whose art doesn’t need explanation or translation. Just using her voice she communicates the whole spectrum of feelings: heartache, happiness, joy, misery, solitude, rage, flirtation, hope. It’d be wonderful if one can do the same with the language of graphic design. In my design for the CD packaging, I sought to capture the extremes that characterize Chavela’s life and music—sinner and saint. So I blended the orchid, as a symbol of female power and sexuality, with references to religion and Mexican legend. It was a beautiful project that blended design, image-making, typography, and illustration. I created original illustrations for the 20-page book included with the CD.

Looking back, I think my motivation for this project was to pay homage to my mother (a ranch woman herself) and to all the women, like Chavela, who despite anything never give up. Those strong women who, like a good wine, get better and wiser as time goes by.

CB: What project that you have yet to work on would you like to?

RE: I'd like to design a bottle for a very good vodka. It would be ideal to design everything for it, the packaging, the branding. I would love to bring some of my ideas in sculpture to the actual form of the bottle. It would be interesting to see the result of this interaction between sculpture and graphic design. A tequila bottle would also be interesting for me to design!

A project that I will start this year is not design per se, but related. I’d like to establish a design scholarship for minority students. I’m starting a line of t-shirts, graphically designed of course, to help this cause. This country is wonderful, if you work hard you can reach your dreams. I was able to receive a great education thanks to scholarships, so I intend to partner my alma mater, the Art Center College of Design, to help talented Latin students pay for their education. I believe we need more diversity in the design industry, and in small ways I’d like to contribute. Stay tuned….

Thanks once again to Rafael for his time and generosity (and for buying me lunch!) I'm sure you will be hearing about him and seeing a lot more of his work in the future. You can see more of Rafael's work here at his website.

Pick Your Creative Critic!

2007-03-05T16:19:00.000+10:30

This is the story of my day to day life! - provided thanks to Brand-Em. Some good articles here as well, Love the Saint B MP3 player featured!

Adelaide Fringe 2007 Poster

2007-02-28T12:45:00.000+10:30

S0 March is here again , the leaves are turning brown, etc, etc, and in Adelaide, March means the beginning of a number of high profile events, the biggest being The Adelaide Fringe Festival, and my chance, once again to 'critique' the latest promotional poster for it.

The Fringe organisers like to speak in terms of it being an 'open access event', so in that spirit, the poster is chosen through a competition open to the general public. This years winner is above, I'd love to be able to tell you the designer's name, but the Fringes own website isn't very forthcoming in any information on this years poster (maybe it's hidden in there somewhere) and a quick google searched returned nada.

I think the posters is a nice overall answer to this years specific design brief - an emphasis on the 'unpredictable' being this years theme - pigs flying is an obvious and recognised metaphor to interpret that. I just think the posters let down a little in it's execution and it's attempt to stretch it's interpretation too far.

I find the pig itself a little ugly and awkward, it looks like it's been manufactured by the auto trace in Illustrator. It's neither polished enough, nor naive enough to be an attractive graphic, it tries to place it's trotters in both camps and doesn't succeed in being a part of either. Speaking of awkward, the pig's caricature 'Asian leer' I find a little unsettling. I know that there was no malice intent on this, from what I've heard, it is supposed to connect to the fact that 2007 is the Chinese 'Year of the pig'. More than one person I've spoken to has wondered why the pig looks the way it does - as I mentioned above, it's an attempt to stretch the interpretation of the idea into areas it doesn't need to, or in fact are relevant. By trying to say too much it has in fact diluted the original intent. If the Fringe this year was particularly focusing on Chinese culture in it's programme (it isn't) it might be appropriate. If Adelaide had a significantly large Chinese population as part of it's general population it might be appropriate. The poster is depending on the viewers knowledge that 2007 is the Chinese year of the pig - something that has nothing to do with the actual Adelaide Fringe other than they happen to fall in the same year. Without this prior knowledge, the poster skirts dangerously close to racial slur, definitely not the intent (and for all I know, the designer could be of Chinese descent and this was the reason it was incorporated into the poster, because it's significant to the designer them self maybe, but out of context, it loses any association to the general viewer). perhaps a better connection could have been made in Adelaide's popular Rundle Mall pig statues were used as the model in the design? Instantly recognisable and popular with the Adelaide population, I guess easy to say in hindsight.

On a slightly lighter note, the pork-chopper in question is seemingly modelled on the Blackhawk helicopter - the tubes on the side - Porky's packing heat! If you look at them closely, I think they are supposed to be 'stage lights' not missile tubes. It's not helped by the fact that it looks like this future ham sandwich has launched a few in the background, exploding upon the hapless and peaceful citizens of the Adelaide cbd. Interesting considering the fact that another theme of this years Fringe is 'double peace', whatever the hell that means!

The pig graphic does work really well as an animated graphic in screen applications which is a serious bonus and consideration when designing such things that have to cover such a broad range, the Adelaide cbd graphic is quite nice as well. And hey, I entered this year as well and didn't even make it as a finalist! Yes, shock! I suck! So when it comes down to these things what they hell do I know!

On a final note to the Fringe organisers, and a particular annoyance of my own, if your going to have specific music as part of your event, used to promote the ADELAIDE Fringe, which takes place in ADELAIDE, how about promoting some of the multitude of ADELAIDE music talent, instead of going to the eastern states - now that would be unpredictable!

Recent Surfing Highlights 11

2007-02-19T13:38:00.000+10:30

The one place I don't like to see graphics is on someones' skin. These idiots show you why it's not always such a great idea to brand yourself as an individual.

Always on the look out for local Autralian album cover designers, here is another good design firm.

A collection of the world's 'gayest' logos - not that there's anything wrong with that!

Barney Bubbles was one of the greatest album designers of all time, his work is often unsung, but he did amazing breakthrough designs for the likes of Hawkwind, Ian Dury and Elvis Costello to name a few. This article reviews and discusses some of his notable contributions.

Kitty wants to play! Check out these diy cat toys.

Pencils Down

2007-02-06T12:03:00.001+10:30

The end of 2006 saw the usual slew of exhibitions of design graduates work. Locally we had the University of SA Visual Communication Honours students show titled 'Pencils Down' featuring the culmination of 15 design students work. There's some nice stuff on display, obviously benefiting from the extra year that the Honours students do on their degree. If there's any weaknesses in the work, it come from the repetition inherent in 15 individuals all doing their takes on the same set projects, and some boring use of typography. You can see their 'wares' on display here. Most of them have each set up their own websites as well if you're so inclined to check out some more.

Interview with JP Williams of MW

2007-01-23T09:48:00.000+10:30

When I decided that I might try to contact some designers when I visited New York, I had set myself a wish-list of those I would approach, figuring most would probably say no, or I would not hear back from at all. Well, most did say no and even more didn't get back to me (it doesn't say much for our profession when you can't even be bothered to email someone back and say no, but that's another article!) Anyway, there were some firms I was more eager to visit than others, luckily two of my favourite firms did reply and say yes, the first of these being design firm MW. I'd love to be able to point you to a website where you could see some of their work, but it's under construction at the moment unfortunately. What I can tell you is that MW do some of the most beautiful and elegant graphic design work you will come across. Meticulous doesn't even begin to describe it, but not in the overly decorative vogue that is popular at the moment, but a deceptive simplicity that carries the weight of a concept in a particular type choice, or brilliantly art directed photograph. I first became aware of their work through an article in Step By Step Graphics magazine, I was struck by their designs for for department store Takashimaya, in particular an amazing tea box design which remains one of my favourite pieces of design in any medium. I spoke to director JP Williams who was a very gracious host, displaying a keen and good humoured intellect on a number of design related issues (as well as a few other tangents!) some of which is transcribed here:

Chris Bowden: How do you go about getting clients in such a competitive market as New York? Does having your work featured in Design annuals, periodicals and competitions help?

JP Willaims: It’s the primary way we get new clients. We don’t do any marketing as such, we don’t do any PR; we just let our work speak for itself. Most of our work is in retail, retail has a lot of people moving jobs, quitting and going to another job, it’s nature of retail. The idea here in the states, I don’t know whether you have it in Australia, the idea of the ‘gold watch’ after 50 years, doesn’t exist anymore and went out many years ago. Retail is one of them, advertising as well, people move a lot, art buyers, marketing people, that’s just the nature of it. You don’t see people stay for a long time, so when you work for a retailer such as our work for Takashimaya, it’s very unusual because the person we dealt with was there for over 10 years, so we did everything for them over that time.

CB: Are you still doing work for them?

JP: We are, but the work is very sparse. The woman we worked with finally left, she went to Saks and hired us to do some work for them on quite a few projects and then she retired. The people who took over at Takashimaya, it’s a very unusual place, they have new management that comes in every 18 months, there’s no continuity, it’s very unusual.

CB: I’ve always had the impression of it being a very ‘exclusive’ store.

JP: Well, people seem to think that, it’s only exclusive in the sense that it’s small and unique and some people think that it’s very expensive; my favourite item there is only $12. The store has changed a lot since the woman we dealt with left. In the beginning, they have a beautiful gallery on the ground floor space, which is very traditional in Japan to have a gallery on the ground floor. The design that we do is very precious, maybe sometimes too precious, but for Takashimaya it seemed to be appropriate. The idea was to have all this really cool stuff from around the world – so that’s what we did.

CB: Could you tell me a little bit about your background and how you started MW?

JP: MW was started by default. I had quit my job, and then my wife finally quit hers. I had worked in retail; I was art director at Bergdorfs which is a single store here in Manhattan for three years and before that I did mainly corporate identity work. They needed someone to work on the identity of the men’s store and they didn’t want to hire an agency, they wanted to have one person because the guy who was vice president wanted to oversee it more readily. I did that and started doing all the advertising and packaging for the store. I did that for 3 years and then quit because working IN retail is a lot more difficult than working for retail. My partner was at Carbone Smolan for 10 years and I helped her get a couple of freelance jobs for Bergdorfs and then she quit her job. I did a magazine for Hearst, freelance, and then I was told about Corky Tyler leaving to start Takashimaya. Someone else told me to go and talk to her, she knew who I was, so that was how, by default, we became a studio. To begin with we worked out of our apartment with no plan. Our studio has been never more than 6 people, at the moment we’re 4.

