Designerino

Juice-Skin

2009-03-18T10:40:00.001-07:00

These drink boxes are the work of product designer Naoto Fukasawa. The designs are intelligent, but not intellectual. The work enters the consciousness through the senses, but these designs are not one-dimensional or skin deep. Awakening of the physical senses stirs both thought and memory.

Writes Kenya Hara about this work, "The gentle angles of the packaging reveal something in common with the feeling of holding a banana." I also noticed that the banana package, in relation to the others, is taller in its proportions. An exquisite detail which unites banana and juice-box is the folded flap/stem. It works so perfectly and is so unforced that the flap—though we've seen it countless times—now feels natural rather than manufactured. The subtle and sensitive coloration—the soft greens, the hints of red on the facets—and the choice of using the sticker as a label contribute to the rewarding experience of this work.

With each piece I notice a little and then a little more, each detail awakening the senses. The soy milk is also a tactile experience, this time in terms of texture rather than form. The exterior of the package has a rough cheesecloth-like feel. The proportions of the box also remind me of the proportions of a block of tofu.

Kenya Hara: "No doubt drinking from this package would feel very strange, as if you were drinking soy milk directly from a piece of tofu."

The strawberry juice is stunning in its color as well as its visual and actual texture. The subtle variations in the red of a strawberry are lush and realistic, and the placement of the white spot at the straw hole is playful.

Kenya Hara: To design is to "build" a structure with an image inside the mind of the recipient. In this case, the materials are not only external stimulation but also massive amounts of memories awakened by stimulation. Designing highlights subtle differences between recalled memories and reality.
All images and quotes are from Designing Design by Kenya Hara, pp 92-95, Lars Mueller Publishers.

Did You Know?

2009-02-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

I was going though some books and came across some background on this well-known design, a Dylan poster by Milton Glaser. Glaser sites his interest in Islamic painting and the below image by Marcel Duchamp as references. Glaser writes that the combination of the Duchamp portrait with near Eastern design elements produced a uniquely American sensibility. I agree.

silhouette cutout by Marcel Duchamp, 20th century.

Instead of showing Islamic painting, I've selected examples of calligraphy, textiles, and tiles to show the sense of fluidity, emphasis on pattern, and floral motifs I see in Glaser's work.

Example of mirror writing in Islamic calligraphy. 18th-century. Wikipedia.

Embroidered Panel, 18th to 19th century. Wikipedia.

Islamic tile painting. Source did not include any work information.

Here’s another image by Milton Glaser, a poster for Julliard. It also works with a silhouette but it is compositionally distinct from the Dylan design in that the subject, rather than being obvious, is almost camouflaged. In the background you can again see the Islamic theme. I prefer the ambiguity of this piece.

Image source for Duchamp & Glaser: Graphic Design, Overlook Press, NY, 1973.

My Art Director is Four Years Old

2009-02-21T04:50:00.000-08:00

My husband turned me on to this site about a four-year old art director. At first, I thought the blog would be a forum where people bitch about their unreasonable, tantrum prone art directors. But this is better. Bill Zeman's four-year old really is the art director of these projects, each of which has a brief and a few notes.

The drawings are uniformly playful and fresh. The dialog is so funny because it captures the spirit of a small child but does so in the format of a design brief, suggesting that this father-daughter relationship is a contractual business obligation.
The Brief: A bone dinosaur eating a little baby
The Critique: No! A baby dinosaur!
Job Status: Rejected
Additional Comments: He's just going to be nice to that baby he's got in his mouth

Go to Tiny Art Director to see more of Bill Zeman's great work.

Helvetica Moleskin

2009-02-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

I wish I had one of these sketchbooks, but so do a lot of other people.

Living

2009-02-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

These works by Chinese designer, Pazu Lee La King, are from the catalog of the 2008 First Edition Chicago international Poster Biennial.

It took me a while to see the letter forms made by the rope and hands, but after I did I was amazed at the clarity of the text. Both types of lettering in this first design work with value contrast to achieve legibility, darkening the hand or part of the hand that does not contribute to the letter form. I love how parts of the hands break outside the boundary of the picture frame, and how the large V acts as a drop-cap.

