Creative Review articles from April 2009

Creative Review archives from April 2009

AGENDA: Taxi as urban art form.(Editorial)
April 1, 2009... I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Mumbai last September after attending the Kyoorius Design Yatra conference. For any design aware visitor, the yellow and black taxis that constitute a major part of the city's horrendous traffic are...

WHAT'S ON: Gerhard Richter retrospective in Geneva.
April 1, 2009... The Centre de la Photographie Geneva is showing a previously unseen series of photographs that have been painted upon by Gerhard Richter. Meanwhile, Richter fans in London should also check out his show at the National Portrait Gallery (until...

WHAT'S ON: Barbie celebration of a legend.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... In celebration of Barbie's 50th birthday, concept store Colette in Paris is showing a super-kitsch exhibition of photographs of the iconic doll shot by Karl Lagerfeld. The images see Barbie in a variety of outfits (including a Lagerfeld...

WHAT'S ON: Future Lions call for entries.
April 1, 2009... Set up by AKQA three years ago, The Cannes Future Lions Awards is open to students around the world. This year, the challenge is to create an ad campaign for a global brand that would not have been possible five years ago. There are no rules...

WHAT'S ON: Magnificent Style.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... An exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London celebrates that most opulent era of design history: Baroque The spring blockbuster exhibition at the V&A in London is Baroque: Style in the Age of Magnificence. The opulence and...

WHAT'S ON: Portfolios illustration & photography event.
April 1, 2009... Portfolios is a new event for art directors, designers, art buyers and anyone else involved in buying and commissioning photography and illustration. Organised by Creative Review and the Creative Handbook, Portfolios will bring together...

BOOKS: Other animals.
April 1, 2009... In a stunning series of photographs of creatures, a new book reveals just how far removed we are from the animal world Giacomo Brunelli's new book is no ordinary collection of wild-life photography. Taken in his native Italy, Brunelli's...

BOOKS: Chicken: Low Art, High Calorie.
April 1, 2009... Morris Cassanova (aka Mr Chicken) has his work on display all over the capital: he's designed and made signs for virtually all of the fried chicken shops on London's streets. In her new book, designer Siaron Hughes looks at the numerous...

BOOKS: Design Disasters.
April 1, 2009... Edited by Steven Heller, Design Disasters wears its heart on its comically misaligned cover. The collected essays explore the role of failure in a design career and frank admissions of embarrassing cock- ups, accidents and faux pas are provided...

BOOKS: Four Corners Books Want You.
April 1, 2009... Four Corners Books is still accepting proposals for their Familiars series, where artists provide new artwork to accompany a favourite classic novel. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Dracula and Blumfeld: An Elderly Bachelor have already been...

BOOKS: Top ten bestsellers.
April 1, 2009... Cornerhouse bookshop 1. A Brief History of Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist, JRP Ringier; #11 Obrist's book is dedicated to pioneering curators, including Franz Meyer and Walter Hopps 2. How Soon Is Now: 60 Years of the ICA,...

TYPOGRAPHY: Say hello to Adios.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Argentinian type designer Alejandro Paul's latest script might just be his most ambitious face to date.... Adios, the latest script by Buenos Aires-based designer Alejandro Paul, has just been awarded a certificate of typographic...

TYPOGRAPHY: Stag Stencil.
April 1, 2009... Stag Stencil, drawn in collaboration with Berton Hasebe, is a new addition to the growing Stag font family by Christian Schwartz. The two weights, Light and Bold, were both commissioned by magazines but Schwartz later added an italic for each...

TYPOGRAPHY: Bolda Display.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Bolda hails from Norway and was conceived when its designer, Morten Iveland, was creating a logo. "When working on a custom letter 'b', I saw the potential for creating more characters in the same style," he says. Bolda Display is Iveland's...

TYPOGRAPHY: Benton Sans.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Benton Sans is a new, vastly expanded, version of Morris Fuller Benton's early 20th century sans face, News Gothic, originally released through the American Type Foundry (atf). Drawn by The Font Bureau's Cyrus Highsmith, there are a whopping...

TYPOGRAPHY: Jeanne Moderno.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... The idea for Jeanne Moderno originally came when designer Steve Mehallo saw some hand-lettering on a monograph for architect Adolph Loos. "It wasn't quite Bauhaus-era lettering, more an early modernist-influenced take on a 19th century 'fat...

TYPOGRAPHY: Type coasters.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Veer.com licences the use of a huge selection of stock photography, illustration and type. It is also about to launch a brand new online shop which will sell a variety of merchandise from clothing through to toys and other designer-aimed stuff,...

TYPOGRAPHY: HugeType.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... HugeType describes itself as "an experiment with found type on the iPhone". It's essentially a very simple web app that allows iPhone users to take a photo and upload it directly to the HugeType Flickr pool which will continue to collect the...

TYPOGRAPHY: Alexander Girard, a new legacy.
April 1, 2009... House Industries' new collection of fonts and wooden toys pays tribute to Alexander Girard House Industries recently launched a new range of typefaces and products all based on the work of the late Alexander Girard (1907- 1993), who made...

LINKS: Design your own face.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... For no cost whatsoever, yourfonts.com allows users to create their own font files. Simply download and print a template which has a box for each character. Fill these boxes with characters of your own devising, be they handwritten or more...

