Poster Design – PRINT Magazine

The Daily Heller: For Lyuba Tomova, ‘Posters Are the Strongest Visual Art’

Steven Heller — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000

… And it’s hard to argue with that after seeing her posters employing acerbic 3D constructions.

Lyuba Tomova was born in 1975 in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she lives and works as a partner at the studio Poster House. A graduate of the National Academy of Art with a master’s degree in poster design, she won the 2022 Grand Prize of Sofia and the Golden Poster Award from the X International Triennial of Stage Poster—Sofia.

Tomova works primarily in the realm of noncommercial poster design. “I believe this is the most dynamic and rapidly developing form of art,” she told me in a recent email exchange, “not just a means of mass communication and information distribution.” Tomova’s posters address social themes, often with drama as a foundation. “Theater is a socially engaged artform that poses critical questions to society,” she noted. Her posters in this realm relate not only to the themes of love and hate, “but also raise questions about tolerance and where our limits of patience lie (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee), and about corruption (The Government Inspector by Nikolay Gogol). Sometimes, I adopt a direct approach to share my opinions and to influence public attitudes and behavior.”

I asked her if she has a favorite poster among those shown here. “In the vast variety of techniques and means of expression, it is very difficult for anyone to pick a single poster.” So, pivoting, I asked her to list her inspirations: “I admire individual poster artists and various poster art schools. Also, I consider posters the strongest visual art and communication medium—an image seen and briefly viewed, yet it leaves us pondering long after.”

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Announcing The 2025 PRINT Awards Call For Entries

PRINT Awards — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:17:28 +0000

The 2025 PRINT Awards honor the beauty of creativity in full bloom.

Design creativity blooms in spaces where curiosity meets intention, where ideas are nurtured into forms that resonate and inspire. It’s a process marked by exploration, experimentation, and the willingness to challenge conventions to uncover new perspectives. In this fertile ground, creativity is more than a spark—it’s a cultivated journey, drawing from diverse influences and blending intuition with technique.

Celebrating our 45th year, the 2025 PRINT Awards honors design in every shape and form. And, as our industry continues to evolve and our practitioners continue to explore new mediums and methods to advance their creativity, the PRINT Awards have found new ways to recognize outstanding work.

enter the 2025 print awards

2024 PRINT Awards First Place Winner in Self-Promotions. The Office of Ordinary Things and D&K Printing. D&K Printing also printed the beautiful 2024 PRINT Awards certificates.

Categories for 2025

The 2025 PRINT Awards offer 28 categories for entries, ranging from Illustration to Motion Design & Video. In recent years, we added In-House, Design for Social Impact, and Packaging and expanded our branding categories. We also expanded the awards to offer students a chance to enter work in each category instead of only one student category. And, this year, our jury will also consider entries in Social Media + Content Design, Title Sequence Design, and Graphic Novels.

Learn more about the 2025 PRINT Awards categories.

2024 PRINT Awards Third Place Winner in Packaging, CF Napa Brand Design; Second Place Winner in Logo Design, Onfire. Design.

Citizen Design Award

Each year, the PRINT Awards highlight a free-to-enter Citizen Design Award to celebrate design work focused on one annually chosen social issue. With societies facing global challenges like climate change, economic instability, and technological shifts, our Citizen Design Award this year will honor work that speaks to social justice.

Social Justice ensures that all people are entitled to human rights and societal respect regardless of race, gender, religion, health, and economic status. Discrimination in the form of economic and educational inequities, combined with enduring legacies of oppression continue to impact many communities, creating toxic cycles of privilege and disadvantage.

Design can profoundly influence social justice through graphic tools that amplify awareness and drive change. Design can make complex issues more accessible, spark debate, inform audiences, and motivate positive engagement. This year’s PRINT Citizen Design category recognizes and celebrates the most impactful work that fosters empathy and action. From social awareness campaigns to apps, community-centered design projects, infographics, posters, social media graphics, and interactive experiences, Citizen Design will honor work that strives to make our world more compassionate and just.

2024 PRINT Awards First Place Winner in Design for Social Impact, Clinton Carlson and Team.

Our 2025 Jury

With a global jury representing a wide range of disciplines, each entry will continue to be judged on four key criteria: Craft, Longevity, Innovation, and Originality. Top winners will be featured on PRINTmag.com and receive trophies, certificates, and social media promotion. We’ll be adding jury members in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we welcome a few here!

A few of the 2025 Jury Members: Marisa Sanchez-Dunning, Bennett Peji, Jennifer Rittner, Eleazar Ruiz, Lara McCormick, Mike Perry, and Miller McCormick. More jurors are to be announced soon!

The 2025 PRINT Awards Presenting Sponsor

The team at PepsiCo Design + Innovation believes that good design is a meaningful experience. A functional product. A rich story. A beautiful object. Design can be fun, convenient, precious, or fearless, but good design is always an act of respect, empathy, and love.

That’s why PepsiCo Design + Innovation has joined PRINT this year as our Presenting Sponsor—to recognize, honor and, above all, to celebrate the joy of design in all its forms. That’s why PepsiCo Design and Innovation has joined PRINT this year as our Presenting Sponsor—to recognize, honor, and, above all, celebrate the joy of design in all its forms!

Dates and Deadlines

As in years past, we’ve broken the deadline schedule for the awards into four simple tiers—Early Bird, Regular, Late, and Final Call. The earlier you enter, the more you save because it helps us plan judging schedules and other tasks in advance. Enter now for the best price! (And it’s worth noting that to enable students to enter, the pricing is consistent across the board no matter when they submit their work.)

Join us as we recognize the talent that colors our world and celebrate the beauty of fresh ideas, bold solutions, and impactful storytelling. From emerging talents to seasoned visionaries, each submission is a testament to the boundless growth of design.

Submit your work today, and let’s cultivate the next generation of creative vision!

enter the 2025 print awards

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Four More Years! (…of Edel Rodriguez)

Kim Tidwell — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

If there’s a silver lining in the recent presidential election, it’s that we’ll be seeing much more from Edel Rodriguez. His Trump-trolling political illustrations gave us life as we dealt with the existential dread of another orange-tinged term.

But, his political satire only scratches the surface of his full oeuvre.

Rodriguez’s work spans from painting and sculpture to film posters, portraiture, children’s book illustrations, and on and on. Steven Heller recently wrote about his illustrated book covers for two Cuban sci-fi titles in a recent The Daily Heller. He also wrote and illustrated his American experience in Worm, a graphic memoir that spans his fleeing from Castro’s Cuba as a young child on the Mariel boatlift to watching the insurrection unfold on January 6, 2021. If you missed our PRINT Book Club with Rodriguez about Worm, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Rodriguez is the subject of a new documentary, Freedom is a Verb, now screening at DOC NYC from Nov 13 through Dec 1, and airing on PBS in the coming months. Directed by Adrienne Hall and Mecky Creus, the film explores the reckless pursuit of freedom inherent in all of Rodriguez’s work. Watch the trailer here.

With the election decided, Rodriguez’s work takes on layers of prophetic meaning. We look forward to Edel Rodriguez’s truth-telling in the near future, reminding us of the power of artists and creatives in times of chaos and despair.

Below, we’ve highlighted some of his stellar work over the last few years.

Left: Latino voter engagement illustration for The Washington Post; Latino vote 2024 poster

Covers for Stern (Germany, two at top left), La Croix (France, top middle), and Time (US, top right and bottom two).

Imagery courtesy of Edel Rodriguez.

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The Daily Heller: When Every Theater Poster is a Drama

Steven Heller — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Sometimes a poster beckons a viewer in mysterious ways. Mirko Ilic‘s eight seasons designing posters for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia, are very special because they enable the designer to interpret the material in any way that makes sense. Each season is rendered in a generally different but uniform manner. In this sense, it is the perfect job for a conceptual artist who likes to move to the beat of his own tin drum (which is one of the posters he’s done). For these posters, anything goes as long as they pique the theater-goer’s interest.

Man’s Tear is a collage piece based on the motifs from four one-act plays – A Joke, A Marriage Proposal, The Bear and Tatiana Repina – and a short story On the Road by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The characters in this stage play have suffered in love, they are lost in time and trapped in a tavern during an apocalyptic storm. Being thus forced to spend time together encourages conflict and somber reminiscences and the text is infused with the author’s ironic tone. The common denominator in the selected pieces is the crumbling of the male characters which ends in tears that, even today, are seen as a sign of inappropriate weakness in men who end up being stigmatized and forced to maintain a stiff upper lip. Chekhov described these pieces as vaudevilles even though he was very much aware of the emotional and existential depths lurking in each one of them. The elements of comedy are, on the one hand, a natural consequence of the mundane and ordinary, but are also progressive and remain a modern commentary on the part of Chekhov on the banality and short-sightedness of male chauvinism and the patriarchy as a social order. The storm itself is a metaphor for the chaos, pandemonium, and wars of our modern times and it represents everything that will eventually and inevitably come to the surface if tears are held back and pride and shame are the order of the day, all to avoid a show of “weakness” in men.

Einstein’s Dreams (left) by Alan Lightman fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905, and each dream involves a conception of time.

Mercy Street (right) by Neil LaBute is a 2002 play that was among the first major theatrical responses to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Set on September 12, it concerns Ben, a man who worked at the World Trade Center but was away from the office during the attack, with his mistress, Abby, who is also his boss. Expecting his family to believe that he was killed in the towers’ collapse, Ben contemplates using the tragedy to run away and start a new life with his lover

The King of Betajnova (left) is a social-critical drama on the complete demise of ethics and justice. The central figure of the play is the factory owner, tycoon, and candidate for MP, Jozef Kantor: a social climbing, egocentric manipulative, violent, power-thirsty materialist… Bribery, dirty lobbying and intrigues are the essential tools for attaining his goal.

A Month in the Country (right) by Russian writer Ivan S. Turgenev chronicles the comic and erotic turmoil that befalls an otherwise quiet country estate when a handsome young tutor arrives to teach Natalya Petrovna’s young son. Soon, Natalya is interested in a tutelage of another kind, much to the consternation of her husband and her long-suffering friend, Rakitin, who is secretly smitten with her. A beautifully nuanced meditation on the nature of unrequited love.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is a play based on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler’s film of the same name. The play depicts the life of middle-class draftsman Herr Raab, who, in an unpredictable violent spell, murders his neighbor, wife, and son before killing himself.

The Glass Neck (Vrat od stakla) (left), a new play by Biljana Srbljanović. The play is about relationships between women in a multi-generational family who are forced to abandon their apartment.

Uncle Vanya (right), a play by Anton Chekhov. What happens in Uncle Vanya isn’t as important as what doesn’t happen. The dominant mood is of a frustration kind that builds up on a wasted life. I decided that the visual theme of this theater’s season is going to be profiled.

Nathan the Wise (left) is a play set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade; it describes how the wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the enlightened sultan Saladin, and the leader of the Templars, bridge the gaps between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The major themes of the play are friendship, tolerance, relativism of God, a rejection of miracles, and a need for communication.

Lorenzaccio (right) is about Italian politician, writer and dramatist Lorenzino de’ Medici (1514 – 1548). Lorenzino lured his cousin, the Duke Alexandro of Florence, into his apartment with the promise of a night of passion then assassinated him with a dagger. Lorenzino acted for political reasons with the goal of freeing Florence from a man that many considered to be a tyrant. After the assassination, he fled Florence, and a few years later two hired killers caught up with him and murdered him in Venice. Overall, it’s like a Renaissance Game of Thrones.

La Celestina is considered to be one of the greatest works of all Spanish literature and is regarded as the beginning of the renaissance in Spanish literature. While chasing his falcon through the fields, a rich young bachelor, Calisto, enters a garden where he meets Melibea, the daughter of the house, and is immediately taken with her. Unable to see her again privately, he broods until his servant Sempronio suggests using the old procuress Celestina. She is the owner of a brothel…When the weary Calisto returns home at dawn to sleep, his two servants go round to Celestina’s house to get their share of the gold. She tries to cheat them, and in a rage they kill her. In an attempt to escape, Sempronio and Pármeno are caught and are beheaded later in the town square…Calisto returns to the garden for another night with Melibea; while hastily leaving because of a ruckus he heard in the street, he falls from the ladder used to scale the high garden wall and is killed. After confessing to her father the recent events of her love affair, Melibea jumps from the tower of the house and dies too.

Much Ado About Nothing (left) by William Shakespeare.
There’s a lot to do but not much to say that the poster does not.

Screw the one who started it (right) by Dejan Dukovski. “In some ways, it was a reaction to the view of war from a close range. The outrage of this view is also felt in the text. Outraged views of fallen angels,” says Dukovski. “I did not want to write about war or comment on politics and military strategies of the time, the text is an homage to mythical theatrical situations about love and war, sex and violence. All scenes are replicas of already existing scenes of world dramaturgy. I guessed some things … Like for example, the young character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet could have met in the town of Wittenberg, the old and knowledgeable but decadent Marlowe’s Faust. Learned to doubt..”

The Traveling Troupe takes place during World War II, a traveling theatre company arrives in the occupied Serbian town of Užice. In the square where the company was supposed to perform, the bodies of murdered people are being displayed, and that is where the story starts.

Pucina (Offing) (left) was written in 1902 by Branislav Nušić, a Serbian playwright, satirist, essayist, and novelist. In the play, Jovanka, the wife of the official Vladimir Nedeljković, becomes the mistress of a minister in the desire to create a career for her husband and thus, to ensure a high civic reputation for her family. Thanks to that, Vladimir progresses and becomes a senior official, but he soon learns that his wife is not faithful to him, just as he learns and is aware of the fact that he progressed thanks to his wife’s love affair.

Kaspar (right) is Peter Handke’s first full-length drama, hailed in Europe as “the play of the decade” and compared in importance to Waiting for Godot. Kaspar is the story of an autistic adolescent who finds himself at a complete existential loss on the stage, with but a single sentence to call his own. Drilled by prompters who use terrifyingly funny logical and alogical language sequences, Kaspar learns to speak “normally” and eventually becomes creative–“doing his own thing” with words; for this, he is destroyed.

Belgrade Trilogy (left), a dark comedy set in Sydney, Los Angeles, and Prague on New Year’s Eve, the play shows snapshots from the everyday life of young people who fled abroad to escape the Balkan war and the choices they face as they attempt to build a new life for themselves as exiles. For the image on the poster, I use a major symbol of Belgrade, the Pobednik (The Victor) monument by Ivan Meštrović. The image is positioned upside down because that is how it is seen from the other side of the globe, and it is printed in three not perfectly aligned colors.

In Moj Muž (My Husband) (right), two actresses play a variety of different roles, analyzing female relationships with men, husbands, marriage, and sexuality.

The Vast Domain (Das Weite Land) is a play by the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, which focuses on 1890s Viennese society, demonstrating the effects of upper-class codes of behavior on human relationships. It is a play that combines detailed psychology with a portrait of a society … What the play shows us are couples indulging in a polite sexual excuse behind which lurks panic, death, and an insane preoccupation with honor … What is fascinating is that the action is conducted against a background of tennis parties, trips to the Dolomites, charades-like affairs and summerhouse banter against Art Deco panels. Everything suggests a world of golden leisure and civilized deceit. But what Schnitzler shows us is the corrosive effect of habitual lying on this Smiles of a Summer Night atmosphere and the destructive impact of the hero’s contaminated sense of honor. I think it’s a marvelous play because it pinpoints decadence with wit and irony.

I Saw Her That Night (left), a love story in time of war, is a story about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history. We follow her story from the perspective of five different characters, who also talk about themselves, as well as the troubled Slovenian times before and during World War II; times that swallowed, like a Moloch, not only the people of various beliefs involved in historical events but also those who lived on the fringes of tumultuous events, which they did not even fully comprehend―they only wanted to live. But “only” to live was an illusion: it was a time when, even under the seemingly safe and idyllic shelter of a manor house in Slovenia, it was impossible to avoid the rushing train of violence.

In Zagreb–Belgrade via Sarajevo (right), we follow two young writers, Ivo Andrić and Miloš Crnjanski, on an imaginary train journey from Zagreb to Belgrade. Shortly after the end of the First World War in which Crnjanski fought on the side of Austria-Hungary, and Andrić was imprisoned in Maribor as one of the suspects in the Sarajevo assassination, the two meet in Zagreb at the moment when the Southern Slavonic people decide to live together in one country called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Strongly influenced by the pressures and euphoria of a victory and a defeat, the disappearance of a number of countries and the creation of several ones, breaking away from the past and embarking on something entirely new, this journey in 1919 takes us on an emotional and intellectual journey through the lives of these two young authors who discuss a number of interesting issues – questioning what has been and anticipating what is still to come.

Alice in Fearland (left) was inspired by episodes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. When she was a girl, Alice believed that six impossible things may happen before breakfast. Now, she is a big girl in her thirties. She is supposed to have a career and a family. She should have become successful, stable, and grown-up. What she does have is a new therapist, and together they travel around her head. When she was a girl, there were wonders all around her – caterpillars smoking hookahs, talking cards, grinning cats, tea and cakes, hysterical birds. This was a world where new excitements awaited at every step, a world of possibilities for endless wonders. Now, it is a land full of doubts and fears. And yet, there is still a chance of a miracle…

The Miracle in Šargan (right), a cult play by Ljubomir Simović, premièred in 1974, explores the themes of cruelty and suffering as well as the deeply rooted conviction that suffering is inevitable. Simović weaves the stories of a selection of morally dubious characters gathered in the Šargan tavern, lost somewhere on the outskirts of a city but also the world, into a complicated tapestry hanging somewhere between the past and the future. The play gives us an insight into the reasons behind cruelty but also an opportunity to question whether the vicious circle of suffering, and the need to inflict it on others, can be broken. Throughout the entire play, constant heavy rain emphasizes the suffering and cruelty of the characters.

Oedipus (left) goes to the Oracle of Delphi to find out who his real parents are. The Oracle doesn’t see fit to tell him this, but she does tell him that he’s destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Oedipus tries to run from this fate but ends up running right into it. He kills Laius in a scuffle at a crossroads, not knowing he’s his real dad. Later, he wins the throne of Thebes and unknowingly marries his mother, Jocasta, after answering the riddle of the Sphinx. Several years (and several children) later Oedipus and Jocasta figure out the truth of everything with the unwilling help of Tiresias, the seer. Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus stabs out his own eyes. The blind king then goes into exile with only his daughter, Antigone, to guide him, and eventually dies in the town of Colonus.

Dr. Ausländer (Made for Germany) / Dr. Foreigner (Made for Germany) (right) is a theatre co-production between JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theatre and Bitef Theatre. As the title of this production may have suggested, the play points to a burning issue of the mass exodus of Serbian medical doctors and other health workers to Germany in search of a better life and working conditions. The main characters are medical workers who, irrespective of their level of education, are learning the language and moving to Germany. The play is partly based on interviews with 13 medical workers from the countries of former Yugoslavia, most of whom are already living in Germany while others are getting ready to go.

Titus Andronicus (left) is believed to be William Shakespeare’s first tragedy. It is also his most brutal and bloodiest play believed to have been written as Shakespeare’s attempt at “revenge tragedy,“ which was extremely popular at the time. The text went far beyond the scope of revenge tragedy and became the first glimpse of Shakespeare’s genius.

Feux (Fires) (right) by the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. The book consists of nine monologues and narratives based on classical Greek stories. Antigone, Clytemnestra, Phaedo, and Sappho are all mythical figures whose stories are mingled with contemporary themes. It consists of aphorisms, prose poetry, and fragmentary diary entries alluding to a love story. Interspersed are highly personal narratives, reflecting on a time of profound inner crisis in the author’s life. The unwritten novel among the fantasies and aphorisms of Fires is a classic tale.

Aleksandar Popović’s play The Development Path of Bora Šnajder (left) follows several connections, the most important of which are the socialist social milieu in which incompetent and unprepared careerists rise, the conflict between social and private work, and the meeting of an anonymous person with ideology and its laws.

The Loser (right) is a combination of Alexander Pushkin’s The Little Tragedy about Mozart and Salieri with the classic novel The Loser by Thomas Bernhardt, enabling the passionate experiment of author and director Nataša Raulović. Just as Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri” is not about its nominal protagonists, so Bernard’s Glenn Gould from The Loser is not a biographical account, but a parable about the relationship between genius and banality, a study of the collision between the banality of everyday life and the sublimity of artistic peaks. It is a story about music, genius, envy, terrors of success, and how easily a person may fail in their endeavors

Pains of Youth is a shocking, erotically charged play by the Austrian writer Ferdinand Bruckner. The play depicts the moral corruption and cynicism of a group of medical students with unprecedented candor in Vienna in 1923. For these young people, youth itself is a fatal disease, and the idea of death by suicide is always present in their minds. A discontented post-war generation diagnoses youth to be their sickness and do their best to destroy it.

An Incident at the Border (left) is a play about When a country’s new border is drawn, a couple are divided by the line.
“Under the rigorous eyes of a brand new border guard, they are trapped in an increasingly absurd nightmare, stuck in between two aggressive nations on the verge of war. The play explores the imaginary lines that divide us and the severe penalties for breaking them…”

The Tin Drum (right) is a theater adaptation of Günter Grass’ novel of the same title. The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, a young boy who willfully arrests his own physical development and remains in the body of a child even as he enters adulthood. A darkly comic war drama with magical realist elements, the play follows Oskar, a precocious child living in Danzig, who wields seemingly preternatural abilities. He lives in contempt of the adults around him and witnesses firsthand their potential for cruelty, first via the rise of the Nazis and then the war.
Through all this, a toy tin drum, the first of which he received as a present on his third birthday, followed by many replacement drums each time he wears one out from over-vigorous drumming, remains his treasured possession; he is willing to commit violence to retain it.

