Salon.com > Imprint http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 When nuclear terror reigned http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/when_nuclear_terror_reigned/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/when_nuclear_terror_reigned/#comments Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12927085 ImprintEngland has a long tradition of dystopian prophecy in literature and cinema. The likes of H.G. Wells, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Ridley Scott all seem to revel in presenting doomsday scenarios. Films such as 1961's "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," and the 1965 BBC docudrama "The War Game," depicting a Soviet nuclear strike on England, as well as books like Raymond Briggs' "When the Wind Blows," a deceivingly innocent tale of untold horror, are among the works that underscore the British fascination with and fixation on nuclear devastation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/when_nuclear_terror_reigned/feed/ 5 Illustrating the ’60s music revolution http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/illustrating_the_60s_music_revolution/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/illustrating_the_60s_music_revolution/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926233 Imprint"When did music become so important?" That's Don Draper from last week's "Mad Men," set in 1966. Later in the episode he turns off "Tomorrow Never Knows," from the Beatles album "Revolver," and walks out of the room.

[caption id="attachment_325801" align="aligncenter" width="445" caption="art: Rick Griffin"][/caption]

There's something happening here, but you don't know what it is — do you, Mr. Draper? One year later, Rolling Stone magazine will make its debut, followed soon by "Rock and Other Four Letter Words."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/illustrating_the_60s_music_revolution/feed/ 14 How to resurrect a comic book http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/how_to_resurrect_a_comic_book/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/how_to_resurrect_a_comic_book/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12924286 ImprintMemory is evanescent. I can’t recall where I made the purchase; perhaps it was during an elementary-school or Cub Scout trip. Nor do I remember my exact age; it was anywhere between 8 and 10. What I do remember vividly is the visceral experience: the feel and smell of the paper as I unfurled it. The sense that I was both witnessing and experiencing history, which I then held tangibly in my hands. In the morning of that day, my mother had given me some small change for the day's trip, and I spent it on a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence. It was printed on a rough-hewn, yellow paper stock with stains on both sides, and it had a rigidity that made it hard to open (it was folded in quarters). The reproduction possessed a distinct smell, and the texture was coarse, as if it was once damp and left to dry. “Onion paper,” my mother explained when I got home. It sounded exotic. Sadly, I've forgotten the whereabouts of that formative piece of paper, but the power of the experience has remained.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/how_to_resurrect_a_comic_book/feed/ 3 Donny Osmond: Design icon http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/donny_osmond_design_icon/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/donny_osmond_design_icon/#comments Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12924253 Before there was a Justin Bieber — before there was even a Justin Timberlake — there was Donny Osmond. One summer night in the 1970s, my poor older brother, Mike, was forced to take his preteen sisters to see Donny and those other Osmonds, as well as the Jackson 5, at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

ImprintImagine the stress of worrying about two adolescent girls and their obligatory mutual friend dancing their way down from the cheap seats to the slightly better view one section below. Mike was in college, and my sister and I weren’t even in high school yet. I guess that’s why our brother sat ducked down in his seat, hiding behind a newspaper.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/donny_osmond_design_icon/feed/ 3 Rising design star: Naz Sahin http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/rising_design_star_naz_sahin/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/rising_design_star_naz_sahin/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 21:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12922331  

[caption id="attachment_310641" align="aligncenter" width="594" caption="Infographic and layout design for Newsweek (designed with Emily Oberman and Bonnie Siegler at Number 17), 2009"][/caption]

Naz Sahin uses the word obsessed often, but with purpose. Obsessively, you might say. But not when she talks about design. Her work is humble, orderly, packed with detail but expertly crafted: not a mosaic—a perfect brick wall. “I think she’s more creative than me,” says her husband and sometime collaborator, Serifcan Ozcan. “But she wouldn’t say that.” In the kitchen, it’s a different story, Ozcan says: “She takes over.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/rising_design_star_naz_sahin/feed/ 0 Selling Zionism in the 1920s http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/selling_zionism_in_the_1920s/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/selling_zionism_in_the_1920s/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921662 ImprintDan Walsh's incredibly rich Palestine Poster Project Archives includes much in the way of protest, but it also contains a trove of rare Zionist/Israeli posters from the 1920s through the '50s, largely before partition. The ones excerpted here are from the Mahmoud Darwish Memorial Gallery, which includes a collection of Zionist Worker agency posters calling for increased development of Palestine.