CB: What has drawn me to your work is the elegant simplicity to it, what has influenced that?

JP: Believe it or not, I’m just going to talk like a graphic designer and say ‘the product’ does. The problem calls for.

CB: Do you find yourself working for clients that can appreciate that?

JP: I think so. I think that people come to us; we’re not out there trying to do a job for Nike. We get a proposal every now and then to design something and the ‘Request for Proposal’ – ‘they want to know about our structure of the office and who the account manager is. We kind of smile and realise we would be please to work for them without any issues; however we’re not structured in the way they want us to be. A lot of times people might not want to hire us because one of us might get sick, I really don’t understand that. If someone hires Peter Saville, they’re hiring him, and that never crosses their mind that he might get sick, he might get cancer because he smokes! There’s a lot of this attitude in business in America, whereas in Europe, the entrepreneurship of being an individual and doing large projects is not a problem, it’s more open. Here the expectation is a studio, say somewhere like Pentagram; you have to have a certain structure. I think the clients that like that go to that, and people who want a more individual point of view, they come to us.

CB: It seems as though there is a push in some areas for studios to structure themselves to be able to do just about all their clients requirements in-house.

JP: Especially when the client is paying multi-thousand dollar fees. We did a website for West Elm, a furniture brand, a few years ago. That was a huge job for a studio our size. Not many studios our size have the opportunity to a project that size. I find that interesting, the only reason we got it is because it was one woman, the woman who runs it, she’s since left and started a new brand and now we’re working on that. As long as you get that one person who believes in you, then you’re fine.

CB: Of all the projects you have worked on over the years, which have given you the most personal satisfaction?

JP: Some of the work we have done for Gmund. We did a corporate brochure for them and I think that’s probably one. A couple of our Takashimaya pieces I guess are the ones I like the most, they’re very simple. I did a business card for somebody once that I liked. It’s a lot of the time, things that people probably haven’t seen much. The Gmund brochure was very well received; we did the photography shoot in Germany, That was a lot of fun. Some people will answer ‘ the project I just finished,’ but I can’t always say that. We’ve just done some catalogues for Nordstroms who are a large department store chain in the US, a simple fashion and still lifes. It was enjoyable because we don’t do a lot of that stuff any more. I think the simple things are usually the ones that I like the most.

CB: When I’ve spoken to some other designers they quite often say they favourite work tends to be stuff that they did when they first started, they felt they had more freedom because there were less expectations placed upon them.

JP: When you say that I think of the guys the studio 8VO. I remember when they founded their business, I went to school in Switzerland for a short time and I met them in Basel. Looking at the new book about them that came out last year, I get that impression from them as well. Just by looking at something like the charts for the sales receipts for American Express, although it was about information, I could see that the things that really mattered a lot to them wasn’t the stuff they did at the end, it was probably one of the reasons they closed I guess.

CB: What are some of the things that keep you inspired?

JP: I’m actually looking into leaving design and teaching again or opening a paper/book store. Teaching in New Zealand would be cool. I think the US is a really bad place to be right now, I think it’s going downhill in a world global scale. Communism will wane in China only because of people’s natural tendencies to want a choice in their lives, when it does; I think it will be a comfortable transition, just like Hong Kong and religion is not a driving force behind their society. It’s most likely going to be the centre of the world soon – the US is just a sad place – it’s all about money and it’s becoming even more so.

CB: Australia at the moment seems to want to follow the US as an example rather than embracing the region in which it is situated.

JP: That’s why New Zealand seems so attractive to me, they’re out there advocating non-nuclear proliferation and neutrality, I just can’t get my wife on board at the moment! Design for me is not the pre-eminent thing on my mind at the moment. I enjoy doing our job and I enjoy working, I love our studio. I think I like everything that is about design. Design is my hobby. I collect things that are design driven, books that are designed by designers. I think the way I save myself is to get lost into my books and the reference of design, collecting objects and things that are related to typography. I have my own little things that I try to delve into. I’ve made a product for my child that I sell over the internet; it’s a thing about watching television. These types of things have been driven for me more by being with my daughter than by the client based type of thing.

CB: Would you consider moving your studio to Australia or New Zealand?

JP: I would, but it’s very difficult for a US citizen to move to somewhere like that who has no connections whatsoever. I considered moving to Sweden three years ago, they required me to have $100,000 in the bank, letters from three separate clients saying they would be paying me x amount, it was not easy. What I would really like to do is return to teaching– I think the way you get a job like that is to be recommended by somebody else. I taught for six years, I have a masters and I love teaching. The problem is, as you get older and the more technology becomes an important part of design education, the more difficult it is. Doing a problem now is not just about knowing one layout program; it’s really all of them embedded together. Teachers are going to have to be able to talk this language. I taught at The University of Arts in Philadelphia, a very ‘Swiss based’ school, so a lot of the teachers there have been trained in that. That’s all well and good, the problem is, that those assignments now have to be re-thought of in relationship to how they can be approached for the tech-savvy students coming through. Sitting and drawing letters by hand is no longer relevant because in the this world those students are never going to have to do that, it can be done quicker and better on the computer. What is needed is to be able to teach within that framework, to look into what they are doing. There’s no question that having the ability to hand draw type forms is amazing. I had Armin Hoffman as a teacher, one of the most famous designers of all time, I saw him cut out a perfect letter from black paper. It was an art; very few people are going to have that ability. I saw a lot of teachers who where very frustrated at the school in Philadelphia because they thought the students weren’t learning. I thought the problem was that the teachers had stopped learning; they just wanted to teach what they were already familiar with. Now when I see the kids’ portfolios from there, they’re exactly the same as they were ten years ago, and I think that is a problem. That’s just my opinion on teaching, but I care a lot about it.

CB: Do you know anything about Australian design?

JP: I know nothing actually! I don’t look at design journals all that much. I look at the Japanese magazine Idea on occasion when I see something I like in them, but I don’t really read that much about contemporary design. We get Creative Review, Eye, ID and Step Inside Design for the studio – but I try not to look at other contemporary designers so much for inspiration. The things that I tend to look at are Swiss and Dutch book design compendiums, for example, I may see someone’s work I like and I’ll follow that up and look at their website. There’s an exhibit on right now of work by Anton Stankalski in Switzerland. I’ve been going to more design blogs of late and hear a lot of stuff from interns we have here. Blogs like Design Observer and Be a Design Group are interesting, I would say on a scale of 0-10 on using the computer and the internet, I would be a 3! Whereas people at Design Observer are 11s, they probably spend 6 hours a day researching, looking, at least what it would take me to keep up. I find with the interns we have here, they’re really quick at finding information. We did a project this summer using the periodic table as the basis for our problem, within 30 minutes we had 45 resources on what it should look like. It also just so happened that someone at Design Observer is a periodic table freak and he had even more examples to show us. There is an amazing amount of information to be gained from the internet that I’m just beginning to comprehend. I was amazed to find on MySpace that Andre Leon Tally, editor at large for Vogue, has a page, I think it’s amazing that he is part of this culture. Nick Knight, the British photographer, has website called ‘Studio View’ that is devoted to the industry and features all kinds of interesting things. I’ve been looking at it a lot recently; he’ll show some of the latest ad campaigns, things he has worked on for Dior for example, so I like to keep track of these things because I find it really exciting. I love photography. Our work here is hugely based on photography. Illustration to me is so stylised, I love certain illustrators, but I seem more drawn to photography because it’s something I aspire to.

CB: I imagine there’s a huge pool of amazing photographers to draw upon in New York?

JP: Yeah, don’t throw a rock because quite a few of them will dive to the ground! Like designers here, there are quite a few, there even seems to be quite a lot more good ones than there used to be. All the photographers we began using for the studio 15 years ago, most of them we can’t afford now, they make so much money. Because we use a lot of photography in our work, I’m really interested in photographers that can offer an individual point of view.

CB: I’ve recently worked on a brochure for a property developer where we chose to use an art photographer to get that ‘different point of view’.

JP: It’s funny you say that, I worked in that same kind of environment for my first 5 years, with a commercial photographer you have to put a lot more into the shoot as designer/ art director, whereas when you hire a fashion/art photographer you’re really asking them to bring just as much themselves to the shoot. I say to people all the time when they ask what is the biggest reason for success? Hiring people who are better than you, that’s really the way to do it, and that’s what we try to do at MW. I took a commercial/corporate photographer years ago who did annual report shots, really good work, very stylised black and white stuff, beautiful prints in the whole tradition of ‘the zone’ that Ansel Adams did. I got him to do a fashion shoot for me and it turned out spectacularly, so now he does a lot more of that sort of stuff, he’s crossed over into the fashion/art photography scene. I mean, in some aspects he was difficult to work with, he was very specific on things, so you had to buy into all of that. The best thing I did was to just get the contact sheets from him and not have him deal with the post, because if I had to deal with him with that, I never would have got the job done.

CB: Is it a matter of not caring so much with what ‘egos’ you may have to contend with as long as you get ‘the shot’?

JP: You know, I used to think that. I feel as though I don’t want to do that anymore though. We did a job for a company called Waverly Fabrics, an advertising job, so we had to go into a space, take everything out, and make up the room with their fabrics. The photographer I hired was someone who I had worked with many times before as well as room stylists, fashion stylists, makeup artists – the generator we were using outside was as big as a Volkswagen because it was raining outside heavily and we had to do the shot as if the sun was coming through the window. You’re talking about a lot of angst and worry getting this shot done, there are probably 20-30 people on the shoot. Anyway, the client comes, I’d told him not to come over until 11 or so because we wouldn’t be ready to shoot until noon. So comes around, there’s food there, everybody is smiling, laughing, music is playing. He comes up to me and wants a word; he says ‘You guys are having fun?’ I say yeah! He’s really surprised that everybody seems to be happy because he’s done this shoot three years in a row and every time before it’s been a nightmare. I told him it’s supposed to be fun; you’re going to love the product. We did that shoot for 3 more years until he moved on, he hired us to do more stuff with his new company. So that’s the type of environment on a shoot I want to be in. I’ve done shoots in Mexico where I was literally crying every night because of a photographer. So, you do whatever it takes to get that picture, but what I think is important now is to figure out when you go into it, to make sure that sort of stuff doesn’t happen. There’s a Nietzsche quote that goes ‘Nothing that is rigorous is meaningless’, so to a certain extent that can apply. If it is really meaningful and rigorous, it’s still got to be something good, so I think you don’t just accept it.