I enjoy seeing these images together. Both use the body as text in different ways, one on a dark and the other on a light ground.

I like the addition of the circles as frames behind the heads and the additional spattering. There is something confused and pathetic about these disembodied heads on their messy ground—also something comic, arresting, and beautiful. There is duality in the dark image as well between the word victory and its spelling through the image of bound hands. These designs suggest both triumph and a futility when it comes to "living."

Hide & Seek

2009-02-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

The following images are from an October post on FontFeed. On the left is the logo for the 2008 Franfurt Book Fair. It is my least favorite of the images I've posted because of the additional wrapping type on the outside. It seems too busy for a logo—especially since the outside elements create three separate elements—but I do like the interior composition. In general, I like the abstract quality of all these images—the integration of text and design, and how the mono-stroke geometry of the letters and their equal-width counters are lost and found within the maze patterns.

T26 type catalogue cover (2000)
book cover for “Orientierungssysteme und Signaletik” (October 2006),
and cover for the G8 brochure (2007)

The Power of Images

2009-01-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

The image below is from a photo essay in documentarian Errol Morris’s blog on the New York Times. It shows George W. Bush after his final primetime address. This is a picture of a man who knows his fate and can do nothing about it. It is a face of despair. In this way it reminds me in appearance and substance of images of the damned. I do not feel judgmental or gleeful about the fate I perceive. Rather I feel a deep empathy and sorrow. I am moved, not hardened.

Photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed

Detail from Massacio’s fresco, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, c. 1424-28

'One of the Damned': detail from Michelangelo’s fresco, The Last Judgment, c. 1540

I’m glad I saw this photo of our former president. It does not exonerate any wrong-doing or mistakes, but helps me to see a human side of George W. Bush. Though I despise his actions and policies, I cannot hate him anymore. Something in my heart has changed; this is the power of an image.

See more photos and read Errol Morris’ interviews with several of the photographers.

"O" so Nice

2009-01-19T08:42:00.000-08:00

This image is by Gore Design Group, a Croatian firm. The following is a translation of the instructions listed with the design.
1. Print eCard
2. take scissors
3. Cut circle dot
4. see through it

With the an actual hole cut into the counter of the nine, you end up with a spatial relationship. The hole becomes a window or frame while the same size circular forms in the zeros are symbols or ideas of a hole (like the Acme product in Bugs Bunny cartoon).

This design caught my attention before I knew about the instructions and I prefer my first impression. The counter of the nine provides a playful visual instruction. The uncut 9 next to the completed 2 and zeros introduces a "before and after" feel. The process in the piece all occurs in the imagination; the design suggests that the previous counters have actually being cut out, the letter shapes produced subtractively.

Design-wise, I love that the upper portions of the 2 and 9 create a chain-like pattern in connection with the zeros. I also enjoy the thickness of the mono-stroke numerals—somewhere between the x and caps height of the smaller text—and how that stroke width flows nicely into the New Years message.

You & Me

2009-01-14T08:10:00.001-08:00

The following images are ballpoint pen drawings by Marian Bantjes. They explore visual and conceptual relationships between the words "you" and "me."

The first shows YOU & ME entwined and interconnected; both words are the same scale and both employ a branching structure—aterial, root-like, vine-like. The branches taper and wrap around the piece, creating an enclosed feel, a sense of interiority. There is something protective about the enclosure of YOU & ME. Here, YOU & ME is a private, slightly guarded world inhabited by equal players.
In the version below, YOU is contained within ME. This creates a first person narrative: ME is the speaker, YOU the beloved subject.
This last piece presents difference with equality, both words at a similar scale but in different colors. The colors and branching suggest an anatomical heart while the overall form of the piece is hart shaped. The words YOU and ME both take the form of anatomical hearts as well. Each heart—rather than being connected to a body—is connected to the other heart.

