Salon.com > graphic design

Google Doodle celebrates graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:11:00 +0000

The above image is a composite of images from today's Google Doodle, a tribute to the late filmmaker and graphic designer Saul Bass, who would have been 93 today. Bass died in 1996.

The full clip, below:

Assaulted by an art professor

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

After a hard-earned master's degree in graphic design and several years of industry experience often working 60-hour weeks, I accepted a position as an assistant professor of graphic design in the art department at a Northeastern university in the fall of 2000. I was excited to enter this new chapter in my life. I was not prepared for what I was about to encounter.

The art department consisted of 16 full-time faculty and many adjunct faculty. The majority of the seven tenured senior faculty were men. The majority of the nine nontenured faculty were women.

What people don't talk about is how dependent the junior faculty are on senior faculty. The imbalance of power is far stronger than the power imbalance of faculty to student. A student wants a good grade to move on to the next class. He/she wants to graduate, to go to a good graduate program, and eventually move away from the university. The junior faculty must have the approval and support of senior faculty for promotion, for raises, and for a permanent position in the department. The support of senior faculty is critical every year and at every juncture.

I’m sick of working for free

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

I'm loving these letters about creative problems. Keep 'em comin'!

Dear Cary,

I'm an art director/graphic designer and have more than quite a few years experience behind me, as well as a BFA. I am capable and qualified to do what I do. I have active memberships in national professional organizations, and work on staying current in my constantly changing-by-the-minute field.

Over these many years I have always donated my time and talents when asked by various nonprofits, schools, communities and churches. I enjoy seeing something succeed because of my efforts and having that going to the greater good (posters, fliers, logos, ad campaigns, banners, T-shirts, teaching, promotional efforts of all kinds, you name it and they've asked for it).

As of January I decided to put a moratorium on my professional services for anything that does not involve pay.

Let me say this: The people who sincerely appreciate what I can contribute through these volunteer efforts are the only reason that I have continued to this point. On the other hand, the bevy of comments that I have heard of late is flabbergasting. They are irrelevant, off-base and sometimes just mean.

A calligrapher explains his art

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0000

One of the big differences between a type designer and a calligrapher is that nobody much wants to watch a type designer at work. Creating and refining a font is painstaking work that requires a fastidious nature, to say the least. Calligraphy is an action sport by comparison – measured in seconds rather than months – and watching a calligrapher at work is oddly thrilling. The stakes aren't exactly high (there's usually another piece of paper available...), but they somehow feel high:

The artist in this video is Seb Lester, seen improvising a beautiful alphabet in real time, filling the page with swift, effortless strokes. But as the video plays on, we also start to see other of his works – impossibly ornate type illustrations. There is a meticulousness to the mind at work here, and he clearly has more than pen and ink in his arsenal. In fact, Lester is known mainly as a type designer and illustrator, and only recently decided to learn the art of calligraphy. He has been at it for about two years now.

Campaign font war: Gotham vs. Mercury

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:03:00 +0000

Remember how great the Obama campaign was four years ago? The slogans, the rising sun in the O, the typeface. The strong, confidant and bold letters, which seemed designed specifically for words like HOPE and OBAMA. Well, this year, Romney is trying to bite Obama’s typographic style.

Campaign typography is crucial in positioning each candidate; the letterforms of a slogan carry as much of a message as the words themselves. It works on a subconscious level, connecting the words we’re reading now with emotions we’ve felt elsewhere at another time. It’s no accident that in 2008 the McCain campaign chose Optima, the same typeface that is used on The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (and a few war memorials since), a subtle reminder of McCain’s military record. Obama’s typeface, Gotham, was macho but less heroic; it was originally designed for GQ magazine. Now, the Romney campaign is using a typeface from another men’s magazine, taking Esquire’s Mercury Display and mixing it with Whitney, originally designed for The Whitney Museum. (Does this mean that Romney has some subtle leftish leanings pro the Arts and is aspiring to be like Jeremy Renner or, for that matter, Sarah Silverman, both of whom are on the cover of the August Esquire?)

Rebranding Brussels

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN—the nonprofit organization that controls the Internet's domain-name system—announced that it was accepting applications for new domain-name extensions. For a mere $185,000 a pop, anyone could suggest alternatives to .org, .com, .biz, and the other URL standbys. Out of the 1,409 applications ICANN received, there were a few amusing ideas (.ketchup, .gripe, .wtf) and plenty of reasonable if slightly depressing commerce-oriented suggestions from corporations (.pfizer), brands (.calvinklein), e-business niches (.spreadbetting), and tourist-hungry cities and regions (.barcelona, .quebec).

How designers compress ideas to their essence

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was surprised the other day to find settings in iTunes and the radio-streaming app Stitcher that allow users to play a podcast at up to two times the normal speed. I tested them and discovered that, yes, NPR hosts speak slowly. But do we really not have time to listen to a pause for breath, or a moment’s quiet contemplation of a thoughtful response?

