We’re at this great nexus of being able to return focus to the book as an object, as a form of expression, and figuring out ways to do that so that it’s relevant to a contemporary audience.

Arion Press has been manually printing books on centuries-old equipment in San Francisco for 50 years, yet they are currently embarking upon a new beginning. The last vertically integrated bookmaker in the country, Arion Press was established in 1974 and has most recently been housed in San Francisco’s Presidio neighborhood. They officially opened their new doors in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in October—after moving over 49 tons of antique equipment—and will soon be releasing their second title of the year, Fables of Aesop.

Arion Press is composed of a production team of six people, split between three departments: the foundry, the press room, and the book bindery. They also work with local bookbinder John Demerritt, and have an additional seven employees on the administrative side of things who spearhead development and programming. Arion Press’s lead printer and creative director, Blake Riley, was hired back in 2001 originally as one of the imprint’s first apprentices. I recently spoke with Riley on the occasion of all of this excitement, to learn more about the history of Arion Press, Fables of Aesop, and keeping the art of bookmaking alive.

(Lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Take me back to the origin of Arion Press. How did it all begin? 

We trace our lineage back in San Francisco to the late teens when Edwin and Robert Grabhorn came out from Indiana. Curiously, Edwin had been primarily a printer of music scores, which is a very niche, phenomenal process that has fallen entirely by the wayside at this point. They set up shop in San Francisco in the late teens and established the Grabhorn Press, which became one of the premier American fine press operations for decades, through the 60s. After Edwin passed away, the younger brother, Robert, ultimately went into partnership with Andrew Hoyem. When Robert died, Andrew founded Arion as an imprint in 1974, which is why we’re claiming this year as our 50th anniversary celebration. 

I know you started out at Arion Press as an apprentice. Can you tell me a bit more about the apprenticeship program? 

With maybe only one exception, everyone who works in production here has come up through this apprenticeship program. It’s ongoing and is considered a fundamental part of the activity that happens here. 

This is one of those professions or trades that is especially unique because it relies very heavily on this oral transmission of skills. There is a certain amount of book learning you can do around this; you can learn technique by reading repair manuals and that kind of thing. But to really have a sense for the sounds of the presses and to be able to see how hands work in relation to bring it all together, there’s no way to simulate that experience. So the apprenticeships became really instrumental in that.

By now, we’ve easily had over three dozen apprentices. Obviously, not all of them have stayed, some of them have gone on to work in other areas of the book arts or for other book arts organizations, or to teach, some of them have moved on altogether, but it actually has proven to be a very successful, robust lifeline for the press and for letterpress printing as a whole. 

I think a lot of other old trades and handcrafts are similar. I’m a sign painter, and I took a two-year sign painting course at LA Trade Tech College that’s not an apprenticeship per se, but it does replicate certain aspects of what an apprenticeship would offer. I learned from two sign painters who’ve been doing it for decades and who took the course themselves. The knowledge that they have is invaluable, and so much of it is just in their heads, so you really have to be in the room with them for two years in order to even scrape the surface of understanding sign painting.

A lot of it, too, is that the people who have that knowledge aren’t natural-born teachers, so there’s a lot that they don’t have words for. Or until a certain problem arises, it wouldn’t occur to them to explain the fix, or how you go about creating a fix for a problem that’s never arisen, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of that kind of knowledge that gets transferred by osmosis. 

What’s your favorite aspect of what you and your team do at Arion Press? 

Writ large, what’s most exciting about the work is that it’s such a dynamic moment to be involved with the book because it’s going through these radical changes. There’s this interesting division that’s occurred between knowledge and information. When people say, the web is going to be the death knell of the book! it’s really the opposite. What the web has done quite brilliantly is wrangle information and remove all of that encyclopedic burden from the book, which frees it up to do all of these other things. Meanwhile, the technologies for construction and manufacturing are changing so quickly that they are offering these wild new opportunities for ways in which books can actually physically be constructed. So we’re at this great nexus of being able to return focus to the book as an object, as a form of expression, and figuring out ways to do that so that it’s relevant to a contemporary audience.

What the web has done, quite brilliantly, is wrangle information and remove all of that encyclopedic burden from the book, which frees it up to do all of these other things.

Part of that is incorporating new technologies, and figuring out how the book can embrace those. That’s the most exciting thing for us: this project of invention and discovery. What that means in the day-to-day that is especially motivating is that it requires this incredible collaboration between all of the creative people who are involved in a project. That’s the artists within the publishing program, then working with the book binders and the guys in the foundry, and being able to coordinate everyone’s expertise to bring them into alignment with the concept for the project, and hopefully ending up with something that surprises everybody. It’s almost always the case that we never know where we’re going to end up, because the process is so organic.

I’m mesmerized by the ancient printing equipment and techniques you all have preserved and use to create your books. What’s it like working with such special and historic machinery day in and day out? 

A significant portion of the type collection here, which is the largest standing collection of metal type outside of the Smithsonian Institution, goes back to San Francisco printers at the end of the 19th century. Plus, ours is still employed; it’s still making books and printing words; it’s not just a research collection. The collection began to be compiled by the Grabhorns, who were great collectors. All of that adds up to what has been described as this irreplaceable cultural treasure designation that we were bestowed.

When working with the historic type collection, we may have a certain design in mind or a certain look for the typography, but when we go to the case it may turn out that we only have a partial alphabet of that particular typeface. So there are instances like that that arise daily where we have to pivot and devise a new solution based on all of the physical realities and constraints of working with 100-year-old equipment. That really leads to this ongoing, continuous conversation and evolution of every project where one thing leads to the next so that by the time we end up with the book finished and bound, it’s something that no one really could have anticipated. There’s a real excitement, joy, and delight associated with that. 

What’s it like keeping an old press and these antique technologies thriving within the context of San Francisco, a place dominated by big tech and digital innovation? 

The most facile metaphor for it is the interplay and relationship between radio and television, and the ways in which television actually ended up leading to the renaissance of radio that we’ve seen in the last couple of decades. We are by no means tech-averse. The monotype casters, for example, which were invented at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution in the 1890s, were the first word processors; they were cutting-edge technology for their day. So when the foundry was set up here in the Bay Area in 1915, it was cutting-edge technology. 

We are by no means tech-averse.

Originally, the monotypes were a two-part system where there was a paper tape that was punched on a hydraulic keyboard, and then that tape was fed onto the typecaster. But then the paper tape became complicated for various reasons, and about 15 years ago this beautiful digital interface was engineered that replaced that whole process. So now what we have is this 21st-century digital interface connected to the 19th-century caster that allows us to download a text from anything that’s in the public domain, format it, and convert it to be cast. It was this beautiful way, much like television and radio, that the new technology has moved in and helped buoy the old one. 

Another example that came up recently was when we worked on the Edgar Allen Poe collection. In the process of building that project, we stumbled upon this pile of bricks that had been rescued when NYU demolished Poe’s house in lower Manhattan. Unbeknownst to anyone, they moved in and raised the house, but it seems as if perhaps a mea culpa, they preserved the bricks. So all of a sudden we had these bricks, and there was this question of how we could incorporate them somehow into the book and enliven the experience that much more. What we ended up doing with them was working with a colleague of ours here in the Bay, John Sullivan, who had gotten into paper making and 3D printing. He created 3D molds into which we could grind the bricks down like a mortar and pestle and use the brick dust as a pigmentation in the pulp paper, and then we packed the molds. We ended up creating these three-dimensional cameos of Poe’s visage, and those were then embedded in the covers of the books. The paper-making is relatively ancient, but being able to create these cameos was made possible by technology only available within the last ten years. 

We’re really invested in that exploring, in breaking down the barrier between those two things and helping ensure that it’s a two-way communication from the digital to the analog, and from the analog back to the digital. They all happily coexist. 

Can you tell me more about Arion Press’s 50th anniversary celebration this year, and the Fables of Aesop collection you’re releasing as part of the milestone? 

We wanted to create something that would appropriately commemorate the press at this inflection point, while also accommodating the move. A year and a half ago, we didn’t exactly know what the move would entail other than it would happen within a six-month period and be completely disruptive and unpredictable. So we had to design a project that could somehow be modular and flexible enough to absorb this unexpected future. 

Those two things came together in Aesop. It seemed appropriate not only for its longstanding role in the history of printing— I came across one comment that said, second to the Bible, Aesop’s fables is the most printed work in the Western world. This makes a lot of sense because, for various historical and technical reasons, the fables lent themselves to the capacities and technologies of the day once moveable type was created. This is in part because of their brevity, but especially because of how visual they’ve always been. That allowed for this incredibly rich body of work to be created around them, and constantly reinvented. 

As I began to dive into the history of Aesop’s fables primarily at the Huntington Library, one thing that rose to the surface was how these morals that we’ve all grown up with and maybe have even been used to affect our behavior one way or another, have evolved over time. Once we got a bead on that, the project became very interesting because there was an opportunity to approach this in a way that’s relevant to the 21st century; what do these morals look like now? 

Also, because the morals are each self-contained in their way structurally, that allowed us the freedom that we needed to treat them individually. We could be printing each individual folio, which is how we will be presenting them, so that if production was interrupted, we could finish that one folio, pack it aside, move the operation, and pick up with the next folio. It also separated the binding from the printing. Typically when we finish the printing of a book, we have another three months of hand book-binding before the book can be released. But issuing it in a box as a collection of individual folios gave us the elbow room we needed. 

So we had this splashy box and these morals, and both of those things were the anchors for the project. That’s what led us to invite Kiki Smith as the primary visual artist to create a sculptural multiple to define the experience of the box, and to invite Daniel Handler (whom you might know as Lemony Snicket) to reinterpret the morals. We then began to invite other artists that we had worked with in the past to each choose one fable to interpret and create one print that we would print here in the shop by traditional letterpress relief printing techniques. We ended up with 15 artists with Kiki being the 16th, and 41 fables. 

The project allowed us to celebrate our community, it gave us a way to make a statement relevant to a contemporary audience, it gave us the flexibility to dance around the move, and it promised to be a lot of fun in the process.