Sol LeWitt

2008-12-08T05:53:00.000-08:00

Check out this blog post and linked articles on Sol LeWitt. Is LeWit a fine artist? Is he a designer? Is he an architect, transforming interiors? You decide. One of my favorite things about the drawings is their execution on walls. This, plus their scale, lends a spatial quality to these strongly two-dimensional works.

79

2008-11-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

THE FIRST THING you'll notice about Micheal Bierut’s Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design is, well, its design. The book throws off the oppressive shackles of consistent typesetting. Every essay uses a different font, including a piece called “I Hate ITC Garamond”—set in ITC Garamond. The cover is simply a list of these highly-readable essays in their respective typefaces, a Whitman’s typographic sampler. Nothing fancy. There are two design rules at play: “Break the rules” and “Do the obvious.”

THE SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH—the list goes on—thing you'll notice about 79 comes from the content of the essays. Here are a few of Whitman’s conceptual samplers.

BIERUT IS INSIGHTFUL. I love his connection of design to everything else. As it happens, the first essay in the book is called, “Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content.” Design is meaningful precisely because of its integration with and participation in other facets of life—pop culture, politics, etc. I’ll pound on this point extra in the closing paragraph.

BIERUT IS FUNNY . . . while being insightful. In “Ten Footnotes to a Manifesto,” a commentary on the new First Things First Manifesto, Beirut takes a look at the signatories of the document. Though I am inclined toward the sentiment of the manifesto—of considering your values and impact as a designer—I think Beirut makes excellent criticisms of the manifesto on a practical level.
Question: who signed this thing saying we need to focus less on manufacturing demand and more on worthy causes?
Answer: mostly designers who practice as critics, curators, and academics and work outside of advertising.“A cynic, then,” he writes, “might dismiss the impact of the manifesto as no more than that of witnessing a group of eunuchs take a vow of chastity.”

BIERUT DROPS NAMES. I mean this in a good way. I appreciate the designers and other cultural items he introduces to my radar. My favorite daisy chain is from an essay called “Errol Morris Blows up Spreadsheet, Thousands Killed.” I recently saw the discussed documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara by Errol Morris. Beirut calls it, “a design achievement of high order” and its undercurrent is the question is of how ordinary people can do evil things. It is historical, political, moral, and philosophical in nature. If I say any more I’ll risk going off on a tangent instead of talking about design. Back to design: get this book. Then see The Fog of War.

BIERUT ADDRESSES COMPLEXITY. The most recent essay I read, “Graphic Designers, Flush Left?” has to do with the relationship of design and politics. It is a compelling argument against compartmentalization and for my own agenda of the problematic but rewarding balance of the competing values of design, politics, ethics, and the need to make a living.

Beirut writes, “(Y)ou can’t underestimate the power of politics and cultural identity in shaping design . . . .” He goes on to cite the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s song about Werner von Braun. Werner Von Braun was a Nazi weapon’s expert who later switched teams and worked for NASA in the postwar space race.Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department, says Werner von Braun.Beirut: “Graphic designers work with messages, and the messages mean something. We may think we are responsible only for launching those messages, and certainly there’s some comfort (and profit) in thinking that. But if you care about your work, you have to care not only about how it goes up, but where you come down.”

Another Three-Dimensional Application

2008-11-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Paula Scher called this project “architecture as graphic design.” In 2000, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center received funds to convert a 1940’s building into high school for the performing arts. Below are images of the original building and the proposal sketch.

Scher writes about the original building: “There was something sadly institutional about it, particularly the brown and beige paint that permeated the hallways and bathrooms.” The task was to reinvent the structure, both interior and exterior. The typographic treatment of the exterior works with the different planes of the building, its nooks and crannies, and even previous eyesores such as the air conditioning ducts. The effect accentuates the building’s form. The interior is bold and colorful. I love how the radiators become abstract paintings.

Image source: Make it Bigger, Paula Scher, Princeton Architectural Press, pp 246–252.

