Creative Review articles from May 2009

Creative Review archives from May 2009

AGENDA: Digital delivers.(Editorial)
May 1, 2009... This year's Annual represents something of a coming of age for digital. There have been digital projects selected in previous years, but not in the sheer numbers and with the same scope as this time. Its prominence is underlined by the...

WHAT'S ON: Obama's People exhibition in Birmingham.(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... This image of Barack Obama was taken as part of a series shot by Nadav Kander for The New York Times on the eve of the Presidential inauguration. The series of 52 portraits of Obama and his team will be on show at the Birmingham Museum & Art...

WHAT'S ON: 2Wice As Nice.(Abbott Miller)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The AIGA in New York is exhibiting back issues of Abbott Miller's beautifully designed 2wice and Dance Ink magazines Everybody Dance Now: 20 Years of Dancing in Print, celebrates Pentagram partner Abbott Miller's art direction of 2wice and...

WHAT'S ON: David Hillman at the Hub.(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Following David Hillman's recent appearance at D&AD for one of this year's President's Lectures, the Hub in Lincolnshire is hosting a retrospective exhibition of his work that opens on May 2. The show will include his work for Nova magazine,...

BOOKS: Naivety scenes.
May 1, 2009... A new book shows how illustrators are embracing more innocent times. Nice images, but don't expect to learn much The work brought together in Naive apparently represents a renaissance in the stylistic elements of classical mid-century...

BOOKS: Virtual Typography.
May 1, 2009... A new addition to AVA's Basics Typography series is Matthias Hilner's Virtual Typography. Hilner is a great guide to this medium (his multimedia work is largely typography-led) and his take on the subject is refreshing. Rather than...

BOOKS: V&A Museum Bookshop.
May 1, 2009... The V&A Museum has just opened its new bookshop. As you might expect, it offers up a wide range of subjects from graphics and photography to jewellery and textiles to match the museum's own remit. (It's on the floor below the National Art...

TOP TEN BESTSELLERS: Design Museum Shop.
May 1, 2009... 1. Less and More, Dieter Rams, Suntory; #75 Brand new from Japan, this huge book is, basically, the Dieter Rams Bible: 800 pages of his unique design philosophy 2. Digital by Design, Troika, Thames & Hudson; #32 A timely survey of...

WEBSITES: Title sequences galore.
May 1, 2009... Ian Albinson's and Alex Ulloa's blog, artofthetitle.com, is a treasure trove of film and TV show title sequences... Now we all watch films on DVD or on our computers, we can easily skip between chapters of a given movie and choose to...

WEBSITES: Missin Letters.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... Mark Thomson, one half of StudioThomson, has been taking photos of sorry-looking signage missing a letter or more for the best part of ten years. Now he is posting a photo a day up on his new Missin Letters blog. "The first example of a...

WEBSITES: Film The Blanks film poster site.
May 1, 2009... "I was looking at Saul Bass' Vertigo poster one day and wondered if it would still work just as blocks of colour, without the centre detail," says John Taylor of the birth of his Film The Blanks project. "After that I started wondering if...

LINKS: Joining Twitter's dots.(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... Karsten Schmidt and Sascha Pohflepp collaborated on this "JavaScript visualization to reveal cross-connections between conversations on Twitter". In a nutshell, it's a tool that literally joins the dots between mentions (in Twitter) of...

LINKS: Textures image library.(cgtextures.com)(Website overview)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... This site hosts a vast library of photographed textures (concrete, fabrics, food, ornamental masonry, grass, animal fur, different papers, metals, wood, windows, roof tiles - the list goes on) which you can download and use to create realistic...

LINKS: Monoface.
May 1, 2009... We're a bit late on the uptake but we only recently spotted this Xmas/new year web toy created by Minneapolis-based creative agency, Mono. Mix and mis-match eyes, ears, mouths and noses of various studio members to create startling and...

AGENDA: Paper.(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... A selection of the latest colour paper stocks, as envisioned by illustrator Chrissie Macdonald, who created everything in this image out of the following papers: Keyboard; Body and black details: Skin Curious Collection, Black from...