My thanks to JP for answering questions he's probably been posed countless times and for being so generous with his time.
Design MW

Snapshot of the Recent Graduate

2007-01-16T16:57:00.000+10:30

I was clearing out some cupboards and drawers at home today when I came across an old copy of the Australian Graphic Design newsletter that contained an interview with me from around the time I had just completed university. I hadn't read it for a while, it's interesting to see where my head was at way back when (to me at least, you'll have to judge for yourself if you choose to read on!)

Chris Bowden: a new designer making the most of new technology

In the leafy setting of the Botanic gardens, Chris Bowden describes his life as a freelance designer.

Chris left Underdale (University of South Australia) at the end of 19911. Since then he has been mainly bringing in his own commissions.

One of the first things Chris did on leaving university was to invest in a mac and some programmes. he is realistic about the unfortunate employment situation: "I knew that I would have to go out and find freelance work of my own and I would need a Mac to do this. Plus the fact to get jobs you need to be very Mac orientated. Buying the Mac depleted my funds, so I had to make do without a printer!"

His first commissions came through his contacts with the local music industry.

Chris regularly listened to friend Greg Williams play at Limbo's nightclub on a Wednesday night. "There was me, the DJ, Greg and a few other odd sorts up and around at 1am. Greg would play, have a few drinks and then get up and play again." This led to the offer to design the record cover for "'Louder Than Words' while still at Uni.

Louder Than Words was probably one of the last vinyl albums produced in Australia at the time. Chris's design got glowing comments even in reviews for the actual album.

Chris anticipated much difficulty with the project as his clients were interstate. He had to deal with Greg and Festival Records over the fax and phone.

The design chosen was an abstract line drawing of Greg holding his guitar. Chris enlarged the drawing and used a section of it for the front of the record. The whole figure appears in it's entirety on the reverse side. The design was then applied to CD and tape covers as well.

The title of the album comes from the expression 'actions speak louder than words.' Chris says "I wanted some broad deinite strokes to emphsize this action. The text was handwritten because Greg often says that when someone listens to his songs, it's like someone reading his diary, so I wanted that look, done with quill pens on rough paper."

Chris now has ten CD designs in his folio.

Through a local marketing firm, Chris worked on SA Brewing's Band Compilation CD. This was part of their promotion for their export chill filtered beer.

Designing the CD for one particular band was an experience that Chris won't forget. There were 7 members in the band, their girlfriends, their manager all giving their opinions. Once the film work was ready, the band decided to change their name!

"It was one of the more frustrating pieces of work I'd done, but this sort of thing is common among the loose organisation that governs local bands.

The CD work has led to corporate identity work for Bartel Street Studios, the SA Music Industry Association, Circular Sound and Round Records. CD work which hasn't paid much has led to work which fortunately has.

Chris tries to get clients to think about how many colours and how much paper they are actually going to use rather than just deciding on using recycled paper. He recommended using coloured recycled stock and only one colour for a set of brochures done for Adelaide Sports Physiotherapy. They worked very well for their intended audience and really stood out.

Chris's approach to design is pragmatic. "I think that we should take a look at what we are designing, does the job really need full colour? - rather than just opting for recycled stock, we should think about the design itself. How can we help the client, promote the product and perhaps save them some money at the same time." Chris tries to concentrate on using simple, basic elements in design. "I am not into computer trickery. I use the computer only as a design tool. It's so handy that I would be hard pressed without it now."

Of the current job market, Chris says "I've found that it's not enough to be just a good designer at the moment. What people are looking for is a value added designer, someone who can be confident at bringing in the work. Someone who can make a profit for them in their studio."

This is a tall order for someone just out of University where you are taught design, not how to make money or how to deal with clients. At the other end of the scale there are employers who feel a degree in design is too much experience!

So there you go, you can almost feel the underlying panic and frustration upon reading that! I was really flying by the seat of my pants at that time, trying to pick up the required computer skills, to afford my own system, to get some work so I could pay the bills (and avoid the dole office!) as well as trying to push myself as a designer.I graduated into one of the worst employment slumps this country has seen. Luckily things picked up pretty soon and I was getting some regular freelance work and eventually a full-time job, and hey, I'm still doing album covers for Greg Williams!

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 13

2007-01-15T13:44:00.000+10:30

Stumbled across another great portfolio of Adelaide design courtesy of the duo kim and nat. Some very nice work on display here, I had wondered who was designing the AGDA invites of late, the one for the wine talk is a particular favourite. At the moment, there's not a lot of work up there, but their identity for optometrist Mark Lambert is fantastic, just don't stare at it too long, and their invites are pretty cool as well. They've already picked up a gong at the latest AGDA Awards, I'll look forward to seeing more of their handiwork in the future.

Welcome to the New Year

2007-01-01T17:13:00.000+10:30

Well it's 2007 and Facing Sideways is nearly one year old, who'd a thunk it would have lasted this long? Being the first day of the new year, it's a traditional activity to reflect upon the year gone by and make resolutions for the brand new one. My usual New Year resolutions consist of the old standbys, lose weight, spend time with the people that really matter, remember to always wear pants in public, the stuff everyone promises but breaks before January 30th. 2006 was definitely a year of contemplation and examination over my career as a designer, so as part of that ongoing examination (and fodder for this blog naturally!) I'm going to make some very design orientated resolutions for the new year that hopefully I will stick to.

Speak to more designers I'm going to try to speak to more people involved in design, from all experience levels. I really enjoyed talking to the designers that I did on my overseas trip (the interviews of those remaining will be up soon as they have checked over them). If you're a designer at any level reading this, please feel free to contact me with any of your thoughts or comments, I'm interested to hear from you, except the spammer who keeps leaving comments trying to sell viagra, penile enlargement and hot lesbian love - I'm sorted in all those areas, thanks all the same, so you can go and fuck off now please.

Be more flexible When it comes to designing outside of my 9-5 job, I've always been a little headstrong about how I design in my so called 'off hours'. I'm going to try to listen a bit more and take the clients point of view into more consideration than I may have previously. On the same score, I'm also going to be a lot more picky about he jobs I take on in those 'off hours'. I've been too much of a sucker for the 'sob story' and invested too much time in jobs that are neither financially or creatively satisfying for people I have no personal obligations to.

Write more I'm going to try and write more on the blog. I've been managing about 1-2 posts a week, I'd love to try and up that a bit, like everything you start, your interest wanes and increases in cycles, depending on various things. I'm surprised I've made it this far. I might try to broaden the range a bit as well to more design topics Australia and worldwide. I'd definitely like to do more designer interviews and studio reviews and definitely more personal opinion pieces.

Buy a laptop This year I'm going to bite the bullet and finally get myself a laptop. I've always thought of it as a wanky unnecessary item, but I think it will be a lot more convenient for my writing and presenting work.

Rejoin AGDA I have my problems with the set up of the Australian Graphic Design Association, which I hope to write about in the near future, but if I'm talking about the Australian design community, I should be a part of the national association dedicated to promoting it.

Learn Flash My multimedia skills are lacking at the moment, while my first love is print design, more and more of it is being translated onto the screen as people become comfortable with the online environment. One of the things I need to get my head around (at the very least) is a program like Flash.

Get my work out there It's one thing to talk about design and the design of others, it's another thing to put your money where your month is and demonstrate some of your own, whether I'm going to put more of my work up on the blog is debatable. I never really wanted it to be a site to promote me as the designer, I'm definitely looking at putting up my own portfolio site though.

Don't sweat the small stuff This is a pretty universal promise, some things just aren't worth losing sleep over.

So there you have it, my design resolutions for 2007, well see how I went same time next year.

Recent Surfing Highlights 10

2006-12-19T12:55:00.000+10:30

Thinking of some time away in the snow in the new year? If you're a designer, you might want to consider one of these, an enlarged print dots ski jacket (click on Half Life pic to see larger). Now if I could only find the time to learn to ski.

It's that time of year to traumitise your kids by sitting them on a fat stranger's knee for the promise of gifts. Relive those memories at the gallery of kids scared of Santa.

Looking to knit something for a loved one this Christmas? You can't go wrong with these ideas from the museum of kitschy stitches.

The top movie posters for 2006 by someone with some taste. Volver and The illusionist posters only spoiled by particular choice of actors.

Pitchforkmedia have picked their worst album covers of 2006. Mostly, I agree (though I don't mind the Sleepy Jackson cover) Pearljam and The Chilli Peppers should know better though.

Et tu BI-LO?

2006-12-08T10:23:00.000+10:30

One of the first big identity projects I worked on back in the day was a re-branding for BI-LO supermarkets back when I was working at Woodhead Firth Lee (now simply Woodhead). I was pretty fresh out of University, working there on a freelance basis, so it was an exciting opportunity to re-establish what had been a reasonably well known local supermarket chain into a national franchise.

Their identity, such as it was at the time, consisted of the word BI-LO set in whatever chunky sans-serif the signwriter had (or could paint I guess) stretched and condensed to fill whatever sign dimensions as needed. BI-LO were a discount supermarket chain, the emphasis being on cheap here and at the very least it certainly demonstrated that in the face it showed the public. If it was going to branch out into other states and compete on a national level, it certainly was going to need some sort of re-branding.