Pig and Runt (left) were born at the same hospital at nearly the same time and grew up next door to each other. They live in their own world and rarely interact with others; when they do, it’s mostly to express their hostility toward them. Their relationship, while very intense and unhealthy, remains platonic until just before their 17th birthday. Around this time, Runt catches and reciprocates the attention of another young man from their school, Marky, just as Pig develops romantic feelings for Runt. As their birthday draws closer, Pig becomes more volatile and violent, and his new feelings become obvious to Runt when he kisses her after a rampage at a nightclub. Runt does not know how to reject him, and they continue their friendship, though relations between them are markedly awkward. Their relationship finally raises concerns at their school. With the cooperation of her parents and Pig’s single mother, Runt, considered the more adaptive of the two, is sent away to a boarding school. On their 17th birthday, Pig arrives at Runt’s school and asks her to leave with him, which she does. Elated at their reunion, the two eventually chance upon a nightclub called The Palace. There, Runt sees Marky again and dances with him. In a fit of jealous rage, Pig beats Marky until he dies. Runt, scared, runs away, and Pig stays next to the corpse of the man whom he barbarically beat to death, discovering something completely new about himself: he likes blood.

Cyrano de Bergerac (right) is a verse drama by Edmond Rostand set in 17th-century Paris. The story revolves around the emotional problems of the noble, swashbuckling Cyrano, who, despite his many gifts, feels that no woman can ever love him because he has an enormous nose. Secretly in love with the lovely Roxane, Cyrano agrees to help his inarticulate rival, Christian, win her heart by allowing him to present Cyrano’s love poems, speeches, and letters as his own work. Eventually Christian recognizes that Roxane loves him for Cyrano’s qualities, not his own, and he asks Cyrano to confess his identity to Roxane; Christian then goes off to a battle that proves fatal. Cyrano remains silent about his own part in Roxane’s courtship. As he is dying years later, he visits Roxane and recites one of the love letters. Roxane realizes that it is Cyrano she loves, and he dies content.

Michael Kohlhaas is a theater adaptation of a novel with the same title by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, published in 1810. The novel is based on the 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase. The merchant Hans Kohlhase lived in Cölln on the Spree (now incorporated into Berlin) in the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the 16th century. In October 1532, he set out on a trip to the Leipzig Trade Fair in the neighboring Electorate of Saxony. On the way, two of his horses were seized, at the command of the Junker von Zaschwitz, as a supposed fee for passage through Saxony. Kohlhase sought redress in the Saxon courts but failed to obtain it. Outraged, he issued a public challenge in 1534 and burned down houses in Wittenberg. Even a letter of warning from Martin Luther could not dissuade him, and Kohlhase and the band he collected committed further acts of terror. In 1540, he was finally captured and tried, and he was publicly broken on the wheel in Berlin on March 22, 1540.

The post The Daily Heller: When Every Theater Poster is a Drama appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Daily Heller: This Fall, Poster House has Three New Shows and One New Director

Steven Heller — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 11:00:00 +0000

And we’ve asked her to sit down for an interview about her new role and curatorial future . This is quite a month for you. You curated two of the three exhibitions that just opened and you have been named as director of Poster House. Congratulations! How will you juggle your curatorial and directorial duties?
Carefully! We actually plan our exhibitions five to seven years in advance, and I’d been pacing the calendar so that I was offering our new Assistant Curator of Collections, Es-pranza Humphrey, more curatorial opportunities. As such, I was already weaning myself off of doing as many exhibitions per year and focusing more on traveling shows, poster education, and proselytizing the wonders of Poster House. In the short term, I recently handed in the first draft of the main spring show that I’m co-curating with Tim Medland, and I was able to hand off curation of an Italian fascism show I really wanted to do myself to the fantastic B.A. Van Sise. This doesn’t mean I won’t be curating again, but rather that I want to get my directorial sea legs before I attempt to do both jobs at once. In the meantime, my capacity as Curator at Poster House will remain as the person who sources exhibitions, reviews shows, chooses guest curators, and orchestrates a curatorial rhythm within our exhibition calendar.

Angelina Lippert, Poster House Executive Director and Curator

Let’s talk about the exhibitions. I’m excited about both, “Lester Beall & A New American Identity” and “Fantastical Streets: The Theatrical Posters of Boris Bucan.” These, along with “Just Frame It: How Nike Turned Sports Stars into Heroes,” constitute your fall schedule. How do you decide what shows to feature and which ones you will curate?
The Nike exhibition was actually a long-term desire of our outgoing director, Julia Knight. She’d wanted us to do a show on Nike’s posters since before we opened, so I’m thrilled that we got to mount it with Adam Howard while she was still here. The Beall and Bucan shows were both exhibitions I’d been interested in for quite a while, but needed to find proper places on the calendar to slot in, especially as Bucan is featured in our Jewel Box space that hasn’t been utilized in this capacity since our very first exhibitions on Alphonse Mucha and Cyan. Once I understood the layout of Nike, I knew I could bring back the Jewel Box gallery, and that is a perfect space for Boris Bucan. As for which ones I have previously decided to curate, my specialty is pre-1960s European, American, and Latin American poster design, so whenever we have the opportunity to borrow pieces that are part of the classic canon, that’s my natural bread-and-butter — and who would give up the opportunity to curate a show featuring the only time in history that every poster Beall created for the REA is in one room?

Lester Beall’s poster series for the Rural Electrification Administration, the government agency responsible for bringing power to the rural south, are masterpieces of American Modern design. They’ve become iconic. What is the story behind Beall, a designer from CT, getting and executing the posters the way he did? So, they weren’t just used in the rural south – they were a national campaign, with evidence of them traveling to Appalachia, the South-Eastern United States, the Midwest—really, all over. But they weren’t just used in rural areas to convince people to buy into electrical co-ops. They were also used in major cities, mostly Washington, D.C., to convince people (read: wealthy white men) to support FDR’s policies around electrification. They were just as much urban propaganda for a liberal policy as they were advertisements for a domestic amenity. Today, they stand as what I believe are the best examples of American Modernism before the war. As for how Beall got the commission and executed the brief, very little is known regarding specifics. I spent a week up at RIT where Beall’s archive is held, and while there are invoices and a few letters around this series, there is no document I can point to that tells us why he was chosen. My best guess, which I state in the wall text, is that he was always an independent agent, and not being tied to a larger advertising agency made him a lot easier to deal with than a more corporate entity. He also was highly adept at taking European Modernist concepts and filtering them through a much more literal American lens. We’re the land of Norman Rockwell and James Montgomery Flagg, not the Bauhaus — finding a way to be direct and to sell something through a streamlined version of modernism was something Beall mastered at that time, and which made the posters stand out among their peers.

What did you discover about Beall’s work that made you focus on “A New American Identity”?
That part of the title is less about Beall’s work specifically (although it does apply), and more about how the work Beall produced was promoting a cultural shift in America. When Beall was hired to create the posters for the REA, only 10% of the United States had access to electricity. By the time the third series was printed, that number was up to 50% (and would be 90% by the end of the decade). That’s a staggering amount of progress that happened in a relatively short period of time — and I can’t overstate how life-changing electricity is. The wall labels I’ve written actually go into pretty deep detail on what any task depicted in a poster would have involved pre-electricity. For example, laundry without electricity is a three-day task, starting with killing a pig to make lye soap. You then have to pump water, physically, usually outside; boil that water; agitate the clothes with the soap; get more water to rinse them; and then hang them outside to dry, which, in the colder months, meant they froze. Once you have electricity, that’s the work of an afternoon. Beall is advertising a service that changed the way Americans lived.

Do you believe he was the wellspring of collage as a Modernist tool in the U.S.?
It’s interesting that you think of his work as collage, though that’s obviously not wrong. I think his version of photomontage/collage/photogram is different from a lot of what inspired other designers working in the United States, be they local or of foreign extraction. It lacks the chaos and cheeky humor of a lot of Dada collages that would have been known at the time, and it isn’t as slick or soulless as a lot of the more corporate-style photomontage designs that were being made simultaneously. For example, I love Erik Nitsche (and am doing a show on him in the spring), but Beall’s use of photography is much less clinical than Nitsche’s, while also managing to be less abstract. He’s using photographic elements to play with scale and space and to draw one’s eye around the composition. It’s much more dynamic and inventive than a lot of what else was being produced—and, as such, I absolutely think that he added to the interest in collage as a Modernist tool in early 20th-century American design.

Why does his work look so fresh today?
As with a lot of modern design that manages to retain its power over the decades, I believe Beall’s work remains exciting and impactful because it didn’t rely on trends, so it avoids looking dated. His concept of “thrusts and counterthrusts” is just a means by which a designer keeps the viewer’s eye moving fluidly around a page, and that’s something all designers still want people to do when viewing their work. His approach is timeless.

You also show a group of striking posters by the late Croatian designer/painter Boris Bucan. What particularly attracted you to this well-known in Europe but virtually unknown in the US design work?
Oh, I’ve been a fan of Bucan forever! His Firebird, which is featured in the show, was the cover of The Power of the Poster, a text any poster historian knows well, and he is, I believe, the ONLY designer to represent his country at the Venice Biennial with posters (some of which are also in the show). I only wish I had more access to more of his work that I could have made a larger exhibition to celebrate him.

Are his posters in your growing Poster House collection?
Yes! All but two of the pieces in the show belong to us, and we have a variety of other posters by Bucan in our archives. They were actually some of the first posters the museum purchased when we were founded.

Do you try to find some link between shows? If so, I don’t see the two above as related to each other or the Nike show. What is your curatorial logic?
In general, I craft the curatorial calendar to make sure there’s as much diversity of expression as possible on at any given time. With these shows, we’ve got classic American modernism, pop culture sports stars, and a lesser-known but incredibly important Eastern European designer. We’ve also got a London Underground and Munich Olympic show opening in November–so there’s something for everyone. That said, there’s always some dialogue between the shows. In this case, the Nike posters are created at the same time as the posters by Bucan—demonstrating how vast the design world is at any moment in time. Meanwhile, Bucan’s posters are made through silkscreen, as are Beall’s, demonstrating how one production method can result in striking different outcomes.

As director will you be doing less curatorial work, or just loading everything on?
While I just handed in my last big show for the next few years that will be opening this spring, I will continue to construct the curatorial calendar and work on building exhibitions—just less in a writing and research capacity. That said, I’ve already found that the director role is just as intense as my former chief curator one, so I’ll be keeping just as busy, I promise.

What is your personal vision for this unique museum that is now under your wing?
I’ve been a poster historian all my adult life, and being able to shape the trajectory of poster scholarship and appreciation through an institution as specialized and unique as Poster House is both humbling and exhilarating. The previous director, Julia, was tasked with building a reputable museum from scratch—and she did that exceptionally well. Now that we’re more established, I want to push the museum to be the go-to authority on poster history by delivering incisive and entertaining exhibitions that you can’t see anywhere else. I want Poster House to make people fall more in love with this medium and see it as just as legitimate, if not more important, than fine art as a means through which we can understand the history of visual communication.

The post The Daily Heller: This Fall, Poster House has Three New Shows and One New Director appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Daily Heller: Don’t Let This Be Your Last Chance to Vote!

Steven Heller — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Timothy Goodman

The Norman Rockwell Museum has launched The Unity Project 2024, a poster campaign to motivate people to vote. Distributed primarily through social media, the campaign features striking images and messages from six top contemporary illustrators who reach a wide range of audiences: Monica Ahanonu, Lisk Feng, Timothy Goodman (above), Edel Rodriguez, Gary Taxali and Shar Tui’asoa/Punky Aloha.

Edel Rodriguez

The campaign went live on Aug. 23 with the launch of the first image on Instagram, to be “followed by a cadenced release of images, messages and voting resources leading up to election day,” say the organizers. The original artwork will also be on view as a featured installation in the Norman Rockwell Museum’s lobby through election season.

The Unity Project draws inspiration from Rockwell and reflects the museum’s public mission to foster civic engagement and participation through art. “Nonpartisan and action-oriented, the Unity Project encourages Americans to embrace our shared constitutional right and privilege to elect a government of, by, and for the people,” the organizers add. “It reflects the belief that when we come together as a nation to vote, we affirm our commitment to democracy, our communities, our nation and each other.”

Monica Ahanonu

Lisk Feng

Gary Taxali

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Stuart Semple Calls Out Hostile Architecture with Powerful OOH Campaign

Charlotte Beach — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:05:07 +0000

Stuart Semple has never shied away from making a stand. The cornerstone of his ethos as an artist has been standing up against injustices in the art world, like making certain trademarked colors accessible to all and combatting Anish Kapoor of Vantablack infamy. More recently, Semple has set his sights on calling out “hostile architecture” throughout London, teaming up with TBWA on a shocking yet critical OOH campaign.

Hostile architecture is a design element in a public space that is intended to keep people away. It’s primarily an effort that targets the houseless community and makes sleeping and simply existing even more challenging than it already is for such a vulnerable and under-supported group.

The always thoughtful and impassioned Semple answered a few of my questions about the awareness campaign, shedding light on the evils of hostile architecture and why he felt compelled to do something about it.

(Conversation lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Can you define “hostile architecture” for our readers?

Hostile architecture is the practice of designing things to create environments that discourage people from being there or using the space in specific ways.

An example would be installing spikes in a doorway so homeless people couldn’t sleep there. Or using a high-pitched sound in a city center that young people can hear yet older people can’t, which is used to discourage skateboarding. It could be a metal bar on a bench so nobody could sleep on it.

I like to call it “hostile design” because I see it as a subversion of design, and when we refer to it as architecture, we think about buildings. I think of it more as a perversion of creativity, something used against humanity and tends to appear in things like street furniture.

[Hostile design] is a perversion of creativity, something used against humanity.

Why is raising awareness around hostile architecture so important to you?

I believe our towns, cities, high streets, and civic centers are really important. They are social spaces that we all use, and they are becoming increasingly hostile. As an artist and a designer I’ve always tried my very best to use what little talent I have to make things better for people and solve problems. Hostile design is the opposite of that; it’s using creativity to cause harm.

I want to raise awareness because hostile design can be invisible until you understand what you are looking at. It hides in plain sight. Once you see it and know what you’re looking for, you literally see it everywhere. Once we become aware of something, we start to change it. I’ve seen a lot of cities and towns changing track now because they understand the issue, and they know they won’t get away with creating cruel spaces.

The more the public understands this, the more our leaders will be under pressure to stop doing it. I hope that in the future, we start to look at proper solutions for homelessness and anti-social behavior rather than using design to move the problem on to somewhere else. I want to see our public spaces being inclusive, compassionate, and helpful.

How did your idea for this campaign develop?

I was working with a big US city, and one of the things I was doing was designing a train station. I found myself in quite bureaucratic meetings with the transit authority. It wasn’t long before they started trying to co-opt my design and make sure it repelled homeless people, skateboarders, and drug users. My scheme was much more humane than that, but they pushed back hard. I remember telling them I didn’t want the gig, even though it was (and probably still is) the biggest thing I’ve ever walked away from. I couldn’t bring myself to be part of something like that.

I got home to my hometown of Bournemouth, where I noticed metal bars on the benches in the high street. I’d probably walked past them a million times. But this time, I could see they’d been retrofitted so homeless people couldn’t sleep on them. I took a photo of it, put it on Facebook, and explained what it was. The next day, I woke up, and the post had a million shares. People all over the world were saying they had similar things in their local areas. I knew it was important and something that needed to be challenged.

I launched HostileDesign.org and worked with the homeless community in Bournemouth to decorate the benches, turning them into art installations called ‘love benches.’ It was all over the news, and the council took all the bars off the benches in the middle of the night. People from all over the world started ordering the stickers from the website and tagging hostile design in their communities. Recently, I teamed up with TBWA, and they installed posters over doorway spikes in London.

The potency comes from the fact that the photographs are life-size; you are confronted with the harsh reality of a human coming into violent contact with the spikes.

What was the installation process like?

It was quite easy. Sadly, the spikes themselves are so nasty that pushing a poster through them wasn’t hard. What I really like about the campaign is how direct it looks and that the posters are made to measure the [installation] site.

How has the campaign been received so far?

It’s been incredible. It’s got a lot of people talking and helped push the campaign and dialogue forward. The potency comes from the fact that the photographs are life-size; you are confronted with the harsh reality of a human coming into violent contact with the spikes.

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Meanwhile No. 208

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

This week I am mostly obsessed with Le Bon Samaritain by Charles Angrand, 1895. I know nothing about it or him, but there’s something deliciously sci-fi about its eery glow; like if you plugged a Minority Report precog into a fax machine.

Le Bon Samaritain by Charles Angrand (1854-1926), via Christies

Couple of new posts on The Book Cover Review worth a look see: Joe McLaren on The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters and Tree Abraham on Parker Mabee’s A Wander in the Woods.

33 1/3 have announced their new batch of titles, including Andi Harriman on The Cure’s Disintegration, Yousef Srour on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Joel Mayward on Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell. I’m amazed they’ve been going this long and still haven’t covered Swift in any way whatsoever. Love her or not, it’s a weird omission.

Excellent thread of behind the scenes shots of classic album covers. Particularly love all the Björk ones, natch.

Agnès Poirier meets the army of artisans tasked with rebuilding the Notre Dame, the 12th-century ‘soul of France’. Incredibly, it looks like they’re going to hit the target date arbitrarily thrown down by Macron the day after the fire.

The Quiet Persuader on iPlayer, a 1965 documentary following New York ad-man Stephen Frankfurt. Half an hour very well spent.

100 of the greatest posters of celebrities urging you to READ; in which James Folta bravely attempts to rank the iconic American Library Association series. The Connery one always cracks me up.

How design’s oldest org torched a decade of discourse—when AIGA Eye on Design vanished overnight, it exposed a troubling lack of stewardship in preserving our industry’s legacy. How can we ensure our design history endures in the digital age?

Do I need these decade-spanning Japanese SNOOPY COMIC SELECTION books? Why yes, yes I do.

That is all.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image: Unsplash+ with Michael Tucker.

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A Look Back with Michael Braley, NVA Class of 1999

PRINT Editorial Team — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

PRINT New Visual Artists have remained at the forefront of visual culture since the dawn of the new millennium.

In 1999, we looked ahead to the new millennium. Concerns about a Y2K bug were kicking around. The Matrix was winning at the box office, and The X-Files and The Sopranos were at the height of their popularity. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator were becoming industry standards, and creativity was thriving across all disciplines.

1999 was also the second year of the PRINT New Visual Artists showcase. Launched the prior year as a way for the PRINT editorial team to seek out and identify emerging visual artists from around the world, the inaugural class included an impressive list of designers, including Michael Braley. Five years earlier, Braley had graduated from Iowa State and was working at Cahan & Associates, looking ahead to his burgeoning career.

I knew I wanted to be in San Francisco. I loved the city and its creative pulse. After a few years, in which I was lucky to work with Stone Yamashita and then Elixir Design, I landed at Cahan & Associates where I worked on projects ranging from brand identity to packaging to annual reports.
Michael Braley, 2024

Trimble Newsletter | Stone Yamashita; Seeing Jazz Book Cover | Elixir Design; 1997 Annual Report Design for COR Therapeutics | Cahan & Associates

I always believed it was important to be recognized especially as a young designer. I remember going to interviews with my big black portfolio, which had a side pocket with the magazines in which I had been featured and Post-it notes marking the pages with my work. Bill (Cahan) also knew the value of award recognition. (I think he’s won thousands in his career). So, when I asked him to endorse me for the PRINT New Visual Artist showcase, he said an enthusiastic yes!
Michael Braley, 2024

Sappi Ideas that Matter Tenth Anniversary Promotion

After twelve years in San Francisco and being in demand, Braley worked for a time at VSA Partners before relocating to Kentucky. His business, Braley Design, has been flourishing for thirty-one years.

Braley, known for his clear, simple, and impactful work, has a mantra: communicate immediately and aim for seamless integration between form and content. His work has been recognized internationally and is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe (Art and Design) in Hamburg, Finland’s Lahti Poster Museum, and The Museum of the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, Poland.

Poster Designs by Michael Braley

I still believe that it’s important to put yourself out there to your colleagues, peers and potential clients. When you’re young, it’s all about carving a path for yourself and finding your place in the creative landscape. For me, participating in competitions is about being exposed to new techniques and ideas so that my work remains relevant and being inspired so that I can always find the joy in design.
Michael Braley, 2024

Brand Identity and Catalog Design for United States International Poster Biennial 2023

Do you want to share your skill, talent, and joy? Do you believe your work has longevity? Inspire others to follow your path by entering the 2024 PRINT New Visual Artists showcase!

late deadline rate ends tomorrow august 6

Featured Image – Book Design for The Woven Perspective, The Work of Photographer Jock MacDonald

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The Daily Heller: Watch as a Drawing Drama Unfolds

Steven Heller — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Martin Azambuja is a graphic designer from Uruguay, currently living and working in New York. Formerly on Micheal Bierut’s team at Pentagram, he’s now working as a senior designer at Porto Rocha. He also co-founded, together with Pentagram partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos, the publishing project Vernacular, and started an online archive tracking down his country’s illustrated heritage.

His new print above is part of the “Unfolding” series, a set of accordion prints from Flecha Books. “The artists are given this format, a folded problem/opportunity,” says Francisco Roca, who in 2018 co-founded the indie press with Leandro Castelao. “We like to think of it a bit like a portfolio piece, something that can capture the graphic essence of the person—as much as that can be done. … When viewers are confronted with these prints, they unfold the artist’s work, hopefully to a pleasing surprise.”

The images are hand-printed in silk, four inks on the front, one on the back. They can be kept closed in a library, unfolded on a shelf or framed on a wall.