Featured image above: Nick Bruno/Courtesy of Arion Press

The post Arion Press Keeps the Art of Bookmaking Alive While Looking to the Future appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Hand-bound books, honest stories and photography as evidence – design and book-making studio Zone6 is putting narrative-driven documentary photography at the front of its print runs.

“Breaks are for wannabe writers. Time and time again, I hear the laments of the undisciplined crying out, ‘Oh, I need to clear my head.’ Ridiculous. You need to resist the siren song of temptation emanating from your bladder or the dog scratching at the backdoor or the pain radiating from your chronic carpal tunnel and get down to work.”

How to write 100,000 words per day, every day.

David Pearson has ‘grammed a fantastic selection of Spektrum books designed by Lothar Reher between 1968 and 1993 for the German publisher Volk und Welt. Never seen these before and now I want all of them.

“Rampant consumerism has consumed us” – how queuing for stuff became just as important as buying it.

Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker announces The Orchid synthesizer, a new songwriting tool, ideas machine and dust-gathering object of bleepy bloopy technolust.

Animauteur¹ Don Hertzfeldt on using Photoshop:

“You don’t know what you’re not allowed to do. I still don’t know, but I’ve felt better about myself because I have spoken to people who are in technical positions in cinema who are like, “Yeah, I don’t know what half this stuff does either.” I think it’s a sign of good software where you don’t need to. A sign of good software to me is it’s intuitive, and you can put your things in, and hopefully behave like an artist and make a mess and not break things. The downside is when you realize there’s something you could have done easier a long time ago.”

… from this excellent Slate interview

All the World’s a Stage, the new David Campany-curated retrospective of William Klein’s photography at Lisbon’s MAAT, looks wonderful.

If, like me, you’ve been given very clear instructions to not ask Santa for yet more books to arrange in neat piles around the house, Creative Boom’s annual gift guide is always a good place to look for alternative stocking fillers.

The Boom’s bluesky starter pack is also worth a click. Or you could just follow me.

That is all.

1. Yeah maybe don’t hold your breath waiting for that one to catch on, Daniel. ↩︎

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

Header image courtesy of the author.

The post Meanwhile No. 221 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

This isn’t just a book—it’s a time capsule. Inside, you’re presented with 1,000 symbols and logotypes crafted by Pentagram’s legendary partners since the firm’s founding in 1972. Each mark tells a story, capturing brands from all corners of the world, from grassroots nonprofits to multinational corporations to cultural institutions (there’s even a logo for a country). The beauty lies in their diversity: bold wordmarks, intricate symbols, and abstract designs—all stripped back to black and white, letting the forms take center stage.

Pentagram—founded by graphic designers Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, and Mervyn Kurlansky, architect Theo Crosby, and industrial designer Kenneth Grange—has always been about pushing boundaries. While the tools and trends of design have evolved, one thing hasn’t changed: the logo remains a keystone of identity design.

What struck me most while flipping through 1000 Marks is how timeless great design can feel. These marks aren’t just logos; they’re cultural symbols that connect us to brands and experiences. And for designers like me, this book is pure gold—equal parts inspiration and education.

Whether you’re a designer, a brand enthusiast, or just someone who appreciates good design, 1000 Marks is a reminder of why logos matter. They’re more than just pretty pictures; they’re visual ambassadors for ideas, values, and stories. And Pentagram’s collection shows us just how powerful a single mark can be.

The post A Journey Through Pentagram’s Legacy in Logo Design appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Documentarian, commercial director, and “Unofficial Talent Scout of NYC” Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico, joined Debbie Millman and Steven Heller last week to discuss his first book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

So, why a book? And why this topic?

One has to understand Heller’s origin story. Like many independence-seeking kids, even those born and raised in Manhattan with design celebrities for parents and whose nickname at three years old was “Major of 16th Street,” Heller wanted to spread his wings. That meant getting out of New York. First, it was Boston for college. Then, Heller went to Hollywood. After three failed driving tests and six months of no bookings, he returned to NYC without a plan and looking for his next step.

On a fateful walk through Union Square, Heller met a local street celebrity, Te’Devan, a “6-foot-7 freestyle-rapping Jew.” Heller made a five-minute documentary of the man, and he never looked back.

Author headshot: Jeremy Cohen

Heller spoke about how the pandemic cemented Heller’s focus on struggling mom-and-pop businesses across the city, his effort to raise money for Army Navy Bags in the Village, and his desire to help preserve what the city is starting to lose.

The most frequently asked question he gets asked by his audience is, “I’m going to be in New York; what should I do?” So, when he was approached about doing a book, he couldn’t turn it down. The book furthers his mission to document what New York is in danger of losing as it changes. Over a year and a half, Heller and a team consisting of a co-writer, photographers, and others traversed the boroughs to interview the proprietors of each of the 100 quaint, classic, small businesses included in the book, all places Heller loves.

It was the best experience of my life, and I want to keep making books.

Nicolas Heller

Register here to watch the recording and get the insiders’ take: Heller’s top five places to visit (one for each borough, yes, even Staten Island). There’s an East Village barber shop home to Big Mike’s art gallery, a nearly 200-year-old tavern (where parts of Goodfellas were filmed), a Sri Lankan restaurant, an old-school panini shop, and a Latin music store run by a 93-year-old man.

We learned of a Harlem man who collected items he found in the trash for 35 years and how he’s curated his private collection in the back of an active garage. The book taught his curious and NYC-knowledgeable father something, too.

Many other NYC gems are waiting to be discovered by you; buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

Coming up on Tuesday, December 10, PRINT Book Club will host designer, lettering artist, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische to talk about her latest book for kids. Learn more and register here.

The post NYC’s Endless Discovery: Book Club Recap with New York Nico appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We’ll bet our December guest needs no introduction. Designer, lettering artist, bestselling author, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische will join Steven Heller and Debbie Millman at the next PRINT Book Club. The always-generous Hische will discuss life, craft, and her newest book, My First Book of Fancy Letters.

A bit from the publisher:

“From the New York Times best-selling creator of Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave comes a delightful spin on the traditional alphabet book, featuring creatively hand-lettered words from A to Z and an affirming message for young readers.

Did you know letters can be ATHLETIC, BUBBLY, or even CREEPY?

Using unique lettering styles to showcase a fun word for each letter of the alphabet, this inventive picture book by creator Jessica Hische highlights how letters can come in all shapes and sizes—and are awesome in their own ways.“

Ellen Shapiro sat down with Hische recently to discuss My First Book of Fancy Letters. Read the interview here.

Don’t miss our conversation with Jessica Hische on Tuesday, December 10 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of My First Book of Fancy Letters. (Psst. It makes a great gift!)

The post “J is for Jessica” Hische Talks Fancy Letters at our December PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Released earlier this month, the gorgeous photo book continues themes Cohen has already mined for years through Advanced Style, in regards to aging with vitality and how important love and connection are at any point in one’s life. As a lifelong animal lover, Cohen wanted to show how pets bring an added dimension of joy and beauty to his vivacious subjects’ worlds.

When I interviewed Cohen for PRINT two years ago, he mentioned Advanced Pets was in the works, and since then I’ve been eager to connect with Cohen again upon its completion. My conversation with the always generous Cohen about Advanced Pets is transcribed below.

(Lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Where did your idea for Advanced Pets originate? 

The common theme throughout my work is love and connection. Whether it’s personal expression which creates connection with other people, or, like in my last book, actual relationships between people, that kind of connection is key to growing older with vitality. I’ve been examining different ways that people stay vital throughout their lives. 

I’ve also loved animals my whole life; I’m a vegan and have had dogs since I was a little boy, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the relationships between the women that I photograph and their own animal companions. Then, because of COVID, I noticed that people got even closer to their animals, and I thought it would be a great time to really explore that. Also, as you get older, oftentimes, unfortunately, a lot of your friends aren’t around anymore, so pets and animals become your companions, company, friends, and family, especially when you’re in isolation.

Can you share more about your love of animals, the dogs you grew up with, your current dog, Vinnie, and how those connections helped fuel this book?

Dogs have been hugely important in my life— animals of all kinds have been, but mostly dogs. I’ve always liked to express myself differently than other people and dress up, and I gravitated toward things that maybe other kids didn’t (antiques, old music); I just always felt a little different. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and I couldn’t wait to come home to the dogs in my life who were my friends, comforted me, and provided fun and joy. 

Throughout our lives, oftentimes people have difficulties connecting with other people or feeling seen or understood. In talking to the ladies and just in my own experience, my dogs have always understood and accepted me without judgment, and I think that’s a very special relationship to have, where it’s just pure love; I see that with the people I featured in this book, too. My dog, Vinnie, is my best friend, and I’ve noticed that same thing with the women that I photograph; how close these relationships are, and how they’re like our family members. They teach us so much about patience and care and provide so much at the same time. 

So much of what you’re saying resonates with me. I’m a single woman who has a lot of close friends, close relationships, and love in my life, but there’s nothing quite like the relationship I have with my cat, Joan Cusack. I’ve had her as long as I’ve lived in LA, about eight years, so she’s this embodiment of my life in LA, in a way, too. It’s hard to put into words. 

Exactly! It is hard to put into words! 

That’s why I think looking to the medium of photography, as you have, is the only way to come close to capturing that connection. 

Our pets are the closest things we have to us. These relationships are so intimate, in terms of the time we spend with them. Some of the ladies say that their pets see them in all their different stages, like as they’re trying on different outfits. Our pets see us in all these different ways that are so different from how other humans see us. 

Our pets see us in all these different ways that are so different from how other humans see us. 

Pets are (seemingly) incapable of judgment, and they see us so clearly in ways that a lot of humans can’t. I think that’s so special, especially for people like the women you’re photographing, who are so distinct and opinionated and unapologetically themselves. Animals, in particular, can accept those qualities in ways that maybe some of the greater public has a mental block about. 

The ladies are sort of outsiders, in a way, because of how they dress. Especially years ago. In their time and even now, they really were rebellious in the way that they were presenting themselves. 

On the photography side of things, how did you go about conceptualizing the photoshoots for the book? What was that process and experience like, especially working with animals as your subjects? 

