Creative Review articles from October 2008

Creative Review archives from October 2008

AGENDA: Preservation order.(Editorial)
October 1, 2008... Leafing through the catalogue for a recent sale at auction house Phillips I was reminded of the importance of keeping stuff - particularly prints by well-known illustrators/artists that now go for hundreds of pounds that I once gave away to...

WHAT'S ON: Night of the AdEaters.(Interview)
October 1, 2008... Advertising fans get the opportunity to watch commercials on the big screen as this unique festival arrives in London Taking place at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on October 16 is the Night of the AdEaters, a marathon six-hour...

WHAT'S ON: Liverpool Biennial.(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... The fifth edition of the Liverpool Biennial is titled Made Up, and aims to be "an exploration of the power of the artistic imagination". The Biennial will include works by artists such as Tomas Saraceno, Richard Woods, Sarah Sze, Rodney...

BOOKS: Wapping gets a little leafier.
October 1, 2008... The Wapping Project arts centre in east London already boasts a unique space: it's housed in the former Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. But by the end of this month visitors will also be able to browse the latest art and design titles in...

BOOKS: Classique: Cover Art for Classical Music.
October 1, 2008... Is it fair to say that classical music suffers from an image problem? If so, this may in part be due to the kind of sleeve artwork featured on the majority of releases. While contemporary labels like Glossa Music and ECM Records are clear...

BOOKS: Russian Criminal Tattoo Vol. III.
October 1, 2008... Those Russian criminals and their tattoos, they just keep on coming. Out next month is design studio Fuel's third (and final) installment of illustrated examples of tattoos from the weird and wonderful collection of ex-prison guard Danzig...

WEBSITES: For book lovers.
October 1, 2008... Why is Penguin Books getting into the online dating game? Digital marketing director Anna Rafferty explains the idea CR: penguindating.co.uk - why? AR: The idea came from inside Penguin, for a variety of reasons. We work very hard to...

WEBSITES: Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena.
October 1, 2008... Professor Michael Bach of Freiburg University must have had a splitting headache after compiling the 78 optical illusions and visual phenomena that appear on his website of the same title. Here Bach displays eye-popping examples of an...

WEBSITES: London 2012: do it like this.
October 1, 2008... Munich, 1972: the year when, from a design perspective at least, the Olympics got it right. Al Rinaudo, a graphic designer from Sheffield, speaks for many of his contemporaries when he says that Otl Aicher's visual identity for the 1972...

LINKS: Publishers Bindings Online.
October 1, 2008... Somewhat esoteric but fascinating nonetheless, this comprehensive resource of information pertaining to the fine art of sticking pages into book covers includes a gallery of historical bindings dating from 1815 through to 1930. Split into...

LINKS: AIVF.(aivf.org)(Website overview)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers actually stopped functioning in 2006. However, the aivf site is now maintained by the Independent Media Publications group who continue AIVF's mission to "inform, promote, encourage and...

LINKS: Earth observatory.
October 1, 2008... NASA's Earth Observatory site is regularly updated with data sets regarding planet earth's activities, from rainfall to sea temperatures. It also has some amazing satellite images. At the time of writing, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike were...

TYPOGRAPHY: Cutting a rug.
October 1, 2008... John Agelii creates hand-cut carpets to order, providing a welcoming typographic touch for both studio and home John Agelii is a graphic designer and artist based in Sweden. His background is in advertising which he studied at Saint...

TYPOGRAPHY: Bookcase Regular.(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Friends and colleagues Sam Taylor and Adam Humphries were tidying the bookcase at work one day when they hit upon an idea for this playful typeface. "As the bookcase was in a 5x5 grid, we realised we could use the individual shelves like...

TYPOGRAPHY: Tiny book, tiny letters.
October 1, 2008... The Smallest Book in the World, published by Die Gestalten Verlag, is so small you need to handle it with tweezers and view the contents of its pages with a magnifying glass. The tiny, leather-bound tome measures 2.4x2.9 millimetres and is a...

GRAPHIC DESIGN: The Mossenger.
October 1, 2008... Anna Garforth With local authorities cracking down on graffiti (the Philistines), we've noted a few attempts at impermanent alternatives. Mostly they have revolved around the idea of creating a new image out of what is already present - by...