Roca notes that there is more to come: At the end of the year, a new title, Iris Alba: Gráfica, will be out. They are also working on an ephemera book about Buenos Aires bookstore labels, and tracking down Milton Glaser’s only conference appearance/interview given in Buenos Aires in 1987 (a significant event for the community, because it took place just two years after the creation of the graphic design curriculum at the University of Buenos Aires).

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Artivism for Social Justice: Merch Aid Drives Change with Their Latest Capsule

Amelia Nash — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 20:00:00 +0000

In the face of ongoing social and political challenges, artists and designers are leveraging their talents to drive meaningful change. Through Merch Aid’s capsule drops—their latest initiative supporting trans rights launches today—creative minds are uniting to raise funds and awareness for critical causes. This month alone, Merch Aid launched two collections underscoring the powerful role of art in activism, demonstrating how design can inspire action and impact lives.

Founded in 2020, Merch Aid is an award-winning social enterprise that collaborates with artists and designers to create fundraising merchandise for non-profit organizations. Initially launched as a relief response to the COVID-19 small business shutdowns, the murder of George Floyd expanded the organization’s vision, highlighting the need for expressive merchandise that resonates with current sentiments to provide a means for impact beyond the pandemic’s scope. Their BLM series raised nearly $50,000, and the AAPI series saw similar success. Merch Aid has raised over half a million dollars and has been featured in major publications, including Vogue and GQ.

As the Supreme Court revisits the contentious issue of trans rights, a group of leading trans designers and allies have united to launch a merch capsule to raise funds for the Transgender Law Center (TLC). This initiative follows the success of the Reproductive Rights capsule released earlier this month, which featured work by notable names such as Jessica Walsh, Debbie Millman, and Gail Anderson and raised funds for the National Network of Abortion Funds.

One of the most important aspects of the reproductive justice movement is the sanctity of every mother’s life. When I state that pro-choice is pro-life, I mean that pro-choice is the mother’s life, and I will always value that above all else.
Debbie Millman, writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the podcast Design Matters

Over 500 anti-trans laws were proposed in 2024 alone, and 53 were passed. The Supreme Court’s decision to review state bans on gender-affirming care for minors further underscores the urgency of this latest capsule collection. The Transgender collection will drop today, Thursday, June 27, at 6 PM EST and will feature artists Ren Rigby, Tea Uglow, Lena Gray, Brooklyn Bruja, Sophia Yeshi, and Doug Rodas.

Opinions don’t change identities, bills don’t change identities, politicians don’t change identities: let trans people be.
Ren Rigby, Chief Design Officer and Founder of Proto

Merch Aid’s initiative is part of a broader art as activism movement, allowing designers to address critical issues and enabling supporters to demonstrate their values visibly. All profits will go to the Transgender Law Center, the largest national trans-led organization advocating for the self-determination of all people. Since 2002, TLC has been organizing, assisting, informing, and empowering thousands of individuals, fostering a long-term, national, trans-led movement for liberation.

No matter what anyone’s personal beliefs are, they are PERSONAL beliefs and should not be projected onto others. The simple arrow pointing down under the belt (or sweatpants) is a reminder that’s what mine is mine. MINE.”
Gail Anderson, graphic designer, writer, typographer, and educator

As trans rights face renewed challenges, this merch capsule not only raises essential funds but also amplifies the voices and artistry of the transgender community, underscoring the power of unity and creativity in the fight for justice. Following this capsule, a series of drops by other renowned artists will continue leading up to the election, focusing on social issues such as bodily autonomy, trans rights, immigration, voting rights, and more.

Design has the power to create change, make people think differently, and mobilize people to action. I’m excited to team up with Merch Aid this year to bring more attention to reproductive freedom at such a critical time and election year. Together, by harnessing the power of design, we can raise awareness and inspire action to protect and advance reproductive rights.”
Jessica Walsh, founder of the creative agency &Walsh

Visit Merch Aid to learn more about their capsule drops and to showcase your values by getting your hands on some merch.

Imagery courtesy of Merch Aid.

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Mythmaking and the Metropolis: Book Club Recap with Nicholas Lowry & Angelina Lippert

PRINT Editorial Team — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 11:29:21 +0000

Missed our conversation with Nicholas Lowry and Angelina Lippert? Register here to watch this episode of PRINT Book Club.

Until the launch of Wonder City of the World (book and exhibition), there had never been an exhibition about New York City travel posters. We found this hard to believe! In fact, no one has written a book about them, either. Not even PRINT’s prolific design history hunter, Steven Heller. Poster House wanted to rectify this.

So, Nicholas Lowry (Poster House board member, writer, and antiques expert—you may know his face from Antiques Roadshow) and Angelina Lippert (chief curator for Poster House) set out to design an exhibition on this poster design genre. Abrams then proposed a book. The sheer amount of posters worthy of our discussion and appreciation wouldn’t fit on Poster House’s walls—the book became a great vehicle to explore this fascinating slice of design history.

The book’s name comes from one of the many monikers given to New York City throughout its history as a destination: for immigrants seeking better lives, for droves coming to the 1939 World’s Fair, for the thousands of tourists who’ve flocked to the city’s sights for centuries. The original name for the exhibition was “Mythmaking and the Metropolis”—we love this, for the record!—however, the book’s editor wanted to simplify and so Wonder City, the book, was born.

Wonder is appropriate. The collection offers an idealized portrait of New York City, accompanied by essays on the posters’ design, the artists (if known; most are not), and the artists’ representation of the city. Our discussion included all kinds of fun facts and little-known details about New York and the history of advertising the city all over the globe. The topic proved to be the ultimate rabbit hole for Lowry.

I haven’t met a rabbit hole I haven’t wanted to jump down.
Nicholas Lowry, writer and curator

If you’d like to go down your own rabbit hole on this topic, register here to watch the recording of our fascinating discussion with Lowry and Lippert.

Haven’t purchased a copy of Wonder City of the World: New York Travel Posters? You can order one here.

If you are in New York, visit the Poster House exhibition, which features a selection of these incredible artifacts of design history. Wonder City of the World is on view until September 8. Poster House’s upcoming exhibitions include everything from Lester Beall to the London Underground to the Munich Olympics, the NYC subway, Nike, and more. Learn more at posterhouse.org.

See you next month!

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Meanwhile No. 202

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

After a period of downtime, the thoroughly excellent things magazine has returned with a massive collection of typically fascinating links (including a mention of Meanwhile, which is always nice). One highlight: behind the partly AI, partly get-rich-quick scheme, entirely bad for consumers garbage ebook market.

Arguably the worst aspect of the current AI revolution¹ is the god-awful deployment of it by humans who aren’t paying attention. Behold, Sidney Lumet’s 1957 masterpiece: 19 Angry Malformed Men.

Look at this! Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, by Frank Horvat, 1959. Incredible image. Found while perusing the Holden Luntz Gallery. “Using a Leica camera with a telephoto lens on a tripod, Horvat took several thirty-second exposures so that the architecture and some people would be still, and the moving crowd would blur. … The image itself was “rediscovered” by Horvat almost thirty years after it was shot and now has come to be regarded as one of his most extraordinary photographs.”

Watching the fine folks at Fourth Cone restoring old posters is very much my happy place. A week of loitering in their studio, just quietly observing, is my idea of a perfect holiday. This recent vid of them linen-backing a 1935 railroad map of the US is particularly calming.

H.R. Giger’s catflap.

The latest Pentagram Paper is designed by Jane Plüer and features some of her extensive collection of modernist poster stamps – “these mini masterpieces originated in nineteenth-century Europe and are now highly valued as an important part of the history of graphic design, popular art and social tradition.”

251 words you can spell with a calculator.²

It’s fascinating to see Nirvana’s second life as ubiquitous line of t-shirts is now pulling other Gen X staples onto the high street. A quick scroll through H&M’s current selection and you’ve got The Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers, Alice in Chains, The Smashing Pumpkins. Do the kids even know these bands? Does it matter?

That is all.

Revolution feels like the wrong word, doesn’t it? Far too hopeful. Uprising maybe? Calamity? Apocalypse? ↩︎
I would add the utterly horrific 58081704 to that list. ↩︎

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header image by Fanette Guilloud / Death To Stock.

The post Meanwhile No. 202 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

PRINT Awards 2024 Student Spotlight: Winners in Packaging, Posters, IX/UX, Information Design & More

PRINT Awards — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 16:05:00 +0000

Every year, the PRINT Awards jury is astounded by the quality of student entries and the extraordinary skill and dedication demonstrated in their work. This year, we opened up the PRINT Awards to students in every category. Here, we celebrate the amazing work in categories from packaging, motion graphics & video, IX/UX, posters, and environmental design to outdoor/billboards and data visualization/information design.

Data Visualization/Information Design

First Place

Street Gum Dots Marching Symphony
Jae Young Kim – Pratt Institute
USA

The Street Gum Dots project accumulated 100 findings in multiples to examine the sequence of a database and transform it into visual narratives to represent the experience in graphical representations. Over four weeks, 100 sets of gum dots on street tiles were collected by 3D scanning following the self-constrained walking directions and the shuffled music playing on Spotify.

Second Place

Fashion, Beauty and Post-Colonial Perceptions
Joumana Ibrahim – Savannah College of Art and Design
USA/Dubai

Stereotypes about Arab women’s beauty standards are often perpetuated by Western media, but they overlook the cultural roots of these practices. Historically, grooming and fashion have been integral to Arab culture, with women socializing in gender-specific spaces like Dubai’s hair salons and Damascus’ hammams. Affordable beauty services further widen access. Arab women’s approach to feminism, embracing cultural and religious differences, challenges Western stereotypes. Visual displays inspired by Lebanese Instagram influencer Lilian, using data from Statista, highlight the influence and empowerment of Arab women in their region and globally.

Third Place

Me, My Languages, and I
Joumana Ibrahim – Savannah College of Art and Design
USA

Dissecting thoughts through languages: Consciously extracting and quantifying the components of the languages the designer uses daily. In this project, Joumana looked at her WhatsApp messages and voice notes for two weeks in January and focused on the languages she used when communicating with people. The infographic consolidates all the 600+ data points she extracted from the messages, which are organized using the following categories: languages, relationship, time, date, nationality, emotion, conversation content, and media sharing.

Environmental Design

First Place

Bike Lane Parking Preventer
Yoon Seo Kim – School of Visual Arts
USA

Many New York City bike riders feel stressed when drivers park or load items in bike lanes, despite a new ‘Citizen Reporting’ bill meant to address this issue. Lack of driver awareness and forgetfulness are key reasons for these violations. Yoon Seo Kim designed a bike lane reminder to guide drivers without offending them, finding the process enjoyable and personally meaningful due to their own biking experiences.

Second Place

Elephant in the room
Eason Yang
USA

NED, a non-profit named for “No Evidence of Disease” and “Not Entirely Dead,” champions cancer survivors in the workplace by highlighting their extraordinary abilities forged through adversity, making them exceptionally employable. It challenges the negative perception of cancer-related career gaps, emphasizing that the resilience, determination, and empathy gained from battling cancer are valuable skills sought by employers. The project seeks to raise awareness of the stigma and bias against cancer survivors’ resume gaps, addressing the “elephant in the room.”

Third Place

Fidelis: A Study in Fraktur Calligraphy
Conner Gayda – Jacksonville State University
USA

This installation reimagines blackletter typography by transforming it from its medieval origins into a medium for social commentary. Conner’s hand-drawn calligraphic letterforms adopt the politically charged aesthetics of D.I.Y./punk music, using gritty, highlighter green posters with provocative political imagery to create a contemporary altarpiece. The installation’s centerpiece features three immersive typographic murals made of masking tape, legible only from specific angles to evoke the distorted art of punk music. The largest mural spells “fidelis,” symbolizing perseverance amidst the chaos, and collectively, the installation challenges traditional perceptions of blackletter typography.

IX/UX

First Place

Deafinite
Jingxin Xu – School of Visual Arts
USA

Deafinite is a pioneering suite of Mixed Reality (MR) devices designed to empower individuals with hearing impairments, particularly in travel settings where verbal language barriers may exist. It features an innovative traveling app with Augmented Reality (AR) Navigation for easy navigation and Deafinite Glasses for real-time communication with non-sign language users. This integration of advanced technology enhances accessibility and inclusivity, enabling confident and independent travel for those with hearing impairments.

Second Place

Sproute App Prototype
Zach Hall and Jordan Heath – University of North Texas
USA

Transportation accounts for 29% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. If each worker avoided driving just two days a week, they could cut their annual emissions by about 1,600 pounds per person. Sproute, a navigational app, not only promotes sustainable transit options but also fosters a supportive community encouraging users to adopt eco-friendly transportation. The app gamifies these choices through points, badges, and leaderboards, aiming to make sustainable travel engaging. Developed by a team of two in a junior interaction design course, Sproute features custom illustrations, badges, icons, and maps, with phases including research, wireframing, style guides, and a final Figma prototype.

Third Place

Trash Panda App Prototype
Macy McClish and Keaton Dillard – University of North Texas
USA

Trash Panda addresses the average household’s $1,866 annual food waste issue by offering a user-friendly app for food tracking, inventory management, grocery lists, and meal planning. Designed with custom illustrations and lively copywriting, Trash Panda aims to motivate users to better manage their kitchens. The app features streamlined flows for grocery shopping, recipe management, and inventory organization, along with intuitive list building and helpful notifications. Its branding and logo design emphasize a fun and approachable tool that encourages efficient use of food resources while reducing waste.

Motion Graphics & Video

First Place

Mirage
Jeffrey Xiyang Su, Hanson Ma, Michael Wang – Art Center College of Design
USA

The design team from Art Center College of Design crafted Mirage, an animated short film depicting a poignant love story transcending social barriers. Their aim was to blend the complexities of cyberpunk aesthetics with deep emotional storytelling, showcasing their technical prowess and creative evolution. Premiering at the Ahmanson Auditorium, Mirage symbolizes their journey, emphasizing perseverance, pursuit of excellence, and the power of teamwork in achieving artistic milestones.

Second Place

Happy Little Birthday
Juni Kweon – Art Center College of Design
USA

“Happy Little Birthday” is a touching 3D animation that portrays a personal story about the childhood fear of celebrating birthdays alone. The narrative unfolds from the perspective of a mysterious hand meticulously preparing for a birthday celebration, from setting up music to lighting candles on a cake. Despite efforts, the hand faces loneliness until a little bird appears, offering companionship and a heartfelt gift. This gesture turns the birthday into a joyful and memorable occasion, emphasizing themes of warmth, friendship, and the reassurance that even in solitude, one can find companionship and happiness.

Third Place

Rapp Snitch Knishes
Audrey Whang – School of Visual Arts
USA

In this vibrant animated motion music video for “Rapp Snitch Knishes,” an homage to the late rapper MF DOOM unfolds. The video showcases a captivating fusion of mixed-media imagery and digital collages, capturing the essence of MF DOOM’s persona. Bold typography adds an energetic layer to the visuals, complementing the dynamic portrayal of the legendary artist. Throughout the video, the iconic color palette associated with MF DOOM is prominently featured, infusing each frame with his unmistakable aesthetic. This homage not only celebrates MF DOOM’s enduring legacy but also serves as a testament to his influence on contemporary music and visual culture, ensuring that his artistic spirit continues to resonate with audiences worldwide.

Outdoor/Billboards

First Place

Spy
Ting Jui Chang – School of Visual Arts
USA

The International Spy Museum in Washington D.C., renowned for its exploration of espionage, undergoes a rebranding inspired by the secretive aura of classified documents, notably their blacked-out sections. This motif infuses the museum’s identity with the allure of mystery and secrecy inherent to espionage. By incorporating elements reminiscent of redacted files, the new brand captures the intrigue and clandestine nature of the spy world. This innovative approach transforms the museum’s identity into a captivating reflection of its mission to delve into intelligence and intrigue, inviting visitors on a journey into the covert realm of spies.

Second Place

Go Skateboarding Day
Hyowon Kwon – School of Visual Arts
USA

Skateboarding, which originated from Californian surfers in the 1900s, has evolved to let skaters enjoy it safely even in busy and densely populated narrow cities in 2023. The goal of this project is to elevate skateboarding from a subculture to a mainstream culture through the “Go Skate” campaign and improve the public’s perception of riders by promoting its enjoyment among the general public. The custom typeface draws inspiration from the various perspectives and shapes of ramps seen during different skateboarding techniques. The typeface can appear plain from one aspect and three-dimensional from another and can be read vertically as well. To enhance the readability of this typeface in posters and billboards, a distorted secondary typeface is used.

Third Place

Elevating Everyday Sounds
Chuanyuan Lin – School of Visual Arts
USA

Crafted as dynamic posters and captivating ad designs, this project aims to showcase the beauty and rhythmic potential of everyday sounds while promoting a STOMP show. The designs highlight how this performance art turns mundane noises into a mesmerizing spectacle through visually engaging graphics and compelling messaging. By emphasizing STOMP’s unique blend of percussion, movement, and creativity, the campaign invites audiences to witness firsthand the transformation of ordinary sounds into extraordinary performances. With each element meticulously crafted to evoke the show’s energy and excitement, the posters and ads serve as powerful tools to entice and captivate viewers, drawing them into the world of rhythm and innovation.

Packaging

First Place

Horsepower Cold Brew Coffee
Vasavi Bubna – School of Visual Arts
USA

Just like a car’s engine would seize up without motor oil, many people cannot make it through the day without their caffeine fix. Inspired by vintage motor oil cans, Horsepower Cold Brew Coffee depicts coffee as a fuel for humans. Along with the hand-lettered wordmark, a maker’s mark was also designed to go on the cap of the coffee tins. The ratios on each can represent the steeping time and intensity of the brew. The coffee packages come with a card with mixing ratios for the concentrate, as well as a set of funnels to channel the true feeling of an auto-body shop. The design of these cards was inspired by old gas station receipt designs.

Second Place

Dark Energy
Eshaan Sojatia – Rochester Institute of Technology
USA

In order to show dark energy and other things in the universe, the project had to be done in black and white only. Each cover delves into a different part of a cosmic mystery, from Acceleration of the Universe, Cosmological Constant, Modified Gravity Theories, and Quintessence to Emergent Gravity. Eshaan used a dynamic mix of graphic elements and geometric shapes along with typography to create elements that represent the forces. The designer stuck to a black-and-white color scheme as a metaphor for how mysterious and hard to pin down dark energy.

Third Place

Never Will
Rabiya Gupta – School of Visual Arts
USA

The design team here was tasked with creating type-only album covers based on a randomly assigned art movement and music genre. Rabiya was given the Bauhaus movement and country music and decided to create a cover for Never Will by country music artist Ashley McBryde. Embracing Bauhaus’s emphasis on geometric forms, the designer integrated these elements into my design, infusing it with a sense of modernist aesthetics. However, to imbue the cover with a personal touch, the designer introduced a functional dimension, crafting a typographic pattern and system that echoed Bauhaus principles while also resonating with the spirit of country music. This fusion of influences resulted in a visually compelling cover that pays homage to Bauhaus while capturing the essence of McBryde’s music.

Posters

First Place

Alzheimer’s Poster
Emily Brown – University of Texas at Arlington
USA

This poster was created for Alzheimer’s Awareness. Emily wanted to use collage to show the dispersion of memories and the idea of the loss of self/who you are with the onset of the disease. After seeing what her grandmother and father went through when caring for her grandfather as he lived with Alzheimer’s, she also wanted to include a positive message for parents and caregivers, reminding them that memory loss is not the end of hope. The designer also includes ways to contact the Alzheimer’s Association, where to get help, and how to give to their cause.

Second Place

Barely Hanging On
Sean Howes – University of North Texas
USA

For this project, the designer had to create a poster design to visualize a social issue of our choice. The suicide rate among workers in the construction industry is 53.3 deaths per 100,000 persons, which is much higher than the overall rate of 12.93 per 100,000 U.S. citizens. The hand grasping the bucket of tools symbolized the workers’ strength and pride in their work. The wrist about to snap symbolizes poor mental health, yet the hand still holds onto the bucket, refusing to show weakness even though their “Barely Holding on”.

Third Place

Synesthesia
Jia Li – School of Visual Arts
USA

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon, a “crossing of the senses,” in which one sense triggers another sense. For instance, listening to music may evoke an individual’s perception of colors and shapes. This series “Synesthesia,” explores the relationship between human perceptions, based on how we interpret various sensations, and individuals with synesthesia may “see” sound, “touch” smell, and “smell” color. A person experiencing synesthesia may observe that their senses blend, adding an extra dimension to their perception of the world. For instance, they may associate taste with colors, feel textures when eating, and describe shapes as either “round” or “pointy.”

NEXT: We spotlight student winners in advertising, annual reports, branding identities, brochures, editorial, and logos.

The post PRINT Awards 2024 Student Spotlight: Winners in Packaging, Posters, IX/UX, Information Design & More appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

PRINT Awards 2024 Spotlight: Winners in Packaging, Motion, Environmental, Data Visualization & More

PRINT Awards — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000

From product packaging to data and experiential space, design tells a story so that consumers and individuals can make informed, inspired, and sometimes emotional decisions. This year, the PRINT Awards entries in a variety of categories, including packaging, data visualization, IX/UX and environmental design all told deeply moving stories that resonated with our jury.

Data Visualization & Information Design

First Place

City Pulse 2023: The Future of Central Business Districts
Minjung Lee – Gensler Research Institute
USA

Gensler’s City Pulse 2023 report examines the future of central business districts (CBDs) by analyzing insights from 26,000 survey respondents across 53 cities globally. It addresses challenges such as business closures, reduced foot traffic, and office vacancies in CBDs three years into the pandemic. The report provides a global overview of findings and focuses on three downtown personas: residents, employees, and local visitors. For each group, it offers insights into their current experiences in CBDs, statistical predictors of a great downtown experience, and future-proofing strategies. Additionally, the report includes regional and city-specific data in an appendix. Ultimately, City Pulse 2023 suggests that by catering to the diverse needs of residents, employees, and visitors, CBDs can revitalize and thrive in the future.