My work is always a mix of street style and shoots that I do on location in people’s personal spaces or near their homes. For these photos, it was really about spending time to feel the connection between each animal and their person, and then also making space for the animal to be comfortable. 

Each one was very different. It was very similar to my process for making my last book, Advanced Love because I didn’t want to force a specific type of interaction or connection. Also, the animals obviously act differently when I’m there versus when I’m not there. It was always just about trying to capture a moment and love between a person and their pet.

When I was in Florida on a ranch with Sandra and Lucy, for example, cows don’t sit still, so it was a lot of walking around the ranch. Eventually, Lucy sat down, and then Sandra sat down next to her and she started singing to her. In that moment I was able to get my photo.

What about the fashion and styling side of things for the photoshoots? 

I told people to dress their most festive and to really celebrate advanced style. 

Your Advanced Style photos have always been so visually rich, due to the styling of these women and their energy and attitudes. Can you speak to the aesthetic power of pets, and how adding that dimension to your photos elevated them even further?  

When someone is holding their animal, all dressed up, it’s almost like they become a part of them. And through that, their pet becomes a part of what they’re trying to communicate visually. 

I’ve always loved photographs of people and their pets. I have this book called Elegance by the Seeberger brothers who were shooting socialites and rich people on the streets in the 1920s and 30s, and I loved seeing the women all dressed up in their vintage clothing with their dogs. There was this one photo of a woman dressed up in polka dots with her Dalmatian, and that was sort of an inspiration for me. 

There’s a picture of a woman named Rory and her dog Elsa in the book, and they have this connection that is a soul connection. She’s this very fashionable woman in New York and carrying her dog becomes part of the way she’s presenting herself to the world. These women are so visual, so their dogs are part of that. 

Of all of the women and their pets you photographed, is there one photo or pair that you think best encapsulates the Advanced Pets project? 

There are several, but Linda and Lil Buddy embody this project. Linda’s a very dear friend of mine who lives on an island in the northwest, and in spending time with her and Lil Buddy, I saw how their relationship is very similar to how I feel about animals.

I remember being in her garden, and she was holding Lil Buddy with the sun shining down in her arms, and she was just in complete bliss in her garden holding her baby. That was a very special moment of seeing that intimate connection, where the joy was emanating from them and I was able to capture it. That was the embodiment of the project for me. 

Usually I’m just establishing relationships with humans, but now I have all these new animal friends to be connected to.

What has been the most rewarding part of the Advanced Pet process?

It was great to not only get to know new women but also, these animals. Usually, I’m just establishing relationships with humans, but now I have all these new animal friends to be connected to.

In my last book, I was showing that you can find love at any age, and this book is also showing that. My friend Jackie in the book, is in her 70s and was never a dog person until she met Betty, who has brought so much more dimension to her life that she never even knew was possible. I think that’s also a special theme of this project: the possibility that you can have love and connection at any age. 

Header image: Valerie von Sobel

The post Ari Seth Cohen’s New Book Explores Aging with Vitality and Our Pets appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Other recent chopping-abouts on IG.

Rachel Cabitt on the technicolor influence of Kayōkyoku Records, where 1960s Japanese and Western cultures collide.

Loving Fred Aldous’ photobooth collection of goodies.

Director Bryan Woods on putting a “no generative AI was used in the making of this film” statement at the end of Heretic:

“We are in a time where I feel like creatively we’re in one of the big ethical battles, and the race is already ahead of us. The importance is to have these conversations before they force things in, just because it makes sense from a corporate structure. It’s incredibly dangerous. If there’s not people to throttle it, we’re going to find ourselves in five to ten years in a very dangerous situation. … AI is an amazing technology. Beautiful things will come of it, and it’s jaw-dropping. What is being created with generative AI and video … it’s amazing we could create that technology. Now let’s bury it underground with nuclear warheads, ‘cause it might kill us all.”

Could this become standard practice, please? To be posted alongside the “no animals were harmed” and “no this story isn’t real, honest” notices.

Artist and photographer Yasmin Masri’s Near 2,143 McDonald’s, documenting over 2,000 McDonald’s locations through Google Street View. Seen a few books and projects over the years use Street View as a source, but I’m unclear about how fair usage/public-domainy it is.

“For some reason, in July 1985, the Daily Mirror’s pseudo-saucy comic strip Jane ran a series of comics centered on – oh yes – Jane and boyfriend Chris hanging out with Sir Clive Sinclair.”

Kurt Cobain’s Youth Culture Scream Time.

Chris Ware on Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature:

“The thing is, “people” weren’t anywhere to be seen in Best Word Book Ever. Instead, the whole world was populated by animals: rabbits, bears, pigs, cats, foxes, dogs, raccoons, lions, mice, and more. Somehow, though, that made the book’s view of life feel more real and more welcoming. A dollhouse-like cutaway view of a rabbit family in their house getting ready for their day didn’t seem to just picture the things themselves—they were the things themselves, exuding a grounded warmth that said, “Yes, everywhere we live in houses and cook together and get dressed, just like you.”

One must never underestimate the power of anthropomorphism in normalising empathy and diversity for children. I grew up with countless Scarry titles (to this day Peasant Pig and the Terrible Dragon is one of my favourite books) and they definitely shaped my view of the world.

It’s November and therefore LEGO have thrown a massive chunk of dad-bait into the universe in time for Christmas. As if a 3000-brick model of Shackleton’s The Endurance wasn’t enough, you can also get an extra set with a minifig of expedition photographer Frank Hurley.

There’s absolutely no need for Suede’s Dog Man Star to be thirty. It’s just unseemly.

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 courtesy of the author.

The post Meanwhile No. 219 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Ware is one of the most beloved comics artists of our time, and his recently published ACME Novelty Datebook Volume 3, spanning the years 2002–2023, is a must-have for fans like me who are mesmerized by how he does what he does. Drawn from the sketchbooks of the creator of Jimmy Corrigan, Building Stories and Rusty Brown, ACME offers a rare chance to get to know the artist behind such an incredible body of work.

Ware is one of the most important cartoonists of the past 75 years, a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the first cartoonist to win the Guardian First Book Award and the first American to win Europe’s highest prize for cartooning (the Grand Prix D’Angouleme).

Like R. Crumb’s famously intimate sketchbook series, ACME was not intended to be seen by his fans, but pulling back the curtain is a gift to all who worship at the altar of Ware. I recently had the good fortune to explore some of his thoughts about life, art and the new book.

Over three decades ago I was on the awards committee of The Swann Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon, and Art Spiegelman brought in a newspaper you had published with your early work. The board members were blown away—you were hands-down the winner. How do you feel when you look back at those early attempts at finding your visual language?
Well, you are very kind; thanks for the generous words. Honestly, I can’t look at any of my early stuff—or really too much of my recent stuff, either—without feeling frustrated by my drawing ability. With my early strips all I see are little bits and pieces I was thieving from other artists (nearly all of whom were published in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW magazine, including Art himself) in my attempt to mash together some sort of something that I could somehow consider “mine.” In my twenties I went back and forth between improvising directly in ink or crafting images that were as iconographic and geometric as possible, then eventually combining the two in an attempt to capture contradictory feelings and sensations—or some such thing—but found that these experiments ultimately felt like what David Foster Wallace called “metafictional titty pinching.” I finally just gave up and tried to present my stories as clearly as possible with the occasional shift in approach whenever it still felt instinctually appropriate.

I presume you’re only showing what you take pride in showing, but can you detect a clear evolution—or did you zig and zag before becoming Chris Ware?
Even though Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America’s biggest jerks—an arrogant philanderer who designed a logo for himself and buried his initials in the name of one of his best-known designs (Falling Water)—he was also an indisputable genius who regularly reinvented himself and so avoided staleness and sterility. I think about his relentless “doing the opposite of what he’d done before” and I worry I don’t have the fortitude, intellect or self-confidence to follow his example—but I try. I doodled a little strip about this in this last datebook, including Scott Joplin and Beethoven in the list of artists who regularly re-thought themselves up to their final moments. Theirs is a tough model to follow.

I love seeing the ACME “brand” take form. Was this always meant to be your signature, or was it initially a stop along the way?
I titled my regular periodical “The ACME Novelty Library” so I indeed wouldn’t have to put my name on it, since drawing and publishing is really its own act of quiet arrogance. Also, I noticed that in single-page comics the artist’s signature frequently acted as a sort of punctuation mark—or worse, an advertisement—plus, I didn’t want it to contribute to the rhythm of reading, as it interfered with the sense of life I was trying to get at. So “The ACME Novelty” part of this book’s title is now completely vestigial, if not completely insane, since I haven’t done an issue of my comic book in over a decade. However, the thought of titling a book “Chris Ware’s Third Sketchbook” is way worse. (Though really, what’s the difference? I still essentially made a pretentious logo for myself, just like Frank Lloyd Wright did.)

ACME is such a classic comic/novelty title. What does it mean to you?
“Acme” was a fairly common commercial brand name in the 1910s and 1920s, nostalgically invoked by Chuck Jones in his Roadrunner cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s, and all of which I was also trying to play on in the 1990s when I started publishing my own comic book. At that time, underground/independent/experimental comics tended to have one-word “loud” names, and I wanted to make something that was harder to remember and awkward and, especially, uncool. Also, since I was trying to tell stories in each issue that were as emotionally moving and literary as I could muster, by hiding them within this fussy shell I felt sort of freed up to experiment and embarrass myself.

When you designed your rule-breaking cover for The New York Times Book Review, I was struck by your exceptional lettering acumen. How did type and image become your metier?
Comics drawing, aka cartooning, has more in common with typography than with traditional drawing: the drawings in comics are meant to be read, not just looked at. However, most of the drawings in this sketchbook, done from observation or direct memory, fall more into the latter category. Or, in other words, unlike in my comics fiction where I use a ruler and geometric simplification for the sake of artistic clarity and literary transparency, almost all of what is in this book is just plain old drawings and watercolors about life as lived.

Since I hate wasting time but am still startlingly good at it, when I’m on the phone I nearly always draw, and during the pandemic, like everyone, I spent a lot of time on the phone, so sometimes just for fun I would copy 19th-century and early 20th-century comics, typography or whatever compelled me into my sketchbook—the only rule being that I didn’t know why it compelled me. [It’s an] activity [that] goes back to all of the great books you did in the 1980s and 1990s, and to which I still look to find something unusual that captures that strange balance between the “looking at” and “reading of” typography.

