tantramar

Anthony Mccall and the Column

I went to see the Anthony Mccall show at the weekend at P3 in London. It's closed now...sorry. I saw the wonderful cones of light. He's a pretty damn interesting artist.

However, I didn't know about the column he's making as part of the artists taking the lead initiative by the arts council (part of the 2012 insanity).

The project is a big splash by the arts council. Some of the projects being undertaken are slightly interesting but the Anthony Mccall piece, will be pretty incredible. 

A spinning column of cloud will rise from Wirral Waters in Merseyside...

.... it is based on the principle of convection, where warm moist air is displaced by denser air. This occurs constantly in the natural world as thermals, and more visibly, in the form of 'dust devils' and water spouts.

It will be several kilometers tall and visible for at least 100km.

(from the press release)

The column will be 20 meters across. Mccall has been working on it with an inventor for 5 years.

I saw a scale model of this in action and it's beautiful. It looks like a constantly building and breaking double helix. The weather will affect how it appears each day, so potentially no two viewings will be the same. Fabulous.

Heavy Pencil at Pick Me Up

I'm DJing at Heavy Pencil again (this Thursday). The last one was pretty fun. This time it's at Somerset House for the launch of Pick Me Up, which should be, by all accounts pretty descent.

Update:
I'm now NOT DJing on the 17th but AM DJing on the 24th. Confusing eh. Not that I'm the main draw...anyway. Main draw... hey that was quite good..

Otto Neurath

Otto Neurath seems to pretty much be a Polymath, taking up the mantle of being a political economist, sociologist and a philosopher of science. I mainly like the pictures though and I've been a fan of him since a discovery via Tufte a while back. Otto defined rules for infographics and fought hard to try and create a visual language for information. He did work over the years for numerous countries and organisations and published several books.

Because the V&A is amazing they have a new exhibition of lots of ISOTYPE's work.

Otto set up ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education) around 1929 in an attempt to explain to people what they needed to know in the simplest way.

There are only two small rooms at the show and I took some snaps here but it's worth popping by if you're in the area.

 

 

It's a shame that more designers working today producing infographics don't pay more attention to work of Neurath and Tufte. Then they might understand what it is they are doing so badly.

All the excellent graphics you can see were produced by German graphics whizz Gerd Arntz, who was Isotype's head of design.

Geoff Mcfetridge Show

I've been a fan of Geoff Mcfetridge for quite a number of years. Probably since Miles introduced me to him at art college. He's defined his style more and more over the years doing really great graphics and illustration work which you can see on his site.

Currently running in the Half gallery in New York is a nice show of some new paintings. I took some more snaps of the work you can see over here.

Lou Dorfsman

This is a spread by Lou Dorfsman who was creative director for just about all time at CBS. He was hired as Art Dirtector of CBS radio in 1946 and by 1964 he was creative director for all of CBS. He pretty much stayed that way until 1991, when he retired. Quite some time.

He was responsible for the visual and emotional language for the whole of CBS on television, radio and in print. The innovative print designer also started realising the need for interior design on talk shows and began styling the CBS talk shows to become more friendly on the eye.

CBS have always been at the front of broadcasting in the United States. Significantly dominating in the 60s and 70s. And 77% of the American public watched the last episode of MASH in 1983. The biggest ever US audience broken only by the 2010 Superbowl (also shown on CBS).

What I'm getting at here is Lou Dorfsman created the most watched visual language of the American people for 40 years. He wrote copy, styled television, produced ads and oversaw all public and internal consumption of the CBS brand. From the construction barricades outside the CBS building (during erection) to the font for the CBS logo, Lou was there. He's responsible for a large piece of American culture and the progress of that culture through a mighty important part of American history.

The impact of his design work upon popular culture cannot really be overstated. And yet most people outside of the design industry don't know who he is.

Michael Beriut (NYC Penatgram partner) in his great article (The four lessons of Lou Dorfsman said 'There is no one today — anywhere — that can match the breadth and depth of design authority Lou Dorfsman exercised in his years at CBS'.

Which is where Kemistry gallery, bastian of visual language and all things graphic step in. They have a show running at the moment that highlights his work and achievements. Very few gallerys or institutions focus on the kind of work Kemisitry does. They cover important often ignored work.

They even have a visual reproduction of Lou's famous Gastrotypographicalassemblage (shown in part above).

Milton Glaser called him “the best corporate designer in the world".

We need to pay more attention to people like that.

Thread Counts

Back when I was working at Sense Worldwide in 2003 looking after their global community of early adopters we used to get intrigued by online communities that were sparking - it's what we were doing too. We had an engaged crowd and so crowd-sourced ideas were our deal.