Additional credits:
Lela Johnson, Laura Latham

Second Place

203 X Infographics
Sung Hwan – Infographics Lab 203
Republic of Korea

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a world-famous classic Chinese novel, is still very much loved. It is a novel that is recognized as the best classic in the East and a must-read book, to the extent that there is a saying, “Do not deal with someone who has not read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms at least three times.” This series of twelve posters tells the story of the Three Kingdoms, centered around the main characters of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, through this infographic. Posters represent Greek and Roman Mythology, Journey to the West, Giant Panda, King Sejong, Pictogram, Taipei, and Yoga.

Third Place

Global Workplace Survey Comparison 2023
Minjung Lee – Gensler Research Institute
USA

The 2023 Global Workplace Survey Comparison examines responses from 14,000 full-time office workers across nine countries and three continents, aiming to understand how workplaces can enhance employee performance and experience amid the transition to mobile work. The report reveals that high-performing workplaces significantly improve personal productivity, job satisfaction, career advancement, work/life balance, and personal health, while also fostering team outcomes such as community sense, relationships, connection to company mission, and productivity. Workers in top workplaces recognize their positive impact on business outcomes, displaying higher engagement, commitment, workflow awareness, team relationships, and a sense of belonging. As organizations shape their future workplace strategies, investing in high-performing workplaces can positively influence business performance at all levels, with employees worldwide seeing the workplace as a preferred destination rather than a mere obligation.

Additional credits:
Lela Johnson, Laura Latham

Student Honorees – Data Visualization & Information Design

First Place – Street Gum Dots Marching Symphony by Jae Young Kim, Pratt Institute, USA
Second Place – Fashion, Beauty and Post-Colonial Perceptions by Joumana Ibrahim, Savannah College of Art and Design, United Arab Emirates
Third Place – Me, My Languages, and I by Joumana Ibrahim, Savannah College of Art and Design, United Arab Emirates

Environmental Design

First Place

Black Power to Black People Exhibition
John Kudos – KASA Collective
USA

The exhibition offers an intimate exploration of how The Black Panther Party utilized branding and media to shape its narrative and garner community support, becoming a significant militant force of its era. The exhibit design features oversized protest signs outside the gallery and iconic photographs of key figures like Huey Newton inside. Organized chronologically, it tracks the development of Black Panther branding across six sections, accompanied by tracks from the Seize the Time LP by Elaine Brown. Bold typography, military colors, striking icons, and heroic imagery of armed members emphasize the party’s powerful design strategies, echoing their impact even decades later.

Additional credits:
Creative Director, John Kudos; 3D Creative Director, Robert de Saint Phalle; Art Director, Ashley Wu; Designer, Fay Qiu; Project Manager, Amanda Knott; 3D Renderer, Imam Fadillah; Design Intern, Saskia Wulandiarti; Photography, Samuel Sachs Morgan

Second Place

Made in Japan Exhibition
John Kudos – KASA Collective
USA

The exhibition offers an immersive exploration of Japan’s graphic design golden age through curated posters from the Merrill C. Berman Collection. Inspired by Ikko Tanaka’s Nihon Buyö poster, the exhibition design incorporates geometric shapes. A triptych of oversized title walls resembling a Japanese folding fan welcomes visitors, creating a seamless exhibit space. Each gallery section features thematic backdrops with vivid colored shapes that progressively enlarge, mirroring the evolution of Japanese graphic design. Oversized typography reminiscent of lettering on ships carrying Japanese immigrants adds a sense of industrialization and globalization, reflecting key influences on Japan’s graphic design history.

Third Place

Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant-Garde
Ola Baldych – Poster House
USA

Poster House’s exhibition “Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant-Garde,” launched in September 2023, charts the trajectory of the Art Deco movement from the 1925 Paris Exhibition to World War II. Designed by Ola Baldych, the exhibit channels Art Deco’s vibrant colors and geometric patterns, with pink symbolizing modernism and metallic designs evoking industrial materials. Hand-painted ombre murals trace the movement’s ascent and decline. Pine slat temporary walls create mid-horizons, complementing the linear patterns in wall graphics, while A.M. Cassandre’s iconic works take center stage, featuring section headings in his “Bifur” font. The design seamlessly integrates with the posters, incorporating dynamic lines and bold hues, blending mechanical production with hand craftsmanship to capture the essence of Art Deco. This immersive exhibition provides a whimsical yet specific exploration of each poster’s significance within the movement.

Student Honorees – Environmental Design

First Place – Bike Lane Parking Preventer by Yoon Seo Kim, School of Visual Arts, USA
Second Place – Elephant in the Room by Eason Yang, USA
Third Place – Fidelis: A Study in Fraktur Calligraphy by Conner Gayda, Jacksonville State University, USA

IX/UX Design

First Place

Studio Museum in Harlem
Base Design
USA

The Studio Museum in Harlem, established in 1968, stands as a vital hub for artists of African descent, fostering creativity, dialogue, and community engagement. To modernize its online presence, the museum enlisted BaseNYC for a website redesign, aiming to reflect its dynamic spirit. Inspired by Harlem’s vibrant atmosphere, the design emulates a brownstone stoop, serving as a lively digital meeting place. Embracing noise as a concept, the website integrates artworks with surrounding creations, placing emphasis on the artists and their narratives. Video and audio clips within the margins further enhance the immersive experience, capturing the essence of the Studio Museum’s energetic setting.

Additional credits:
Mirek Nisenbaum, Min Lew, Andrey Starkov, Harry Laverty, Ross Gendels, Marc Hill, Masha Basyrova, Vivian Valentin, Artem Lyustik, Sergei Khegai, Volha Trehubava, Jerry Johnston, Ji Park

Second Place

theo Transformation Advisory
Hana Snell – Caliber Creative
USA

theo is an advisory group that partners with entrepreneurs, executives, and industry leaders to metamorphose talent and guide their enterprises through transformational journeys. With a refreshed wordmark, visual identity, and inventory of infographics, the brand’s new look reflects the same frameworks meant to transform organizations. The combination of gradients, emanating graphic elements, and gentle brush strokes create an expressive approach to otherwise corporate data visualization. Color is strategically used throughout the website to categorize each level of a client’s journey (talent, culture, and enterprise), while the color-field digital paintings abstractly represent the various impacted industries. This dynamic mixture of elements is energetic and impactful, inspiring clients to trust in the theo expertise and embark on their own metamorphosis.

Additional credits:
Brandon Murphy, Erin Brachman, Trevor Scott, Cosme Olivas

Third Place

Fearless Website
Rony Dixon – Texas Tech University
USA

Fearless is a podcast showcasing the untold stories of Texas Tech through candid interviews with students, faculty, staff, and alumni, introducing listeners to individuals embodying the Red Raiders’ qualities and contributing to the university’s broad impact. With an immersive, long-form storytelling approach, Fearless delivers compelling narratives highlighting the passion and perseverance of the Texas Tech community. The recently redesigned website, launched alongside season three of the podcast in 2023, reflects the podcast’s personal, relatable, impactful, engaging, sincere, and authentic character, prioritizing relevance and connection for listeners.

Additional credits:
Web Design, Rony Dixon; Lead Web Developer, Gary Eubanks; Director of Design, Veronica Medina; Producer and Host, Taylor Peters; Photography, Justin Rex; Photography, Ashley Rodgers; Co-Producer, Allison Hirth

Student Honorees – IX/UX Design

First Place – Deafinite by Jingxin Xu, School of Visual Arts, USA
Second Place – Sproute App Prototype by Zach Hall and Jordan Heath, University of North Texas, USA
Third Place – Trash Panda App Prototype by Macy McClish and Keaton Dillard, University of North Texas, USA

Motion Graphics & Video

First Place

Santé: Designed by Patrick Norguet
Molly Skonieczny – Tolleson
USA

“Santé: Designed by Patrick Norguet” is a meticulously crafted stop-motion animation video created by Tolleson, a creative agency, and Studio TK, a furniture company. Departing from typical designer videos, the duo sought to amplify Studio TK’s voice and stand out in the industry. The video production embraced analog techniques, aligning with Studio TK’s craft furniture production ethos. Through interviews with designer Patrick Norguet, a script was constructed to distill complex design ideologies into understandable visuals. Each handmade prop was carefully placed, capturing the essence of Norguet’s work. Inspired by Norguet’s love for music, the video utilizes visual metaphors to convey profound ideas, such as the transition from black and white to color representing the journey from concept to creation. With around 1,400 frames, the video celebrates the emotional essence underlying every design project, showcasing the art of storytelling through stop-motion sequences and captivating visuals.

Additional credits: Steve Tolleson, Jesse Goldberg, Evan Tolleson, Briana Tarantino; Photography, Eric Einwiller

Second Place

Doris Duke Foundation: When Artists Thrive, We All Thrive
Bryce Bizer – None Other
USA

None Other was commissioned by the Doris Duke Foundation to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Doris Duke Artist Awards, which provides substantial grants to individual performing artists. To capture the essence of a decade of achievements, None Other adopted an unconventional approach. Instead of traditional interviews, they used motion design-based photography paired with audio interviews. This method allowed for flexibility in documenting seven artists across various locations, ensuring a comprehensive narrative. The resulting film was showcased at a landmark anniversary event, garnering widespread attention from both the artistic community and media outlets, including CBS Mornings, NPR, and Billboard.

Additional credits: Daphne Chiang; Photography, Gabriela Bhaskar, Brittainy Newman

Third Place

Dieline Awards 2024
Justin Colt – The Collected Works
USA

The Dieline Awards is an annual competition celebrating outstanding packaging design. For 2024, Dieline approached The Collected Works to create a short film for their upcoming call-for-entries campaign, celebrating the meticulous and material-focused nature of packaging design. The end result is a 30-shot, one-minute-long 3D motion piece exploring the unique properties of various commonly used physical materials, gradually joining together into the form of the Dieline Awards trophy.

Additional credits: Jose Fresneda, Christian Townsend, Vincent Drayne, Mina Son, Justin Raymond Park

Outdoor/Billboards

First Place

Life Less Scary – Billboard Series
Stephanie Morrison – Dunn&Co
USA

Grow Financial, a Federal Credit Union, launched the “Life Less Scary” campaign to address the heightened financial fears of millennials and Gen-Z. They collaborated with 3D artists to create a set of “monster letters,” which were featured in out-of-home placements to represent Grow’s financial products in a visually engaging yet approachable manner. Inflatable versions of the monster letters were displayed on billboards, adding an eye-catching element to the campaign. The monster alphabet was integrated across various campaign elements to convey the message effectively.

Additional credits: Chief Creative Officer, Troy Dunn; Creative Director, Max Dempster; Art Director/UX Design, Mitchell Goodrich; Copywriter, Michala Jackson; Designer, Cris Trespando; Designer, Cody Davis; Account Supervisor, Rachel Jensen; Account Coordinator, Ann Butler

Second Place

I Am Toronto Pearson
Joshua Duchesne – Made by Emblem
Canada

Toronto Pearson Airport launched the “I AM TORONTO PEARSON” (IATP) program in 2016 to support its vast employee community, but the COVID-19 pandemic impacted its business and employee morale. To rejuvenate its workforce and reputation, Pearson sought to revamp the IATP brand, focusing on enhancing employee engagement. Made by Emblem undertook the task, aiming to celebrate Pearson’s employees as resilient heroes. Inspired by Nike athletics, the new brand identity centered on employees, featuring custom typefaces and authentic street photography to reflect the employee community’s spirit.

Additional credits: Megan Drummond, Christina Kim; Photography, Taha Maharuma, Daniel Neuhaus; Videographer, Colin Clark

Third Place

Dream Streetcar
Matt Wegerer – Whiskey Design
USA

In 2023, Barbie Fever took over, and the world couldn’t get enough. Barbie has had dream houses, dream campers, and dream boats, but she has never had a Dream Streetcar. That is how the Kansas City Streetcar was transformed into this pink dream. This toy-inspired makeover included sticker headlines, fake wheels, and perforated curtains. The inside was also decked out with the latest fashion of Barbie, Ken, and yes, even Allen.

Additional credits: Lindsey Musil; Photography, Travis Carroll, Monica Melber; Printer, Signco; Videographer, James Meierotto

Student Honorees – Outdoor & Billboards

First Place – Spy by Ting Jui Chang, School of Visual Arts, USA
Second Place – Go Skateboarding Day by Hyowon Kwon, School of Visual Arts, USA
Third Place – Elevating Everyday Sounds by Chuanyuan Lin, School of Visual Arts, USA

Packaging

First Place

Lou Reed / Words & Music / May 1965 – Special Edition Packaging
Masaki Koike – Phyx Design
USA

Lou Reed – Words & Music offers an extraordinary, unvarnished, and plainly poignant insight into one of America’s true poet songwriters. Capturing Reed in his formative years, this previously unreleased collection of songs—penned by a young Lou Reed, recorded to tape with the help of future bandmate John Cale, and mailed to himself as a “poor man’s copyright”—remained sealed in its original envelope and unopened for nearly 50 years. Its contents embody some of the most vital, groundbreaking contributions to American popular music committed to tape in the 20th century.

Second Place

Golden Hour
Miles McKirdy – Golden Hour Wellness
USA

Golden Hour is pioneering the evolving cannabis industry in the United States, capitalizing on its legal infancy to redefine consumer perceptions. Positioned as a disruptive and approachable brand, Golden Hour aims to transcend the stereotypical ‘stoner’ culture, offering a sophisticated approach to cannabis consumption. With a mission to be recognized as more than just a product, the brand strategically focuses on five key areas: Branding, Engagement, Education, Innovative Packaging, and Sustainability.

Additional credits: Creative Director, Miles McKirdy; Brand Strategist (and Miles’s Partner), Jessica Arnone; Project Director (and Miles’s Dad), Dr. Mark Lewis McKirdy; Art Director (and Miles’s Mum), Carol Mary McKirdy; Photography Cheyenne Lawson

Third Place

The Grappler
CF Napa Brand Design
USA

Vinoce Vineyards brought back their Zinfandel brand, “The Grappler,” due to popular demand. Partnering with CF Napa, they aimed to give it a bold new look for exclusive sale at their tasting room and wine club. Drawing on parallels between winemaking and wrestling, CF Napa created colorful labels inspired by Lucha Libre. The angled placement adds a lively touch, celebrating wrestling while honoring the Vinoce Vineyards owner’s ties to Mexico and the farmworkers there. Collectors are encouraged to collect all six wines, each featuring a unique mask design.

Student Honorees – Packaging

First Place – Horsepower Cold Brue Coffee by Vasavi Bubna, School of Visual Arts, USA
Second Place – Dark Energy by Eshaan Sojatia, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Third Place – Never Will by Rabiya Gupta, School of Visual Arts, USA

Posters

First Place

Upside
Edica Holeman Design
USA

This interactive poster is a result of the designer’s reflection on the design process as a form of catharsis. The white typographic elements are generated from custom code written in p5.js, representing the complexity of human experiences. The text acknowledges the mix of good and bad in life. Using p5.js, the typography starts legible but transforms into waving staggered tiles as the user interacts with it, symbolizing the highs and lows of life. References to cargo and packaging add depth, and the poster can be hung in any orientation. A QR code allows viewers to access the interactive typography.

Second Place

Minnesota Twins History Poster
Jovaney Hollingsworth – DLR Group
USA

During the renovation of the club lounge at the Minnesota Twins baseball stadium, a large framed poster was created to showcase the team’s extensive history. To encompass the diverse range of players, coaches, and achievements, a collage style was chosen. Historical elements were meticulously recreated to maintain quality and adhere to the team’s brand guidelines. The project received positive feedback from the client and may be considered as a gift for club members or included in a community fundraising initiative.

Third Place

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (Kansas City Monarchs)
Jovaney Hollingsworth – DLR Group
USA

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City celebrates the history of African-American baseball, located near where the Negro National League began in 1920. The museum holds artifacts from the pre-integration era of Major League Baseball, nurturing legendary players like Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. The XGD Studio at DLR Group created posters featuring Monarchs players, including Buck O’Neil and Jackie Robinson, to support fundraising for a new museum facility. The posters feature a comprehensive list of Monarchs players and are designed for branded merchandise like mugs and t-shirts, expanding fundraising opportunities. DLR Group’s experiential graphic design services contribute to preserving and celebrating the Monarchs’ legacy.

Student Honorees – Posters

First Place – Alzheimer’s Poster by Emily Brown, The University of Texas at Arlington, UAS
Second Place – Barely Hanging On by Sean Howes, University of North Texas, USA
Third Place – Synesthesia by Jia Li, School of Visual Arts, USA

NEXT: Check out student winners in packaging, motion graphics & video, IX/UX, posters, environmental design, outdoor/billboards, and data visualization/information design.

The post PRINT Awards 2024 Spotlight: Winners in Packaging, Motion, Environmental, Data Visualization & More appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Daily Heller: The Poster Child for Poster Auctioneers

Steven Heller — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Nicholas (Nicho) Lowry knows his stuff and has a lot of stuff to know … about posters. He is the president of New York’s famed Swann Auction Gallery, one of the major go-to venues for trading and selling posters, and one of the on-screen experts on the beloved PBS “Antiques Roadshow“—totally identifiable by his Simon Legree waxed mustache and an endless sartorial array of tartan plaid three-piece suits.

Lowry is a character, a poster child for the important value and revealing mysteries of how each poster represents the era in which it was first made. For Lowry, posters are not just printed pieces of paper, they are entry points into the worlds in which they were created.

As curator of the current Poster House exhibition on New York travel posters, on June 20 at our next session of the PRINT Book Club, Lowry and fellow curator Angelina Lippert will discuss the book/catalog that bears his byline—and I think it is a propitious time for PRINT readers to learn more about this poster expert.

Nicho Lowry on set for Antiques Roadshow

At the recent event celebrating Poster House’s fifth anniversary, you casually mentioned you’re now 30 years into the poster business. The Swann Galleries have been in your family for a long time. How did you become interested in posters?
Swann Galleries was actually founded by my grandfather’s nephew, Benjamin Swann, back in 1940. My grandfather, Louis Cohen, founded New York’s Argosy Bookstore in 1925 and was avidly acquiring books. In the late 1930s he bought a library that was so big that he couldn’t absorb it into the store and so he put his nephew into business as a book auctioneer. For the first few years of Swann’s existence, all the house did was sell books from that original collection. In 1969 when Ben Swann was ready to retire, my father bought him out and ran the business until 2000, when I took over.

My interest in posters, however, predates my time at Swann, and actually began (officially) when I worked at the Argosy briefly in the mid 1990s. On one of the bookstore’s upper floors was a storeroom which my grandfather had filled with World War 1 propaganda posters he had purchased over the years. Hundreds and hundreds of them, each one with a cardboard backing and covered with stiff acetate that had been stapled all around the edges. At this incredibly early point in my “career,” I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. But I did know that every member of my extended antiquarian family had their own area of expertise. My mother was a specialist in modern first editions, my father was an autograph specialist, my grandmother was a map specialist, etc., etc., and I knew that if I ever did enter the family business that I wasn’t interested in following in any of their professional tracks, per se.

Preview exhibit, photos courtesy Swann Galleries

How did you study to be so keen in your expertise? You have a broad swath of knowledge, from Premodern to Modern to Postmodern to contemporary, and a range of themes and eccentricities …
I actually don’t remember what I thought when I was first confronted with this storeroom filled with dusty plastic and cardboard, but I do know that I emerged from that room about four months later with a sound knowledge of the values of American propaganda posters, and I had begun to oversee the restoration and selling of a number of the store’s better posters. And from there I was off and running. I have referred to the experience in the past as akin to falling in love.

To learn about the history and value of posters I initially turned to  the printed catalogs put out by Meehan Military Posters. I used those as guides to understand more about the relative values, rarity and importance of different posters.

Did you teach yourself, or was there some cabal of passionate posterists you could tap into?
Ever since college I always felt that if I was interested in something then it wasn’t difficult to learn more about the subject. It never felt like learning if I was pursuing a passion. And so it was with posters. I came of age in the pre-internet years, so all I had were old catalogues and reference books to guide me. While I had a small library of my own (which has now grown to quite a large reference library), I was lucky that in New York City there was a great poster resource in the library of Poster Auctions International, where I would find myself several times a year pouring over books, finding references to and information about different posters that we had coming up for sale.

The vast majority of my learning was done through osmosis. People frequently ask me what is the best way to start collecting posters, and one of the things I say is that they should familiarize themselves as much as they can with the market. And that is what I would do. I went to auctions, read catalogues, visited dealers and poster shows (back in those days dealers had large ring binders filled with actual photographs of their inventory; I would ravenously flip through them, seeing new images and constantly checking prices, etc.).

I have continued through my career attending auctions, visiting exhibitions, meeting dealers and curators and collectors and always, always, filing away images in the back of my mind. It’s funny—while I often have trouble remembering my schedule, or what I did in the evening last Thursday, I seem to have a near-photographic memory when it comes to posters.

Would you concur that there is some quirky gene inside you that makes you a posterphile?
Oh, do I possess some quirky jeans. I am not entirely sure this is the business I have chosen; I am fairly certain it chose me. And I am a lucky man for it. Much like some people are hoarders and others are strict minimalists, I think that there are people who relate to material objects in different ways. I could not imagine a life without a lot of stuff. Maybe it is an extension of my ADHD, but I find it calming and enriching to be surrounded by items and posters. With their bold colors and captivating designs, they fit right into that mindset of mine.