Unity through Restraint

2008-10-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

The previous post was about creating unity through inclusion: if anything goes, than everything goes. This week, bookshelves meet architectural detail meet multiple works of art—united via the quirky line of a sharpie marker. Lawyer by day, artist in the basement, Charlie Kratzer combines these varied elements by rendering everything in black line on a cream ground. The playful lines suggest deep space (the hallway in the corner of image one), create shallow space (beadboard, architectural trim, and framed paintings), and emphasize the three-dimensional canvas as drawings work their way onto the horizontal plane of the ceiling as well as onto a bench and shelves.

More is More

2008-10-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

If you use every color and pattern available, then everything will match. This is the design concept behind the home of Richard Schultz and Anado McLauchlin. They live near San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico; you’ll notice a Mexican aesthetic in the décor and color choice. Below are some shots of the kitchen, exterior, and living room. Check out the New York Times slide show to see more.

Responsible Design

2008-10-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

This image and the brand name “Nigger Hair” were used by The American Tobacco Company of Wisconsin to sell their product. In the late 1920’s the company changes the product name to “Bigger Hare.”

Seeing past examples of visually represented stereotypes needs to make us more sensitive to the stereotypes we use today. We usually assume, because it is status quo, that recycling and reinforcing existing stereotypes is acceptable. We often don’t even think of them as stereotypes. “What’s wrong with these ideas?” we say.

It is very easy, however, to look to the past and see how problematic stereotypical portrayals are, to see the harmful messages they present. It is likely that the makers of these images and popular culture at the time also thought, “What’s wrong with these ideas?”

The lesson as a designer is: think about what you are doing, learn from the past, and question the present. I am not a political activist. I say that not as a denial but as a clarification. I have often felt “useless” as an artist or designer in light of problems of social and economic inequality and environmental concerns. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that my talents lay here and I should find a way to meaningfully be an artist and designer. It is as wrong to think that I can change nothing, as it is to think I can change everything.

I am not suggesting that we all blindly follow a set of PC rules, but that we be mindful. Think about the message you send in your work. If you use a stereotype, are you reinforcing that existing idea or challenging it? I have examples of both.

Stereotypical Portrayals of the Past
It is important to understand that design is informed by and in a dialog with other elements of culture. The products designs for both Darkie toothpaste and the original Aunt Jemima relate strongly to ideas of race typified by blackface.

The poster above advertises a blackface or Minstrel show. Part of American theater from approximately 1830-1930, blackface is a style of makeup and performance that represents the racial stereotype of the “Yes, suh!,” happy go-lucky, dim-witted, “darky” eager to please the white man. Important to note: these were white’s ideas about blacks. Blacks, I am certain, would not have described themselves as dim-witted and eager to please unless doing so in a critical fashion. Also, we can be proud that this idea of blackface was made in the USA.

In the leftmost original package, it is easy to see the relationship to blackface. The marketing logic behind this image, paraphrased through the lens of time, is as follows: “Since black skin is dark, by contrast blacks’ teeth seem very white. Hey, let’s put a stupidly grinning black man on the cover to show how white your teeth will get with Darkie Toothpaste! And let’s make sure to use a stereotype crafted and controlled by whites so that black man isn’t threatening.”

The packaging evolved over time with changing racial sensibilities–first in the name shift from Darkie to Darlie, and finally in the transformation of the blackface character into “Quaker-Oats-man-with-bow-tie.”

We are all familiar with how Aunt Jemima looks now. The direct inspiration for the original pancake lady came from a song sung by apron and kerchief-clad blackface performers.[1] This poster is an 1899 depiction of the “Jemima” character on a sheet music cover. The phrase "Aunt Jemima" is sometimes used as a female version of "Uncle Tom" to refer to a black woman who is perceived as obsequiously servile or acting in, or protective of, the interests of whites.[2]

This post will continue (at some point) to include:
Reinforcing Existing Stereotypes
Challenging Existing Stereotypes

1. Moss Kendrix: The Advertiser's Holy Trinity: Aunt Jemima, Rastus, and Uncle Ben
2. Green, Jonathan. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, 1998. p. 36.

First Chicago International Poster Biennial

2008-10-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

I found this poster (from the First Chicago International Poster Biennial) on a post at Design Observer. The exhibit is in Daley Bicentennial Park until October 29.