We (and I suspect everyone else) watched Threadless quite carefully. In the post-bubble online grass-roots world could you really make money from a bunch of kids interested in t-shirt designs?

Well they grew and grew and suddenly it seemed you could - they had a thriving business. This model must have inspired thousands of budding design entrepreneurs and crowd sourced businesses around the world.

Then they did something really crazy - they opened a physical shop. At that time the model was; get costs really low, ditch as many fixed costs as possible, dodge the high street, get lots of links and subscribers and you'll be fine. But no, they wanted a physical shop, fair enough. And then that worked too. The Midas touch these kids had eh!

But the thing they had driving them on, wasn't sales figures or megalomania it was the enthusiasm of the community. Proving what we already know - communities are powerful when you harness a passion.

So they've been running 10 years and released this little book which stumbled across my desk recently. It has loads of the old designs and chats with the designers made famous through their work showcased online. Careers have literally been made on this site. And there's also some wise words from the likes of Seth Godin and John Maeda

But for me, more importantly it gives space for all the founders to talk about their company the decisions they made and why they made them. What went right, what went wrong and what they learned.

This all started from a little post on a forum back in 2000. The Internet is great when it creates little wonders like this that improve lives left right and centre.

Really inspiring stuff.

Ant Farming

I felt that I didn't know anough about Ant Farm so I'm reading a book about them. It's inspiring stuff. Like other collectives (of the time) such as Archigram and Push Pin the mindset was very playful. See their Cowboy Nomad manefestio (1969) below. Great Stuff.

'safety matches / kwik start energy'

The Creative Process

 
I've always struggled with process in design. There's something in the above statement taken from here.

Being genuinely creative means that you don't know where you're going...

Yes. I like that.

Incidentally, the book where it resides I found to be a very rewarding and stimulating read. Very useful for bite size consumption. 101 nuggets, 101 pages, easy.

The Original Advertising

Anyone that knows me, will know I have a bit of thing for sign painting. This is a great little film about some sign painters still painting big adverts the traditional way, instead of using nasty big vinyl banners.

What I barely noticed was that this was essentially an advert for Stella put together by Mother (I think) and presumably paid for by Stella. Hat tipped to a nice job done.

Cheer Up It's...

 
Sort of old news now, but last week the Archigram archives got a dusting down. About time too. So much on there, so little time. I wish at school, I could have traded in studying Keynesian Economics for Architectural visionaries. One dates far better than the other.

Still Rather Nice

The regular genius of the It's Nice That returns shortly to our grubby paws, to fawn over with glee and curiosity. The third edition of their journal is available for pre-order on the site and looks as good as ever, or dare I say it EVEN BETTER!

Shown here is the free Parra print you get with the issue (click for larger version)!

Aside from that little gem there are interviews and content from some pretty big hitters such as: Maisie Broadhead, Tom Dixon, Tom Gauld, Milton Glaser, Keith Schofield, Dan Tobin Smith and Paul Smith.

If that's not enough there's also content from: Daniel Eatock, Jochen Gerner, Charley Harper, Lucy and Bart, Susanne Ludwig, Aakash Nihalani, SpY, John Paul Thurlow and Geoff McFetridge (pictured).

 

Oh and there's some words too from: Keetra Dean Dixon, Ken Garland, Dan Germain and Johan Löfgren.

I don't know many media producers that have such an active digital presence and that still manage to produce print media that can sit alongside the digital product so neatly. Hat Tipped.

Save The ICA!

Apparently the ICA is in trouble. It could even close by May this year. The ICA in London is pretty damn important. It can't simply go away. There isn't really anywhere else like it in London.

I will be shocked and appalled if the government or even London as a city lets this happen. It's clear looking at the numbers that the arts institution doesn't make any money. Whatever the reason for this, recession, management, niche content, this place needs to exist.

How come no one is doing anything about this? Arts council, Lottery funding? Hello? Anyone there?

Jean-Michel Basquiat

  I'm a big art fan, a wannabe collector and an avid viewer. Some art has a physical effect on me that I can't really explain. Work by Basquiat, does this to me frequently. Anyway, there's a new documentary coming out soon with unseen footage and interviews. I'll be watching it for sure.

Everything Under One Roof

You may have seen adverts for the Museum of Everything. Brave title isn't it. I just went for a second time as I was overwhelmed the first time. I should point our quickly here that it's an outsider art museum and a damn good one at that.

Located in a strange cavernous and incredibly neglected building in Primrose Hill. It launched as a Frieze affiliate and I thought it was due to end at the end of the year. However I can't find any mention of that in the site now.

Seriously though, if you like folk art or outsider art you'll be hard pushed to find a better collection anywhere in the country I suspect. And the photography sign is pretty sweet too.

It's a Date

Sadly I'm not around but I think this will be pretty good.