You get a great feeling of pride when you see your work appearing in a book. It’s like that nice feeling you got when your Mum put that picture you did at school on the fridge for all the family and relatives to see. I knew when I received my copy of ‘Touch this, Graphic Design that feels good’, that I had a piece inside it… it was only when I flicked through the pages that I was amazed to see three pieces of work I did with my then Art Director, Simon Rowlands, had been chosen to appear in this fabulous book.
Compiled by Designer Scott Witham, who has worked for global clients including Sony, Virgin, Orange and the Royal Bank of Scotland, ‘Touch this, Graphic Design that feels good’ features intriguing projects that incorporate a gamut of “you can’t print on that” materials, including pleated, Issey Miyake type forms and razor-thin metal business cards; X-ray film; heat-sensitive inks; ceramic tiles; and carpet samples. In short, there are design solutions in this book that use any and everything, except plain paper.
After a few fun, intense days of editing I’ve just uploaded my entry to the Getty Mishmash Music Video Remix Competition. From the moment I heard about this competition I knew I had to enter as it gave me the chance to dabble in two of my favourite things: music and film. There was also the small matter of a shiny new 17″ MacBook Pro with Final Cut Studio installed for the winner. Phwooar. The rules to the competition were delightfully simple: make a music video using Getty footage and music. Er that’s it. After whiling away a few hours sampling the delights of the Getty film footage catalog and music collection an idea began to taken shape. You can see my video ‘The Devil & Mr Jones’ here. I’m excited about the result although i’m up against some stiff competition from those pesky professional film directors/editors. Feel free to post ego massaging comments after you’ve viewed it. Thanks.
Call to actions. They are those pesky things that designers hate because the client always wants them bigger… and the designer wants it to be tucked away so the masterpiece he/she has created won’t be ruined by commercialism. But what if the advert itself was the call to action… and by simply taking a picture of the advert you can automatically be connected to a website where you can get more information or call a number where you can give your details and more information.
Sound daft? Well believe it or not those clever people at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have developed a mobile phone app for iPhone and Android that turns a multitude of items; from DVD and CD covers to Film Posters and Adverts into call to actions… so the design is the response device! Designers rejoice!
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)… the online resource for visual arts and design.
VADS has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK… and now this entire collection is available to view online.
Everyone knows that buying CDs is on the decline and when it comes to owning music… digital is the way to go. But you have to credit the people behind The Muisc Tee for getting us to part with our hard-earned green stuff for something more than just a digital download.
The Music Tee is a new product line that combines digital music and fashion in one eye-and-ear-catching package. Music Tees are high-end t-shirts that feature album art and a tracklist. Each shirt comes with a unique code that can be used to download a digital copy of the album associated with that Music Tee. This enables people to discover and purchase music in fashion retail environments, then hear and wear an album!
What do you think of when you hear the words YouTube? How about, the good, the bad, and the ugly? Sometimes it’s really ugly, sometimes confusingly, you get all 3 in one movie. While YouTube is undoubtedly the place to go to get as many eyeballs on your video as possible, I’m sure I’m not the only one who wishes there was a magical button to filter out the mobile phone uploads of last nights party, the offensive comments and get straight to the really good stuff. Well, there isn’t. But there is Vimeo, a place where you can find a community of passionate filmmakers, along with the likes of Moby, Royksopp, Kanye West, film director Michael Bay, and even the White House, uploading their stuff in high definition.
Last edited by Andrew Campbell on October 7, 2009 at 11:40 am
Trackbacks are a way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks, no other action necessary.
Custom Fields
Name
Value
Add new custom field:
Custom fields can be used to add extra metadata to a post that you can use in your theme.
It’s not very often that I see a graphic design book that really amazes me with the levels of inventiveness contained on every page. Tactile, however, is certainly a book that does that.
Tactile shows how graphic design is moving into three-dimensional objects and products and presents graphic design that works with space or the perception of space. The book focuses less on murals than on products, objects, installations and collage that demonstrate how designers are developing and implementing their ideas spatially from the very outset of a given project. Tactile proves that spatial innovation in graphic design is not limited to personal work or artistic endeavours for exhibition, but is being sought out more and more often by commercial clients, for example in store design.
Abram Games was one of the most influential Graphic Designers that this country has ever seen. He created some of the most memorable designs of the 20th Century by following his own personal belief of: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means… and back in the early 90s, maybe ’92 or ’93, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by this true great of design at Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations) Conference.
To be honest, when I attended Icograda that year, I had absolutely no idea who Abram Games was. In fact as far as I was concerned he was just a warm-up to the main attraction… Neville Brody. Yet as I entered the Odeon Cinema where Icograda was being held that year and was greeted by his work… it soon became clear that even though I did not know the name Abram Games… I certainly knew his work.
Travelling with kids can be a fantastic experience as you get to see things from their entirely fresh perspective. I’d always wondered why there were no kid’s travel guides around and thought i’d cleverly identified a gap in the market. Until I discovered the wonderful ‘This is..’ series of books by Miroslav Sasek and realized that someone had come up with the idea in the 1960s!
With dreams of a publishing empire in tatters I gave this charming book to my 6 year old daughter just before our trip to San Francisco this year. With every page turn the full excitement of the upcoming adventure began to delight and intrigue her. The book even beat Harry Potter as the chosen bedtime reading material in the weeks prior to the holiday. No mean feat for a book that’s almost 50 years old. Read more…
You get a great feeling of pride when you see your work appearing in a book. It’s like that nice feeling you got when your Mum put that picture you did at school on the fridge for all the family and relatives to see. I knew when I received my copy of ‘Touch this, Graphic Design that feels good’, that I had a piece inside it… it was only when I flicked through the pages that I was amazed to see three pieces of work I did with my then Art Director, Simon Rowlands, had been chosen to appear in this fabulous book.
Call to actions. They are those pesky things that designers hate because the client always wants them bigger… and the designer wants it to be tucked away so the masterpiece he/she has created won’t be ruined by commercialism. But what if the advert itself was the call to action… and by simply taking a picture of the advert you can automatically be connected to a website where you can get more information or call a number where you can give your details and more information.
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the 
What do you think of when you hear the words YouTube? How about, the good, the bad, and the ugly? Sometimes it’s really ugly, sometimes confusingly, you get 
It’s not very often that I see a graphic design book that really amazes me with the levels of inventiveness contained on every page. 
Abram Games was one of the most influential Graphic Designers that this country has ever seen. He created some of the most memorable designs of the 20th Century by following his own personal belief of: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means… and back in the early 90s, maybe ’92 or ’93, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by this true great of design at Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations) Conference.
Travelling with kids can be a fantastic experience as you get to see things from their entirely fresh perspective. I’d always wondered why there were no kid’s travel guides around and thought i’d cleverly identified a gap in the market. Until I discovered the wonderful ‘This is..’ series of books by 
Discussion