Finally, since you asked, I tried to teach myself to handletter by looking at examples of 1920s original commercial art, specifically those done for the Valmor cosmetics company, original scraps of which were sold by the Chicago novelty store Uncle Fun and run by Ted Frankel, who had inherited the company’s entire back catalog. I learned more from looking at those old inked and whited-out boards than I did from all of the old instruction books I tried to puzzle out, which always seemed reluctant to give up their secrets. These Valmor originals, many of which were by African American artist Charles Dawson, also affected the way I ended up drawing comics, which was to work more typographically than drawing-ly, for lack of a better word.

When you see the three volumes of Date Book, do you have any regrets, second thoughts, nostalgia or other emotions?
Of course; life is full of regrets, and confoundingly, while some of my favorite books are facsimile notebooks and sketchbooks (especially the sketchbooks of Robert Crumb, which, along with Art Spiegelman’s encouragement, saved me in art school), I didn’t realize the effect that publishing my own might have. As I say in my introduction, the decision to publish a sketchbook—where a sketchbook should be a place where one feels absolutely free to humiliate and mortify oneself—torpedoes its basic utility. So almost immediately after printing the first volume I started keeping a separate daily comic strip diary into which I diverted all of the private unpublishable stuff. Now I have a thousand unpublishable pages of a private comic strip diary, which I still compulsively keep mostly for my daughter, as it covers her life more than anything.

In the meantime, I still tried to thoughtfully arrange these three sketchbooks (aka “datebooks”), culled down from 13, into something that hopefully still somehow captures the inevitable passage of time and life, as the books begin when I was a teenager learning to draw and end right when my teenage daughter leaves home—yet here I am, still learning how to draw.

What other alterations, if any, do you have in mind for your work?
Well, aside from simply trying to get better, I’m currently working on three graphic novels, as well as the occasional New Yorker cover, and continue to make sculptures and paintings; also, I’m helping to design the exhibitions for a traveling retrospective of my stuff that began in the Pompidou in 2022 and went through other European venues, which will end in Europe next year at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona and then, finally, at the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus, OH, in 2026.

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Collage has been the subject of so many art books and scholarly treatises that the publication of more is barely met with any degree of excitement today. However, excitement is an apt response to the current volume Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage by Freya Gowrley (Princeton University Press). It is new and deep in its exploration of the “mode” (Gowrley states, “In this book collage is neither a medium nor genre, but a mode; a means of processing the world as it was encountered by individuals across cultures and geographies, who subsequently produced a creative response to that experience”). Throughout the text she explores its range from religious to folk to avant garde approaches—from anonymous Victorians to Faith Ringgold’s African American quilts—and a bit of DIY.

Below, Gowrley, a scholar and the author of Domestic Spaces in Britain, 1750–1849, talks to me about the origins of the “mode” in its spiritual and rebellious manifestations (with a pinch of AI too).

You say that most histories posit the Cubist papier collé as the invention of collage. What do you propose?
I think any statement of a definitive moment of invention is going to inevitably misrepresent a more complex reality, so I probably wouldn’t propose a single alternative for when collage was “invented.” I guess I’d propose multiple instances of creation, whether using paper, or found objects, or whatever, as contributing practices which culminate in the kind of form we recognize as collage today.

Religion has a hand in collage. What was the reason for pictorial assemblages?
The relationship between collage and the expression of devotion is absolutely at the heart of the book. This manifests in both the romantic and religious senses of the term, and we see manifestations of the latter from early Christianity onwards. As we see later on, this kind of collage becomes associated with rituals of religious devotion, such as pilgrimage, as part of which you might acquire images and relics associated with saints. Likewise, relics become a vital part of the liturgical furniture in the medieval period, so we see the emergence of a whole religious visual culture predicated on the display of these goods subsumed within elaborate and often very costly compositions.

How was collage perceived in painting? Was it an opportunity to fit many narratives into one frame?
One of the things that really fascinated me about this way of approaching collage as a form was the opportunity to bring multiple forms of visual and material culture from across distinct periods into dialogue. Still-life painting, in particular, has a really clear relationship with later papier collé, as the recent MET exhibition Cubism and the Trompe L’Oeil really reinforced. The show brought together Cubist works with early modern painting in this beautiful juxtaposition. As a painterly mode, the collagic absolutely encourages the presentation of multiple narratives, but also multiple moments, multiple perspectives, multiple ways of seeing, something which is absolutely echoed in later work.

Is there a fundamental distinction between collage and assemblage?
The traditional answer here would be to stress a distinction between the “flat” and the “fat,” that is, between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. I can absolutely see this as being an important way of distinguishing between forms, but for me, I’m interested in how these forms are united by a shared mode of creation through the various acts that combination encompasses. Both collage and assemblage are united by a series of material and visual gestures that include acquisition, selection and arrangement, and those are the compelling relations between these modes to me.

Hannah Hoch is one of my collage heroes. What made her work modern?
Hoch is actually super interesting in that she’s often cited as being directly inspired by earlier modes of the fragmentary, specifically homemade photomontages, so I actually wouldn’t emphasize too strong a distinction between her work and that which preceded it. Nevertheless, what I think makes her work so distinctly of its period is her presentation of the modern feminine subject. Using images from contemporary women’s magazines, Hoch is literally reconstituting what it is to be a woman at a time when the contours of this were shifting and being redrawn. It’s that perfect culmination of art and the time and place in which it was made.

You suggest that collage is a woman’s language of art. How so?
Here, I’m drawing heavily on Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer’s essay, published in the 1970s, titled “Waste Not, Want Not: An Inquiry Into What Women Saved and Assembled — Femmage.” This is an absolutely foundational text within the feminist art movement, and it’s one that strongly shaped my thinking about how the various kinds of crafts and art-making women engaged in throughout history might be thought of not only as a distinctively feminine mode, but one that stretches across time. I wouldn’t say that collage is necessarily a woman’s language of art, but I would say that it’s one that folk who have often been excluded from mainstream art history engaged in, and that’s significant.

Can you explain what a “collage intervention” is? With punk, collage appeared to be vernacular. Was there something other than a DIY aesthetic at work?
I think what is crucial in punk collage is the end to which that DIY aesthetic is employed, namely in the interrogation of the socio-cultural hegemony, whether that is thematically or in its mode of representation. The work of Linder Sterling really emphasizes this to me—her work doesn’t necessarily have a DIY aesthetic (no more than all collage does), but her work is employed by bands like the Buzzcocks precisely because in skewers the mores of the day in its subject and attitude. On Sterling’s cover of the single Orgasm Addict, for example, we see a nude woman, her head replaced with an iron, whose objectification is rendered in a literal form in her collage.

Where is collage situated in the continuum of art today?
This is a difficult question that I try to address in the conclusion. There are undoubtedly more collagists than ever before. As a form it continues to be highly accessible and so there is an implicit equitability in its undertaking. Thanks to the work of craftivists and socially engaged artists, it continues to be a power tool for critique. But what does the future of collage look like? I guess in order to answer this question, I’d say we should look to the past, and the mutability and transmedial vitality that collage has always had. The development of increasingly sophisticated AI generators will inevitably affect these forms, as it will across all genres of art, but I think this will only be one more transformation in a form that has such a long and varied history.

The post The Daily Heller: The College of Collage appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Artifacts from the Eames Collection is a series of catalogs that comprehensively documents pieces from the Eames Institute collection, making these iconic designs more widely accessible to all, thus further advancing the legacy of 20th-century designers Ray and Charles Eames.

The Eames Institute has already offered themed virtual exhibitions and is thrilled to continue its growth into the physical print medium. Forty-thousand+ objects have been lovingly collected, preserved, restored, and documented by the Eames Institute so far, with Artifacts from the Eames Collection presenting curated selections from these objects in six thematically themed catalogs: Tables, Ray’s Hand, Eames Aluminum Group, Toys & Play, Steinberg Meets the Eames, and Postcards. (The first five have already been released, with the Postcards catalog coming soon.) Many of the objects featured in these editions have never been seen before, and all have been newly photographed to highlight design details.

Each catalog includes an introductory note from Llisa Demetrios, Chief Curator of the Eames Institute and granddaughter of Ray and Charles, and an essay written by a leading design expert. The catalogs also present a variety of archival material and photography from the Eames Office, Library of Congress, and the archives of Herman Miller and Vitra.

The catalogs are softcover with a short cover wrap and a special insert and range from 122–172 pages. They are available for purchase from the Eames Institute here.

The post All the Eames That’s Fit to Print appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

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.

The post Four More Years! (…of Edel Rodriguez) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Together, James Sturm, co-founder of CCS and co-author with Emil Wilson, lead cartoonist of the new volume, discuss the need for this helpful guide to personal fortitude. A free copy is available from The Center for Cartoon Studies.

What was your goal in creating this guide to creative work?
We imagine our goals with Art & Courage were similar to Ted Orland and David Bayles’s with Art & Fear: to offer fellow or aspiring artists a few insights that might help them persevere. Creating art is often a mental game, and we hope this comic gives artists a reassuring pat on the back—a way to say “we understand,” along with a reminder that every artist encounters moments of fear or lack of motivation to push forward in their work.

You list such disciplines as photography, collage, writing, songwriting, etc. How does a reader really know which area to pursue?
Most likely through a process of elimination. It’s usually a bit of a journey for any artist to figure out what medium best suits them. Many also combine mediums, blending techniques in ways that blur distinctions. We’re hoping that the book speaks to all artists, whether they have one discipline or dabble in several. 

How does it compare to the previous volume, Art & Fear?
Art & Courage distills the main themes of the original book, updated for challenges facing today’s artists, such as navigating social media—an influence that didn’t exist when Art & Fear was first published. The comic also has a stronger focus on mental health. Plus, our book is filled with visuals to bring these insights to life.

Where do fear and courage ultimately fit into the equation?
They seem like two sides of the same coin, and all artists use both. Sometimes an artist must courageously leap before they look, and other times fear could help them be appropriately cautious and sensitive.