The New York poster show sounds like a similar native obsession I’ve had for NYC (in art, design, cartoon, photography, souvenirs, etc.). What do the NYC posters say to you emotionally and intellectually?
New York posters to me pretty much sum up my life experience. They are a confluence of almost everything I hold dear. I was born and raised on the island of Manhattan. I studied history at Cornell University, and I now have worked with vintage posters and graphic design for almost 30 years. To be able to do a deep dive into the history of New York City travel and see how the city was advertised to tourists and emigres, etc., was a next-level experience for me. And one of the reasons it was next level was the unexpected rigors of academia. Having been writing poster catalogues for decades now, I foolishly assumed that writing wall notes for a museum exhibition would be a piece of cake. Little did I know about the research, and the editing and the proofreading and the rewriting, etc., that would have to be done before the project was polished enough to be presented to the public.

What factors determine the thematic range of your Swann auctions? And are there areas you are more interested in than others?
For a long time Swann conducted two general Vintage Poster auctions every year. These posters were organized alphabetically by artist and were a hodgepodge of topics and themes. Then, in 1998, I was called to Laurel, MS, where an art museum had discovered a cache of posters hidden under a rug that had been stashed there by a librarian who brought them back after visiting Europe in the 1930s. It was such a collection, largely of images I had never seen before, that I felt compelled to offer them for sale in a special auction, “100 Rare and Important Travel Posters.” It was the first time that I was aware of when travel posters were placed in as esteemed a position as their counterparts. Until that time travel posters were almost considered second-class collectibles within the poster market. The success of that auction (97 out of 100 sold, and the sale dollar total exceeded the pre-sale high estimate) led to the establishment of a yearly auction of “Rare and Important Travel Posters,” which now has been a signature auction in Swann’s yearly schedule for a quarter of a century.

You mentioned in your public conversation with Poster House chief curator Angelina Lippert (with whom you have a wonderful rapport, by the way), that value (i.e., rarity) is measured by how many times a poster is sold. What are other factors in determining why certain posters are collected?
With the success of the Travel Poster auctions we began to think of other areas of poster collecting which we could highlight by doing featured auctions, and the next area we came to was Art Nouveau posters, followed a few years later by Modernist Posters (the name of which became “Graphic Design” about five years ago).

You have the gallery but do you also have a personal collection? If so, what dominates your collecting passions?
Of all we handle I think that travel posters are my most favorite, but even as I write that I realize that many of the Modernist posters/graphic design images are fantastic as well.

My personal collection is of Czech posters. My father was born in Prague and I lived there for a number of years in the early 1990s. Together he and I began collecting and have amassed a collection which is larger than in the collections of most Czech museums (I love this “fact” because it is so difficult to prove!) We have hundreds of posters ranging from the years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, through the First World War, the First Republic and then on through the Second World War and the Communist Era.

We have mounted several exhibitions of our collection, including a 2013 Exhibition at the Dutch Poster Museum in Hoorn of Czech Modernist Posters (1898–1938) and a 2016 exhibition of Czech Travel Posters at the Czech and Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, IA.

You clearly look into the distant past and propagate its meaning through posters. But have you looked into your crystal ball to see what the future will be like for posters as an artform? And for practical purposes, now that LED screens compete with printing on paper and vinyl?
People collect posters for any number of reasons. From the most mundane, “the colors match the couch and the shades,” to the esoteric, “this is the ship that my parents emigrated on to the United States.” People collect artists, they collect eras, they collect subjects and styles, they collect to decorate and enrich homes, restaurants and offices, they collect ski posters for their chalets, and tennis posters for their summer cottages. I once knew a woman who collected posters of women with ruddy cheeks!

By virtue of dealing with printed matter (including books, prints and more), are you intentionally preserving a legacy? Or do you foresee digital or optical technologies as becoming part of your wheelhouse?
As our society veers more and more into the digital world, with Kindles replacing books, NFTs attempting to replace art and social media now the hoardings that all turn to for amusement and enlightenment, it gives me just cause to worry about the future of printed advertising. But rather than think about it in a broad and anxiety-filled manner, I prefer to focus on the fact that as printed media becomes scarcer and scarcer, so too, as the thinking goes in my head, does interest in earlier forms of printing rise. I have faith that a future generation of collectors and enthusiasts like myself will eagerly seek out remnants of previous eras. Current-day collectors and institutions are working hard to preserve this legacy of the past, and as the years progress this material will be even more eagerly sought after by collectors, and even harder to find. (It’s a nice dream, isn’t it? Please don’t burst my bubble!)

Now that your dream of an NYC exhibit has been realized, what other dreams can come true?
With the New York travel poster exhibition behind me, there are several other projects for me to focus on. In the same vein, I am currently working on a book of Czech travel posters, which I hope to have finished in the next year or so, and for the past two years I have been working on a film project in Prague on the history of Czech graphic design. I also have begun thinking about doing another exhibition at Poster House (if they will allow me) in time for the institution’s 10th anniversary, which is five years from now.

(Note; Daily Heller @ Poster House, 2023.)

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Celebrating Post-War Italian Graphic Design and its Transatlantic Influence in NYC

Amelia Nash — Wed, 29 May 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Walking into One Art Space on Warren Street, Massimo Vignelli’s 1964 Pirelli advertisement greeted me — you know the one, the red and pink duotone image of a joyful bike ride. It was a bright spot of color against a black-and-white gallery display featuring the names of influential Italian designers.

I was delighted to attend the launch event for “Made in Italy NYC,” an exclusive two-day event celebrating the rich heritage of post-war Italian graphic design and its enduring relationship with the United States. This two-day exhibition offered a unique opportunity to explore original pieces from significant Italian and American designers produced between the 1950s and 1980s. The exhibition drew from the collections of AIAP CDPG, the Milan-based Graphic Design Documentation Center of the Italian Association of Visual Communication Design.

Italian graphic design has a rare power that can still surprise us. Made In Italy NYC contains examples of the warmth, humanity and verve that excited designers half a century ago and continue to inspire today.
Michael Bierut, Pentagram

Beyond Vignelli: A Broader Connection

The iconic figure of Milan-born Massimo Vignelli often epitomizes the graphic design connection between Italy and the U.S., as he is renowned for his extensive body of work after moving to New York. However, this exhibition aims to illuminate the broader array of Italian and American designers who contributed to this vibrant exchange post-WWII. Many of these designers are well-known in graphic design history, while others have recently been rediscovered, highlighting the depth and diversity of this cross-cultural design relationship.

The exhibition and accompanying book feature work by a stellar lineup of designers, including Massimo Vignelli, Heinz Waibl, Giulio Cittato, Bruno Munari, Roberto Mango, Mario, Dagrada, Albe Steiner, Bob Noorda, Giulio Confalonieri, Anita Klinz, Ferenc Pinter, Balilla, Magistri, Max Huber, Milton Glaser, Bruce Blackburn, Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, Leo Lionni, Paul Rand, John Alcorn, Silvio Coppola, Franco Grignani, Alfredo Mastellaro, Claudia Morgagni, Enzo Mari, Giovanni Pintori, and Walter Ballmer.

The event focused on four areas of this cross-cultural design conversation: Italian Designers Who Worked In The U.S., Italian Designed Book Covers For U.S. Authors, U.S. Designers Who Worked In Italy, and Influential Italian Graphic Design.

This book and exhibition is a celebration of all things Made in Italy, exploring the rich and untapped vein of Italian graphic design with rarely seen and published work.
Bryan Edmondson, SEA

Designed by SEA in collaboration with Pentagram, the exhibition presentation was visually striking and intellectually engaging. SEA, a London-based brand agency, is renowned for its powerful ideas and meticulous attention to detail, making it an ideal partner for the project. Pentagram’s storied history and global influence added another layer of expertise to the exhibition’s design.

The event was proudly supported by Fedrigoni and Monotype, two industry giants whose contributions have been invaluable.

Fedrigoni, synonymous with excellence in specialty papers since 1888, is the global leader in wine labels and premium papers for luxury packaging. Their commitment to sustainability and quality is reflected in their support for this exhibition, which aligns with their dedication to art, design, and creativity.

Monotype, with a library of over 150,000 fonts, provides the tools for creative expression through type. Their support celebrates the post-war Italian graphic design period, when typography reached new heights, showcasing the innovative and poetic forms of expression that define this era.

The Italian Association of Visual Communication Designers (AIAP) meticulously curated the exhibition’s content. Founded in 1945, AIAP promotes design culture and preserves Italy’s design history through its Graphic Design Documentation Center, which houses over 100,000 artifacts.

More than an exhibition, “Made in Italy NYC” was a collaborative event celebrating the creative synergy between Italian and American graphic design, honoring the legacy of past masters and bringing to light the lesser-known contributors who played pivotal roles in this dynamic exchange. The evening was about appreciating the global influence of Italian design and its profound impact on visual communication. The cherry on top was the beautiful, limited-edition metallic-covered book I gingerly placed into my bag as I left the venue, beaming into the warm summer air.

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The Daily Heller: Trump is Broadsided

Steven Heller — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Ward Schumaker, a veteran painter and illustrator, anticipates the 2024 election will be a war of words. So, as the campaign kicks into gear, he turned scores of Donald Trump’s most quotable bon mots into typographic broadsides—modern-day samplers—that measure 37″ x 25″, painted with acrylic + paste (along with some collage elements).

He’s been met with various responses, not all of them positive. For example, Schumaker told me that when he gave a talk about his Trump work at a museum, he was “harassed verbally” by a member of the board of directors: “These are all lies,” the board member barked. “Trump never said half these things!” And when showing them at Jack Fischer Gallery, a stranger threatened to pound him. These incidents happened in San Francisco, theoretically a safe place for such artworks. “Yet in Nashville, a pro–Trump stronghold, I was greeted with kindness, applause and appreciation.”

Schumaker is expressing himself in the media he knows best. I asked him what he hopes readers take away from it all.

I have a reasonable idea what triggered these broadsides, but can you put it in your own words?
I’d never been very political, but about seven years ago I asked my grandson what he’d been studying in school that day. “How not to be a bully,” he answered. Then added: “You know, like Donald Trump.” At the time I was making large, one-of-a-kind, hand-painted books, many using hand-cut stenciled words, and I decided to do one using Trump’s words. It was not the kind of subject I’d regularly use, and when I finished I didn’t know what to do with it. One night I woke thinking I should show it to my gallerist (at the time, Jack Fischer). I sent him jpgs, insisting he promise to show no one.

He promised. But the next day a woman came into the gallery and asked to see my work—she might buy a painting. Jack apologized, and said he’d only recently moved, and all my work was still at his old address. She sighed and started to leave. Jack stopped her: “But would you like to see an interesting project Ward’s been working on?”

Then he broke his promise. After seeing three of the spreads, the woman said, “Stop. Can I get my husband in here? He’s out in the hall.” The husband came in, looked at the work, then said, “I’m with Chronicle Books; do you think Ward would let us publish a facsimile of this?” In record time, Chronicle produced it as a trade book: Hate Is What We Need. The title is from one of Trump’s quotes.

And that might have been the end of it. But about the time I finished that first book, white supremacists marched through Charlottesville shouting “Jews will not replace us,” and Trump stated that there were “good people on both sides.” I felt compelled to make another book, this time including not only Trump’s incendiary words, but the words of others, both in support of Trump and those opposed. (That book is now in the collection of the Achenbach Foundation of Graphic Arts.)

However, my books are seen by few people, so I began making large broadsides in hopes of exhibiting them. I thought I might create 10, maybe even 15. I ended up creating 350. I am extremely grateful that the Letterform Archive has given each and every one of them a home in its collection. See their book Strikethrough. While I thought I’d quit a long time ago, I recently started doing more, which I mount on Instagram and Facebook.

Was it your intention to, shall we say, seduce the viewer into reading these?
My intentions vary, but first is always simply making certain others have seen and digested the latest vile words from Trump and/or his minions. If I have time, I might try to be clever, but most often it has been: What can I do quickly and still get my regular work done? And of course there is the fact that I’m a painter, not really a designer at all, so I have often embarrassed myself trying to be clever. I know some great designers and ask their forbearance.

You’ve succeeded at, in my view, what many “political artists” try and often fail to do, which is make intriguing art with a message that stands on its own. Was this your intent?
Thank you. I recognize that I don’t have the particular talent of esteemed illustrators (i.e. Edel Rodriguez) but I do value my paintings—and they’ve included words since I started painting, as a kid, back in the ’60s. So it has been a matter of simply doing what I do best: words-as-paintings.

How long did it take to make these broadsheets?
I started working on these in 2017 and I’m still making them. Each one is created using hand-cut stencils, so the longer the quotation, the longer it takes. The wordiest have taken three days to accomplish, others have been completed in one day. Often I start cutting words with no plan at all. I think of them as paintings, and my paintings have always followed that Rauschenberg rule: Do something, then do something else to it. It may not be the wisest way to work, but it’s what I know.

Is your work a kind of anti-DIY/DIY aesthetic?
As a kid I often raised my grade by doing what was termed as extra credit: making a book cover for biology class, for example, by pasting cut-paper words that said “Clothes don’t make the man, cells do.” As a 12 year old I was very proud of that. Of course I should have been embarrassed. Later, at the age of 35 I began illustrating, and my best work was definitely DIY because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Why haven’t I seen your Trump work on social media?
Early on I tried mounting the Trump Papers on Twitter. I was almost immediately thrown off. I wrote [to Twitter], asking for an explanation. Over and over I wrote. I got no response. Years later, a couple months after Biden was elected, I got a note from Twitter saying I could once again post on their site. Of course, I quit.

What do you feel is the most powerful piece among these?
Trump: “Women: You have to treat them like shit.”

Liz Cheney: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

And the most frightening—Trump: “This could very well be the last election this country ever has.”

How will you put these to use in the coming battle?
Truthfully, I don’t know.

What’s next for you in terms of where you’re feelings will drive your work?
Just before I hit 80, I started working in clay, and that’s been a joy. But Trump is running again and very possibly will win, so what can a person do?

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Meanwhile No. 198

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:00:00 +0000

One hundred and ninety-eight? Really? Yep. I’ve had a bit of a tidy and corralled all of my newsletters from ten years of platform-hopping into one place. Annoyingly, some of the older links are broken (suffice to say MailChimp is an utter git if you dare to go elsewhere), but it’s been awfully satisfying to go back through it all and review the ebb and flow of my fascinations. Have a delve into the archive, see where it takes you.

A new piece for the New York Times, illustrating an article on brain injuries caused by blast exposure and how artillery is essentially killing members of the military who don’t even see combat. Editorial work is such a different pace to book design – turnaround of one or two days rather than several months (or even years). It’s intense, but damn I love it.

A little blown away by the virtual tour of the George Eastman Museum’s Crashing into the Sixties film poster exhibition. Properly immersive; an excellent use of 3D modelling. One of the drawbacks of viewing posters on-screen is you lose a sense of scale, but with this you really appreciate how enormous some of these pieces are.

(thank you Eric for the tip)

Elsewhere in the newslettiverse:

Owen D. Pomery on architectural drawing and the art of creating a believable space;

Marina Amaral on fake historical photos and how the increasing sophistication of AI-generated photos raises concerns about the reliability of visual evidence; and

Gia asks, what is a female robot?

Best words growled by Tom Waits in A Brief History of John Baldessari: peepholes; biennale; pushpins; Giotto; dots.

Love this detail from Frank Herbert’s wiki page:

“The novel originated when he was assigned to write a magazine article about sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon. He got overinvolved and ended up with far more raw material than needed for an article. The article was never written, but it planted the seed that led to Dune.”

Overinvolved.

My Threads has turned into something of a monochromatic scrapbook. Not really sure why, but I like using it in a completely different way to twitter. Proper good old fashioned micro-blogging. It almost feels like – ask your grandparents – tumblr.

As a new series of Neverending Story movies is announced, behold one of the all time great cosplays.

That is all.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Collage by the author for the New York Times.

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The Daily Heller: New York “Wonder City” in Posters

Steven Heller — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 11:00:00 +0000

David Klein, 1960.

I’ve been dubbed “New York–centric,” as if it were a bad thing. My love for the city goes back to my birth. I’ve always thought of Manhattan as the center of the world. Now, Poster House in Manhattan is celebrating my NYCentricity with an exhibition curated by Nicholas D. Lowry and designed by Ola Baldych, Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters (on view through Sept. 8).

“The phrase ‘Wonder City’ in regards to New York was the brainchild of marketers,” states the exhibition website. “It had appeared in newspaper and magazine advertisements and articles sporadically through the final decades of the 19th century. And although it didn’t specifically originate in New York City—a number of cities around the country and in Europe also used it in their promotions at that time—by 1914 the phrase appeared on a New York Souvenir booklet.”

At the end of the 19th century, New York became a tourist destination that demanded the printing of many alluring travel posters, more than were designed for any other world city. “A host of images as varied as her ever-shifting identity, seen from the water, from the ground and, eventually, from the air,” states the website. This special exhibit shows how the city was marketed to the slew of newcomers, from tourists to immigrants.

Various poster artists were able to capture the magnitude and power of the world’s greatest metropolis, magnifying the bright lights and the imposing structures, “as well as managing to capture some moments of intimacy and slice-of-life imagery within the canyons and among the ziggurats.”

For the New York maven this is a finely curated treasure trove of bills definitely designed to be proudly posted.

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The Daily Heller: A Poster Museum Where Movies Began, in New Jersey

Steven Heller — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Original drawing of the Barrymore Film Center and Museum, Fort Lee, NJ.

During the period just before and after the first World War, Fort Lee, NJ, served as an incubator, home to the first concentration of motion picture studios in the United States. While the stars and studios eventually went West, Fort Lee is where the movies outgrew their roots and emerged as both an art and an industry.

The nonprofit Barrymore Film Center and Museum—the final commission of architect and theater designer Hugh Hardy—opened in Fort Lee in October 2022. Part of the center’s offerings is a special museum devoted, in part, to film posters. I asked the curator of exhibitions, Richard Koszarski, to shine the spotlight on his contribution to preserving and displaying the printed artifacts of the movie world—arguably America’s most beloved industry.

Does much or any of the museum’s collection come from Fort Lee itself?
The Barrymore Film Center essentially functions as a local history museum whose subject is not, say, immigration or the Civil War, but the growth and development of moving pictures. Like other museums and historical sites, it uses its history to look forward, to link the past with the present through such activities as film screenings, museum exhibitions, publications and public events.

Imagees courteesy Barrymore Film Center and Museum

What is your curatorial goal?
Local residents began working to preserve this history as far back as the 1930s, work that was later taken on by the Fort Lee Public Library and Fort Lee Historical Society. I started here in 2000, when the Fort Lee Film Commission was formed to focus on that part of this local history (Fort Lee’s role in the American Revolution was already well-handled elsewhere). At the time I was professor of English and cinema studies at Rutgers University; prior to that I had been associated with the development of the Museum of the Moving Image since 1977, eventually serving as head of collections and exhibitions. My main area of interest is the history of the East Coast motion picture industry, which I explored in books like Fort Lee, the Film Town (2004) and Hollywood on the Hudson (2008).

Is there a criteria for collecting and displaying posters in the Barrymore Film Center?
Hugh Hardy had originally been hired to design a theater space, but as work progressed this vision expanded and what was once a modest lobby display grew into an 1800 square foot exhibition gallery. To date we have designed and installed three exhibits in our museum, each of which manages to celebrate Fort Lee’s (often neglected!) role in a different chapter of American film history. While some materials are drawn from our own collections, most items on exhibit are on loan from a range of public and private collections. We have used the same local design team, E. K. Skrabonja Exhibition Design, for all our exhibitions.

What is the intent or message of your exhibitions?
The inaugural exhibit looked at three members of the Barrymore family, John, Ethel and Lionel, representatives of an acting dynasty whose careers reflect the history of American entertainment, from vaudeville to video. Not only did all of them make films in Fort Lee, but some of the family even lived there. Power Couple looked at the rise of media celebrity through the careers of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, famed as the king and queen of Hollywood, but also veterans of the Fort Lee studios (and in Mary’s case, dozens of short films shot on its streets in nickelodeon days).

We have just installed our third exhibit, Coming Attractions: Classic Film Posters from the Konstantino Spanoudis iKon Collection (April 7–Jan. 5). The 70 items on display date from 1910 through 1981, mainly American, but with a few European examples included for context. The focus here is not on the making of films, but the ways in which they were sold and marketed—specifically, on how producers and distributors, as early as 1910, used posters as their major advertising vehicle. Beyond this, the afterlife of such posters has a story all its own.

From a curatorial viewpoint, how do you explain the primary purpose of film posters as functional and collectable?
Film posters arrived at an unfortunate moment, appearing in quantity just as “postermania” seemed to have run its course. Neil Harris noted in 1998 that, “by 1910 or so the poster as a collectible had all but vanished.” Even those still committed to the form considered film posters of little or no interest. Charles Matlack Price ignored film posters entirely in his 1913 study of Posters, and while acknowledging their numbers in the updated 1922 edition (now dubbed Poster Design) wrote that the number of good film posters was still “deplorably small.” Even in the 1920s and ’30s, as other poster genres flourished and once again attracted both curators and collectors, movie posters were still regarded as anonymous hack work (one reason being that, in America at least, nearly all film posters were, in fact, anonymous). As late as 1968, the published catalog of the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal Word and Image exhibition included no American film posters.

How is the scope of your collection addressing graphic design?
When a significant market for film posters began to develop in the 1970s, it was initially driven by collectors hunting for movie memorabilia. Galleries and major auction sales devoted solely to film posters appeared only later, fueling an appreciation for the history, culture and range of graphic traditions involved in this specific poster genre. But until then individual collectors were very much on their own, and the collections they assembled often had little in common with institutional holdings.

Konstantino Spanoudis was one of those collectors. Spanoudis loved movies, but unlike many others he was not just collecting souvenirs of his favorite films. Graphic design was always the major consideration, often trumping a film’s critical standing or historical importance. A passionate collector, he first found himself attracted by the size and color of the large stone lithographs printed to advertise B-westerns and short comedies in the 1930s, but was soon collecting European posters, classic Hollywood, and the work of Saul Bass. These and other collecting categories ring the walls of the gallery, while the spine of the exhibit is devoted entirely to posters from the golden age of Fort Lee film production, when John Barrymore and Theda Bara were making movies just down the street.