It was something that were loathe to change in any dramatic sense, this look had served them for the last 20 years or so and had seen them through some success in South Australia, the bean counters were obviously thinking, why bother? The firm I was working for, Woodhead, were primarily Architects and Interior Designers, the graphics department had come into being as a natural progression to provide a more value added service to their clients - the BI-LO account I'm sure was won on the basis that Woodhead had the capabilities to design and furbish a big roll out of stores around the nation. The groceries buying public was becoming some what more canny in their preferences, though they still wanted cheap groceries, they also didn't want to wade through uncomfortable surroundings to do their weekly shopping, the stores needed to be able to compete immediately with the multitude of supermarket chains in the other states.

I'm not sure the mark itself was even part of the initial consideration for the furbish, it was obvious when the project got underway, that some consistency would need to be established with the mark to tie in with consistency on the store interior designs. Also, if there was ever going to be a time to look and establish the stores identity mark, this would be it.

The first think we did was to establish a consistent look to the mark. This was set in a Helvetica Black, tweaked in places so the logo looked more unified, and also prevented third party contractors from the urge to simply setting the 'logo' in type and stretch and condense it, rather that using the actual mark. The main change was to change the normal hyphen into a downward pointing triangle, to denote 'low prices' directly in the mark and to also give it some uniqueness and personality. Truth be told, note many people notice this until it's actually pointed out, but then again, most people aren't seriously studying corporate logos in too much detail, how may people notice the joined together 'm's' in The Commonwealth bank mark, or the arrow in the FedEx logo? For such a small change, I remember at the time it caused a bit of controversy, BI-LO had become part of the Coles Myer group and had significant asian backing, apparently in some asian cultures the symbol of the triangle pointing downwards signifies loss of fortune!

It did eventually all get through though, the mark became the basis for a whole range of identity items. I was pretty happy to have an identity I worked on rolled out on a national scale. Today, BI-LO is one of the nations best known 'discount' supermarket brands, but not for long. BI-LO has been incorporated into the Larger Coles chain and the mark is gradually being replaced by the eponymous Coles tick mark.

So it's with some melancholy I see it go, I'll miss pointing out signs where they haven't followed the design guidelines (such as placing the word 'supermarket' into the yellow banding box!) and being able to point out to people easily something that I have designed. It's inevitable of course, as designers, nearly everything we work on has a limited lifespan, the BI-LO isn't completely gone as I see they are still going to use it on some instore items - I'll miss seeing those big yellow and red signs though!

Judging albums by their cover 9

2006-11-20T12:16:00.000+10:30

Beck: The Information

Beck has always been an advocate for the use of strong, clever visual solutions for his music releases, apparently growing up, he used to pick up albums based on their cover art as well :) His latest release 'The Information' takes it up another notch. This clever little package design contains a set of stickers that allows you to customise your own cover. Art directed by uber album design specialists Big Active, over 20 image-makers were involved in the creation of the sticker sets. It's a fun idea to 'value add' the physical CD in this day and age of easily down-loadable music - the listener becomes an active participant in the album experience. So the CD package is cool, but while I was in London I managed to pick up the 7-inch vinyl single of 'Cell Phone's Dead' (the revival of the vinyl single in Europe is another story) that also contains it's own set of stickers, along with a larger cover 'canvas' to display them on. I imagine out there somewhere you can also purchase a 12-inch full vinyl album. So while this is all pretty clever, I imagine it's the sort of thing that will only effectively work once, it opens up a lot of ideas and possibilities for value adding CD packages in the future though. One of the first things I thought of when I got the Beck CD was that it was a pity that the stickers, once stuck down, are so permanent, wouldn't it be cool if they were like those old 'colour-form' kits from my childhood (I had GI-Joe and Evel Knievel sets!)that let you take off and re-place the stickers over and over. How about a set of rub-down 'letraset' images or a cover that works like a magna-doodle set? It's highly likely that the future of physical CDs lies in different areas of thought like this. There's a contest online for the best 'Information' covers put together by listeners here, oh, and the actual music on the album is pretty good too! Go out to your record shop and buy a copy.

Interview with Value & Service

2006-11-14T11:19:00.000+10:30

So I went for a trip overseas a little while back (which I may have mentioned once or twice on here:) Anyway, I figured while I was over where ever I found myself, why not see if I could drop in and see a few designers whose work I admired? Easier said than done of course, many were asked, a few replied and some even said I could come and see them. London was particularly tough (maybe I shouldn't have said I was Australian?) A few replied and very politely said they would be too busy or not in the studio when I would be there. Luckily one of the studios that I did really want to visit said yes, that being Value & Service. Value & Sevice was established by Directors Sean Murphy and Hazel Rattigan in late 2002. I know the term 'thinking outside the box' gets thrown around a lot, especially in design circles, but I had been really impressed by just how different the studios work was to just about everything else out there. They really take a considered approach to the use of materials and unique solutions to their projects in a real world setting, not just a design for design sake environment. I wasn't really sure what to expect when I visited their studio is Shoreditch, what I found was a very down to earth group of designers pushing the boundaries of their profession but still dealing with the day to day challenges of running a professional studio. I spoke to director Sean Murphy.

Chris Bowden: What first inspired you to get into Graphic Design?

Sean Murphy: Believe it or not, there's a program you might have heard of, a soap opera called Eastenders, there was a character in it called Colin who was a graphic designer and I quite liked the sound of the job, the term 'graphic designer' sounded quite interesting, I always wanted to be a TV camera man before I wanted to be a designer, so I wanted to be a graphic designer before I really knew what it was. I was always quite good at art and liked drawing. Rather than doing A-Levels which is what most people in the UK do, I went straight into a Btec in graphic design.

CB: From there you went onto further study at a University?

SM:I went from there to Central St Martins and that's where I met Hazel, we worked together quite a bit at university, I left and Hazel went on to do an MA, I started working at North which is where I met our neighbours upstairs in Bibliotheque. I then went back to university to do my own MA as well, and about three and a half years ago, Hazel and I set up Value & Service.

CB: Your folio contains quite a bit of work for artists, galleries and arts organisations, was this a conscious effort on your part to work in that area?

SM: It's not something we planned really and it's probably something we're trying to change a little bit, we've got that so well covered now, and it's not an area that generally pays very well! So we want to change what we're doing in some ways, we still enjoy that kind of work, of course, it depends and what you're doing at any given time. We've just finished a book for an artist named Trevor Appleson, and in fact, we're just about to start another one for him.

CB: Do you think that sort of work offers you a lot of freedom or do you feel restricted by working under the particular aesthetics of the artist?

SM: In some ways it's actually more restrictive than more 'corporate' work in a weird sort of way. It depends who the client is though, we've worked with a curator called Tom Morton quite a bit, and he's really good, he understands what we do and allows us to get on with it, he values it, he's not one to stick his oar in in a sense. It's a two way thing, the work always comes out of our conversation with him, rather than him dictating or us dictating. That's a nice working relationship, when we first set up Value & Service, he got us to do some work on a one day art show he curated and he then went onto setup a one year temporary gallery and we were involved with that. He then went onto be the curator at a gallery called 'Cubitt' and he's brought us along with him. We've been quite lucky in who we've worked with, because they've all been quite open to our input, they've not had that idea that they tell you what to do and you just do it.

CB: I guess the good thing about working in London is the amount of fine art related enterprises there are.

SM: There's a multitude of galleries and artists, there's always something going on in that area, like the Freize Art Fair which is quite a big deal, because we've done some work in that world, we're beginning to understand that just about everyone wants work for free or at least to pay very little for it.

CB: Of all the projects you've worked on, do any stand out as being particularly memorable or enjoyable to work on?

SM: It changes all the time. Sometimes you're really happy with something and other days you look at the same piece of work and see the faults in it. There's a couple of things that I really like because of their simplicity, they tend to be some of the older stuff. We did a window for Selfridges that I think is very us. There was no brief essentially, the concept was a window display based on window displays. We photographed different things around London, bits form McDonalds, dry cleaners, just anything really that caught our interest. We then recreated it, mostly in vinyl and we used suckers and things you would find in windows. The project came about through Creative Review magazine, we were chosen as one of the design firms featured in their 'Creative Futures' annual feature. That year as part of it you got given a window to design. Another project that stands out is one we did again for Tom Morton. It was an invitation to a one day art show, it was a quick idea, we cut up copies of Vogue magazine and took the pages that were purely advertising on both sides and used that as our base and just laser printed information on top of them. It's probably the lowest budget job we've ever produced, it cost about 30 quid to do, and it's one of our favourites. Things like an identity we did for a one year temporary gallery, a set of business cards on a tear off pad, there's just something about the feel of it we quite like. We were probably a bit more free with our design when we first started out, now we've got overheads to worry about!

CB: With those concerns, how do you keep yourself motivated and inspired?

SM: Depression?! It's hard to pinpoint anything exactly, mainly just by observing the things around you.

CB: Do you draw any inspiration from any of the artists you work with?

SM: I don't feel like the work that we do is directly influenced by any of the artists we have worked with. I think it's more from things like our collection of old books, lots of typographic oddities and such. We find inspiration everywhere, not particularly in one place, we might find it by looking at someones photographic work or what not. Sometimes it's a good idea to look backwards!

CB: You've mentioned that you're looking to broaden your work outside of the arts, what sort of work would you like to do?

SM: More art direction. We feel there's a bit more scope to do interesting things working with other people to create imagery, it's the sort of work we enjoy doing. At the moment we feel as though we've been getting work that just needs to be 'put together'.

CB: Would you have an ideal client you would like to work for?

SM: Comme des Garçons would be pretty ideal for us. Someone who does very interesting stuff that doesn't just follow the conventional route.

CB: There's a lot more opportunities to do that sort of work in London and Europe as a whole I guess?

SM: There's a hell of a lot of designers here as well though and each year design companies sub-divide and designers split off and start their own firms, plus a plethora of students leaving university who are really good, there's a lot of competition.

CB: What do you know about Australian Graphic Design?

SM: I've seen bits. I'm not good with names, so I couldn't name anyone in particular, but I've seen a few magazines that have come out of Sydney that have been quite interesting. There seems to be stuff going on in Australia now whereas you would never see anything, but now you do see quite a bit in magazines or whatever, mags like Grafik or Creative Review, you see Australian designers have submitted work. I think there's some nice work coming out but I couldn't tell you who did it though!