TOTEM 49 EXHIBITION: Damien Poulain.(Kemistry Gallery )(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... In an exhibition for the Kemistry Gallery in London, Damien Poulain has created 49 contemporary totems (small sculptures from 10 to 30cm). "I reinterpreted the idea with contemporary concepts such as politics, art, fashion and society," says...

FABER BECKETT COVERS: A2/SW/HK.(Faber and Faber Inc.)(Scott Williams)(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... As part of its 80th anniversary celebrations, Faber & Faber is publishing an extensive series of Samuel Beckett's work, including 18 novels, plays and short stories that will appear over the next two years. The typographic covers for the...

MATTEL HOTWHEELS ADS: Ogilvy London.
May 1, 2009... Ogilvy London has created this series of charming posters for Mattel's series of children's toy cars, HotWheels. The posters feature a number of different landscapes and driving terrains, each with the regular road replaced by domestic...

MATT ROWE WEBSITE: Form.(Website overview)
May 1, 2009... Matt Rowe has written songs for the likes of the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse and Sophie Ellis Bextor. He also has a passion for old video games which is where the inspiration for his new website, designed by Form, comes from. Form wanted to...

SHARP PROJECT IDENTITY: four23.(Brief article)
May 1, 2009... The Sharp Project is a major new digital media production complex in Manchester. Design studio four23 has created a suitably hi-tech generative identity for the centre based on data streams coming to and from the building. The visual that...

THE ZIMBABWEAN ADS: TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris.
May 1, 2009... TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris has created this ambient outdoor campaign for The Zimbabwean, a newspaper produced by a group of exiled Zimbabwean journalists. The paper is sold in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe but when entering the latter is charged...

LONDON OLYMPICS: 68 72 84 2012?
May 1, 2009... Of the 29 modern Olympic Games to have been staged since 1896, only a handful have resonated as pieces of classic design. Mexico 68, Munich 72, and LA 84 are perhaps the most celebrated in terms of their visual communications, each one the...

The YouTube dilemma.
May 1, 2009... YouTube provides a steady stream of inspiration to advertising creatives, but it leaves young directors vulnerable to having ideas stolen and agencies open to accusations of plagiarism, says Eliza Williams In 1998, director Mehdi Norowzian...

The rise fall of Attik.
May 1, 2009... Few creative companies have experienced such extreme highs and lows as Attik, going from one office to five to [almost] none: from two people to 160 to half that. It's some story In its 23-year existence, Attik has experienced some very...

Next year's colours.(Occupation overview)
May 1, 2009... I find that my inspiration is very unpredictable," says colour consultant Beatrice Santiccioli. "It comes from accidents. You turn down the wrong street, you see an old garage door, an old store sign pulled down." This in fact happened...

DRAWING IS THINKING: Glaser's inner artist.
May 1, 2009... Richard Poynor welcomes a new book of drawings by Milton Glaser that reveal the designer's technical skills as an artist It's hard to think of a body of work by a living Anglo-American designer quite like Milton Glaser's. Drawing has...

THE CREATIVE UNIFORM: A new seriousness.
May 1, 2009... Making the most of print is key if magazines want to see off the recession. James Pallister reports from Colophone 2009 Better known as a home to tax-evasion, sundry Eurovision song contests and Eurocrats, the City of Luxembourg had an...

THE MOHEMIANS: Design guidelines.(Law overview)
May 1, 2009... Bland statements of intent can do designers more harm that good, says Craig Oldham. It's vital that we stick to our beliefs I'm a passionate person. Not just over the usual - such as when I scream at Barnsley for riding their luck one too...

TYPEFACE FAMILIES: Too much type?
May 1, 2009... Since the advent of OpenType, typeface families have been growing ever larger. In last month's CR, we previewed two new typefaces: Benton Sans, which boasts a staggering 128 different styles, and Adios, which contains a total of 1,470...