When the Hollywood studio system still dominated the industry, the useful life of a movie poster could be measured in days. Films rarely played any single location longer than a week, and the poster for last week’s film was useless, quickly replaced by the next new thing. Thousands were printed, very few survived. Some studios did manage to save many of their films, but none of them bothered to save the advertising. The posters preserved in Coming Attractions exist today only because collectors like Spanoudis simply fell in love with their graphics.

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The Daily Heller: Tolerance is Celebrated in Lahore, Pakistan

Steven Heller — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

On Feb. 22, the Tolerance Poster Show—which since 2017 has appeared 81 times in 40 countries—opened its second run in Lahore, Pakistan, at Beaconhouse. Beaconhouse is Pakistan’s first nonprofit liberal arts university.

The Tolerance Poster Show allows any institution to select the amount of work they have the capacity to showcase, and then digitally print and mount those pieces. This iteration of the exhibition, curated by Professor Aarish Sardar, was displayed at the SLASS Lawn on the university grounds and was seen by students, faculty and members of the public.

To date, most of the exhibitions have been mounted outside the United States. Some domestic institutions have signed up for the show, but have since decided to cancel it for unspecified reasons. It seems, in part, that tolerance has become politicized at a time when intolerance has risen throughout the world. The Tolerance Project starts a conversation about inclusion, which can only begin with a foundation of tolerance. “The show utilizes the unique power of design to remind us what we all have in common,” says organizer Mirko Ilic.

The photos below are from the current exhibition in Lahore.

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The Daily Heller: 20 Years, 600 Concert Posters, a Legacy of Music Design

Steven Heller — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Jeffrey Everett is an unstoppable poster maker, having produced more than 400 concert posters and 200 others for cultural events. A fraction of this work, along with process drawings, is collected in Let it Bleed: Twenty Years of Poster Design, a 444-page monograph of his epic work. Included are posters designed and illustrated for an array of bands, including Social Distortion, Flogging Molly, Foo Fighters, Letters to Cleo, Idles, Flight of the Conchords, Blondie, The Gaslight Anthem, The Bouncing Souls, Lou Reed and New Found Glory. He has also worked for Red Bull, The New York Times, The Washingtonian, Variety, Universal Records, LiveNation, Dreamworks, SideOneDummy, Rise Records, Equal Vision and others.

Under the moniker Rockets are Red, Everett has spent more than two decades designing work that has been stapled on the walls of acclaimed rock clubs such as The 9:30 Club, Black Cat and The Trocadero; “inked into brave people’s skin,” he told me; “and framed in high-end galleries around the world,” such as Arch Enemy Arts in Philly, Lost Origins in DC, and Gallery 1988 in LA.

Today he talks about his enviable legacy, his favorite bands and his major influences.

How many posters have you done over the past 20 years? Are they all commissioned by the bands?
I have done over 400 concert posters and another 200+ for gallery shows, pop-culture clients, and personal pieces over the last two decades. All my poster work for bands have either been commissioned from the band, their management, or the venue hosting them.

Is it a mutual collaboration with the bands and artists?
I consider myself a designer who can kinda illustrate, and I enjoy the process of working with a band. Some bands have quite direct instructions and wants, while others have a longer list of don’ts. I enjoy working through the process and doing something that is for them—not any other band. Peter Saville said that about designing for Joy Division: You should love the music based on seeing the record cover; the art should reflect the music. A good band client realizes ultimately it is not about them, it is about the fans who are purchasing the work and hopefully hanging it on the wall (or in some cases, getting it tattooed on themselves).

I am in the quite fortunate position that I only do work for bands that I get a spark from now. I have done a lot of work in the past where I didn’t know the band, or base, well, and tried to do something cool. Now when I work with a band like The Raveonettes or Girls Against Boys, whom I have adored for decades, I am overflowing with directions and concepts and it is a matter of sorting through the pile of sketches.

You belong to a long line of concert poster artists. Who are your favorites?
Art Chantry is the immediate inspiration; I have admired him, his work and design knowledge forever. Does Edward Gorey count as a poster artist? I am a huge Gorey fan and I have multiple tattoos of his work. Off the top of my head, I have to include Frank Kozik (RIP), Methane Studios, Todd Slater, Dan McCarthy, Zoltron, Morning Breath.

Currently I am a huge fan of Alex Eckman-Lawn. I own a bunch of original pieces by him and keep pestering him for that commission. Luke Martin (Suburban Avenger) is a young talent who blows my work away. I also want to send a big amount of love to Lou Xray (GarageLand), Triple Stamp Press and Mathias Valdez (Last Leaf).

Are band posters your primary outlet?
I have a full-time gig as a designer at The National Institutes of Health. I realized years ago I want to do work that has some meaning and longevity. I worked on a lot of design for/about COVID and, yes, even won an award for my retirement poster celebrating Dr. Fauci. It is also nice [not] having to argue about $100 with a belligerent manager trying to stiff you on a contract. That said, I still do two to three posters a month for either bands or for gallery shows. I enjoy the ability to flex and let my mind wander.

Your typography is a perfect match for your drawing. At what point in the process do you decide on lettering?
It is a companion when working. I usually have it all displayed next to the artwork that I am building. I keep it in mind so the two—the design and the typography—can work together instead of around each other. There are a few typefaces I rely on for being consistently good for certain things, but most of the time I do a deep dive for the type that works.

This book marks a milestone, but I presume there are more to come?
I do this because I cannot not do it. When I travel and explore, watch new movies or read new books, attend concerts and museums, I am constantly taking reference photos, sketching out ideas and trying to stay young and curious until I die. I did work for Iggy FUCKING Pop, and Spiritual Cramp opened. They held their own against the master and I knew I had to work with them. I am already sketching out a second poster for them and can’t wait to see them playing bigger and bigger places. Like Idles, like Gaslight Anthem, like Frank Turner, I love finding bands and growing with them as they progress as artists. There are too many awesome bands out there I still want to work with, like Jeff Rosenstock and Amyl and The Sniffers, and so many more I want to keep designing with, like Bouncing Souls, Tuscadero and Velocity Girl.

Everett strikes a pose.

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13 African American Graphic Designers You Should Know

Glenford Laughton — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 14:42:57 +0000

Back in the day, diversity in graphic design was far from visible. While studying in the early 90s, we learned of famous designers like Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, and more. Although these designers changed how graphic design is seen, we did not see graphic designers from the African diaspora proudly presented and applauded. With that in mind, let’s celebrate *African American graphic designers who have left an indelible mark on the field. Let’s check out those who flourished in the face of racial adversity, fighting to have their artistic voice heard, who created their own companies and excelled as Black entrepreneurs when this was unheard of, and those who continue to do so to this day.

*My criteria for choosing my top African American Designers were simple: a) I must love their work, and b) they must be older than I (born in 1966).

I do not intentionally exclude well-deserved and talented younglings. But I wrote this article as a call back to my younger self, to recognize that the path before me was designed Black and beautiful.

Now, read on and shine on.

Charles Dawson (1889 – 1981)

Best known for his illustrated advertisements, Charles Dawson (Charles Clarence Dawson) was an influential Chicago designer and artist through the 1920s and 30s.

He was born in 1898 in Georgia and went on to attend Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. After two years, he left when he became the first African American admitted into the Arts Students League of New York. Dawson abandoned the pervasive racism of the league when he gained acceptance to the Art Institute of Chicago, where, in his own words, their attitude was “entirely free of bias.” During his time there, Dawson was heavily involved and went on to become a founding member of the first Black artists collective in Chicago, The Arts & Letters Collective.

Charles Dawson (back row, fourth from left) and class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, c. 1916.

After graduation, he went on to serve in the segregated forces of WWI, where he faced combat in France. He returned to find a changed Chicago: one racially charged due to a slowed economy and trouble finding jobs. In 1922, Dawson began freelancing, producing work for other black entrepreneurs. Five years later, Dawson played a major role in the first exhibition of African American art at his alma mater called Negro In Art Week.

Dawson took part in two different Works Progress Administration programs under Roosevelt’s New Deal, including the National Youth Administration, where he designed the layout for the American Negro Exposition, a piece composed of 20 dioramas showcasing African American history.

He eventually returned to Tuskegee, where he became a curator for the institute’s museum and passed away at the ripe old age of 93 in Pennsylvania. Dawson will always be remembered for his great contributions to African American art, design, and advancement.

Left: Page illustrated from Charles Dawson’s Booker T. Washington; Center: O Sing a New Song, 1934, Charles Dawson; Right: The Negro in Art program cover, 1927, Charles Dawson

Aaron Douglas (1899 – 1979)

Known as a key artist in the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas was a pivotal figure in developing a distinctly African style of art through his blending of Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles with connections to African masks and dances. His illustrations, published in Alan Locke’s anthology, The New Negro Movement, showcased his detachment from European-style arts and evolution into his own style, clearly communicating African heritage.

Aaron Douglas – From Slavery Through Reconstruction, 1927

Douglas graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1922 with a BFA. He then taught high school art before moving to New York two years later to study under German artist Winold Reiss.

He became the most sought-after illustrator for black writers of his time after his covers for Opportunity and The Crisis, dubbed “Afro-Cubanism” by leading art critic Richard Powell. Among his other notable covers and illustrations are his designs for Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven and God’s Trombone, James Weldon Johnson’s epic poem.

Douglas was well-versed in Harlem nightlife, where he spent many nights gaining inspiration for his designs and depictions of the black urban scene. His murals, adorning the walls of various institutions, cemented his name as a major artist of the Harlem Renaissance. His best-known work is a series of murals called, Aspects of Negro Life, which Douglas created for the 135th St. branch of the New York Public Library.

He later left New York to become chair of the art department of Fisk University in Nashville, where he resided until his death in 1979.

Left: Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life, May 1927 issue, cover by Aaron Douglas; Center: Home to Harlem cover, Aaron Douglas; Right: The Blacker the Berry, Aaron Douglas

Leroy Winbush (1915 – 2007)

One week after graduating high school, Winbush left Detroit for Chicago to become a graphic designer. His inspiration and mentors at the time were sign designers on Chicago’s South Side. He began creating signage, flyers, and murals for the Regal Theater, where he rubbed elbows with some of the most famous black musicians of the time.

Album cover designs by Leroy Winbush

Winbush then went on to join Goldblatt Department Store’s sign department, where he was the only black employee. In 1945, after years of working for others, Winbush started his own company, Winbush Associates, later Winbush Designs. Here, he landed accounts with various publishing houses, doing layouts for Ebony and Jet, among others. His ambition and charisma eventually helped him gain acceptance as a black designer and entrepreneur.

Later in life, Winbush began teaching visual communications and typography at various Chicago universities. He concurrently mastered the art of scuba diving, a feat that helped him land a position as part of the crew tasked with creating Epcot Center’s coral reef.

Leroy Winbush at work

Winbush was adamant in his desire to be remembered as a “good designer,” as opposed to a “Black designer,” but was well aware of the influence he could have on the progression of the Black community. He designed a sickle cell anemia exhibit and exhibitions of the Underground Railroad for different Chicago museums to illuminate Black history, past and present, to the public. His accomplishments throughout his lifetime make LeRoy Winbush a notable African American graphic designer worth checking out.

Eugene Winslow (1919 – 2001)

Born in Dayton, Ohio, into a family of seven children, Eugene Winslow’s parents stressed the importance of education and encouraged their children to study the arts. Winslow attended Dillard University, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He then served in WWII as part of the revered Tuskegee Airmen.

Eugene Winslow: A Century of Negro Progress

After the war, Winslow nurtured his lifelong artistic interest by attending The Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Winslow then went on to co-found the Am-Afro Publishing house based out of Chicago, where in 1963, they published Great American Negroes Past and Present with Winslow’s illustrations. That same year, he also designed the seal commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation for the Chicago Exposition. Throughout his career as an artist, designer, businessman, and entrepreneur, Winslow always sought to promote racial integration wherever possible.

Left: A Century of Negro Progress cover by Eugene Winslow; Center: Eugene Winslow at work at IMPAC; Right: The IMPAC Plan by Eugene Winslow

Georg Olden (1920 – 1975)

Born in 1920 in Birmingham, Alabama, to the son of an escaped enslaved person and opera-singing mother, Georg Olden was a revolutionary designer who helped pave the way for African Americans in the field of design and the corporate world.

Left: Georg Olden; Right: Undercurrent and Studio One Summer Theatre, CBS

After a brief stint at Virginia State College, Olden dropped out of school to work as a graphic designer for the CIA’s predecessor, The Office of Strategic Services. From there, the connections he made helped him land a position at CBS in 1945 as Head of Network Division of On-Air Promotions. Here, he worked on programs such as Gunsmoke, and I Love Lucy and eventually went on to help create the vote-tallying scoreboard for the first televised Presidential Election in 1952.

Praised in his day and posthumously, Olden appeared multiple times in publications such as Graphis and Ebony. In 1963, he became the first African American to design a postage stamp. His design showcased chains breaking to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. By 1970, he had won seven Clio Awards for creative excellence in advertising and design and eventually won the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) award in 2007. Celebrated for his talent, charm, and business intelligence, Olden was a revolutionary African American graphic designer who made advancements in the industry and for all African Americans.

Top left: Climax, CBS, Georg Olden; Top right: Dupont Show of the Month, CBS, Georg Olden; Bottom left: Spotlight on Harlem, CBS, Georg Olden; Bottom right: Songs for Sale, CBS, Georg Olden

Thomas Miller (1920 – 2012)

Born in Bristol, Virginia, the grandson of enslaved people, Thomas Miller’s talent, hard work, and ambition helped him become one of the first Black designers to break into mainstream graphic design.

Miller graduated and earned a Bachelor of Education with a focus on the arts in 1941 from Virginia State College. Soon after, he enlisted in the army and served in WWII, achieving the rank of First Sergeant.

After the war, Miller was determined to learn about commercial design. He gained acceptance to The Ray Vogue School of Art in Chicago, where he and fellow student Emmett McBain were the only African Americans besides the janitors.

Morton Goldsholl Associates

After graduation, Miller searched for jobs and denied one offer in New York because he worked “behind the screen.” Unwilling to tolerate the company’s overt racism, Miller passed on the offer and eventually joined the progressive Chicago studio Morton Goldsholl Associates. It was here that Miller, as chief designer, worked on high-profile campaigns such as the design for 7-Up in the 1970s. As a supporting member of the design team, he also worked on the Motorola rebranding, the Peace Corps logo, and the Betty Crocker “Chicken Helper” branding, earning accolades for himself and the company.

Miller also freelanced, starting when he served in WWII and continuing through his work with Goldsholl. Through his independent work, Miller was commissioned to create a memorial to the DuSable Museum’s founders. This job resulted in one of his most well-known pieces, the Thomas Miller Mosaics, now featured in the museum’s lobby.

Miller’s hard work, dedication, and artistic talent helped him pave the way for many African-American artists and designers to come.

Left: Thomas Miller – 7-Up Carton, Goldsholl Design Associates; Center: Wilberforce Jones mural by Thomas Miller; Right: Thomas Miller, Storkline Corp., Goldsholl Design Associates

Emmett McBain (1935 – 2012)

Emmett McBain, born in Chicago in 1935, is lesser known than some other designers I’ve profiled. But McBain made major contributions to the advertising and design world and for all African Americans through his successes in the business world.

Emmett McBain

Emmett McBain, a true visual thinker and communicator, attended The American Academy of Art and the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he became a talented watercolor artist. Post-graduation, McBain worked for several notable agencies and firms as a designer, art supervisor, and creative consultant before co-founding Burrell McBain Incorporated. This advertising agency, which later became the largest African-American-owned agency in the States, aimed to serve their accounts while gaining the trust and loyalty of the Black community. McBain was key in running the agency, landing valuable accounts, and constantly developing new and fresh ideas. His former partner, Thomas J. Burrell, praised his leadership skills and ability to think outside the box.

Left: Black is Beautiful ad, 1968, Emmett McBain; Right: True Two ad, Emmett McBain

McBain left Burrell McBain in 1974 to focus on independent art and design in his Hyde Park, Chicago neighborhood, where he later passed away in 2012 at 78.

The University of Illinois at Chicago has a collection featuring his works entitled Emmett McBain Design Papers. You’ll find print ads, record album covers, and transparencies of Billboards, all McBain designed.

Playboy Jazz All-Stars, 1957, record cover, Emmett McBain

Archie Boston (born 1943)

Known for his blatant self-deprecation and humor, Archie Boston was a pioneer in challenging the racism of the 1960s and 70s through his designs and attitude.

Archie Boston

One of five children, Boston grew up poor but well aware of the importance of education. In 1961, his artistic talent landed him acceptance to Chouinard Art Institute. While at university, he interned with the advertising agency Carson/Roberts, where he cemented his desire to work in design and eventually returned to the agency years later.

After graduation, he worked at various advertising and design firms before forming Boston & Boston with his older brother, Bradford. It was here that they created provocative pieces showcasing their race, as well as creativity, in pieces such as “Catch a Nigger by The Toe” and by selecting the Jim Crow typeface for their logotype.

Poster designs for Boston & Boston by Archie Boston

For the majority of his career, however, Boston was an educator. He landed a position as a full-time lecturer in the art department at California State University, Long Beach, before creating their design department and eventually becoming head of the visual communications design program. He influenced countless young designers there, inspiring them through his encouragement and standard for excellence.

ADCLA 30th Annual Western Advertising Art Expo, Call for Entries, Archie Boston

Emory Douglas (Born 1943)

The former Revolutionary Artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas’ career in commercial art has been centered around civil and equal rights propagation from its beginnings.

Emory Douglas helps lay out The Black Panther in Oakland, California, in 1970. John Seale to his left. photography by
Stephen Shames

Douglas’ first exposure to design came when his crimes landed him in the Youth Training School of Ontario, California. Here, he worked in the print shop and learned about typography, illustration, and logo design. Later, Douglas enrolled in commercial art classes at the City College of San Francisco after running into a former counselor from the center who encouraged him to do so

During this time, Douglas became active in the Black Panther Party after being introduced to the founding members, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Douglas offered up his design skills while watching Seale work on the first issue of the party’s paper, The Black Panther. He was well aware of the importance of having illustrations and artwork to help reach the many illiterate members of the communities the party was targeting. Much of his art and illustration for the paper initially focused on Black rights, but it soon expanded to include women, children, and community figures alongside the party’s focuses. While working on The Black Panther, Douglas coined and popularized the term “pigs” in reference to police officers.

Posters and graphics for the Black Panther Party

In the 1980s, the Black Panther Party, as Douglas had once known it, was mostly dissolved by law enforcement efforts. Later, Douglas moved to care for his ailing mother and continued to pursue some independent design. His revolutionary artwork helped to educate and agitate repressed and suppressed communities of the time.

Sylvia Harris (1953 – 2011)

Noted for her unwavering desire to help others, Sylvia Harris was a graphic designer, teacher, and business owner who used her research and skill set to reach far and wide.

Born and raised in Richmond, VA, Harris experienced the desegregation of the 1960s directly. This experience provided the foundation for her interest in social systems and their effect. After receiving her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Harris moved to Boston, where she worked with various creative types. Through her work with WGBH and Chris Pullman, she realized the design field’s breadth and depth. After much prodding from her mentor, Harris enrolled in Yale’s Masters in Graphic Design program.

Two Twelve Associates was created with two of her former classmates in 1980 after graduation. Here, Harris began to explore how to use and grow her skill set to develop large-scale public information systems. Her work with Citibank set an early precedent for human-centered automated customer service.

Left: NYU Environmental Branding Study, 2008, by Sylvia Harris; Right: Columbia University Environmental Branding Wayfinding Study by Sylvia Harris

In 1994, Harris left Two Twelve to create Sylvia Harris LLC, where she changed gears and began focusing more on design planning and strategies. Harris helped guide some of the largest public institutions, hospitals, and universities with systems planning. As creative director for the US Census Bureau’s Census 2000, Harris’ rebranding efforts helped encourage previously underrepresented citizens to participate.

Left: Sylvia Harris, Voting By Design; Right: Sylvia Harris, 2000 U.S. Census Form

Harris was awarded the AIGA medal posthumously in 2014, three years after her untimely death at the age of 57. Harris will always be remembered for her contributions to the design field and far beyond.

Art Sims (Born 1954)

From his first foray into the art world with the “Draw Me” test from magazines and TV of the 50s and 60s, Sims excelled. He attended Detroit’s Cass Technical High School, known for its dedication to the arts. From there, Sims gained acceptance to the University of Michigan on a full scholarship. During the summer between his junior and senior years, Sims landed a job with Columbia Records to produce a series of album covers. After graduation, the Sunshine State called his name, and Sims headed to LA.

Sims scored a job with EMI, but he was ultimately let go for pursuing freelance work. He went on to work for CBS, where he continued building his independent portfolio. When he was let go this time, Sims was prepared and already had the office space for his firm, 11:24 Advertising Design.

After seeing one of Spike Lee’s films, Sims knew he had to work with the director. He went on to design posters for Lee’s New Jack City, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and most controversially, Bamboozled.

Art Sims poster designs for Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Mo’ Better Blues.

Ever the entrepreneur, Sims is developing a greeting card line and writing screenplays while teaching graphic design to African American middle schoolers. Art Sims is the epitome of talent, drive, and ambition, someone every graphic designer should know.

Gail Anderson (Born 1962)

Known for her uncanny ability to create expressive, dynamic typefaces perfectly suited to their subject, Gail Anderson is a designer and teacher with an impressive tenure in the field.