[caption id="attachment_318721" align="aligncenter" width="492" caption="The affairs of the workers of Eretz Israel should be in the hands of the workers of Eretz Israel, 1935."][/caption]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/selling_zionism_in_the_1920s/feed/ 4 When text meets art http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/when_text_meets_art/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/when_text_meets_art/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921049 ImprintIn the exhibition "Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language," which opened on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, words are treated as tools and as totems. Gathering text-based work by artists from Marcel Duchamp to Tauba Auerbach alongside contemporary designers like Paul Elliman and Dexter Sinister, the show offers varied takes on how to make meaning out of language, and also how to make a beautiful mess of it—sometimes at the same time.

[caption id="attachment_320971" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="A portion of Paul Elliman's Found Fount, at the Museum of Modern Art's "Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language""][/caption]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/when_text_meets_art/feed/ 3 America’s road sign legends http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/americas_road_sign_legends/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/americas_road_sign_legends/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12920325 ImprintIn a simpler time, when automobiles went slower and the pre-Eisenhower highway system in the United States was less developed, there was a popular advertising campaign that ran from 1927 until 1963. It consisted of rhymed messages sequentially staked on the right side of the road, all ending with the advertiser's name, "Burma-Shave."

[caption id="attachment_320381" align="aligncenter" width="511" caption="Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)"][/caption]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/americas_road_sign_legends/feed/ 7 Secrets of the New Yorker cover http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/secrets_of_the_new_yorker_cover/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/secrets_of_the_new_yorker_cover/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12918609 ImprintFrançoise Mouly, the New Yorker’s art editor since 1993, doesn’t have normal relationships with the artists who draw the magazine's covers. “Think of me as your priest,” she told one of them. Mouly, who co-founded the avant-garde comics anthology RAW with her husband, Art Spiegelman, asks the artists she works with—Barry Blitt, Christoph Niemann, Ana Juan, R. Crumb—not to hold back anything in their cover sketches. If that means the occasional pedophilia gag or Holocaust joke finds its way to her desk, she's fine with that. Tasteless humor and failed setups are an essential part of the process. “Sometimes something is too provocative or too sexist or too racist,” Mouly says, “but it will inspire a line of thinking that will help develop an image that is publishable.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/secrets_of_the_new_yorker_cover/feed/ 4 7Up’s branding revolution http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/7_ups_branding_revolution_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/7_ups_branding_revolution_salpart/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913846 ImprintI became interested in pop bottles (I grew up in the Chicago area where we all said "pop") and related stuff when I was about 12 years old. I had gone inside an old garage that was attached to a neighborhood house that was being torn down and inside was a cache of un-returned pop bottles that must have dated from the 1940-'50s period. I took one of each type home (about 20 of 'em) and yes, still have them to this day. I really got off on all the different labels and colors of glass and because I used to like to read old magazines I actually recognized most of the brands that were no longer around or had changed their design. I'll go into this more in a future post, but wanted to lay some sort of a foundation for this piece, which is exclusively on 7Up, with a special focus on their branding efforts of the 1950s.

The soft drink that would be known as 7Up was created in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg in St.Louis as part of his "Howdy" line of sodas and was originally called "Bib-Label Lithiated (it contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate until 1950) Lemon-Lime Soda." It was almost immediately re-labeled "7 (7 natural flavors) Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime," and then finally just "7Up".

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/7_ups_branding_revolution_salpart/feed/ 10 Wet, revisited http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/wet_revisited_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/wet_revisited_salpart/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913741 ImprintIn the late 1970s, bohemian hipsters on L.A.'s west side were getting Wet. At the time, it was highly influential among local artists, designers and architects, despite its small circulation. And now, "Making Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing," provides a sampling of its spirit.

