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HandPaintedType
‘HandpaintedType is a project that is dedicated to preserving the typographic practice of street painters around India. These painters, with the advent of local DTP (Desktop Publishers) shops, are rapidly going out of business with many of them switching to the quicker, cheaper but uglier vinyls. Many painters have given up their practice altogether.
The project involves documenting the typefaces of road side painters across India and digitizing it so that it serves as a resource for present and future generations.’
A kind of ethnographic/oral history /documentary that feels elegiac. More lost skills. Why is the handmade more beautiful than the digital equivalent?
Graphic Design before Graphic Designers
The book’s main focus is the developments of the 19th century which saw the printing process undergo a technological revolution and the printer become integral to the expansion of industry and trade. The book doesn’t just focus on letterpress but also takes into account the importance of various crafts vital to the world of print and design such as engraving – which allowed for more flowing calligraphic styles of text and, of course, illustration – and sign-writing, the art of which influenced type design, in particular display type.
Creative Review – Graphic Design before Graphic Designers.
David Shrigley and Teresa Chiba
BBC News – Collaboration Culture 7: The artists – David Shrigley and Teresa Chiba
For the latest in the BBC’s Collaboration Culture series, British artist David Shrigley teamed up with Japanese counterpart Teresa Chiba.
Glasgow-based cartoonist David travelled to Tokyo to meet Teresa, a graphic artist and illustrator.
During their few days together they explored the city and created a short comic book detailing their experiences.
Signal: a journal about international political graphics: Observatory: Design Observer
Signal: a journal about international political graphics: Observatory: Design Observer.
Rick Poynor article about this magazine .
“I can’t think of any other design or visual arts publication quite like Signal in form and content. “Journal” is exactly the right word here because Signal, published by PM Press in Oakland, California, is half way between a magazine and a book in appearance and tone. Its dinky size, combined with astutely pitched, matt-laminated cover designs, make it immediately intriguing and attractive. The page design is poised between scholarly seriousness and newsstand techniques of appeal. Signal is generously illustrated and would be rewarding merely to browse, but everything about it says: read this (because it will be a pleasure).”
Mark Wigan
plankton people
Drzeworyty (Virtual Woodcut Museum)
Drzeworyty.
‘The VIRTUAL FOLK WOODCUT MUSEUM, created by the Seweryn Udziela
Ethnographic Museum in Kraków – www.drzeworyty.eu – is a response to the need
to complement and guarantee quick access to information and knowledge on objects
which are dispersed and as yet little known.
Attention started to be paid to Polish woodcuts at the turn of the 19th and 20th
centuries. During this period, however, researchers were not so much interested
in the artists themselves, neither their methods nor the history of such artistic trends.
They concentrated rather on individual works of art, their iconography and stylistic
qualities, hailing the woodcuts’ simplicity as having aesthetic and artistic values.
The first works on the subject were based on a limited group of objects, with some of
the items becoming dispersed after 1945. In 1948, Józef Grabowski – an art historian,
museologist and creator of the State Institute for Research of Folk Art in Warsaw –
noted that still “we stand before a full undertaking of research, critique,
and classification of materials which are in our possession; to place them in space
and time, only then allowing us to propose a more synthetic understanding and
letting us draw conclusions.”
Since that time not much has changed. An attempt to provide a holistic
approach to Polish folk woodcuts took place in Kraków in 1970 during the 3rd
International Print Biennial, which was accompanied by the International
Symposium dedicated to the subject matter. Unfortunately, these efforts were not
marked by any continuing research of any great significance. After 1970 only
individual works pertaining to specific items were carried out.’
Found Muji
This ‘concept store’ takes Muji back to its sources…the design team travel around the world observing simple everyday design and then working with artisans to ‘mujify’ it. There is a link to the website, which you can run thro good translate to get a vague idea of the stories behind the objects.
Against All Odds
Against All Odds. Polish Graphic Design 1919-1949 – Piotr Rypson
“A panorama of a lost world – Polish graphic design in the thirty year period between 1919 and 1949, with achievements that are outstanding for their innovation and radical concept. The story of how visual language evolved in Poland as the country entered the modern age. A portrait of everyday life in that fascinating, though sometimes peculiar country that was the Second Republic, the Poland of World War Two and the first few years following.”
TypoWiki | Typophile
good resource
Barbican London-Bauhaus: Art as Life
Barbican -Bauhaus: Art as Life.