If we all have some creativity in our DNA, as I believe we do, how does one get it out of the body and into the world?
For some, it’s a necessary part of life, as essential as eating. For most people it’s profoundly challenging. Having basic needs met (housing, proper medical care, living wage) is a good starting place to be in a position to create and share art. But even then, there’s all kinds of cultural stigmas that discourage people from making art. The specter of the “starving artist” warns that investing too much in creative pursuits can lead to ruin. Yet, when you manage to silence the negative voices—whether they’re real or imagined—it becomes far easier to summon the courage needed to bring your work to life.

You have a page on “What Makes Art Good Or Bad?” Is not all creativity created equal?
For artists, being preoccupied with whether one’s art is good or bad is profoundly unhelpful. How we assess work is constantly changing depending on shifting cultural trends or one’s current blood sugar levels. Plus there’s the fact that in order to make good art you have to make a lot of not-so-good art. Art isn’t like mathematics, where one answer is correct and accepted. One person’s masterpiece is another’s junk store donation. And that’s what makes art so special, so alluring, so exciting. There are so many different kinds of art that shock or feel unfamiliar, made by artists who see the world uniquely but maybe don’t have an audience who can appreciate their work—yet.

The post The Daily Heller: How to Not Snuff Out Your Flame appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The six books below are just a few recent fiction and nonfiction projects that have captured my interest over the past few months. There are others … but too many books and too little time to appreciate them as they deserve.

Reading Brian Blomerth’s Lilly Wave (Anthology Editions) was something of a flashback for me. I did not know Blomerth’s work and was unaware of John Cunningham Lilly, a leading psychedelic researcher from the 1950s through the ’70s. But the explosive power and the hallucinatory essence of the art and narrative presented by Blomerth was not lost on this child of the ’60s. Lilly Wave is a biographical deep dive into Lilly’s life and covers the generational shift from his scientific neurological research to the mind-expanding visionary (and recreational) impact of psychedelics on a battalion of inner-mind-out-of-body explorers.

Although I was not able to maintain enough energy to absorb the entire Blomerth experience, I am extremely impressed by his own graphic stamina and narrative gymnastics. What I was able to follow gave me new insights into a dimension of neuro-pathological discovery that has united popular culture and serious science.

This was produced for an audience that can better appreciate the cognitive anomalies that are described. I’m of the old prude school. Never having taken acid or psychedelics of any kind, I have nothing to base my opinions on, but I was turned on by Victor Moscoso’s ZAP comics. Blomerth’s work is possibly the next level to the fantastic work that Moscoso and his cohort of psychedelic artists invented in the ’60s.

The graphic novel and zine genres, like the underground comix that preceded them, have grown with incredible speed and brilliant imaginative power. The titles themselves have also evolved beyond familiar formats into the realm of more precious artist books. Raw Sewage Science Fiction (Drawn & Quarterly) by Marc Bell, another artist (and designer) previously unknown to me, has pieced together from eccentric self-published and small press booklets a distinctly eclectic mix of sci-fi, hi-brut, low-art manifestations. He draws as he writes, with an eye and ear toward the past and future of his personal realm of the absurd. The book feels in design and physical presence as though a diary/scrapbook/catalog of personal graphic tropes, which on the surface seem anarchic but are nonetheless very deliberate.

I wonder whether there is any symbolism in the large “RAW” on the cover. There is a certain suggestion of the original RAW magazine, famous for its band of first-generation experimental comix artists. And I don’t mean that this is derivative, but rather just as exciting.

Like Blomerth’s book, this is a feast that will go half-consumed, but I will keep it by my nightstand for those periods of increased insomnia when I wish I were able to create my own Raw Sewage.

The cover of Edward Steed’s Forces of Nature (Drawn & Quarterly) is as curiously ornamented as it is decoratively appealing. It reminds me a little of Edward Gorey’s eerily, ironically, comically neo-gothic/Victorian short tales (even Steed’s title page resembles lettering done by Gorey). But this work is not fashioned in Gorey’s contiguous narrative manner. Steed is a “gag” cartoonist of decidedly refreshing humor; he is skilled with the single-panel captioned joke—the mainstay of The New Yorker, where his comedy often appears.

Steed’s drawing line is loose and expressive, simple and inherently hilarious. Combine that with his absurd captions and he excels at making commonplace situations ridiculous. Take the cartoon directly below: The fireman on the ladder is calmly explaining to the woman he’s about to rescue from a burning apartment that the hook and ladder lying on its side below, next to two bodies, “hardly ever” tips over.

Steed’s wordless humor is just as precise. With his few scrunchy lines he evokes an emotional satisfaction that few gag artists achieve so consistently. He may not be that other Edward, but Steed has similar witty deviousness and, from what I can assume, a lot of fun doing it.

Distant Ruptures by CF (aka Christopher Forgues), edited by Sammy Harkham (New York Review Books), is another welcome discovery. CF’s most-known book, Powr Mastrs, is glowingly referred to by the publisher as genre-defying punk. After spending time with Distant Ruptures, I agree with the assessment … but I can’t quite get a Gary Panter deja vu out of my head. I know that CF’s comic world is different and his ecosystem of characters and creatures profoundly varies, but the spirit is a nagging reference to Panter’s variegated view.

Distant Ruptures is a collection of rough sketches and notes. Of most interest are the unfinished strips, like “Hearing Loss,” “Wolf Problem” and “Sex Comic,” which live as one-offs of ideas that CF appears to be trying out. I’m also seduced by the simple complexity of “Wizard Acorn,” and where this storyline is headed.

Like Raw Sewage, Distant Ruptures fits well into the comic/art book genre outgrowth of the zine scene and is well worth delving into further.

I am forced to admit that my ignorance of Japanese comics is woefully extensive. I’ve read some manga books and have obtained a few wartime collections. But I’m currently reading as much as possible to catch up—a goal that eludes me as time speeds by. Oba Electroplating Factory by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Drawn & Quarterly) is one book that I had previously put aside, believing from a superficial once-over that it was a lesser Gary Panter. I was dead wrong.

I’ve since learned that Ysuge is a pioneer of the form, from his first comics in the mid 1950s through to his opus entry into surrealism with Nejishiki. Oba was published in 1973, and it was the first time he created manga that, per editor Ryan Holmberg’s introduction, “aspired to a realistic representation of his personal past”—a bleak one, indeed, having grown up after the war in the midst of American occupation.

It is always enlightening to see what cultural traits influence comics, and my mistaken attribution to Panter was admittedly me looking out when I should have looked into the window of Oba Electroplating Factory.

Although not a comic, this small book is, in a delightfully inspiring interview-style format, the voice of one of my favorite illustrators/comics artists. Q & A (Drawn & Quarterly) by Adrian Tomine is an ersatz memoir constructed using questions from fans that he has dutifully answered during free time on Sundays. He writes in the introduction: “From 1995 to 2015, I published what I considered the most interesting of the incoming mail in each issue of my comic book series Optic Nerve, but also made an effort to respond to people directly, usually with a handwritten postcard.”

Times have changed. Tomine “might not do so again,” so this book is a substitution. In it he has selected some FAQs about technique and technical issues but keeps things lively with answers to queries on how to pronounce his name to such questions as, “Do you ever do sketches for fans?” (His answer: “I’m terrible at off-the-cuff drawing, especially while people are watching, but I’m happy to do a little unimpressive sketch for anyone at a book signing event.”)

The book is like being at just such an event. It is a comfortable pocket-sized volume, generously illustrated with sketches, progressives and finishes, and is a pleasant read for those boring rides on the Metro North after the end of Daylight Savings Time.

The post The Daily Heller: A Graphic Novel Dump appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our November PRINT Book Club, we’ll welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico for a discussion of his new book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC. Nicolas Heller is the son of PRINT’s Steven Heller and artist Louis Fili. In our recent interview with the Heller-Fili family, Heller discusses being raised by creative parents and the city of New York; both very much inform his unique point of view.

Nicolas Heller is a filmmaker and a social media icon. In his first book, Heller takes us on a tour of 100 shops, institutions, and eateries, and the characters who shape them. He covers beloved spots across all five boroughs (you too, Staten Island!), visiting barbers, kosher delis, and record stores, to name just a few.

By hearing the living histories of New York’s most colorful characters, Nico shows us the heart and soul of the place they call home.

From the publisher:

“What makes New York City the greatest city in the world? As one of the foremost chroniclers of New York’s local legends and urban glory, New York Nico has thoughts. Nico gets asked a lot of questions about his hometown. Where’s the best slice, pastrami sandwich, cup of coffee, vintage store, or bookshop?

In this must-have city guide, New York Nico takes readers on an epic tour of his 100 can’t-miss NYC spots, including food, shopping, and so much more. As he traverses the five boroughs, he offers a raw and authentic “locals-only” guide to the city so nice they named it twice. But behind every New York institution are the personalities who make them special.”

Left: Nicolas Heller; Right: a recent feature in The New York Times covering a book launch event at Astor Place Hairstylists, one of the institutions featured in the book

Don’t miss our conversation with Nicolas Heller on Thursday, November 21, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

The post New York Nico Shares His City at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Designer (textiles, furniture, and interiors), graphic designer, and architect Alexander Girard refused to be boxed in by medium or style. He played with an aesthetic uniquely his own—defying the design canon. You may not know something to be “an Alexander Girard,” but his work is most definitely stamped on your design DNA.

Here are just some of the phrases Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, our guests and collaborators on Let The Sun In, used to describe the ineffable Alexander Girard:

“An incredible synthesizer.”

“A joyous creator.”

“Endless cross-pollination.”

“Inspired by everything.”

“Would have been himself anywhere.”

“Both timeless and ahead of his time.”

Todd Oldham’s first exposure to Girard was at eight or nine years old, in DFW’s new Braniff terminal. Oldham remembered being surrounded by patterns and color (and being able to touch the dinosaur bones they had excavated while building the new terminal). That explosion of color and pattern, though he didn’t know it then, was courtesy of a collaboration between Alexander Girard and Emilio Pucci to redesign every aspect of Braniff International Airways. Oldham later learned the extent of the Braniff project: Girard and Pucci designed 17,000 items across 80 colorways (luggage tags, ticket jackets, timetables, seat fabric, the actual jets!).