[caption id="attachment_312951" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Poster illustration and design: John Van Hamersveld."][/caption]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/wet_revisited_salpart/feed/ 4 From superheroes to doughboys http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/from_superheroes_to_doughboys/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/from_superheroes_to_doughboys/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913278 ImprintIn the early part of the 20th century the first American cartoonists were the superstars of their times. Their work was received by an adoring audience, they earned lucrative contracts and toured the country to give chalk talks to a welcoming public. Richard Felton Outcault’s "Yellow Kid," Bud Fisher’s "Mutt and Jeff," Rudolph Dirks’s "Katzenjammer Kids," Winsor McCay’s "Little Nemo," George McManus’ "Jiggs and Maggie," Sidney Smith’s "The Gumps" were all extremely popular entertainment, earning some of their creators upwards of $1 million annually.

With the introduction of Superman in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938, the longer form of comic books sold in the millions of copies per issue but the artists themselves didn’t fare as well, earning only dollars per page. Following the congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency and comic books in 1954, the industry tightened, and many titles ceased. In the back of David Hajdu’s "The Ten-Cent Plague" hundreds of artists are listed who left comics never to return. The question at hand is: Where did they go? Many, as it turns out, headed to the more profitable field of advertising.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/from_superheroes_to_doughboys/feed/ 3 The unhealthy life of drawing http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_unhealthy_life_of_drawing_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_unhealthy_life_of_drawing_salpart/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12912472 ImprintSoon after Jungyeon Roh began working as an illustrator, she had an unpleasant revelation. “I realized that we are just sitting and drawing all the time,” she says. “It’s really not healthy at all!” Movement is essential to Roh. Born in South Korea, she lived in Seoul for 23 years until a study-abroad program in her junior year of college led her to visit nine European countries in a month. Having caught the travel bug, she studied in Chicago before making her way to New York in 2006 to study at SVA.

Age: 29
Illustrator
From: Seoul, South Korea
Lives in: New York City
Website: jungyeonroh.com

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_unhealthy_life_of_drawing_salpart/feed/ 0 A bricklayer turned designer http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/a_bricklayer_turned_designer_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/a_bricklayer_turned_designer_salpart/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12912225 Imprint
Dafi Kühne took a rather circuitous route to becoming a graphic designer. He first fell in love with design during the year he spent studying architecture in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. When he decided that wasn’t a good fit, he dropped out of the program and spent a year working as a bricklayer before applying to Zurich University of the Arts’ visual-communications program.

Age: 29
Graphic Designer/Letterpress Printer
From: Glarus, Switzerland
Lives in: Zurich
Website: babyinktwice.ch

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/a_bricklayer_turned_designer_salpart/feed/ 0 Arabic type mysteries http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/arabic_type_mysteries_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/arabic_type_mysteries_salpart/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12910923 Nadine Chahine is an award-winning type designer specializing in Arabic fonts. Since 2005 she has worked for Linotype combining design with sales and marketing, though as the company’s Arabic type design program has gathered momentum, her role has shifted toward a greater emphasis in font development. Born in Lebanon, she came to a career in type design initially via her graphic design studies at the American University of Beirut. This early awakening to the design possibilities for Arabic type was further explored in the M.A. Typeface Design program at the University of Reading, from which she graduated in 2003. The practicality of pushing the parameters of her vision for design is now the object of her day job, and the implications for such work the focus for the Ph.D. she is also currently undertaking at Leiden University (NL), in which she is investigating the study of legibility specifically in relation to the Arabic script.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/arabic_type_mysteries_salpart/feed/ 3 Comic collages in context http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/comic_collages_in_context/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/comic_collages_in_context/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12910380 ImprintJack Kirby had choices to make, especially considering he could do it all: writing, penciling, inking, coloring. Along the way he found it prudent to concentrate on what he could do best: dream big and render those flights of fancy in graphite. Why then would he choose to break his stride and search through various magazines in search of the right image, rubber cement in hand?