COMMERCIALS: Ford Fiesta commercial.
October 1, 2008... Ogilvy London The concept behind this ad for the new Ford Fiesta initially appears fairly straightforward. It opens with individual television screens appearing within a suburban setting, before coming together to form the rough shape...

INTERIORS: Fleshless Floor.
October 1, 2008... Commonwealth Using animation software to create ceramics or 'rule-driven scripts' to design furniture, New York-based studio Commonwealth has made a name for itself in employing familiar technological processes in unlikely ways (see CR...

IDENTITY: Kalmar Konstmuseum.(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Sweden Graphics The art gallery as leisure experience is one of the cultural phenomena of our times. It's a competitive market where, it seems, for good or ill, no new venture can now afford to launch without an understanding of its...

ART/ILLUSTRAION: Art & Sole.
October 1, 2008... Intercity Art & Sole, a new title from publisher Laurence King, is the first book to explore and celebrate the phenomenon of the now-frequent collaborations between sports shoe brands and artists. The book is split into two sections, the...

INSTALLATIONS: Sony exhibition stand.
October 1, 2008... Freestate/Fallon Freestate created this mammoth Sony stand for the ifa trade show, the world's largest consumer electronics trade event, which recently took place in Berlin. The stand aimed to introduce Sony's latest products to...

MAGAZINES: MK Bruce Lee magazine.
October 1, 2008... The President Here at CR we're longstanding fans of Peet Pienaar's Afromag - a wonderfully eclectic, loosely bound collection of stickers, posters and graphic ephemera that gave a fresh take on what a magazine could be. As is often the...

ADVERTISING: Wrangler print ads.
October 1, 2008... FFL Paris Shot in New Jersey by artist Ryan McGinley, this slightly unnerving campaign for Wrangler has several jeans-wearing youngsters taking on the behavioural qualities of animals: be it part-submerged in murky waters, reclining in...

ADVERTISING: Levi's Unbuttoned.
October 1, 2008... BBH BBH's classic ads for Levi's 501 jeans were rooted in aspects of the product itself - whether rivets in the crotch, twisted seams or pockets that made a neat hiding place for condoms. Playing on Levi's unique heritage, in an era of...

AMBIENT: Nivea ambient campaign.
October 1, 2008... TBWA\Chiat\Day Sometimes a witty visual pun still makes for the best kind of advertising, as this ambient campaign for Nivea shows. Used to promote the brand's Goodbye Cellulite product, these sofas were created exclusively for an event...

EDITORIAL DESIGN: Where We Are Book.
October 1, 2008... Marque Where We Are celebrates the design scene in Scotland's six largest cities: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling. Developed by Joseph Burrin at design studio Marque and editors Emma Halliday and Stacey...

Beautiful losers.
October 1, 2008... Beautiful Losers, which is showing as part of this year's London Film Festival, is a documentary telling the story of a group of artists, designers and filmmakers who worked, exhibited and hung out at the Alleged Gallery in New York in the...

The state of music video.
October 1, 2008... Next month the first UK Music Video Awards will be held in London's West End - a new awards night to honour the very best work in music videos, celebrating the creativity and craft in a sector of filmmaking which has, over the past 30 years,...

The dying art of gig photography.
October 1, 2008... Rock'n'roll is such a dramatic art form, the images we took still shape the way we experience music," says legendary rock photographer Mick Rock. And not even the ubiquity of the music video, prompted by MTV in the early 80s, can compete....

BETC: also an ad agency.
October 1, 2008... Of all the creative industries, advertising is perhaps the most maligned. Its brashness, the wild variations in its quality, and its blatant manipulative intentions mean that other artistic forms such as music, theatre and art don't want to...

In the front line.
October 1, 2008... Climate Camp provides an opportunity to examine design activism in action. Jody Boehnert attended this year's event The design industry is an important player in the creation of a sustainable society. Designers could help the world...

MESMERIZATION: Spellbound.
October 1, 2008... Gee Thomson's critical evaluation of the current multimedia landscape just doesn't go far enough, says Rick Poynor Mesmerization is a book about our minds. It aspires to make us aware of the powerful 'spells' concocted by advertising,...