Thanks to both Sean and Hazel for sparing the time to talk to me and show me their studios and work. All the pieces discussed in the interview can be seen on the Value & Service. website, a nice piece of work in itself, along with the rest of their portfolio.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 12

2006-11-13T13:19:00.000+10:30

In case you've been thinking I've given up on looking at the local design scence, what with me swanning around world, think again as I delve into the creative cauldron of Adelaide to pick out another fine design studio to bring to your attention. Detour. are a design firm I've been meaning to present here for a while, I thought they actually didn't have a website, in fact they've probably had one for a while, while I was looking for the company name followed by a .com.au, they were there all along hiding under a .net.au! Detour have been in business for what must be going on for 14 or so years now, which is a lifetime in the competitive design market of Adelaide. The studio is run by Catherine Bell and Abra Remphrey, Abra is of course, married to Parrallax head honcho Matt Remphrey - with that sort of design influence, their daughter is going to turn out to be the next Sagmeister or perhaps she'll be overwhelmed by all that designy-ness in her life and opt for a career in something more lucrative like real estate or blogging. Anyways, the Detour site has an interesting and easy to navigate interface made up of a grid of coloured boxes that you click on to reveal the studios work. Some nice work there is too, highlights being some great labels for Hazyblur and Oldfellows wineries, The Banksia Pallative Care Annual report and a really beautiful and appropriate package design for Lanapelle wool rugs for infants. Detour are a part of the pack of Adelaide design firms that stormed into the Australian Graphic Design Awards this year to pick some well deserved gongs, so spend some time and take a look.

London Design Museum

2006-11-02T13:13:00.000+10:30

So when In London, taking in the sights, where is the obvious first thing a designer should visit? Being a designer and all I figured a visit to the Design Museum might be in order, asking my partner Caroline if she would like to attend she replied that she would rather force matchsticks under her fingernails, so taking that hint, I set off on my own to this shrine of design. For a museum of design, I've got to say that the facade was pretty uninspiring, at least the locale is pretty, right besides the Thames in view of The Tower Bridge. It cost 7 quid to get in, which kind of put me off purchasing anything in their gift shop, as impressive as it was - I had my eye on a design museum t-shirt until I saw that they were 40 quid, which is, I don't know, about a thousand dollars or something in Australian dollars:)

One of the special displays that had on was a show on Formula One Grand Prix, not really my area of interest I've got to say, though they did have a car on display that I had as part of my Scalectrix model set when I was younger. At this point I was probably more interested in how that had set up their exhibits, graphics wise, rather than studying the intricacies of an exploded view of a McLaren F1 engine.

The main display area was dedicated to a sort of history of UK graphic design (though a pretty condensed version admittedly). I'm not sure whether this is on permanent display or not (is there anything on permanent display here? There were some beautiful WW2 deco inspired propaganda posters. This sort of illustration seems to be a lost sort of style these days, more is the pity. Best of all, there was a (small) display dedicated to Peter Saville's Factory Records work, including the original 'floppy disk' inspired sleeve for the 'Blue Monday' single which I've seen in books plenty of times but never in the flesh as it were. There was also a nice display of old penguin book covers, Penguin seems to be quite the flavour of the month as far the design blogospehere, maybe it's due to the book that was release on Peguin book design a little while back, it's good stuff, One Plus One Equals Three has a link to a Flickr photoset if I have at all piqued your interest.

The museum was filled with bored looking school students plodding through displays, filling out obligatory class set assignments, occasionally a teacher would tell one of them that they had spent enough time on the 'playstation' display and they would plod off bleary eyed into another nook of the gallery. That's about it as far as what is in the museum, ok I guess but hardly worth the Â£7 entry fee, pity I wasn't there a month or so later to check out the Alan Fletcher exhibition.

Being in the vicinity, and a little disappointed with the Design Museum, I figured I'd take the half hour stroll down to the Tate Modern. Caroline had expressed a slight interest, but was fearing that she would be forced to view, as she put it 'blank canvases with a pile of pebbles underneath it' which to me sounds like the most fantastic idea for 'fine art' I've heard in a long time which I intend toimplementt and enter in the Turners as soon as possible. Anyway, it was a nice day for a stroll (for a change) and the view along the Thames on the way can' be beat. The walk took me past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a replica that is built kind of pretty close to where the original was built. Did you know that Shakespeare's first Theatre was called the Curtain and was built on the other side of the Thames. When the landlord wanted the land back, he took it apart and rebuilt it across the way.

The Tate is going through a lot of renovation work at the moment, which means it's looking kind of crappy. The great entrance hall space was being transformed into the biggest and loopiest slippery dip of my dreams that I had ever seen, even though it was still under construction, don't think I didn't ask if I could take a slide down that baby - denied! It is art after all. Once again, the exhibit graphics are excellent, I really like the entrance wall to the 1945-1960 artists section, decorated with artists signature on a black background, really striking. The good thing about the Tate is that entry is a donation,(so free then for me :) the bad thing about the Tate is that it was full of more bored school kids with an even greater area of boredom to trod through (and no playstations!) The thing you find about London is that they really hate you taking photographs, especially if there is a buck to be made from preventing you from doing so. In mostcivilizeddplacess in the world they put up signs that say 'No photography' if they don't want you to take photographs, in London they just prefer to hire people to yell at you. So I'm in a gallery with some of the worlds greatest modern art on display, a good place to take a couple of snaps you say? Apparently the fear is that you will go in, take photos of that Rothko on the wall, run it out onto a canvas, claim it as your own and sell it. I can see how they have to be careful and once again I'm sure it has nothing to do with the prints for sale in gift shop. So I'm in there happily snapping away, actually at this point, more interested in how they hadappliedd information graphics to the walls than the actual works of art. I was getting the look from people around me, that look like I had just strangled their kitten or something, had | stepped in something, maybe a piece ofavante garde artinadvertentlyy? From out of nowhere comes a screaming banshee of a woman, for awhile I thought it was aperformancee piece of some sort, but then I realised she was with the gallery. 'No photography, no photography! She wailed like a pair of cats fighting on a tin roof - now I was on display at the Tate - the school kids certainly took more interest in it than the nearby Bacon (Francis, not in the cafeteria). London always brings the worst out in me temper wise, I'm usually pretty relaxed, but there's a way that normal people handle things like this, they politely tell you there's no photography allowed, you apologise and you're on your way, then there's the London way of being as rude as possible and drawing the most attention to yourself. I told her this in not so many worlds after she had finished screaming in my face - I may have added that dental hygiene was now a cheap and readily available commodity as well. I guess that's probably what led to me being goose stepped out of there by a couple of security guards soon afterwards, hence the rather light on review of the Tate, but by all means, if you're in the area, take a look, it's free after all :)

Back In The Saddle

2006-10-30T14:40:00.000+10:30

And I'm back, actually, I've been back for just over a week or so, but a combination of jetlag, work catchy uppy and just trying to get my head around my experiences OS and how I'm going to present them on this blog has detained me from getting my arse into gear and posting that I'm back. I saw some interesting stuff and met some very inspiring individuals while away, all of which I'll be regurgitating in some form or another in written form in the coming weeks. You can look forward to my visits to Value & Service in London, MW, Alfalfa & TwoTwelve in New York, as well as my excursions to various exhibitions and galleries (including getting thrown out of The Tate Modern, as well as my general observations on the design scene in London, New York and The Netherlands. Stay tuned.

The Overseas Experience

2006-09-26T18:05:00.000+09:30

I'm typing this in a little internet cafe in London, yeah, suffer in your jocks, I'm on the start of my 4 week 'Overseas Experience', with thanks to Chris Cooper (welcome back!) for inspiring that title. Posts are probably going to be pretty thin for the next couple of weeks, but I've lined up some studios to visit and talk to here and in New York, and hopefully I'll be inspired enough to have some interesting reading up in the coming months. Meanwhile, if you've stumbled upon this site for the first time, there's a wealth of articles on Adelaide design firms, my opinion of Ben Lee and cats that look like Hitler for you to explore!

Album Cover Gallery

2006-09-18T12:32:00.000+09:30

I've had some recent requests to see some of my album cover art, so I've set ap a Flickr gallery of some (admittedly not so recent) album covers I have done over the years - they are mainly just examples I actually had jpegs handy of! Maybe someday I'll get off my arse and set up a proper website with some up to date work! Chris' not so up-to-date album art gallery.

I Am Blue

2006-09-05T12:47:00.000+09:30

I'm beginning to really dislike reflex blue. To me, nothing says boring, conservative, unimaginative, unyielding corporate business than the particular shade of 100% cyan and 100% magenta (give or take a few percentile). And yet we see it used everywhere, I'm sure businesses think it denotes class and reliability - maybe they just feel more comfortable following the herd. It's the fall-back colour for the indecisive, the unadventurous and those who can't be bothered exploring alternatives. Even grey or black are preferable to me, and yet it feels like 70% of the jobs I work on - reflex blue is the dominant colour. If the fact that it's everywhere isn't enough, it's also a bastard to print. Print a big expanse of reflex blue and don't seal it with anything, come back in three years time and run your fingers over it, you'll still get ink rubbing off onto them, it's a bastard to dry. No two jobs printed in reflex blue ever feel like they match when placed together, don't get me started on roller marks. So in response to the great sorrow that reflex blue brings to my life and as a means of trying to exorcise that demon, I have written the following haiku:

'Reflex blue tell me why
Your cobalt hue makes me cry
Not again I sigh'

Reflex blue, if you can help it, just don't do it. Pantone blue is beginning to get up my nose as well....

Art & Design

2006-09-04T09:07:00.000+09:30

I friend of mine who I do a lot of album cover design for, has been for years trying to convince me to mount an 'art exhibition' of some of the work I've been doing for him, it particular, a style of painterly - photo-montage that I've used on a couple of his covers. I haven't been all that keen on the idea, for one, I don't like to think I dwell on style too much, but in my mind I feel as if this particular one I employed was starting to becoming a crutch that I knew I could employ perhaps because I was lacking in a decent concept. It has gotten me thinking more about the relationship between art and design. By using this 'style' was I in fact crossing over into art? Is this what people generally think of as an artist, someone expressing themselves through a single recognisable style?