Gail Anderson, photographed by Darren Cox

Born and raised in New York, Anderson’s ever-burning curiosity about design began with the teen magazines of her adolescent years. It was cemented while studying at the School of Visual Arts in NY. Here, Anderson began to develop her methodologies and no-holds-barred approach to design.

After college, Anderson eventually landed at The Boston Globe for two years, working with those responsible for pioneering the new newspaper design of the late 1980s. Moving on to Rolling Stone in 1987, Anderson worked seamlessly with AIGA medalist Fred Woodward, where their creative process always included lots of music, low lighting, and late nights. Her work with Woodward was always exploring new and exciting materials and instruments to create Rolling Stone’s eclectic design. They utilized everything from hot metal to bits of twigs to bottle caps to create their vision.

Gail Anderson, spread for Rolling Stone, featuring Chris Rock

After working her way up from associate to senior art director, Anderson left Rolling Stone in 2002 to join SpotCo, where her focus shifted from design to advertising. At SpotCo, she’s been the designer behind innumerable Broadway and off-Broadway posters, including that of Avenue Q and Eve Ensler’s The Good Body.

Praised as the quintessential collaborator for her inclusive, expressive, and encouraging attitude towards working together, Anderson also admits that many of her “high-octane” designs occurred at night, solo. Whether it’s her collaborative work, solo projects, magazine layouts, or theatrical posters, Anderson designs work with and for her subjects, always emphasizing their highest potential.

Left: poster for Avenue Q, 2003, by Gail Anderson; Center: cover for Rolling Stone Magazine by Gail Anderson; Right: poster for The Marriage of Bette and Boo, 2008, Gail Anderson

The Unknown & Overlooked Designers

They are many, often invisible, but we feel the impact of their work throughout history, and we should acknowledge them. Many African American graphic designers worked behind the scenes and did not receive credit for their work due to the racist norms of the times.

These include:

The logo creators for the uniforms of the Negro baseball and basketball leagues;
Trail-blazing entrepreneurs like Madam C.J. Walker, Annie Malone, Carmen C. Murphy, Mae Reeves, Anthony Overton, Frederick Patterson, and many more;
The unknown graphic designer who painted the bold and sobering “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY” flag, hung by the NAACP from their New York offices whenever they learned of a hanging;
Those presently active (Black Lives Matter) are creating banners, posters, signs, and media protesting discrimination of all kinds. Graphic design, after all, is about communicating a message effectively.

The truth of all history cannot be understated. As a designer of the African diaspora (African-Jamaican-Canadian), I believe in knowing those who paved the way. These men and women boldly pushed past racial inequality with their talent and perseverance to help create the way for all.

Glenford Laughton is founder of Toronto-based agency Laughton Creatves, a design studio that believes design is a highly-collaborative endeavor (hence the missing ‘i’). This article was written and researched by Glenford Laughton and originally published on the Laughton Creatves website. Republished with permission of the author.

Sources: AIGA, The Design Observer, The University of Chicago Library, Atlanta Blackstar, The History Makers, Wikipedia, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Design Archive, and The Root.

The post 13 African American Graphic Designers You Should Know appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Meanwhile: Coastal Gothique

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 15:00:00 +0000

3 — I’ve found one of the best things about AoUS is the writing going on around it. This write up from John Grindrod is particularly lovely, and I once again find myself nodding along to Guy Lodge.

4 — Can’t stop looking at Lee Friedlander photos. His use of frames within frames (windows, doors, mirrors, television screens) – an additional layer of mystery about what’s happening inside and outside the image’s border – very much appeals to the rectangulist in me.

5 — These unused posters for Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut are creepy as heck, and therefore perfect. Surprised they’ve not been reused for rereleases or anything.

6 — Website updated! Have downgraded from Squarespace 7.1 to the arguably superior 7.0. If you’ve yet to dabble in Squarespace, be aware that that version numbering is exceedingly misleading – they’re essentially two completely different platforms, with very little in common.

7 — Science fact: 10am and 4pm are the best times to watch a movie. GERWIG HAS SPOKEN.

8 — Really rather tempted by these postcard model kits. Love the buildings they’ve selected, especially the wonderfully plain snooker hall and the coastal gothique Hastings net huts. Is coastal gothique a thing? Should it always be italicised? Who knows.

9 — Seeing lots of great work from GrandSon recently. Loving their Longlegs posters. Apparently there’s a cracking trailer as well, but I’m avoiding it as I’m already sold.

10 — Loving Patrick O’Keefe’s deep dive into the character-based production design of Across the Spider-Verse, specifically on creating the expressive, chromatic world of Gwen Stacy. Would love to see some of this on Nimona, for my money the best animated film of the year.

Okay, that’ll do. Find me elsewhere, on threads, twitter, instagram, etc.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Banner photo by Liz Furze on Unsplash.

The post Meanwhile: Coastal Gothique appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Daily Heller: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeaaaaah

Steven Heller — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Wednesday marks the 60-year anniversary of that epic airport arrival. On Feb. 7, 1964, flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York’s Kennedy Airport, triggering the arrival of “Beatlemania” (and simpler times). New York will be celebrating this invasion at the refurbished Eero Saarinen–designed TWA Hotel from Feb. 9–11. To commemorate the commemoration, designer and artist Marlene Weisman created a series of parody Beatles Air travel posters, combining references to song titles and lyrics with hints of TWA typography.

Yeah, yeah: I know! The plane was Pan Am, but that defunct airline did not refurbish their former terminal, did they?

Weisman talks more about her surprise Beatles pick-me-up in our conversation below.

What prompted you to make these posters?
Last summer, I was thrilled to hear the next Beatles convention (more about that to follow) was going to take place at the TWA Hotel at JFK to commemorate their February 1964 U.S. arrival. I absolutely love the redone TWA Hotel—they did an amazing job with the historic restoration. The iconic vintage TWA posters are nicely featured around the hotel, along with that gorgeous red-and-white Midcentury Modern decor and architectural details.

So I thought it would be a cool idea and perfect opportunity to parody the style of those posters (beautifully designed by David Klein) using Beatles lyrics as destinations.

As a freelance graphic designer and collage artist, I’m drawn to the incredibly rich visual history and design of 20th-century pop culture, especially of the ’60s and ’70s era. I’m particularly interested in fonts, especially ones used in the vernacular like signage, supermarket packaging and logos.

Graphic design parody mash-up work is a part of my career history: From the late 1980s through mid 1990s I had a fantastic job working in-house in the NBC art department at 30 Rock. I created on-air graphics and props for seven seasons of Saturday Night Live and worked on Late Night (Letterman and Conan eras) as well. So graphic design with a sense of humor comes quite naturally to me.

Were you a screaming Beatles fan back in the day?
As a little kid who grew up in Queens in the shadow of the 1964 World’s Fair, my parents often took me to JFK airport just to ogle the Jet Set travelers and marvel at the jets. (Free entertainment!) Those early ’60s space age days felt so modern and full of optimism.

And at the same time, the Beatles arrived with fresh new music—which, as we all know, grew into a global phenomenon. I’ve been a huge fan since I was a kid, trusty transistor radio always at my side. That expanded into a love of all kinds of rock music. (Before my NBC days, I designed music industry graphics right after getting out of college.)

How did you make them?
After making my list of destinations mentioned in Beatles lyrics, I sketched out some layout ideas by hand for each poster. Then I scoured digital public domain sites for location visuals, also snagging some PD vintage WPA-era illustrations to possibly use as well—you can see I adapted one for Blue Jay Way. To “up” the vintage factor with an illustrative look, I played around with my finds in Photoshop and Illustrator. And all my type design is done in Illustrator. Of course, I made a deep study of the TWA logo, too—to get FLY Beatles Air just right.

I then prepped them for production, as these are printed as physical 11×17 posters, and will be on display at next weekend’s Fest for Beatles Fans (Feb 9–11).

For whom did you make them?
A few years ago, I began attending, with my husband Mike, the Fest for Beatles Fans—which is what you might imagine: a sort of ComicCon for Beatles fans. It’s a crazy wonderful experience, lots of panels discussing Beatles history, tribute cover bands, guest appearances by Swinging London–era luminaries, Beatles cosplay, but most of all, a lovely community of attendees and staff. The Fest started back in 1974, so they are also celebrating a big anniversary this year.

There is always a Fan Art room, run for decades by Deco, a fellow collage artist. Attendees bring their homemade art there, and it’s very sweet—all levels accepted. I made a few wacky contributions to display there over the years: Victorian cabinet cards reimagined with the Beatles, a psychedelic-style painted guitar among them.

Over the past couple of years, I collaborated with Deco by designing a multimedia presentation about the artists, gallerists, illustrators and fashion designers who were in the Beatles trajectory in the late ’60s. This included people like Peter Blake, Jann Haworth, Robert Fraser, Richard Hamilton, Alan Aldridge, John Van Hammersveld, Klaus Voormann, Heinz Edelmann, Peter Max, Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (Michael English and Nigel Weymouth), The Fool design collective, and others. We presented it at the Fest over the past couple of years.

I can’t believe, being such a Beatles fan, that I allowed such a major historical moment to almost fly by. I’m glad you were on the case. What’s next on the drawing board? Er, the screen?
I do lots of book cover design, logo design and also media packaging for a wonderful company, Undercrank Productions, which restores and releases silent films, often by partnering with the Library of Congress.

I’m also preparing one of my collage series to be displayed at a big U.K. festival this summer. And most exciting, I’m working on a book that will be a visual memoir of my experiences designing graphics for NYC’s music industry and rock clubs during the gritty, rollicking early ’80s post-punk period. It will feature material from my archives, all designed in that pre-computer Xerox aesthetic. I have a real New York story to tell, X-Acto knife in hand.

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Repslabel Orchestrates Visual Symphony for Les Boréades

Amelia Nash — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 15:52:23 +0000

Montreal-based creative agency Repslabel has recently revamped the visual identity for Les Boréades, a distinguished music ensemble specializing in Baroque repertoire. Since its founding in 1991, the group has been recognized for its dynamic and expressive performance style. Les Boréades enlisted Repslabel to refresh their visual identity and graphic system, blending contemporary design with historical accents.

To maximize the impact of the new identity, Repslabel orchestrated a comprehensive campaign that works across various elements, including digital publications and promotions. The conceptual campaign pays homage to Baroque composers, utilizing graffiti to shroud their identities in secrecy, infusing Les Boréades with an enigmatic quality that focuses squarely on the music itself. This strategic approach enhances the ensemble’s artistic presence and showcases the adaptability and creativity embedded in their revitalized visual branding.

The newly crafted identity is flexible and designed to adapt seamlessly across various media over time. The typographic approach carries a distinct personality, communicating information with clarity and impact. The grid structure provides versatility, accommodating different visual and typographic elements based on the integrated content. A simple yet powerful color palette adds sophistication and allows for harmonization with diverse graphic styles.

Repslabel’s ‘Go for Baroque’ approach, combining contemporary graffiti in contrast with the highly ornate and elaborate style of Baroque, is music to my ears.

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Meanwhile: Things, Other Things

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve been looking at a lot of street photography recently, full of all the glorious noise and chaos of human life; barely constrained visual hubbub. So it was a nice change of pace when I fell into Scottish photographer Soo Burnell’s ongoing Poolside series (via Blind Magazine), collected in her book To the Water. All that light and geometry an eery sterility. Love it.¹

Stepping away from the water, Soo recently started a new series looking at cinemas, starting with The Scotsman Picture House in Edinburgh and the Regent Street Cinema in London. It’s fascinating to see how her poolside aesthetic translated to this new environment – expanses of water and tiling replaced with seats and curtains; sunlit blues and whites replaced with musty reds and greens.

I’ve put together my annual list of the year’s best film posters for Creative Review. It takes a lot of shortlisting and whittling-down, but it’s always a joy to compile, especially when I stumble upon something like this – Percival & Associates’ poster for All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the feature debut from award-winning poet, photographer and filmmaker Raven Jackson. Using an image from unit stills photographer Jaclyn Martinez, it pulls you right into a single gentle embrace, capturing the essence of the film; a big story told in small moments. Just gorgeous.

via Percival + Associates

No particular reason for sharing this 2007 Juergen Teller portrait of Björk eating at Spaghetti Nero, Venice. It appeared on my Pinterest yesterday and … look at it. I need to watch whatever movie this isn’t a still from.²

“A 30 day walk in Japan. A memoir. Fishermen, foul-mouthed kids, and terrible miserable wonderful coffee.” Things Become Other Things, the latest in Craig Mod’s photography plus narrative non-fiction walk-a-very-long-way-in-Japan books, looks utterly gorgeous. I love the attention he puts into the physical design of these books – here’s something you want to feel the weight of, touch, sniff.³

I hate that my first response when seeing immaculately composed photography like this is now ugh midjourney. Along with everything else wrong with AI-generated images, it’s undermining the immediacy of photography – I don’t want to have to study an image for increasingly abstruse clues as to whether or not it’s real! With art it’s bad enough, but now it’s seeping into news media. Fake photojournalism isn’t just directly insidious, it’s programming us to doubt the authentic. ↩︎
All title suggestions and plot synopses welcome. ↩︎
Right? Right? ↩︎

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Banner by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash.

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The Daily Heller: David Byrd, the East Coast’s Psychedelic Poster Man

Steven Heller — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0000

While psychedelic rock concert poster artists were making art in San Francisco, defining the style of the ’60s, concert promoters at New York rock palaces were churning out their own brand of work. David Edward Byrd was arguably the leader of this East Coast movement, and later became a ubiquitous Broadway show poster designer. His first retrospective monograph, POSTER CHILD: The Psychedelic Art & Technicolor Life of David Edward Byrd, created with Robert von Goeben, is a stunning collection of art and stories behind one of rock and roll’s most visible yet somewhat lesser celebrated artists. The book is packed with finished and sketched work as well as anecdotes galore—an essential chronicle of the times. I asked Byrd whether he saw himself as central to the East Village music scene and why the San Francisco artists soaked up all the notoriety.

You appear to be inspired by an Art Nouveau language. How were you introduced to this approach? And what would you say distinguished you from the late 19th-century masters?
I fell in love with the work of Alfons Mucha in my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon when it was still called Carnegie Tech. I am still not certain about how that happened at that time—but I do believe that it is necessary for a young artist to “fall in love” with an older artist in order to gas the engine of their creativity, so to speak. Everything about Mucha’s work: the exquisite draughtsmanship, the sinuous curves, the very delicious color palettes, the image/ground treatments, etc., just thrilled me. I became a voracious collector of art reference sources/books from that moment on. I was a major in the painting and design department and by my senior year I became somewhat fixated on the work of Edvard Munch and Francis Bacon. I was creating very large canvases (6–8 feet) of what I called “Existential Figure Investigations” of loosely brushed nudes. The only 19th-century masters I was interested in at that time were Carravagio, Gauguin and Puvis de Chavannes, plus the aforementioned Munch and Bacon.

I know your work for the Fillmore East (one of my teenage haunts that housed the office of the East Village Other); it was very different from the Fillmore West and San Francisco poster artists, like Victor Mosocso, Wes Wilson, et al. How would you describe the distinction in form and style?
Well, I was living on a commune (Fantasy Farm) and I got a call from Josh White and Kip Cohen, both of whom I met in art school. They were part of the creation of a rock concert venue in the East Village called “The Fillmore East,” and they desperately needed a poster designer. As I was the only graphic artist they knew, they called me at the commune and asked if I would be interested in creating a poster for Traffic, Blue Cheer & Iron Butterfly, which was the next show lined up at this new venue. Several of my communards were classmates of Josh and Kip at CMU so it became a cozy start for the new rock era. Bill Graham liked my style a lot, saying it was “very New York.” He was thrilled that the type I used was “readable.”

Your approach was indeed more illustrative—and I’d say more precise—than other poster “children” of the ’60s. What was your background and starting point for developing a signature approach?
You are right on about it being very different than the Fillmore West artists. I had no idea about how to create a poster. Also, I had absolutely no knowledge of or about typography. And the “Westies,” as I called them, were all about hand-drawn Nouveau-ish typography, which at that time was way over my head, but I was determined to not let this stop me. So, I worked hard to make PressType work on the fly. (I am still embarrassed about this, by the way.) My well-known Hendrix Poster uses Clarendon PressType but the complexity of the “Experience” image I hoped would draw your eye away from this type. (WTF—Clarendon? Oy!)

How much influence did The Who, Dead, Byrds and other groups you promoted have on your final output? Did they request you specifically?
In those days the bands were just happy to get “paid and laid.” It was Bill Graham that kept me creating posters. NYC was not a “poster town,” as it were. So in the three years we were open I only did a small number of FE posters compared to David Singer (the best of the Westies) who created 60 posters during his gig in San Francisco. (We became friends—the only Westie I really knew.) Never the twain shall meet.

Bill was a real mensch as far as I am concerned. His son David owns some of my originals. But, if it weren’t for Broadway and the theater, I never would have survived. But that is a real “shaggy dog” story in itself that is pretty much covered in the book. But my rock posters got me my first Broadway gig (Lanford Wilson’s The Gingham Dog) in 1969.

Was there a spoken or unspoken rivalry with the San Francisco artists?
I was never aware that any of the Westies even knew who I was. We did finally meet at the book signing for The Art of the Fillmore at the Fillmore West back in the day. We all sat at a long table and the books would be passed down the line and we would each sign our names inside. I never felt any rivalry ever at this time or since. To me, it was these guys who were famous, not myself.

Your Hendrix poster is but one of the icons of the period, but even more well-known and ubiquitous were the Broadway posters for era-defining musicals. Given that the San Francisco poster artists focused on music, would you agree that you owned the musical theater space?
For a New York Minute. It is true that Follies and Godspell put me on the map, as it were. But there were so many NY illustrators who created fantastic show posters that I am very humbled to be part of such an illustrious pack of designers.

Who among your peers as Broadway posterists—Paul Davis or Doug Johnson, for instance—did you look at as a “competitor” or “peer”?
Everyone who creates a good show poster is a competitor and/or a peer. One of the most prolific is my first student at Pratt Institute from my Beginning Illustration course in 1971, Frank Verlizzo. “Fraver” being his poster handle. We are still very close friends, though a continent apart. (Sweeney Todd, The Lion King, Sunday in the Park With George, etc.) He brought me home to share his Italian mama’s eggplant parmigiana. I always knew he would be famous some day!

Do you believe that your work was of its time or for all time?
One hopes “for all time” but I will take either. The fickle finger of fate sometimes sticks it in your eye, alas.

I’ve read that you were always busy, but your name was not as well-known as your work. Milton Glaser may be known for his Dylan and many other ’60s icons, but “Byrd” was and is a marquee name. Do you believe you were somehow undervalued in the poster world?
I never expected to have a coffee-table book about myself and my art. So I am tickled Barbie. As I like to say, “If you live long enough, you might get a book!” It’s a long road from Miami Beach to the Library of Congress. Shalom!

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The Daily Heller: Another Poster Spectacular at Poster House

Steven Heller — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant-Garde, which had its official opening last night at Poster House in New York City, features more than 50 works that showcase the rise and fall of the geometric, bold, machine-focused international style initially known as Modernism, and today as Art Deco. Originally the hallmark of the European avant-garde, the style became the visual language of consumer culture before its more nationalistic deployment leading up to World War II.

As host of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris was the epicenter of “art moderne.” This exposition was a collection of lush pavilions that celebrated a new kind of ornament, presenting the world with examples of the choicest stylistic developments in furniture, textile, fashion and graphic design. This early French beachhead is what one critic called the “style wars,” and took place throughout the industrial world.

The Poster House exhibit, organized by chief curator Angelina Lippert, designed by director of designOla Baldych, featuring materials selected from the extraordinary collection of William W. Crouse, showcases how Art Deco became the first global art movement, spanning railway advertisements from Japan (1935) to a Uruguayan FIFA World Cup promotional poster (1935), an airline ad from the former Yugoslavia (1930) and more, each celebrating their respective country’s expression of modernity at the time. Altogether, the exhibition tells a story of the cultural, societal and economic shifts that occurred before and after the Great Depression throughout the world.

The show features work by A.M. Cassandre, Charles Loupot, Marcello Nizzoli, Jean Dupas, Herbert Matter, Jean Carlu, Paul Colin, René Vincent, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Austin Cooper, Pierre Fix-Masseau and Joseph Binder, and runs through Feb. 25.

Gallery photos by Stephanie Powell.

Bugatti, 1930. René Vincent. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House

Mar del Plata, c. 1930. Ernesto Scotti. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House.

Aeroput Jugoslavija, 1930. Hans Wagula. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House

Week End Cigarettes, 1933. Paul Colin. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House

Lyra Extra, c. 1929. M. J. B. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House

Noveltex, 1932. Sepo (Severo Pozzati) Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House.

Leroy, 1938. Paul Colin. Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House.

Giornata del Prodotto Italiano, 1930 Giuseppe Riccobaldi del Bava Collection of William W. Crouse Image Courtesy of Poster House.

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The Daily Heller: Can Posters Have Muscle?

Steven Heller — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

When the editors of Posters Can Help asked me to write a foreword for their new book, I relied on my hardwired notions about design for social activism to fill the page with words and thoughts. When I received the book in the mail, I realized that I over-wrote what I wanted to say and, therefore, did not say what I intended in an economical, accessible manner. Fortunately, I have this Printmag.com venue, where I have a second chance to fine tune. The following is a shorter, and I hope breezier revised way of stating why this is a valuable collection and worthwhile book, that I urge you to purchase since its sales will help ARTHELPS and MSF—Médecins Sans Frontières.

Posters are tools of both commerce and society—and sometimes the two goals intersect. They advertise everything from food and fashion to cars and computers—in fact, everything we consume—they inform and entertain on themes as broad as art, music and lifestyle. Just as important, posters advocate, protest, caution and educate on such topics as the horrors of war, the serenity of peace, the dangers of climate change, the norms of community, the gift of hope, the fear of authoritarian rule.