LINKS: Hobo.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Although designed by Morris Fuller Benton around the same time as his classic News Gothic (see page 12), Hobo couldn't be more different in style. To celebrate its forthcoming 100th anniversary, Hobo fan John Caserta set up hobo2010.com as a...

LINKS: Letterpress blog.
April 1, 2009... Beast Pieces is a blog from Minneapolis based design and letterpress outfit, Studio On Fire. Yes, it shows much of their own, invariably beautiful work, but it also has a selection of choice letterpress projects from other studios as well....

LINKS: Kern for iPhone.
April 1, 2009... We blogged about this but wanted to mention it again. It's a kind of Tetris game for the iPhone and iPod Touch that involves trying to position a single letter at the bottom of the screen in order to fit into a word that is falling down...

PH0TOGRAPHY: Levi's Twisted Originals.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Neighbour/Wilfrid Wood Working on a brief to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Levi's Engineered (twisted) Jeans, London-based design studio Neighbour commissioned Wilfrid Wood to create three "slightly twisted" characters. Named Fingers,...

GRAHPIC DESIGN: Kate Marsh identity.
April 1, 2009... Foxall Associates Commissioned to create a new identity and website for design recruitment consultant Kate Marsh, London-based Foxall Associates employed a series of bird illustrations to represent her varied creative clientele. "A...

ILLUSTRATION: Ghost Houses Long Gone book.
April 1, 2009... Nigel Peake Inspired by photographs of "homes, holidays, family, soldiers, events of wonder and the plain ordinary" which he found in a thrift store in Philadelphia, illustrator Nigel Peake has published a book showcasing dozens of his...

ADVERTISING: Toyota iQ print campaign.
April 1, 2009... Saatchi & Saatchi London French design and directing collective Pleix has created this series of print ads for the launch of the new Toyota iQ, which is a competitor to the Smart Car. The car contains various pieces of ingenious...

ALBUM SLEEVES: Pet Shop Boys, Yes sleeve.
April 1, 2009... Farrow Farrow resumes its longstanding relationship with the Pet Shop Boys with the sleeve for the duo's latest album, Yes. "Neil and Chris said that this was their most 'pop' album in a long time and the idea of creating something very...

ALBUM SLEEVES: Pentatonik, A Thousand Paper Cranes sleeve.
April 1, 2009... StudioThomson StudioThomson has designed and art directed the new Pentatonik album, A Thousand Paper Cranes. The title is a reference to the story of Sadako Sasaki, the Japanese schoolgirl who contracted leukaemia as a result of...

WEBSITE: New Vitsoe website.
April 1, 2009... Airside/With Associates Vitsoe has been creating and selling furniture designed by Dieter Rams for 50 years - most notably the sleek and functional 606 shelving system. Vitsoe's central London showroom has just closed so the company...

COMMERCIALS: Comcast ad campaign.
April 1, 2009... Goodby, Silverstein & Partners This new series of ads for service provider Comcast uses delightful 3d animation mixed with live action to create Comcast Town, an imaginary world that illustrates all the connectivity and entertainment the...

COMMERCIALS: Reality Coalition ad.
April 1, 2009... Crispin Porter + Bogusky It might come as a surprise to discover that this ad for the Reality Coalition - an organisation that aims to highlight the pollution caused by the burning of coal - has been directed by Joel & Ethan Coen, who...

INSTALLATION: The Fedrigoni Mountains.(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Alex Ostrowski As part of a series of events in its new London gallery space, paper company Fedrigoni approached art director Alex Ostrowski to devise an installation. Ostrowski worked with illustrator and set-maker Hattie Newman (a...

Type online: At last, some craft, says Fred Flade.
April 1, 2009... In a way, digital typography really changed with one key piece of technology: when Macromedia introduced Flash," says Fred Flade, co- founder and creative director of de-construct and committed typophile. "Before that there was a limit in...

Alison Carmichael: Exquisite handjobs.
April 1, 2009... Hand-lettering artist Alison Carmichael first came to our attention here at CR four years ago when we received a baby pink screenprinted poster bearing the word 'cunt', in beautifully drawn, ornately decorative script, along with the line,...

Fubsy. Griseous. Cacotopia. Yestreen.
April 1, 2009... All these words may seem familiar, but what do they mean? Can you think of the last time you heard them? It's unlikely that they would have come up in any recent conversation as these are 'endangered' words - utterances that are so...

The art of necessity.(type design)
April 1, 2009... When the European avant-garde reached Spain in the 1930s, local printers found themselves ill-equipped to respond. Small printshops were mostly reliant on turn-of-the century typefaces: hardly fitting for expressing this bold new world. But, in...

THE DESIGNERS REPUBLIC: They sell! We buy!
April 1, 2009... As a company name, the Designers Republic was a masterstroke. This mysterious entity sounded big and well organised and it had the air of being an outfit with a purpose and a plan. There was nothing modest or retiring about such a moniker and...

BRITISHNESS IN ADVERTISING: Gordon Comstock.
April 1, 2009... John, Paul, George and Jingo When you think of Britain does a wave of images, sentimental, yet faintly militaristic, rush through your brain? Do soldiers, barrel- rolling Spitfires, smiling farmers and Eric Morecambe pass in tight...

CANVAS BAGS: The canvas catch.(Reprint)
April 1, 2009... A midst all the despair in the last few years about the slow extinction of various design-friendly formats - the vinyl LP, the newspaper, the book, etc - one vehicle for graphic design has vaulted to almost instant ubiquity: the canvas tote....