Then again, reduction and compression can also be done in a thoughtful way; certainly, designers constantly rely on reduction to inform our work. Logos and app icons require extreme simplification of an idea. From a perfectly composed tweet to a book cover, there's an undeniable art to brevity. Even when a particular designer's work seems to favor complexity, it's often an aesthetic judgment; the designer is choosing to reveal a select part of the spectrum from simplicity to complexity. Some of the greatest "maximalists" of our time show great restraint of concept.

London 2012 anti-logos

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe it's just because I'm based in London and so more aware, but this Olympics, more than any other, has been a target for spoof, protest, and conspiracy. Its staging has proved, so far, to be widely unpopular. Maybe this will change on July 27. It was unfortunate that just after London won the race to stage the Games, the global banking system collapsed, with its repercussions still painfully felt. An event that takes such an investment is always going to have to fight a battle of ideology with other worthy recipients of public finances. In a time of austerity, the idea (not necessarily true) that money directed to the Olympics was coming from welfare payments or hospitals was doubly problematic. The Olympics seemed a luxury London couldn't afford, and the Olympic movement became an idea people were mistrustful of.

Litho-mania

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My last post concerned the photoengraving industry of the pre-Depression period. This week it's pre-WWII lithography!

"Litho Media: A Demonstration of the Selling Power of Lithography," published in 1939 by Roger Stephens and edited by H. Homer Buckelmueller and Colin Campbell, is a 206-page, 12-by-15-inch slipcased bible produced to help publicize the successful and effective results of using the lithography process for marketing purposes. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a "Toot Your Own Horn" compilation of uses (employing tipped-in examples of the produced work discussed), accompanied by testimonial letters from the various people responsible for utilizing the craft for their products. There are no technical descriptions or images that explain the process.

My Chuck Close problem

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:03:00 +0000

When one of the world’s richest living artists orders you to stop making art, you do it. Or do you? That is what Chuck Close has done to me. In response, I have developed a 100-year plan that will allow my digital art to outlive any threats of legal action.

I started working on my Chuck Close Filter in September of 2001. The idea came to me the month prior, when I flew to Los Angeles for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. The creators of Photoshop gave me first place in the Creative Illustration category for my “Barcode Jesus” portrait. I felt that my creative efforts had finally been validated, even though most people still considered computer art to be a lesser medium. One person in particular, an artist whom I really admired, seemed to have a big problem with computers as vehicles for art. He referred to them as “labor-saving devices.” This was Chuck Close.

Stan Mack’s Occupy-the-Fourth-of-July funnies

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It’s 1776 in Philadelphia. Congressional delegates “sweat, swat flies, and argue independence.” They retreat to a tavern and casually dump Jefferson with the job of composing a declaration: “Tom, write us something dignified, yet magical.” Once he’s finished, all the congressmen shout out changes at him: “Drop 'independent’;” “Why ‘happiness’ instead of ‘property’? What’s ‘happiness’?”

The process is loud, sloppy, and often chaotic. It also feels like real life.

Remembering Roy Kuhlman

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Roy Kuhlman (1923–2007) is not forgotten—his work has been written about here and here, his book covers have been collected here and here, he was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame, my 2007 obituary is here, and there is even a spare website waiting for an infusion of content, launched by his daughter, Arden Riordan. For Imprint, Steven Brower recently wrote about Evergreen Review, where Kuhlman was once art director.

Graphic design’s role in “Girls”

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Viewers of HBO’s new series Girls can be forgiven for not paying much attention to its title sequence. Buzz about the show, which follows the complicated, passionate, and often narcissistic doings of four young women in New York City, quickly grew into a divisive debate over its feminist intentions. And that was just the pilot. With the first season now complete, it's finally safe to shift our gaze to the striking sans serif that opens every episode.

The custom typeface is the work of the Los Angeles–based production company Grand Jeté. “Truth be told, there were countless hours spent on the pitch, because I believed in the project,” says Howard Nourmand, the firm's creative director. After landing the job, he worked closely with Girls' creator, Lena Dunham—who also wrote, directed, and stars in the series—to strike a balance between something bold and something beautiful.

Graham Moore’s midcentury

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Graham Moore creates fine-art pieces that put you in a dancing mood, just by looking into them. In fact, many of them began as vintage LP record album covers, several decades pre-mp3. Then, under his knife, texts lose their legibility, images lose their identity, and those often dull cardboard sleeves are reconfigured into visual bop rhythms and beats that delight the eye.

This art grew out of Moore's graphic design career. He worked at studios and ad agencies in London back in 1985. In 1991, he landed in Los Angeles, where he now freelances and earns awards such as Print's Certificate of Excellence. He also teaches at Art Center College of Design and other schools around town, where his students learn non-digital, handmade methods of operation.