3 May 2012 – 12 August 2012
The biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years presents the modern world’s most famous art school. From expressionist beginnings to a pioneering model uniting art and technology the Bauhaus’ utopian vision sought to change society in the aftermath of the First World War. Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the diverse artistic production that made up its turbulent fourteen-year history and delves into the subjects at the heart of the school: art, culture, life, politics and society, and the changing technology of the age.
Bauhaus: Art as Life will feature a rich array of painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation. Exemplar works from such Bauhaus Masters as Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl, will be presented alongside works by lesser-known artist Masters and Bauhaus students .
The Bauhaus: Art as Life public programme will feature a host of workshops, talks, films and performances as well as a major Creative Learning initiative, the Bauhaus Summer School, an intensive two-week school held at the Barbican and led by leading practitioners from all artistic backgrounds.
GRAFIST 16 // Uluslararası İstanbul Grafik Tasarım Günleri/International Graphic Design Week 07-12 Mayıs/May 2012
7-12 MAYIS / MAY 2012 ISTANBUL
The “International İstanbul Graphic Desing Week” is an educational activity organized annually since 1997 by Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Fine Arts Faculty, Graphic Design Department.
A visual communication designer is a professional:
- who contributes to shaping the visual landscape of culture
- who focuses on the generation of meaning for a community of users, not only interpreting their interest but offering conservative and innovative solutions as appropriate
- who collaboratively solves problems and explores possibilities through the systematic practice of criticism
- who is an expert that conceptualizes and articulates ideas into tangible experiences
- whose approach is grounded in a systematic conduct that respects the diversity of environmental and cultural contexts without overemphasizing difference, but recognizing common ground
- who carries an individual responsibility for ethics to avoid harm and takes into account the consequences of design action to humanity, nature, technology, and cultural facts.
Beauty is in the Street
In May 1968, demonstrations against the French government spread across Parisian universities, and then to factories and other workplaces, resulting in a general strike of eleven million workers that brought the country to a virtual standstill.
Among the students were a group who called themselves the Atelier Populaire, who produced hundreds of posters to encourage the protestors and to report on police brutality. Beauty Is In The Street reproduces over 200 of these posters which have become landmarks in political art and graphic design. Also included are a wealth of photographs, many published for the first time, and translations of first-hand accounts of the clashes between the students and strikers and the police.
Beauty is in the Street.
Brian Selznick
interview in the guardian
“People use computers more and more, which erase the hand of the artist – and I wanted to do something in which you see the hand of the artist… I wanted to stretch as far as possible after what I could do with the technology of bookmaking – the book is authentic and I wanted to use the technology of the book to achieve authenticity. I’m interested in the act of turning a page, to tell a story by moving forward physically. In picture books, you turn a page at the pace you want, you become the driving force behind the narrative.”
Record sleeves
record envelope
http://crossedcombs.typepad.com/recordenvelope/
Occupy Design launches
The hands-on workshop will, says Barnbrook, lead to further lectures and events which examine design within the context of protest. While plenty of designers have professed interest in Occupy, a programme of design events associated with the movement has come about in part, Barnbrook says, because of the lack of interest from UK art colleges towards the discontent felt by many students.
“We do feel the art schools are not addressing the feeling of discontent properly [due to] the amount of red tape and the restraints put on teachers because students need to get ‘value for money’ and have a guaranteed degree,” he says.
“There are also some ridiculous things going on at the moment which show that much of design and advertising is simply pretending it’s business as usual. For instance: D&AD setting a brief for students to rebrand the City of London, to make it look cool when these people are responsible for the mess we are in and the huge cuts in education.”
“We should be teaching students that anything is possible, not that they will have to suppress there instincts about what they believe because that is the ‘pro’ way of doing things,” he says. “A lot of people feel disconnected from what they are asked to do at work or college and want to try and make a difference.”
“Now we’re in the situation where most people accept that this situation has got to change, partly through desperation, partly through disgust at the lack of morals that this has highlighted and the falseness of living in an economy based on borrowing money that doesn’t exist. We’re a stage on: many people are sick, unhappy, looking for an answer. I’m not saying we have the answer – because we don’t know where the world is heading – just that we, along with the whole Occupy movement, are at least providing an open forum to talk about it. Personally I don’t just want to treat the symptom, I want to help find cause.”
Occupy Design launches tomorrow at The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street, London E1 5LJ. For more details, see occupydesign.org.uk and the Occupy Design Facebook page, here.
George Melies- Bluebeard
The story is told via a series of static scenes, like stage sets but also reminiscent of picture books.