Kiera Coffee’s recognition of Girard happened naturally as a design writer. She had long admired his work without knowing his name and understanding who he was. Coffee’s collaboration with Oldham on Girard has been an ongoing project. Let The Sun In is the second book on the artist they’ve worked together on. (Fun fact: the first had serious “plunk value,” weighing nearly twelve pounds!) Let The Sun In is the perfect coffee table size.

This book is glorious everything. It’s the superstar tribute [Alexander Girard] deserves.

Todd Oldham

How do you encapsulate Alexander Girard’s singularly open and curious mind in a short recap? We can’t. But we hope you’ll register here to watch the recording and buy your copy of Let The Sun In.

Here are some additional links worth your time:

The gorgeous Girard Studio website.

Girard’s work on the La Fonda del Sol restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, in Architectural Digest.

More about a fan favorite: Girard’s John Deere mural.

A fun feature on the Braniff redesign by Billie Muraben: “The End of the Plain Plane.”

Coming up on November 21, the PRINT Book Club will welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico. Look for an announcement soon!

The post Book Club Recap: Celebrating Joyous Creator Alexander Girard appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“Letters are magic” is the watchword of Jessica Hische, one of the world’s leading lettering artists. “Letters are an amazing playground,” she says, “a playground for art and creativity. They’re an art form that gets kids — and everyone — believing they’re artists.” But it’s inaccurate to call Hische “just” a lettering artist. She’s a bestselling author, a graphic designer with an enviable client list, and an illustrator with a delightfully sophisticated style.

She’s also the mother of three school-age children, which gives her an insider advantage when it comes to creating books that kids will love and parents will want to buy (and read aloud and collect and display). It’s no accident that her books‚ which are one hundred percent Hische productions from the cover and spine to the acknowledgments page — have sold up to 200,000 copies each.

On October 22 — that’s next Tuesday — her fifth picture book, My First Book of Fancy Letters, will be released by Penguin Random House, and Hische is currently on tour.

What places does she most enjoy visiting? Elementary schools, of course, like the two pictured above, where she’s introducing her 2021 New York Times bestseller Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave. “Kids at first don’t know what a lettering artist is,” she explains. (For a detailed explanation yourself, please see her 2015 book In Progress: Inside a Lettering Artist’s Process from Pencil to Vector.)

To break the ice at a school visit, Hische might ask, “Who has letters on their shirt?” Many kids always raise their hands, so she explains, “An artist drew those letters and made them into what they wanted to express.”

She then demonstrates that letters can have all kinds of forms and meanings. As long as the basic shape of the alphabet letter is clear, it can be Athletic, Bubbly, Creepy … or whatever you, the artist, want it to be. I personally appreciate that each letter is shown as a grown-up capital and a baby lowercase because 95 percent of the letters we read in text are lowercase. Kids who start first grade only knowing the uppercase letters are at a big disadvantage.

Spreads ABC and DEF from My First Book of Fancy Letters, © Jessica Hische, 2024

Hische might then ask, “What’s your favorite thing?” If a student says, “a rainbow,” she might encourage them to draw an ‘R’ made from a rainbow, like the one in the spread below. If another student answers, “A rocket ship,” you can already visualize the kind of ‘R’ the child will draw. This game has only one rule: you must draw the alphabet letter that matches the concept or word. So, if the word is “Prickly,” like in My First Book of Fancy Letters, in which each letter illustrates an adjective, the ‘P’ is a prickly green cactus.” The ‘F’ is definitely Flowery. And the ‘Y’ is as Yummy as a cookie with pink icing and sprinkles.

Spreads PQR and XYZ from My First Book of Fancy Letters, © Jessica Hische, 2024

“I’m not there to sell books,” Hische says of her school visits. “I’m there to inspire the kids, especially when they’re still at the age when their brains are mushy sponges. Even if the book is not specifically about letters, they’ll walk away inspired to draw letters.” Her way of organizing a talk or pitch — totally involving the audience in a creative process — could be a model for all of us.

A quick stroll through Hische’s website tells you that “lettering artist-author-designer-illustrator-mom” is still an incomplete bio. Hische is a true entrepreneur. In addition to 20 years — and counting — as a design firm principal, creating logos, posters, book jackets, packaging, and all kinds of cool stuff like holiday cookie jars for A-list clients, she owns two retail stores in her adopted hometown of Oakland, California. She describes Drawling as a kids’ art supply store and Jessica Hische &Friends as a showcase for her books and lots of flourish-y things she’s designed: limited-edition prints, posters, apparel, jewelry, and note cards. Many of the products are on the ‘shop’ section of her website, where font packages of her six original typefaces are available for sale and download — so that you, too, can design with very fancy letters.

A few examples from the extensive Jessica Hische portfolio. (l-r) Top row: Spread from the book Tomorrow You’ll Be Brave; Popcorn can from the Neiman Marcus 2022 holiday packaging suite; Poster for all-star Scott Rudin film. Center: Neiman Marcus Christmas cookie jar, based on a ceramic tree that Hische’s grandmother put out every holiday season; Promotion for a master class she teaches for Skillshare featuring her hands refining the Mailchimp logo. Bottom: Poster for the American Red Cross encouraging vaccination; Main title design and poster for Lionsgate film; Poster for Comcast used as set decoration in a film in which E.T. reunites with Elliott’s earth family; Limited-edition print.

Hische is the first to admit that from kindergarten on, she was the one whose art was most often displayed on school bulletin boards. After attending public schools in the small town in Pennsylvania where she grew up, she became “a design major who did illustration on the side” at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, graduating in 2006 with a BFA. In 2007 she came to New York to be a junior designer at Louise Fili LTD, bringing her own historically-based swashes and ligatures to the firm’s work in logo, book, and postage stamp design. Not surprisingly, the job soon became a full-time senior designer position.

“When I’m looking to hire a designer,” Fili says, “I want to see at least one portfolio piece that I wish I’d done. Jessica’s was a set of postcards for the Twelve Days of Christmas, a showcase of her skills. From day one here, she was fearless. To anything I asked of her — Can you make this type look like spaghetti? Like embroidery? Oatmeal? Ribbons? — I received an affirmative response. And the lettering was always, of course, perfect.” 

In 2009, Hische began freelancing in New York, making a name for herself and winning just about every award and accolade in the business. In 2011, her husband, the musician and web designer, now Meta design director Russ Maschmeyer, was hired by Facebook, and they moved to the Bay Area.

Hische and Maschmeyer began growing their family in 2015, now with kids aged nine, seven, and five. “I have a complicated life,” she admits, “but I could never miss one of my kids’ first steps or birthday parties. We’ll even make the cake together. Part of the reason I’ve kept my businesses small — mostly just me — is to have a ton of flexibility around family stuff. I love going to their school plays, volunteering at the school, and bringing them to sports. I’m even taking karate with my middle son!”

Letters are an amazing playground.

Jessica Hische

Portrait of the family, © Rasmus Andersson

What are the most important things Jessica Hische wants everyone to know? One: that every letter in her books is hand-drawn, first in pencil, then in Illustrator or Procreate. Other than the glyphs in the font packages, each letter is a unique work of art. Two: that she hopes that the kids (and grown-ups) on your gift list will make their own fancy letters. And have lots of fun doing it.

With Hische, even an interview can be lots of fun.

Images courtesy of Jessica Hische, except where noted.

The post Letters are Magic in Jessica Hische’s New Children’s Book appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

October is a special month because we are bringing you not one, but TWO book club discussions.

One week after our talk with Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller about Here: Where The Black Designers Are, we’ll welcome photographer, fashion designer, and artist Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee to discuss their new book Alexander Girard: Let The Sun In.

Register here to attend the live stream on Thursday, October 24.

The new monograph, by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, covers the full breadth of the influential and much-loved designer’s life and career. It begins with Girard’s textile designs where he favored abstract forms and geometric patterns that moved effortlessly between chic, understated designs full of subtle color and texture, to intensely vivid designs that popped with super bright tones.

For many years he led the Herman Miller textile department where he worked with George Nelson and Charles & Ray Eames, and designed, colored, and drew hundreds of patterns, many of which are still popular and available today.

The book also covers the highly diverse range of work Girard undertook for commercial businesses, from Braniff (rebrand) to Detrola (radios and turntables) to La Fonda del Sol restaurant in New York (interior design).

For Girard, design (interior or otherwise) was never fixed; his ethos was one of constant change and allowing space for new ideas and seasons.

Art is only art when it is synonymous with living.

Alexander Girard

Todd Oldham is a photographer, author, and designer. Widely regarded as one of America’s top fashion designers in the 1990s, Oldham has since authored more than 20 books about artists and various design subjects, including Best of Nest (Phaidon, 2020).

Kiera Coffee is a New York-based writer and has spent more than a decade writing about design. She has worked for publications such as Interiors, Nest, and Martha Stewart Living amongst others.

Don’t miss our conversation with Oldham and Coffee on Thursday, October 24, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Let The Sun In, here!

The post Todd Oldham & Kiera Coffee on Alexander Girard at Our Bonus October Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Visual effects magazine befores & afters looks at the impressive array of seamless VFX shots in Ripley.

More gorgeous photography – Richard Weston and family follow in the footsteps of Mr Ripley along the Amalfi Coast.

More Farrow-meets-Kubrick than the rest of Richard’s pics, that up there is Anish Kapoor’s Dark Brother at Museo Madre. No family holiday is complete without a big black hole in the ground filled with nothingness and despair.

Back in Blighty, The World of Tim Burton is opening this month at the Design Museum. I’m very much “love the early stuff, and then … ehh” on Burton², but heck, I’ll still lap this up. Can’t wait to see the range of gift shop merch. I love gift shop merch.

The Folio Society have continued their Dune series with a new edition of Children of Dune, illustrated by Hilary Clarcq. At some point I’m going to get all three of these books and make a little sandy shrine to them.