I've never looked upon myself as an artist as such, trying to convince myself that I'm a halfway decent designer through the years has been hard enough. I would pretty much equate calling myself an artist with about as much respect as I would consider calling myself a wanker. I cringe when someone introduces me to themselves as such, as a title, I feel as though it is something that needs to be bestowed upon the recipient, earned rather than freely used as your job title.

To me,the word design implies something that has been created through pre-planning and pre-thought to reach a pre-determined outcome (a lot of 'pre's' there!) Art on the other hand seems to be something a lot harder for me to define, rather than generalise, it's perhaps something best left to the individual to come to their own conclusions. I do think though, that is a term that is used much too often to categorise creative endeavors. I think good 'art' should carry a unique message or emotion, not needing to attach itself to any pre-determined expectations or doctrines. It's something that can convey a multitude of thoughts and feelings, the artist, free from a particular expected outcome can create whatever they want without having to explain why they have produced what they have. The only client they have is their own self-fulfillment. They key words I think are 'individual' and unique'.

Design as such seems some what at opposites with that definition, in a strictly commercial and traditional sense. The designer is often taught to submerge their stylistic individuality in service of the design, to produce something that serves the needs of the client, not the fulfillment of the designers creative expression. I'm not sure too many designer's get into the field to solely work to service the client. Design is a way of legitalimising our creative pursuits - "look Mum & Dad, I can make a living out of 'expressing myself". That's putting it pretty simplistically, but each of us likes to feel that we have a little bit of 'the artist' in us - most of the time it's a struggle to incorporate a little of that and at the same time, solve the clients needs.

The main problem I have with what is loosely incorporated and titled as 'art' is that most of it is simply a throwback to what has been done before. It's not falling into the category of 'individual' or 'unique'. You often hear artists as 'working in the style of...' or 'from the school of.... In that case, the artist is realistically just following and feeding popular trends rather than following an individual or unique vision. In that case you may be a painter or a sculptor or whatever medium you choose to work in, but it doesn't make you an artist. Design on the other hand tends to draw inspiration from what has come before, trends and styles are common, swiss style, modernism, grunge, minimalism - commercialism dictates the course the designer takes to a large extent in fulfilling the clients brief.

W shouldn't be ashamed to look upon ourselves as designers and not artists. We all want to think we are producing creative work that is worthwhile, we're often looking for the next big trend to incorporate into our work, to make us stand out, to be well on top of it before it's overwhelmed into the mass media. Perhaps the key lies in looking into the heart of what really makes something 'art' - to use that example and to be strong enough to follow our unique passions and emotions to look beyond what is trendy, to stray from the rules and create our own 'art' and bring some of that back into our day to day design work.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 11

2006-08-16T13:01:00.000+09:30

It's not often that I pick myself up out of that fortress of indifference I call my daily life to really care all that much about the state of the general majority of local graphic design (at least not in the days before I started this blog!) Sometimes something will hit close to home, it may be that I have to look at every day, maybe someone I know who can do better designed it, maybe I designed it! Sometimes it's just for something that is close to my heart. Case in point, The 2005 marketing material for The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra - it may be the 2004 stuff - I don't want to unnecessarily vilify someone for producing totally adequate design that I've just gotten the years wrong, I've tried to exorcise it out of my mind to be honest - you'll know what one I mean because it was horrible. For the past few previous seasons the promotional material had been consistently bland, The ASO went through some personnel issues and to be fair, some serious funding issues which I'm sure left their mark, but the stuff looked like no one gave a damn. And really, what more incentive do you need to produce beautiful design than doing work for a symphony orchestra? There's just so much scope there, it's my dream assignment. It looks like they got the high school work experience kid to knock it out ten minutes before the end of the day.

So come 2006, I wasn't expecting much from the ASO in regards to their season's promotional material, was I in for a shock. The 2006 design was some of the most beautiful I've seen for a local arts organisation. Obviously someone had gotten them back on track by employing the capable lads at Voice Design. Voice have been quietly plugging away for over ten years now, with some very unique and inspiring designs in their portfolio, including the work for the ASO, Rio Coffee, SA Great and Beresford Wines, to name a few. Persistence seems to have paid off for them, as their work is becoming a more common sight in design journals and competitions, including an in book award at the 2006 UK D&AD awards. Their book 'Type it Write' has become an essential reference guide around many a local and not so local design studio.

For Sydney-siders, Voice are currently part of the Powerhouse Museum's 'Design 06 - Cutting Edge Australian Graphic Design' exhibition for the benefit of all you eastern states gurus who I know flock to this blog.

Recent Surfing Highlights 9

2006-08-11T13:04:00.000+09:30

If you get to the point where you think you've got all your Ipod needs covered, perhaps you need this.

Too much Peter Saville is never enough.

Bugs Bunny under the spotlight, deconstructing an animation icon.

A fantastic design blog, that highlights found type, print and packaging.

I was a wee bit too old when Transformers they first hit the seen back in the 1980s, but I have to admit this trailer for the upcoming film has got me excited, especially the tranformery typography at the end.

And speaking of typography, is there nothing it can't do? You'll never think of taking a shower the same way again after seeing this.

Oh, The Busy...

2006-08-03T17:59:00.000+09:30

I've been crazy busy in my neck of the woods for the past couple of weeks, logging in the overtime trying to get a couple of projects approved before a client jets off on holiday, then going home and doing my freelance design thing for a couple of more hours - hence the relative sparsity of new articles up here on this ol' blog 'a' mine (for the benefit of the 2 or 3 people who check it on any regular sort of basis!)

The unfortunate and fortunate thing about choosing a life in design is that you carry your passion with you all the time, not many designers turn off at five o'clock that I know of anyway, most try to find some hobby outside of it or it will just consume you 24/7. I know I find myself when driving home checking out the kerning for a headline on an advert on the back of a bus, or noticing a new identity on a building on my route. I'm informed by my partner that 99.9% of the population who aren't graphic designers don't do this, and for her part, she works long hours, in a very stressful position as a Human Resources Director, but at the end of the day, she's not looking for the validity of possible compensation claims on the latest episode of 'Big Brother', meanwhile I'm driving her crazy flicking between the music channels on Foxtel to try and catch the fantastic graphics on the latest Gnarls Barkly filmclip.

So I sometimes envy the ability of people able to separate their home-lives from their work-lives, especially when you're in the middle of a busy workload - I guess the advantage that a designer has at the end of the day is that the product of their work efforts are somewhat more tangible. We have a portfolio of work, a gallery - evidence of our daily struggles whether that be a brochure, a website, an advert, whatever - it's there, we can say I did that, whether you're proud of the work or not, it's a lot more than a lot of professions can say at the end of their working day.

So yeah, busy, but slowly easing off to just a mild form of insanity.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 10

2006-07-25T21:38:00.000+09:30

It's always great to stumble across some inspiring design work when trawling through the internet, even better when you discover the work is by someone you studied with (petty jealousies aside!) and haven't heard from in Many Years.Mia and Jem Graphic Design features the work of husband and wife Mia Daminato and Jeremy Matthews, I studied in the same year as Mia and Jeremy was a year below me. If memory serves me, they were both clever clogs when it came to designing back then (Mia won the design 'prize' for our year I believe, against some pretty stiff competition in that class) the work has certainly blossomed from that potential. Currently they are working in San Francisco, Mia at Sunset Magazine as a Creative Director and Jem at Metadesign, while finding time to do projects on the side. Their portfolio is fantastic, it includes one of my favourite identity concepts of all time Box Cafe. It's a fun site with plenty to check out, you'll be impressed if you do.

Was It Worth The Effort?

2006-07-18T20:30:00.000+09:30

Most people who watch an average amount of commercial television and certainly most people with an interest in the design arts would have seen the advert for Sony Bravia Television featuring a multitude of coloured balls bouncing down a street to the tune of Jose Gonzalez's 'Heartbeat' tune. The amazing thing about the advert,, of course, is the scale of it, a quarter of a million bouncy balls were fired from 10 specially constructed giant cannons onto a San Francisco street that was cleared for the shoot - and it was all shot in camera. It has received a lot of praise for it's scope, it's lack of computer trickery, and it is a beautiful and sublime piece of advertising. Having seen the advert a number of times, it very much looks like it was produced using CGI - I would hazard a guess that 90% of people watching it who aren't aware of how it was produced would think so as well. So the question posed is - a lot of respect that this advert has garnered is over it's 'hands on approach' to production, but if the majority of your audience is unaware of this, does it dampen the impact? Was it worth going to all the expense and trouble to produce something that looks so computer generated, something that could have looked the same at a fraction of the cost, and the audience still none the wiser?

Design Heroes - Peter Saville

2006-07-05T12:54:00.000+09:30

Most Graphic Designers have their personal design heroes whose work has influenced and inspired them in their creative endeavors, there's a whole industry devoted to it judging by the number of graphic designer monographs out there snapped up by an eager audience. When I started at University, the Neville Brody worship was on the wane and Duffy & Charles S Anderson where emerging as the idols that launched a million design graduate portfolios. By the time I had finished my degree, David Carson and Emigre were influencing the legions of professional designer wannabes.

My first professional work being in the music industry, the designers I looked up to tended to be those producing the look of music graphics, Art Chantry, Oliver Vaughan, Dirk Rudolph and of course Peter Saville's album covers for Factory Records. Though I've never really followed his aesthetics of his austere style in my own designs, he's been a big influence on how I approach and think about design. My favourite comments on design from Saville have been his opinion that a piece of design doesn't need to be blatantly self evident - that the viewer should be given enough credence and respect to be able to grasp the function and concept of, say, a particular logo without the designer merely stooping to visual puns, I'm quoting out of memory here, but I believe he set the example of a stylish restaurant, people who would frequent such a restaurant would be able to grasp that it is a stylish, sophisticated, upmarket establishment by the designer using an informed choice of font that reflects that, rather than, say a pictogram of a plate, knife and fork to represent it. Unfortunately, for every informed comment he makes, there seems to be an equal amount of gibberish and self posturing. He skirts dangerously close to that precipice that separates a designer from an 'artist' and has often commented that he never really wanted to be a designer and merely became one by circumstance (we should all be so lucky with those circumstances!)