"Piano Folies" by Michal Batory of France is one of my favorites. Using black and white photography allows the racial difference in skin tone to be about value rather than color. Dropping the issue of color works formally as the grey tones more closely resemble the black and white of piano keys.

This image is incredibly well executed—from the horizontal layout to the use of only the index, middle and ring fingers. Take a look at your hand and notice how much shorter the pinkie is: the inclusion of such a dramatic change would stray too far from the evenness of piano keys. On the other hand, if all the fingers lined up perfectly you would loose the organic feeling of the hand.

The photography captures nuanced changes in skin tone (darkening around the cuticles), creases in the skin, and the distinct shape of nails on each finger; these ordinary and often unnoticed details are presented as beautiful and worthy of attention. The series of photographs are beautifully stitched together.

Considering all the obvious songs and images on the theme of “Ebony and Ivory,” I am amazed at how rich and resonant this piece is, that it does not become another cliché . Yes, nearly everything has been done before. And it can still be done again wonderfully.

See a slideshow of 31 winners from the contest.

Pie Chart

2008-09-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

The concept is excellent and I'm also enjoying the low level of craft and wood grain background. My friend Diane's artistic philosophy is, "Do the obvious." This is clearly working in that school of thought; it's so stupid and so very good at the same time.

Graph by Jamie Schimley: from a site called Graph Jam--Music and Culture for People Who Like Charts.

A Book & Its Cover

2008-09-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

A book cover picturing a book; a bit of trompe-l’oeil (Because of the 1:1 scale, the photograph registers very three-dimensionally); an excellent use of color; and a nice formal layout to boot.

Book cover design by Peter Mendelsund.

Good Times

2008-09-19T11:52:00.001-07:00

Below are some clocks and a watch from the product line of Tibor Kalman’s design firm M&Co. (1980s)

Creating emphasis through omission. Now we can actually see how important 5-o-clock is without all the rest of the stupid numbers competing for attention.

Time is a regulator, a standard, which is why the choice of three random hours is so interesting.

Said Kalman of the fuzzy clock: “Very good in bars.”

Ed. Hall, P. & Bierut, M.: Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Princeton Architectural press, 1998, p143,150, & 151.

Kalman's Humor

2008-09-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

This poster by Tibor Kalman for the 1986 AIGA Humor Show works with the image of mistaken printing. The design includes Kalman’s notes—a date and job number, test strip, a reference to the crop marks (useless in a poster that has printed so poorly), and a note to “Micheal” about how important it is that this job be done right. Rather than seeing a slickly finished product we see the back-side of design, the process, and the things that can go wrong. The banana peel is an obvious but effective image to convey the humor of a mistake. “Ops! I slipped and fell.” Or, “Ops! This printed wrong.” While a misprint ad (especially when dealing with a close deadline) and falling down are not necessarily funny, what both instances have in common with humor is a subversion of expectation. Neurologically, funniness is an idea taking an unexpected turn in your head—perhaps a short cut or maybe a scenic route. Humor creates a degree of surprise, a sense of “Oh!” or maybe even “Uh-oh!”

Humor Poster by Tibor Kalman, 1986.
Ed. Hall, P. & Bierut, M.: Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Princeton Architectural press, 1998, p37.

Like W, Like M

2008-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

This design is smart and no frills. The M-W relationship, flippablity of the zero, and division of the flag as “stars: left” and “stripes: right” allows the lower half to read both right-side-up and as a reflection. The fading is a cue that what we are seeing at the bottom is a reflection, while the placement of the apostrophe indicates that the lower image is also upright. The association of “reflection of Bush” with “McCain” says: these two things look a lot alike.

Below the Belt

2008-09-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Below the Belt is a three-man play, vaguely set in an unidentified industrial compound in a “distant land” across from an unnamed desert. It is a dark comedy focused on the relationships of men in the workplace. Michael Sommers of the Star-Ledger called the play, "a mean, keen comedy about a snarling trio of corporate number-crunchers going for the groin."