Pretty certain that Harold Fisk’s Meander Maps of the Mississippi River (1944) are some of the most beautiful images ever made. Do I need one of these on my wall? If so, which one? All of them, you say? Every wall? FINE.

A brief history of a graphic design icon: Chip Kidd/Sandy Collora/Tom Martin’s Jurassic Park logo. Features the greatest fax of all time.

Very pleasantly surprised to find myself alongside other fantastic newsletterists in this week’s Substack Reads digest, curated by Coleen Baik.³ Apparently I’m a “known quantity in design circles” and should be enjoyed with a dirty vodka martini. This is all I’ve ever wanted.

An LP a Day Keeps the Doctor Away – excellent guest post by Rachel Cabitt on Casual Archivist, delving into the world of educational record sleeve art.

“I have been told to stop stealing muffins from the bakery. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to keep my lucrative muffin stand in business. Everyone is fine with this.”

That is all.

1. If anyone needs me, I’m out here perishing on the “remakes and re-adaptations are distinct cultural entities that each deserve their own critical discourse” hillock. ↩︎
2. Slavishly copying Burton’s art occupied most of my time at school. Ideally, this show would have one room dedicated to nothing but nineties teenagers’ exercise book doodlings of stripy snakes and Edward Scissorhands. ↩︎
3. This has created quite a spike in subscribers, which will immediately correct itself the moment I hit Send on this thing. Nothing loses you newsletter subscribers quite as effectively as sending a newsletter to your subscribers. ↩︎

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 Osarugue Igbinoba for Unsplash+.

The post Meanwhile No. 212 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Our obsession with celebrating book and cover design finds good company—AIGA has just announced its 50 best book covers and 50 best book designs of 2023.

Just because we’re hurtling through the last quarter of 2024 doesn’t mean we can’t take a moment to reflect on these stellar book and cover designs from last year. AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2023 marks the 100th year of the competition, with 542 book and cover designs entered from 28 countries. All Eligible entries had to have been published and used in the marketplace in 2023.

One hundred years into this competition, the book seems to be as protean and chimeric as ever.

Rob Giampietro, AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers Chair

“At times confounded and delighted, we asked ourselves [during the judging process], Is this a course packet or a manifesto? A sculpture or a monograph? A glossary or a guidebook? Is this book contemporary or retro? Gauche or chic?” Rob Giampietro, chair of the competition, said of their consideration process. “We debated books that blended the grotesque with the goofy alongside books that were delicate, subtle, and difficult to emotionally classify. In the end, we felt we found some of the best of this year’s offerings, books that in every case seem to show what design can do to bring the experience of reading to riskier-yet-more-rewarding places.”

Each of the 2023 winners can be viewed through AIGA’s online gallery, and will become part of the AIGA collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University’s Butler Library in New York. Entries for 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2024 can be submitted starting this November.

The post AIGA Looks Back on the 50 Best Book and Book Cover Designs of 2023 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

There’s little else in America as inherently nostalgic as a bowling alley. From those ‘90s kids such as myself who grew up attending duckpin bowling birthday parties at kitschy spots in suburban strip malls to those who remember high school dates spent at the local lanes, to grow up in the States is to have a heartfelt reverence for the institution of the bowling alley.

The signature style and aesthetic of bowling alley architecture is central to their mystique, which originally developed in mid-century California after World War II, in an effort to get more people going to the lanes. Suffice it to say, the strategy worked, with bowling alleys blooming nationwide. The history of this bowling alley boom is beautifully preserved and articulated in a new book from Angel City Press of the Los Angeles Public Library, Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling.

Written by the LA preservationist and senior editor at Los Angeles Magazine, Chris Nichols, along with historian, advocate, and former president of the Museum of Neon Art, Adriene Biondo, Bowlarama encapsulates the enthusiasm and splendor surrounding mid-century bowling alley culture through vintage photographs, ephemera, and hand-drawn architectural renderings.

An architectural style called Googie architecture was the dominant look of this era of bowling alley design, which is characterized by space-age shapes, materials, signage, and more, meant to catch the eye and entice onlookers. Last year, I took a tour of relics of Googie architecture that remain in Los Angeles with Nichols himself as the charismatic tour guide. Considering the grip Googie had on LA in the 50s and 60s, it’s no surprise the city served as the epicenter for the mid-century bowling alley frenzy portrayed in Bowlarama.

For gamers and architecture buffs alike, Bowlarama is an at-home library must-have. So many bowling lane structures are no longer with us following the crash of the craze in 1962; Bowlarama is a critical historical record that helps keep them alive.

Hero image above: The gloriously googie Covina Bowl (1956, Powers, Daly & DeRosa), shortly after it was completed in 1956, was an instant landmark in the new suburbs. (Photo credit: Charles Phoenix)

The post A New Book Honors the Bygone Bowling Alley appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The accomplishment Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is most proud of, is that 6,000 Americans display his prints on their walls. There’s perhaps no better anecdote to describe Kennedy’s humble, generous, thoughtful spirit, on full display in the pages of the gorgeous monograph Citizen Printer and in our Book Club discussion.

If you missed our live conversation, this one was truly special and worth a watch!

Kennedy was exposed to letterpress printing as a ten-year-old in Louisiana with his Cub Scout troop. He rues that in our contemporary, digital culture, people don’t always have access to see how things are made. “I just watched him work,” Kennedy said, “The pride that he took in making these things, in workmanship, I picked that up.”

One doesn’t realize what effect an encounter will have on our lives.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy talked about his career trajectory from a “one-time business bureaucrat,” to taking what he deemed the easy path: “I decided to do what made me happy.” He’s a practitioner of bad printing, a term he uses to describe his lack of formal training, his use of layering, and his self-described sloppy, hurried technique.

There are other followers of “bad printing,” notably the Dutch experimental artist and typographer HN Werkman. Kennedy, like Werkman, values the power and influence of printed matter, saying, “Printing is always a dangerous business. The dissemination of information is dangerous.”

Dangerous, and important. Kennedy’s manifesto is passionate and provocative: I PRINT NEGRO. “Those voices that have been suppressed, I have to use my press to put those voices out in the world,” he says.

He considers himself an agitator (and our culture is better served with his hard truths). Listening to Kennedy, one can’t help but absorb his palpable joy and contentment in his work.

I try to put ink on paper everyday. Then it’s a complete day.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

We’ve only scratched the surface of this incredible conversation. We hope you’ll register here to watch the recording. Psst: Kennedy offered a free postcard print to everyone who attended. You’ll have to watch it to find out how!

If you haven’t purchased your copy of Citizen Printer, order one here. Your design bookshelf will thank you!

Links & diversions from this live stream:

Kennedy refurbished an old building as his print shop, starting in 2016. Check out the photo album.

Clear some space in your studio. Posterhouse NYC has two Kennedy prints in the shop. We Tried to Warn You! (2023) and the Posterhouse 2021 anniversary print. Smaller in scale, Kennedy’s Sista Said postcard set at Letterform Archive offers words of wisdom from Black women in social justice and the arts.

Go see the gorgeous exhibition that accompanies this monograph at Letterform Archive in San Francisco! On view until January 2025, Citizen Printer showcases 150 type-driven artifacts produced throughout Kennedy’s career, including broadsides, maps, church fans, handbills, and oversized posters.

The post PRINT Book Club Recap with Joyful Agitator, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

In my first year working with the large-format camera I saw how it was too slow for street work. I thought if I had a subject against which I could pit street life, perhaps I could develop a strategy for working in the city. My goal was to have the Empire State Building ever-present, presiding over the scene like a Mount Fuji, while I would watch for the signs of daily life that would make a new kind of photographic sense when seen all together.

Joel Meyerowitz

Popped into Tate Modern for the first time in ages – particularly loved seeing Joel Meyerowitz’s Empire State. Tempted to try something similar in old York.

Coming soon from Unit Editions: 1,000 Marks, a collection of symbols and logotypes designed by the Pentagram since its founding in 1972. It’s BIG. Seriously, the girth of the thing. Crikey.

Winona Ryder visits Criterion’s closet, shares her profound connection to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, recalls the deep impact Gena Rowlands had on her life and career, and selects favorites by Gordon Parks, Jim Jarmusch, Albert Brooks, and John Sayles. SEE ALSO: There is no love affair more enduring than Ryder and a black jacket and a Tom Waits t-shirt.

When a film doesn’t look like its concept art – another fantastic read from Animation Obsessive, looking at the influence and frustrations of Disney artist Mary Blair. 

A brief lesson explains the visual impact of an early cinematic favourite, the Sustained Two-Shot. 

Julia Schimautz on how to make a risograph animation. 

“Stålenhag’s most personal work yet, Swedish Machines explores masculinity, friendship, and sexuality in a queer science fiction tale about two young men stuck in the past – and in each other’s orbit.” – only a couple of days left to back Simon Stålenhag’s long-awaited new art book.

“Please roll the back window down and approach the White Zone at exactly 2.6 mph. Staff are standing by to launch your student into the window, Dukes of Hazzard style, with a trebuchet handmade by the LARP Club. If you cannot achieve this speed in the requisite time, simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK” — McSweeney’s new school year drop-off and pick-up rules.

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 Daniel Farò, Death to Stock

The post Meanwhile No. 210 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Expensive medical care for domestic pets has surged over the past few decades, especially for dogs, with costly vet visits and rising insurance rates. Dogs are not as resilient as I once thought (Lassie and Rin Tin Tin to the contrary). Among the most common medical devices for dogs, the neck cone is used to prevent them from exacerbating wounds or harming themselves in other ways. It is also an awkward-looking piece of equipment, which, for all I know, is as embarrassingly annoying for a pooch as a neck brace was for me when I suffered an ailment.

Regardless, it begs the question of how an implement that looks like a lampshade can be made more aesthetically pleasing and conceptually witty. How can it be transformed into art? Author/photographer Winnie Au and Designer Marie-Yan Morvan explore that in their new book, Cone of Shame—which will also raise funds for Animal Haven’s Recovery Road fund, and which Winnie Au discusses with me below.

(All images reproduced with permission from Cone of Shame by Winnie Au © 2024. Designs by Marie-Yan Morvan. Published by Union Square & Co.)