He's left a lasting legacy on album cover design and visual communication in general. You can find a good biography on him here on Wikipedia.

Furry Fuhrers

2006-06-28T12:21:00.000+09:30

Cats seem like and endless source of inspiration on the web. Site makers seem fascinated by our furry companions, joining popular sites like Bonsai Kitten & Stuff on my Cat is Hitler Cats. You read that right, as the moggie above us demonstrates, this is a site dedicated to cats that resemble Hitler. Okay, maybe it's not exactly politically correct, but it's called a sense of humour and one of the funniest things I've come across in quite a while. This must be what the web was created for! I'm sure all of us have had experiences with cats where that gleam in their eye seemed to indicate something more 'what's for dinner tonight?' The picture of that cat above freaks me out the more I look at it, the resemblance is uncanny....

I've had my own experience with a Furry Fuhrer. A previous girlfriend had a cat called Max who looked pretty close to the cat above, we were convinced he was the reincarnation of the maniacal dictator himself. He was a cat with some deep psychological problems and some anger issues to work out. One minute he would be lying pleasantly on your lap purring, the next he would be going for your throat unprovoked, claws and fangs bared. It wasn't uncommon for me to hear a shriek from another part of the house, only to run out and find my girlfriend bailed up in a corner, water pistol in one hand, cushion in another fending Max off. I don't know what became of Max, I wouldn't be surprised if he's plotting to invade Poland at this moment though.

So what does this have to do with design? Well... ummm... doesn't nature work in some mysterious ways!

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 9

2006-06-23T13:53:00.000+09:30

Parallax Design wants you to know that they sell imagination, (personally I prefer to only lend mine out on weekdays and make sure it's back by six) it's a good thing they have plenty on offer because at these prices you'd be crazy to shop for your imagination anywhere else. Parallax is run by 'pal 'o mine' from my Uni days Matthew Remphrey and after a few years in business he's finally put up an honest to gosh website for us to all ooh and ahh over (and you will!)

I've probably talked about Matthew's work on this blog more than anyone's, particularly his work on the recent Adelaide Festival of Arts, hopefully he doesn't want to punch me in the face next time I run into him, but Parallax are producing some very recognisable and awarded work at the moment, right from the heart of little old Adelaide.

A little history on Matthew from my perspective, he went through the Illustration stream at the University of South Australia's Bachelor of Design course at the same time I did Visual Communication (proof that in the final analysis, it probably didn't matter which stream you chose to follow). After graduating he formed a design/marketing company called Punch! with fellow graduate Andrew Rice which lasted for a couple of years. Andrew decided to move interstate and Matthew moved onto IK Design where he quickly began to produce some impressive design work that earned him many national and international design awards as well as being featured in all the big graphic design publications such as Graphis and Communication Arts. An overseas trip to the US contributed to the inspiration to go out on his own and form Parallax.

I think you can still see some of the influence of those IK Design years, especially in the SA Tourism 'Brilliant Blend' mark, but if you look at the identity work he did on Mexican Burritto outlet "Burp' there's a definite growth away from anything I could imagine IK Design producing. This identity is a perfect example of the 'simpatico' that parallax seems to manage with their clients, not only is it extremely appropriate and well produced, it's also a lot of fun and light years away from your typical fast-food outlet identity, this is a piece that respects the intelligence of both the client and their customers.

In a recent article on Parallax, Matthew held that the idea is central to the core of what Parallax produces, if the viewer can't immediately grasp your idea then it's failed in it's purpose, I suspect he holds a little more leeway in that regard. The work he has produced for the Epilepsy Association, Adelaide Festival of Arts and Living Cell Technologies seem to leave some room for the viewer to explore and discover, some trust that they'll grasp to the concept, and to me, they are all the better for it, being some of the standout pieces in his portfolio.

The Epilepsy Association identity in particular is a great example off effective communication on what I imagine was a fairly tight budget and for a difficult and delicate subject matter.

So take a look through the site's portfolio section for a dose of inspiration, I'm sure you'll be seeing a lot of it in the upcoming Australian Graphic Design Awards.

Judging albums by their cover 8

2006-06-19T12:41:00.000+09:30

Eskimo Joe: Black Fingernails Red Wine

Eskimo Joe's third longplayer finds the band once known for quirky tunes like 'The Sweater Song' taking a decidedly darker and introspective turn, one I'm all for - I hate 'The Sweater Song' with a passion and was pleasantly surprised by the step up they took in their song writing skills with second album 'A Song Is a City'.

They're not afraid to change and adapt with the times which is to be applauded - with the new album they seem to be searching for a larger sound and larger audience. Lots of reviews talk about the 'stadium sound' of the album, I'm not convinced of that, but I can definitely hear a play for the hearts and wallets, of say, the multitude of Coldplay/Interpol fans out there. There's certainly and earnestness to it, almost a plea to be taken seriously as sophisticated ensemble, moving beyond the realms of disposable pop into something more mature, what better way to emphasise this than to put some 'Art' on the cover?

Despite what I feel about some of their earliest musical efforts, the band have always had a strong visual presence in regards to their album covers and music clips. The cover to 'Black Fingernails Red Wine' feels like a definite and positive continuation of the beautiful artwork incorporated in their previous release 'A Song Is a City'. The impressionistic, dark brushstroke aesthetic is quite appropriate to what you might expect to hear on the album upon hearing the first single (the title track in fact) with it's brooding, growing intensity.

That being said, a little bit of that treatment in both graphics and sound goes a long way. Unfortunately, in both instances on this album they overstay their welcome a little. The designers have decided to 'go for broke' with the cover painting and cut and spliced it throughout the whole CD booklet. The type treatment on the cover feels more 'marketing compromise' than design intent - almost like a guy in a suit and ponytail looking at the intended cover painting and saying 'They can have their arty shit as long as we make the title and artist name as chunky as possible! A more delicate approach to the type would have been more effective - in fact removal of the text all together, to be paced on the inside spine would have given the alum cover much more impact. The band sold 100,00+ copies of their previous album, they've got the fanbase there to purchase this one, they're big enough to get away with it.

In the final analysis, and after a couple of listens, I would say the artwork as a package reflects an album that initially offers a lot of promise, but unfortunately gets mired in it's attempts to prove itself worthwhile and deep but accessible to the major radio listener.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 8

2006-06-14T15:40:00.000+09:30

Fusion are a well known and respected Adelaide design firm, who for the past ten years have been mostly working in the fields of multimedia and online design solutions. They started out as the proverbial two blokes working out of a back room and have grown into one of Adelaide's largest and most awarded design companies.

While they already had an impressive print design division under the helm of David Zhu, recently this arm of the company has grown with the appointment of my former workmate, Chris Cooper, and a merger with local outfit Do-Da (covered in a previous 'Designers Who Are Better Than Me' article). Some nice work has been coming out of here, they picked up a couple of gongs at the latest Adelaide Art Director's Awards, and have been receiving a lot of attention for a series of beautiful glass murals they designed in conjunction with designer/artist Gerry Wedd for the new Adelaide Airport Terminal.

The Fusion website demonstrates a lot of interesting website solutions for a variety of clients if you're into that sort of thing. The actual interface of their site isn't all that exciting, I guess it's a 'let the work speak for itself' sort of thing. A pity considering the wealth of talent they have on hand.

Recent Surfing Highlights 8

2006-06-06T12:01:00.000+09:30

David Byrne always has something interesting to say up at his web journal, in particularly with this article where he discusses the future of music packaging.

I don't know whether this is a good idea or not, but it certaininly made me think. Italian Vogue steps out of the comfort zone with these layouts for their magazine

A great new book cover design blog.

The Poster Museum at Wilanow Poland is hosting the 20th International Poster Biennale. you can see present and past winners here.

Music Video Clip Highlights

2006-05-30T17:14:00.000+09:30

30gms is a new design blog that I frequent quite often, created by London design firm Fibre. I've posted some links from them before, they always have interesting design and non-design snippets to impart upon the masses. Want to know what's on Kurt Cobain's Ipod at the moment? Find out here! For me, it's been a great source for discovering visually stunning music video clips (I'm getting too old to sit up to 3am in the morning watching 'Rage'). The following are some that have caught my eye.

This film clip for Black Tambourine by Beck has been around for a while. Produced by Associates In Science, this ASCII art extravaganza is a typography lover's wet dream (probably for programmers as well). It's a fantastic song as well.

A stunning Australia clip for the band The Presets. Produced by Kris Moyes, it's a tour-de-force in experimental animation and film-making techniques with a decidedly '1980s' feel.

The antics of the lead singer of the Vines do more to interest me in them than their music ever has (read Karlsson Wilker's book 'Tellmewhy' for some interesting insights into his mania). This music clip produced in 'claymation' by Michael Gondry's brother Oliver manages to be both cool and sort of creepy.

Revenge of the Graduate Portfolio 5

2006-05-22T12:22:00.000+09:30

Another week, another stroll down the dusty corridor's of my graduate portfolio, a place where the 21 year old designer Chris' creative machinations are reassessed by the jaded, yet ruggedly handsome 30-something Chris, I tread where other designers fear to tread!

The big assignment set during final year was the eponymous Annual Report, another labour saver favourite of lecturers, incorporating all the aspects of Visual Communication that we (should) had learned.

The brief was open (as usual) in regards to who the report would be for. I chose the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. It seemed an obvious choice for me at the time. I'd spent a lot of hours there during my study years, it was a favourite spot to draw, photograph, mope and generally collect my thoughts from the heady pressures of student life, especially midweek when the place was virtually deserted. The old Palm House in particular was a favourite spot of mine, over a century old and in a fairly dilapidated state, it seemed to provide endless inspiration for me in drawings and a stunning 'happy accident' photograph that I managed to snap around sunset on afternoon. The Palm House isn't nearly as interesting since they renovated it a couple of years ago, that's progress for you I guess.