Kirby’s entrée into the world of collage did not begin with the "Fantastic Four," or even by his own hand. Richard Hamilton included a (Simon &) Kirby "Young Romance" splash page in his seminal 1956 collage “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” launching both pop art and Kirby into the fine-art world. “High” culture had begun to give sway to pop culture through the most democratic of visual art forms, collage.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/comic_collages_in_context/feed/ 2 Paul Rand’s forgotten ads http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/paul_rands_forgotten_ads/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/paul_rands_forgotten_ads/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12909426 ImprintWhen Paul Rand was art director of the William Weintraub Agency in New York, he did scores of advertising campaigns, most with his distinct drawing or collage styles. Much of this work, though smart and witty, especially when compared to the heavy-handed advertisements in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was neither saved on film nor in original printed formats. When I was writing "Paul Rand" (Phaidon), I had only limited access to his Weintraub-era tear sheets, which were not in job bags like the work he did after leaving the agency. These ads for Shur-Edge knives and Stafford fabrics, printed on newsprint, appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. One just has to look at the poor typographic ads on the verso side of these sheets to see how much better Rand's work was.

The Kaiser car image was a cover for one of their typical sales brochures. Rand also designed revolutionary advertisements that barely showed the new cars -- a no-no in the auto sales world. When unfolded, however, this brochure looks like any typical sales sheet and was obviously not done by Rand.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/paul_rands_forgotten_ads/feed/ 0 Devil in the details http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/devil_in_the_details_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/devil_in_the_details_salpart/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12908890 ImprintThe infographic shows incarceration rates around the world, each country a rectangle in a prison yard, each rectangle a scatter plot of milling inmates. What you notice after a few minutes: The uniform colors are accurate, from America’s eyesore orange to France’s proletarian blue. What you notice after a few more minutes: a sprinting escapee, fleeing to the margin of the page. “I love it,” says Scott Stowell, who worked on the graphic―a page in a Norton sociology textbook―with Ryan Thacker at Open. But why would a designer think to slip that detail in? “Ryan would say, ‘Why wouldn’t you think of it?’ ” Stowell says. Thacker’s work is funny (when else have incarceration rates elicited a grin?), and the humor is in the details.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/devil_in_the_details_salpart/feed/ 3 Natural design http://www.salon.com/2012/04/24/natural_design/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/24/natural_design/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12908126 ImprintLisa Hedge spent her first New York winter in Long Island City, working for Takashi Murakami’s studio, Kaikai Kiki, mixing 3,000 shades of green paint. “It was an insane design experiment in a way,” she says. “Matching what we were mixing to the swatches, making little samples, creating rules for ourselves. We finished the painting about when I left, and then it went to Gagosian.” Hedge went freelance, doing design work for L’Oreal, then to Tender, where she worked on corporate jobs like banner ads and branding. But an artist’s instincts are hard to wash off. Getting out brushes and scissors is, for her, “a natural starting point. Until I realize, Oh, wow, I need to get something into Illustrator.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/24/natural_design/feed/ 1 The genius pencil http://www.salon.com/2012/04/23/the_genius_pencil/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/23/the_genius_pencil/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12881311 Imprint"I have found a new kind of pencil ― the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much too but it is black and soft but doesn’t break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Blackwings and they really glide over the paper.” So said John Steinbeck, according to a Paris Review article (PDF) that pulled together quotations from the author over the course of his career. Steinbeck’s high praise for the Blackwing is just one notable voice in a choir of legendary figures.

In his autobiography, "Q," Quincy Jones explained how he composed “Suite to the Four Winds” by running all over Seattle, “working it out bit by bit on every piano I could find. That piece was the most valuable thing I owned. I carried it around with me every day, like money, scrawling on it, fixing it, changing it, carrying it under my sweater with a Blackwing No. 2 pencil in my pocket to make continual fixes.”

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