The design presents the three characters, who are neither heartful nor thoughtful, from the waist down. The characters in the play are shallow, really more caricatures, and graphically represented by flat silhouettes.

The figures and words are integrated through the vertical positioning of the text, the matching of caps height with figure width, and the similarity of the stroke weight and leg thickness.

“Below the Belt” by Rafeal Esquer
Feill, C. & P.: Contemporary Graphic Design, Taschen, 2007, p155.

Time & Space in October

2008-09-03T09:19:00.001-07:00

Spatial contradictions of possibility and impossibility create interest in the contemporary surrealist image “Octobre” by Genevieve Gauckler.

The tilted ground plane of white dots and arrows on grey is a flat, graphic image turned volumetric. Rather than facing us like the vertical plane of a wall, it stretches before the viewer like horizontal ground in a landscape.

The cartoonish black figures do not suggest depth but they, too, exist dimensionally with the use of cast shadows. The overlap of the boy makes the front row seem much further than the back row even though the characters change in scale only slightly. (The number 24 up front is just barely bigger than 04 in the back.)

Are the graffiti marks flying like the birds, or is the sky not distant but near like a backdrop in a play? This creates a theatrical effect furthered by the disco sun, but then refuted by the spatially convincing and beautifully rendered sun halos in the area of #10.

The combination of the spatially believable and the fantastic creates a metaphorical space that addresses both the concrete and abstract natures of the passage of time.

“Octobre” by Genevieve Gauckler
Feill, C. & P.: Contemporary Graphic Design, Taschen, 2007, p200.

Black is for Bold & Black is for Black

2008-08-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

This post started with a statement at the end of my previous post about how Obama's logo uses color to verify his Americanness.

Interestingly, most iterations of John McCain’s logo are black (sometimes navy)—not red, white, and blue like Obama’s. Micheal Bierut describes the McCain logo as “militaristic and blunt.” Aside from whether the logo is good or not, McCain can use the color black and not look “Un-American” because his name is John, he’s white (Just like me!), and he served in the military.

I am not interested in arguing whose logo is better but in how the meaning of color can change depending on who’s using it. For McCain, black shows boldness, plays up his military service (insert patriotism here), and says, “I mean business. Watch it or I’m going to use that pointy thing on you!” If Obama used all black, he’d be making a racial statement and inviting comparison to the Black Panthers. His actual logo does neither of those things.

Political Communication Through Design

2008-08-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Obama logo combines the images of flag and landscape, two symbols that work with different levels of representation.

The flag represents the United States of America by using numerical symbolism. For example, the 50 stars represent the 50 states and the thirteen stripes represent the original thirteen colonies. The stars, however, don’t look like states and the stripes really don’t look like colonies. Though it is visual, the relationship between the signs and signifiers is distant, even arbitrary.

The flag represents other things as well—freedom, pride, patriotism. These meanings, however bound they are with the image of the flag, come not from the image itself but from associations with our particular history and the use of flags in general (in the Olympic parade, in front of buildings, on the moon, etc).

The image of the landscape is direct and pictorial. Plain and simple, it looks like a landscape. No need to count. Just use your eyes. While the flag represents the "country" of the United States, the landscape represents "country" as land. The ideas of land and country are linked—as in the patriotic song lyric “this land is my land.” Country is an abstract concept, but land is concrete, grounding. You can farm it, build a house on it, hike it, etc.

The landscape depicted in the logo is a Midwestern farming landscape (not mountainous like the Denver DNC logo) and is well chosen for strategic political communication. The landscape feels very “Illinois” (Obama’s current constituency); makes me thing of other farming areas considered as “red” states (bringing a democratic association to republican strongholds); the sun reads as rising (new opportunity, “change”); the openness of the landscape says “straightforward and clear;” and the farming aspect bring a connection to the archetypal farmer—an honest, hardworking American connected to the land.

The combination of the flag and landscape bring together concrete and abstract ideas of country. More than “Midwestern” the landscape in red, white, and blue says “American!” In a political climate where candidates must prove their authenticity as Americans, this logo is a smart move for a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.