The Gardens have a good deal of history as far as public gardens in Australia. Of particular interest beyond the variety of exotic native and introduced flora, are the number of public art pieces, statues, fountains, even a monument to Elvis if you believe that. My concept for the visual aspect of the annual report was to merge the flora with these artworks so as to emphasise both. This was achieved by the simplest and most immediate technique available to me, taking photos as transparencies and merging the resulting slides together to produce a single print. An example of the result can be seen above.

What I wanted to achieve was a sort of 'enchanted forest' feel, to portray the gardens as a place of new discovery, wonder, tranquility and inspiration, as they were to me rather than just a collection of trees and flowers. I'm not sure my primitive attempts really achieved this, maybe if I has access to photoshop (and knew how to use it!) I might have been able to portray this a little better, but then, maybe I would have lost some of the spontaneity and rawness of it.

As far as a concept goes, I thought it was a good one. I really think at the time the lecturers were more concerned with style over this though (a claim that can be backed up by the uproar that erupted when Design Coordinator Cal Swann tried to get the design department to look a little deeper into their concepts choosing a 'nice' typeface. Overall, my shots were let down by my inability to communicate what I wanted outside of an audience who had spent as much time roaming through the gardens as I had!

Revenge of the Graduate Portfolio 4

2006-05-15T10:50:00.000+09:30

I never intended when I entered the Visual Communication course at The University of South Australia to become a graphic designer. I barely even knew what one was, let alone had any idea that is was something you could make a career out of, the careers course I took at high school still had 'ticket writing' as a job option for the individuals with artistic leanings wishing to apply their skills to the real world.

Through my life I like to draw, it was a past-time, but also something that I focused on as a future profession. While other kids wanted to be an astronaut or a race-car driver, I was dreaming of being a cartoonist, as I grew older and started to more seriously grasp the realities of 'real world' skill applications, I began to think that maybe I could illustrate children's books or at least be somehow involved in commercial illustration. It was with this some what vague plan that I applied for, and was accepted into The Uni of SA Bachelor of Design course.

At the time, (we're talking late 80s here) the course was set up so as both illustration and visual communication students did a two year combined foundation course (in the first year, all the design disciplines were pretty much combined in a foundation course, this included industrial design, ceramics, jewelry, human environments and graphics) so everyone got a grounding in the disciplines of both streams - typography, life drawing, graphics, photography, illustration, print-making, even wood and metal working - it was a pretty good system. After the two years, you split off into your preferred discipline, illustration or visual communication - it turned out to be a valuable system, because after that two years I discovered that concentrating on illustration wasn't for me.

A couple of things led me to that decision. I could see that while some of my classmates were progressing in leaps and bounds with their illustration skills, I wasn't progressing very far at all, my marks in illustration were just average, I was doing much better in typography, visual communication and even photography. I felt I had taken my illustration skills as far as I could at that point - or as far as I wanted to - I just didn't get along with the Illustration lecturers, it was all too close to 'visual arts', too unfocused and if there is one thing I have learnt about encouraging myself to 'create' - it's that I need an objective.

So I went over to the 'dark side' so to speak and took the visual communication stream, and for the most part, any inklings of being an illustrator fell by the wayside. The Bakehouse identity items you see above were my last gasp at any allusions in that area. To those in the know, you can see a strong influence from The Duffy Design/ Charles S Anderson style in the execution. Everyone else in the class seemed to be treating their identity projects so seriously, I just wanted to do something colourful and fun and momentarily recapture that spirit of enjoyment that made me first put pencil to paper when I was a kid.

As it turned out, in the long view of things, whether you chose to concentrate on illustration or visual communication didn't really matter that much in the real world. A lot of the illustrators found that their skills were much in demand in the studios and went on to successful careers as graphic designers (Matthew Remphrey of Parallax Design studied illustration).

It's unfortunate that the Uni of SA doesn't do the combined foundation years anymore (at the moment though, that's probably the least of their problems, don't get me started) because for myself at least, it let me sort out what I really wanted to do. Through the years I've incorporated a few illustrations into the work I do, but I wouldn't list it as one of my major skill sets. I still have a certain fondness for that pink dinosaur eating the cookie though :)

Revenge of the Graduate Portfolio 3

2006-05-08T13:54:00.000+09:30

The Southern Cross Packaging Awards were held nationally each year for final year design students (I assume they still are). Students have a set number of briefs to choose from, the emphasis being on designing innovative packaging concepts. The year I entered I chose to tackle the beer packaging, a popular choice as you could imagine.

Out of all the projects I worked on that final year, this design shoes my influences at the time more blatantly than anything else. Charles Anderson/Duffy Design retro-pictorial elements? Check! Neville Brody typographic treatment? Check! Cool Simpatico matt black beer bottles? Check! I'm sure if David Carson had reached the heights that he would at that point in time, I would have thrown some of that grunge stuff that the kids loved on there as well.

The actual brief was that the package had to hold three beer bottles. My solution was to 'clasp' the bottles by the neck, leaving the labels on the bottle visible and also incorporating a nice wide panel area to maximise graphics. The back of the 'holder' had a cut-out hand-hold that you slip your fingers in to carry it. Basically the 'holder' starts flat, you punch to tops of the bottle through perforated holes that grasp the neck, fold it over, punch through again to hold the bottle top, then lock in the back. It took a reasonable amount of folding cardboard and broken bottles to get gripping the bottles comfortably.

I still cringe a bit over the graphics. The one comment I remember when presenting the work to a prospective employer was 'why isn't the label in blue and white'? (a reference to the Eureka Stockade Southern Cross Flag), well, I don't really know, I guess that's why he was sitting on that side of the desk and I was the poor schmuck looking for work.

And no one got the joke of the label. It was called EUREKA BEER, get it? As in 'You Reek Of Beer!' What a card I was back in those care-free student days. The design did end up winning a bronze in the awards, lame pun not-withstanding.

Recent Surfing Highlights 7

2006-05-08T11:49:00.000+09:30

A gallery of Josef-Muller Brockman posters, for those who like that sort of thing.

Tanek Atrissi's blog features beautiful Arabic design and typography.

Gnarls Barkley have been receiving a lot of hype for being the first artists to have a number one song in the UK before even releasing the song as a 'physical' CD single or album. While it's not really my type of music this video for the song 'Crazy' is pretty cool in it's 'ink-blotty' greatness.

Paul Sahre, designer extraordinaire, wants you to 'Spread the Love'.

Designers Who Are Better Than Me 7

2006-05-01T12:50:00.000+09:30

Who couldn't love a design studio named after Homer Simpson's workplace area at the Springfield Nuclear Plant? Sector7g is run by principal Nicholas Eldridge who is fortunately somewhat more adept at his work responsibilities than above mentioned cartoon icon. I was actually kind of surprised to find an updated website for Sector7g having thought it had been encapsulated into design triumvirate Metascope, Nic is still listed as a principal there though the site hasn't been updated in a while, either they've split or he's just being 'Mr Overachiever' with two design companies. In any case, the work up on the Sector7g site is excellent and inspiring, makes me wonder why you don't see his name mentioned in a few more design competitions. The website has an interesting interface as well, allowing you to detatch the portfolio pics and move them anywhere in the space. You'll need to 'shuffle' the folio a few times to view all of the work on offer, well worth it to see some more excellent Adelaide design pieces.

Revenge of the Graduate Portfolio 2

2006-05-01T12:44:00.000+09:30

Photography formed a large part of the curriculum in my fourth year design studies. Where a lot of my compatriots in the course were keen photographers and really into the whole process of setting up studio lighting and breaking out the large format camera, I was never that confident in my photography skills. A lot of the technical requirement's of taking proper light meter readings and developing the film seemed time consuming and boring - just thinking about it seemed to sap a lot of the enthusiasm I might have had for the project right out of it. My initial thoughts always seemed to turn to how can I knock this off as easily and quickly as possible - but still tackle it in an innovative and (personally) creative way, specifically in a manner that no one else was approaching it.

The lecturers were big on combining disciplines that year, less work for them I guess, so it came as no surprise to anyone when we were assigned a photography/typography project, specifically to design a calendar.

As far as the 'brief' for it went, it was your typical university course 'open ended' brief, we were allowed to do what ever we wanted with it as long as it encapsulated photography and typography. If there was a 'client' in mind, I guess it would be the designer's dream project of a calendar for a paper merchant or printer. One stipulation may have been that each photo should reflect the month it was portraying in some way, I can't remember, it may have been a matter of of that being imposed by myself to try and direct what my interpretation might be.

Keeping in mind that this was back pre my computer usage - as soon as we got the assignment my first thoughts were how I was going to lay the date information onto the photos. I didn't have access to a scanner, the only way to get type onto a photo would be through the use of letraset - hours of meticulously having to lay down each number for the calendar wasn't an encouraging thought. I was also dreading the planning that would need to go into shooting the photo so as to leave enough room to place the type. I was getting less and less enthusiastic.

I don't know when the solution struck me, maybe I was lazily scribbling in the dirt with a stick (it has a Newton 'Eureka!' vibe to it) It's probably fair to say that seeing as I was a student, whatever I was doing at the time was probably 'lazily'. It occurred to me that I could incorporate the type for the calendar already in the photograph - I take the shot and I'm done in one. All at once the possibilities of where I could go with this seemed endless.

The picture above for 'February' was one of the first shots I took - a simple matter of writing the calendar in the mud in my backyard, surrounded by some of my mother's pots (love those teapot planters :) Where possible I tried to stick to a 'theme' for the month, for example, in January I wrote the calendar in zinc cream on my father's back, in June I wrote it in the frost on my bedroom window. I wanted to keep the photos spontaneous, so the shot was set up using available light conditions.

I think they all turned out reasonably well, it was certainly worlds away from what anyone else did and for once I think I receive a good mark for a photography assignment.