If the design and content grab attention, elicit response, challenge perception and infiltrate the mind of the receiver, posters can help augment thought and stimulate ideas.

Not all posters, however, function at the same level of useful intensity. Self-indulgent design will be a liability. Over-stylized imagery will dilute a message. Yet legibility and readability are not, however, always the requisite for effective posters. Often the surprising visual impact of abstraction is more motivational than realistic representation; chaos can be more relevant than a pristine fine design. The designer’s emotional response to an issue is sometimes best when counter-intuitive.

In these frenetic times there are many positives regarding static representations. As we experience culture today there is expectation of movement, motion and change. Time for contemplation has been reduced to seconds as AI bots become increasingly more powerful. Yet posters, even those that are designed on and for the screen, are essentially lasting. They can be animated if the designer so chooses, but they can also be printed out and hung on surfaces. The benefit of the semi-but-not-entirely-hybrid poster (those that are made for and reside on internet sites) is how they are used, which is an agreement between the designer and the viewer (or user).

Posters for social (including among other issues, gender and sexuality), political (including issues, rights, law and freedom in general) and personal concerns (whatever they may be at any given time and place) can be accomplished as quickly as the creative (or polemic) mind can conceive them, produced and distributed in large numbers around the world.

The golden age of the poster has long been considered the pioneering turn of the century, then the modern mid-20th century, then the psychedelic ’60s, and so on through the decades, in Europe, the US and Asia. Today is another golden age. It is the digital golden age. Can posters really help? Yes!

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In Memory of David Lance Goines

Natalia Ilyin — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 13:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, my sister forwarded me an obituary. Poster designer David Lance Goines died on February 19th after a stroke ten days before. I looked at the red envelope that stood propped on my desk. I always save his Lunar New Year’s card to open as a little present from him on a difficult day. This was that day. I opened it to find a chiseled rabbit looking back at me, and “Happy New Year 2023” in his fine italic hand.

“People who run for buses will never make calligraphers,” Goines once told me sedately, as I blew into work, windblown. But I think he heard that bus coming when he signed those last cards. The pen was moving fast.

Obituaries are funny things. They make a nice package of a life so that we can feel we understand that life and tuck it away, complete. But the outside things about David Goines, his fame as a quirky person, a poster designer, typographer, and calligrapher, didn’t do justice to the formidable mind and work ethic and “tears for things” held in the man.

I met David Goines in 1977 after getting tossed out of my first college. On my last day, my type teacher, James Hutchinson, pressed an envelope into my hand as I was leaving class. The envelope was sealed and addressed to Goines. I carried it to Berkeley.

In those days, as a young person, I thought of Goines as a demigod of design and was terrified of his quiet and his certainty. He was 31. I considered him middle-aged. He was a big deal in the California design-world. He’d been thrown out of UC Berkeley in the ’60s for printing pamphlets for the SDS. I think that shock contributed to his becoming a hugely educated person and an autodidact in design.

When I met him, California was piecing itself back together after the confusion of the early 1970s, when the hippies and flowers and dreams of universal love faded into drug addiction and kidnappings and blown-up buildings and death and terror cells. Goines’ methodical creation of poster after poster for all kinds of Berkeley businesses and good causes threw a fine net of visual order over the city. His posters served to create cohesion— his personal routines championed the value of work, of unlocking the shop door every morning, of locking it every night.

I remember opening that jingling storefront door that first morning, carrying the letter in my little box portfolio, and seeing the calligraphed sign, “Sorry, We’re Open.” (And the reverse, “Yes! We’re Closed.”) He loved an ironic opposition.

From The Constructed Roman Letter

Goines greeted me with the formality of someone from the 1890s, and I answered in kind, having been brought up by Edwardians myself. Today, you’d think steampunk. Vest and watch chain. Waxed moustache. We both had hair. It was a long time ago. He handed me a mug of Peet’s, read the letter, and gave me a job.

I shrink-wrapped piles of cards and cut up negatives for stripping. But mostly I watched Goines make things. I had worked for a commercial printer, but I had never seen someone run a letterpress, never seen a Heidelberg windmill or a Chandler and Price actually printing, never seen work that was so handmade.

And what a printer he was. Each sheet of Mohawk Superfine went through his Chief 24 one color at a time, often more than 20 times— with perfect registration. He never used halftones. If you see a teal and an aqua on one of his original posters, those are two separate ink colors— two separate passes through the press. He ran that press dry as a bleached bone.

From A Basic Formal Hand (via The People’s Graphic Design Archive)

He’d sit down across from me and doodle a perfect group of italic letters— upside down and backwards, so I could read them. He’d take painstaking care to show me the reasons for the geometry of a constructed alphabet. One time, he decided to prove to me that color was not discernible in the dark. He revved up his old Volkswagen Beetle and careened up and down the Berkeley hills, with me clutching the dash, searching for the Berkeley Rose Garden. We eventually got there. His lighter flared, lighting rose after rose. He was right: no color. Once, upstairs at Chez Panisse, flushed with the victory of his own win, he tried to coax me into arm wrestling Alice Waters. I sized her up— she looked small but tough; I wasn’t that foolish.

I didn’t know anything about the arts and crafts movement. I didn’t know he was “stealing with both hands,” as he would say, from Ludwig Holwein. I didn’t see the Jugenstil in him because I didn’t know what the Jugenstil was. What did I know of tertiary complements? Of the black line of Ukiyo-e? How would I have known that Morris’s designer-socialism marked a trail for Goines’ designer-radicalism? David Goines was good to me and to many, many other people who needed a helping hand. Only later did I learn to name the layers of his living.

Natalia Ilyin is Professor of Design, Design History, and Criticism at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

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Meanwhile: Stunning Monks, Unexplained Sounds, and Weird Noises

Daniel Benneworth-Gray — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0000

— Thought it was about time I shared some of my own work! Problem is, I’ve been doing a lot of art directing for film and TV marketing material recently, which basically means I have a lot of projects that I’m very proud of, buried beneath multiple layers of NDA. So in lieu of that stuff, I’ll be topping Meanwhile with my own collage sketches and composition experiments. (It’s design without purpose, which I guess makes it… art?)

— Anyone else obsessed with trawling the Christie’s auctions while daydreaming about art you can’t afford? Always lots of interesting pieces to be found, and the images are nice and big too. For example, Grayson Perry’s The Island of Bad Art is well worth a zoom around, even if most of it does feel like a personal attack.

— More overdraft-troubling loveliness to be found at Projekt 26, purveyors of midcentury Polish posters. Even if you’re not going to dip your hand in your pocket, it’s an incredible resource for typography and color palette inspiration.

— Louie Schwartzberg talks about the craft and technology that goes into his mushroom time-lapse videos. The results are quite beautiful, but if you’re currently watching The Last of Us, watching this will probably trigger intense fungal panic.

— Ridiculous tables from the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons DM’s Guide, including the Unexplained Sounds and Weird Noises Table, the Chance of Monk Stunning/Killing Opponent by Height Table and of course the Random Harlot Table. (I’m *rolls* a haughty courtesan!)

— Really enjoying Fleishman is in Trouble on Disney+, which weirdly reminds me of Cameron Crowe’s Singles for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Respect to the makers for faithfully adapting Kelly Blair’s original cover design for the opening shot and titles. More of Kelly’s work here.

— The history of LEGO’s smaller and cubier Modulex system, tracing its evolution from 1960s architectural modelling tool to project-tracking aid to signage system. Warning: watching this video will result in significant eBaying. I’m the proud owner of one Modulex brick (thanks to the incredibly generous Caz Mockett at last week’s Bricktastic convention) and it’s adorable and I need MORE.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo by the author.

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The Daily Heller: Posters From Modern Belgrade

Steven Heller — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Slavimir Stojanovic was 16 when he designed his first poster for the 1985 Belgrade Culture Olympiad. The piece was hung all around the city—and “I was eternally hooked,” he told me. It was at the height of socialist Yugoslavia, when culture was the “prime social identifier.” Unfortunately, in the beginning of the 1990s, nationalism imploded the country.

Graphic design served Stojanovic and friends as a creative escape. In the ’90s, he worked mainly in advertising, receiving hundreds of awards worldwide; he briefly studied in Sweden, and after the NATO bombing in 1999 he left Belgrade and started a new life in Ljubljana, Slovenia, formerly the Northern Yugoslav republic (close to Italy and Austria). He says he became a proper designer there, because both the industry and the aesthetics were already developed and creatively more demanding. After 10 years he returned to Belgrade, where he launched a creative communications studio called Futro Design, which has expanded to include the Futro lifestyle brand, with a web shop and two stores in Belgrade. He employs almost 20 people, and writes books for children and adults. He recently published Nothing Really Matters, But Everything is Very Important. I asked him to discuss his design entrepreneurship.

Why did you publish this book? And what is the inspiration for the title?
Fifteen years ago I stopped competing and sending my works abroad. It just felt counterproductive for the business since my success was oversaturating the local media space for years; it was a public relations overdrive where nobody would work with me because my image seemed too expensive and too exclusive. I also had to go back to basics and redefine my purpose in life, so this book now is meant to show what I have been doing all this time, what the backstory of it all is and, of course, to expand the influence of creativity and generate universal inspiration. The title comes from my artistic social commentary projects, where I search for the truth and all its children lost in contemporary communication.

Why are all your posters in English?
I was born and raised in Yugoslavia, in a truly cosmopolitan spirit-driven society. I always had a need to be universally understood on as large a scale as possible. The English language offers that. Maybe the fact that I spent almost two years living in Washington DC as a kid, with my grandparents who worked at the Yugoslav embassy there, has something to do with it.

After more than 30 years of all kinds of isolation, social depression, an unbearable stigma cloud above us all here and ongoing national tensions, this region needs to be heard in order to be understood worldwide. As a part of this cultural neighborhood, I have an obligation to take part in that effort.

How would you describe the “style” of the work you do?
I have a creative maxim—”Complicate Simply”—and I have been sticking to it ever since I was studying at professor H.C. Erikson’s class at HDK in Gothenburg, Sweden. I fell in love with Scandinavian functional minimalism there, but I try to combine it with the Balkan creative heritage rooted in soul-preserving disciplines: humor, irony, satire, and the works of Zenithists.

What is the intent or aim/goal of your messages?
The intent of the Futro Posters is to provoke and challenge people mentally and hopefully inspire and motivate them to do something creative, relevant and meaningful with their lives, instead of scrolling hours away.

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The Daily Heller: More Intolerance Over Tolerance

Steven Heller — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Posters are often magnets … for defacement. Many such “interventions” are simply benign jokes, but just as frequently they are menacingly hateful racist and sexist responses by modern-day Vandals and Goths.

In Zagreb, Croatia, the “Students for Tolerance” poster exhibition opened last week on the Republic of Croatia Square, directly in front of the School of Applied Arts and Design and the Museum of Arts and Crafts. The posters show a variety of responses from four historically hostile neighboring nations to the unifying theme of tolerance. Not long after they were put on display in Zagreb, they were vandalized.

As reported on the Croat news site IndexHR: “This morning, a citizen reported to the police that one of the posters from the exhibition offended him. … A little later, a group of men scribbled ‘LGBT’ on the poster with a felt-tip pen and … then wrapped [the poster] in a white shroud so passersby could not see it.”

The poster that caused the ruckus has the headline “Disgusting, but I tolerate it,” and the text: “Every Sunday a veteran, a conservative, a liberal, a gay and an atheist sit down at the table and tolerate each other.” The photo shows a family having a meal together; the image is blurred but a cross is visible on the wall.

Although the student designer’s use of the word “disgusting” is arguably a questionable choice, the message is meant to be ironic in tone and acerbically targets overt and covert beliefs. The Zagreb news site explains: “We may have different beliefs, we may not agree on opinions and actions, but within the community, in this case the family, we support and tolerate each other regardless of all our differences and disagreements. And perhaps within such a community is exactly the first lesson we learn about tolerance. To love each other. This poster talks about that love and it is sad that this kind of student work serves to promote hate speech.”

This series of posters has been exhibited without damage or incident in Graz, Austria, at the Design Monat festival; in Berlin, during the Berlin Design Week; and in Ljubljana, Slovena.

In Zagreb, although organizers removed the white cloth cover, by late afternoon the poster was vandalized for a second time.

Meanwhile, in the center of Zagreb, a blitz of homophobic and xenophobic posters with the coat of arms of Zagreb and the inscription “Zagreb for equality” were pasted on lampposts and bus shelters. The poster at right reads: “Support the LGBTQ+ community—children have the right to love adults!” The poster at left reads: “Let’s accept migrants together—welcome new Croats.” It depicts a crossed-out photo of white, blonde (Nazi-era) well-behaved girls and two other contrasting photos, one showing riots involving Black people and the other protests in Asia. In the background is the 1892 painting Antemurale Christianitatis (Antecedents of Christianity) by Ferdinand von Quiquerez-Beaujeu. It is an allegorical depiction of Croatia as the defender of Christian Europe.

The Zagreb city seal at the bottom of the work is a failed attempt to suggest these are official posters. The City of Zagreb began removing them immediately. Nonetheless, the virus spreads.

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The Daily Heller: The Performances of a Lifetime

Steven Heller — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 11:00:00 +0000

As I have never seen a Baltimore Theatre Project performance, from where I sit David Plunkert’s theater posters steal the show. As a record of the plays (and a catalog of enticing design), Plunkert’s collected works have earned the curtain call they receive in the stunning monograph Happy Sad Ugly Pretty, which also features a 12-page book of sketches and an interview of Plunkert and Paul Sahre conducted by Ellen Lupton.

There is a long history of boffo theater posters, so to be on the same stage as such masters of the genre as Paul Davis, Jim McMullan and Paula Scher is a considerable accomplishment, especially as clients routinely put as much weight on the quality of a promotion as they do the strength of their actors’ performances.

With over 90 works spanning 17 years, Plunkert’s posters are notable for their wide array of visual techniques, and a playfulness that lives on long after the cast has taken a final bow.

But don’t take it from this fan—ask Plunkert while he’s waiting in the wings and under the spotlight on Sept. 28 at New York’s Society of Illustrators. Broadway, here he comes.

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The Daily Heller: What if Movie Poster Collectors Were Eligible for Oscars?

Steven Heller — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Dwight Cleveland would be a definite nominee. He has compiled the most boffo collection of vintage film posters in the world. Since 1977 he has avidly discovered rarities from all over the globe—56 countries, spanning multiple genres. His archive includes every Oscar Best Picture winner and the top 100 films of all time, as rated by The American Film Institute and The Internet Movie Database. Cleveland has donated a significant amount of his collection to museums around the globe, too.

He is also one of the first collectors to document the narrative of women in early cinema and their historic contributions to film. It was, he notes, actually women who were the real power players of the industry during that time. Recent social movements inspired Cleveland to showcase parts of his collection where underrepresented communities played pivotal roles behind the camera.

Some of this collection is currently on display through October at Poster House in New York City in Experiential Marriage: Women in Early Hollywood.

A 2019 exhibition of Cleveland’s collection at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL, marked his first solo show and the first film poster showcase of that magnitude. Later that year, Assouline released his book, Cinema on Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters (I contributed a preface, alongside TCM host Ben Mankiewicz).

In addition to his passion for collecting, Cleveland, a Chicago real estate developer and historic preservationist, is enthusiastic about the impact of film posters on culture, how they’re celebrated as an artform in their own right, and how his collection depicts a 125-year panorama of American history.

What inspired you to become a film poster collector?
As a naive high school senior, I fell in love with a portrait lobby card from Wolf Song (1929), with Lupe Vélez and Gary Cooper. The color saturation, Deco graphics and romantic embrace just reached out and grabbed me. Every poster acquisition for my personal collection has been like that for the past 45 years.

How has collecting these posters affected your cultural literacy?
My résumé has transitioned from collector to archivist, preservationist, conservator, philanthropist and, now, with the exhibition at Poster House, advocate for women’s rights. My early love for foreign posters opened my eyes to the ways different cultures interpreted these films and their strategy for advertising them in their specific market. This has been an ongoing learning experience for half a century. Then, my research on all the women who played a major role in developing the cinema business—yet whose careers have been overlooked—really struck to the bone. My wife is Latina and I’ve witnessed the discrimination and misogyny over the years that she’s endured. No one has broadcasted the importance of the thousands of women’s stories represented in my collection until now. So the combination has molded what appeals to me visually and what I think is important from a social responsibility standpoint. My focus now is educating a new generation on the impact they can truly have through an intersectional lens.

Many like me in the design world see contemporary film posters as a field governed and hampered by strict industry rules.
I couldn’t agree more. Oftentimes, the legal contracts of the stars dictated graphic elements, like the star’s name had to appear above the film title or it had to be in a particular size font. The studios sold the foreign distribution rights in places such as Eastern Europe, where the artists became particularly adept at using their art to bypass the bureaucratic censors who had no aesthetic. The distributors, who could advertise any way they saw fit, gave these artists free rein in creating their own designs apart from the U.S. studio-created campaigns. As a result, they are much more thought-provoking.

Who are designers that you believe are leaders?
In 1985 I circumnavigated the globe in search of film posters in far-off lands. I was really taken aback by the Italian designers, along with posters from Asia—Japan in particular. Because I fell in love with the graphics first, I was never fixated on U.S. posters being the best, but rather on what I thought in my mind’s eye were the best graphics. Very few of the Japanese are signed, but Anselmo Ballester, Ercole Brini, Angelo Cesselon, G. Di Stefano, Luigi Martinati and Sandro Symeoni are all Italian artists I admire.

What is most valued in your collection?
The last one I acquired …

What is your criteria for selection and inclusion?
If I have a visceral reaction to something visually, then I know it should be in my collection. A bit like porn, where I can’t necessarily define it but I know it when I see it.

Do you have an unattainable poster rarity?
Most of what I like is one-of-a-kind and I don’t even know it exists until I spot it at a flea market, in an auction catalog or on a dealer’s website.

I’ve always believed posters are collected because of the relationship of the collector to the film, as a token or trophy or flag of allegiance. Is this true?
Very much so. The bigger the film or star, the more important this becomes. But I have several posters I treasure as much as anything that are from totally forgotten films with no one special in the cast or crew. Those of us who are most smitten by film posters value the ones that reduce the true soul of the movie onto a single sheet of paper. What makes this so intriguing is that the posters are usually designed before the film is even completed. The artists are given very little to go by for confidentiality reasons. This is why the most effective ones are so sought after.

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These Glitchy Lecture Posters Ask: What Buildings Would You Put on a Desert Island?

Sarah Fonder — Tue, 17 May 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, the University of Hong Kong hosted “Desert Island Buildings,” a weekly lecture series where big names in global architecture discussed their favorite buildings all of time. It was inspired by the classic BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs, where celebrities and thinkers talk about their most essential musical picks.

Designer Anthony Lam plays up the lecture series’ “design your own island” concept with vibrant, cartographic posters reminiscent of the world-building modes in video games. Each speaker in an international lineup including Go Hasegawa, Hua Li, and Alessandra Cianchetta gets their own glitchy imaginary landscape with mountainous peaks and bold, high-contrast colors. Lam announces each speaker with a sturdy, yet slightly fluid inktrap font that pops right out of the design and adds a quietly surreal feel.

Six buildings, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the architecture of their lives.

Based on the seminal BBC Radio 4 Show, Desert Island Discs, first launched in 1942, the Spring Lecture Series at the University of Hong Kong will adapt this format to provide a very personal insight into the minds of an intriguing group of international architects. By selecting six buildings that are most relevant to their work, have altered their design approach or that have left them baffled, inspired, angry or lost for words, the discussion will reveal how the architects think and the importance of their background, education, culture, and upbringing, that has shaped their identity. What are the key moments that have impacted their architectural vision, what keeps them motivated and what concerns them most today? These issues will be discussed and teased out from our speakers which include Go Hasegawa (Japan), Clement Blanchet (France), Hua Li (China), Mark and Jane Burry (Australia) and Alessandra Cianchetta (Italy).

Client—

Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong

Typeface in use—

Pleasure Inktrap by Pizza Typefaces

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Martina Galarza’s Comic-Inspired Design Adds an Extra Spark to Concert Art

Sarah Fonder — Wed, 11 May 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Argentine designer Martina Galarza recently shared this poppy, graphic poster art she created last fall for a concert by buzzy singer-songwriter Marilina Bertoldi. The visual’s bright neon hues and nostalgic, comic-inspired accents add a punk rock irreverence that I’m sure inspired more than a few ticket purchases. Galarza’s fun, youthful art immediately stands out on a wall, and we can’t wait to see what other tricks she has up her sleeve.

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The Daily Heller: What Would Massimo Say?

Steven Heller — Fri, 06 May 2022 10:52:00 +0000

Massimo Vignelli (1931–2014) would have turned 90 on January 10. And there’s no better way to posthumously celebrate Massimo and Lella Vignelli’s well-lived lives than to assemble 250 posters from designers in 46 countries for an online exhibition, Vignelli90, which echoes the maestro’s signature preference—a tsunami of Helvetica type and black and red ink.

The show is organized by Amijai Benderski, Juan Martín Lusiardo and Santiago Ternade, in concert with The Vignelli Center for Design Studies. It’s impressive to be so revered by the design world. Here, the posthumous poster is graphic design’s 250-gun salute.

What would Massimo say? “Move one point to the left.”

Below are some excerpts from Vignelli90.

Shweta Malhotra, India.

Derek Stewart, Italy.

Stefanie Weigler & Triboro, USA.

Diego Feijóo, Spain.

Vince Frost, Australia.

Joaquín Riso, Paraguay.

Wayne Ford, UK.

Jureko Koletic, Croatia.

Mother Design, UK.

Indernik,India

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