Like you, I’ve always felt bad for dogs who had to wear lampshades on the street. What inspired you to do these photographs?
Cone of Shame was born out of two things. I often see things in life and file them away in my brain as ideas for future projects. I had always seen dogs wearing cones post-surgery, and that image and shape was sort of seared into my head and floating around. I knew there was something strong about the visual and that I could do something interesting with it. I also loved how the cones made a dog look both sad and funny at the same time. And the cone has a transformative nature—when it’s worn, it really transforms the energy that a dog has. So I wanted to create a series that transformed our own vision of the cone. I decided to turn the cone of shame upside down and really make it into a majestic, beautiful and artful moment.

The second thing that made Cone of Shame into a series was the passing of my corgi Tartine. She was diagnosed with throat cancer, and after about a month of chemotherapy and endless doctor visits, we had to put her to sleep—one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make. The whole experience was so difficult and sad, and it made me acutely aware of the high cost of medical bills for dogs. It made me want to make sure that other pet parents would not have to make any medical decisions based on finances. So I decided that the Cone of Shame series would help raise funds for rescue dogs with urgent medical needs. For every print, notecard, and now book sold featuring the Cone of Shame, a portion of the proceeds is donated to Animal Haven’s Recovery Road fund.

How did the pooches respond to wearing these?
I did a lot of work in advance of our photoshoots to vet each dog and make sure they would be comfortable wearing a cone. For dogs who didn’t have prior experience wearing a cone, we sent them plain plastic cones to get comfortable with in advance of the shoot. So first and foremost, the dogs had to be comfortable wearing a cone in order to participate in the series. On our actual photoshoots, the reactions would vary quite a bit. Some dogs did not even notice they were wearing a cone. For example, Kyrie fell asleep while sitting up wearing a cotton cone. To be fair, her cone did seem very cuddly and pillow-like. Other dogs had more abstract cones that required us to lift areas of them with fishing line on set (in order to get just the right shape for the photograph). This was the case for Finley the papillon, and Tia the shar pei. In some cases, wearing the cone required a lot of discipline from our dogs—they needed to be able to sit or stand absolutely still while we adjusted the cone to create the right shape. Some dogs, as expected, tried to shake the cone off. And we had the usual reaction—a bit of confusion/disorientation coming from our pups. Some loved staring at themselves in the mirror. Other dogs would just dance while wearing the cone—they would jump, they would get excited. And others did look proud, which was a vibe I was going for throughout the series. I mainly photographed the dogs with the hope that they would forget they were wearing a cone so I could capture their true personalities. Most of them would forget after about five minutes that they had a cone on.

Some of them are quite fashionable. Since dogs are now wearing shoes, sweaters and whatever else owners can think of, do you think at least some of the dogs enjoyed their cones?
Yes, I did try to cast dogs who already enjoy “wearing” things. So for a lot of them, they were not phased at all and [they] just enjoyed all the love and attention they were getting during the photoshoot. We, of course, had a lot of treats on hand, so for a lot of the dogs, wearing a cone = getting fed delicious treats.

You achieved some great poses. What surprised you most?
One of the challenges in doing a series of this size for a book was to try to not repeat the same shapes too much. And with dogs, there is such a wide range of dog sizes, fur and breed intricacies. This was a lot of fun to explore. I loved learning about each dog breed or type to understand what they could or could not do. Some of my favorite poses came from dogs whose cones mimicked their fur. The dog shapes became very abstract (for example, with Calvin the Komondor or with Waldo the Bedlington Terrier). It was fun to kind of watch the dogs disappear in front of our eyes on set, to wonder where the cone ended and the dog began. I do love some of the photos of the dogs stretching (Tia, Henry McGoober). It’s a moment that you just have to catch—most dogs cannot do this pose on command. And it feels like a really recognizably dog moment for all of the pet owners out there, but in placing it in context with the cones, it becomes this beautiful shape. The other pose I loved getting was when dogs jumped or danced in front of me. The shapes of the dogs could just be so unique and unexpected, and there’s just always something magical about seeing a jumping dog frozen in air. They look like they are flying.

Where did you find your models?
I have a network of friends/dog lovers who I reach out to whenever I have a dog project, and that usually results in some great recommendations. I also found some dogs in dog parks around NYC, on the street (I made notecards to give to dogs who I found photogenic on the street), on Instagram, and we also found some of the very unique dogs through an animal agency. I worked closely too with designer Marie-Yan Morvan (who made all the cones), and she reached out to her network of creatives to find dogs as well. I have been photographing dogs for a long time so I also reached out to some of my favorite dogs from past shoots to see if they wanted to participate in this series. The fun thing about working on Cone of Shame is people and their dogs are so excited to be a part of it, so the casting—while time-consuming to find just the right dogs—was always easy in a sense.

The post The Daily Heller: Art of the Dog Cone appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Letterform Archive in San Francisco is currently showing a retrospective of Kennedy’s work in an exhibition entitled Citizen Printer, curated by Kelly Walters. On view through January, the show features over 150 type-driven artifacts created by Kennedy throughout his career and is accompanied by a monograph of the same name. This book has been selected for our September PRINT Book Club, which will feature a virtual conversation with Kennedy moderated by Steven Heller and Debbie Millman on Thursday, September 19, at 4 p.m. ET. Learn more and register to attend here!

As a primer to the Book Club, check out my conversation with Kennedy about his background and the exhibition below! (Conversation lightly edited for length and clarity.)

What first brought you to printmaking?

I didn’t enter into letterpress printing until about 1988, and prior to that, I’d worked in corporate America as a computer programmer. I discovered it in Williamsburg, Virginia. Williamsburg is a historical village based upon the 18th-century colonies, and they had an 18th-century print shop. I saw the docent doing a demonstration of letterpress printing, and then I just started doing it. I’ve been doing it ever since!

Before that, I had dabbled in calligraphy for a number of years, so I had a background in letters and letter forms. But for some reason, letterpress printing really resonated with me. I also had very minor experience in commercial printing at the university that I went to; my neighbor was the university printer, so occasionally, I would pop into his shop while he was working, and he would explain some of the rudimentary principles of printing, but I didn’t actively pursue it.

After you discovered letterpress printing in Williamsburg, how did you start printing yourself?

I was staying in Chicago at the time. There was an organization called Artist Book Works, a community-based book arts program that taught letterpress printing, bookbinding, paper decorations, and things of that nature. I took two of their letterpress courses, and then I was on my own.

I continued to work in corporate America, and then I was forced out by the downsizing of the company. I tried to set up a print shop at home in my basement, but I was very unsuccessful at it. So then, like any good person, when you don’t know what you’re doing, you go hide out in graduate school. So I did that. I got my MFA in graphic design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

I had my own letterpress shop, even when I was in graduate school— I had it long before I went to graduate school. That’s one of the things that distinguished me from other students; they were using the equipment that was at the university, so once they left, they had to find equipment to use. But I already had my equipment—I had a Vandercook 4 and a Heidelberg 10×15 Platen—and so once I left, I could continue to pursue learning the skills and learning the craft. 

How did you acquire those two presses? 

When I started, the zenith of letterpress printing had waned, and offset printing had taken over, so people were getting rid of this equipment. But a school had one, and no printer wanted it, so they just offered it for free. I saw the notice, and then I went and picked it up. I paid about $5,000 for the Heidelberg from another printer, which was an exorbitant price at that time.

Do you still have them?

I have the Heidelberg, but I gave the 4 to a community print shop, and I have no idea what happened to it. 

What was the turning point that allowed you to go from your unsuccessful print shop in your basement to the successful artist you are now?

A complete abandonment of any goals. I just gave up and started printing because I liked printing and needed a modest income to support myself.  Everything else has been the result of me doing those two things: getting up every day and printing and enjoying it. I also tried to become an academic, but I found that to be too stressful and too confining.

How did you develop your signature printmaking style? When did that distinct aesthetic coalesce for you as an artist?

Well, to begin with, I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press. Printers are very professional, careful, and sincere about what they do, and I just mess around. I have fun. And I’m fortunate that people see the merit in what I do and want to hire me and buy the things I make.

I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press.

I was formally trained in what they call fine printing and book arts, but when I moved to Alabama, I transitioned to what I’m doing now. The reason I do what I do is out of necessity. I had a commission that I was working on, and I made a mistake, but I didn’t have any more paper, and I didn’t have money to buy it, so I had to do something with what I had. I decided to carefully print another layer over everything so you couldn’t see the mistake and put the corrected text on top. After I did that, I found it interesting how the letters overlapped in the shapes that were made, so I continued doing that. It became one of the styles that people recognize me for. 

Your activism is a central part of your printmaking practice, and you use your printmaking as a form of abolition. Where does your drive to communicate those ideas and themes in your work come from? 

It comes from my humanity. It is a part of the universal humanity in all of us: the humanity that cries out for justice, the humanity that cries out for liberation. We all have that within us. It is what makes us human.

I’ve always been that way. How do I separate my skin from the rest of my body? It’s just the nature of the beast that I am. I was raised in a family that, foremost, was truth, respect for individuals no matter what their so-called social class was, you do not infringe upon another person’s rights, and you show generosity and gratitude at all times.

Can you tell me a bit about your exhibition at Letterform Archive, Citizen Printer?

The exhibition includes works from as early as 1988, so it’s not just posters. It shows the artist books I’ve done and the wider swath of my work. It’s a retrospective, and that’s the first time this has ever been done. All of the exhibitions I’ve done to date have been site-specific, in that if an organization or a university or a museum asks me to do an exhibition, I will do it, provided that they identify grassroots organizations that need to have their message disseminated. I will then create promotional materials for those grassroots organizations to be exhibited as posters in the museum. Then after the exhibition is over, the museum gives those materials to the organizations to use as they see fit. 

I tell them, If you want me, then you have to do something for the community. And I don’t mean the United Way or the NAACP. I mean, grassroots organizations and small organizations that may not even have a 501(c)(3), but they’re out there helping their community.

The reason I do that is that traditionally, museums have excluded Black people, but now, they want Black people, brown people, those populations that they did not actively recruit in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, to come and take advantage of the services and the offerings of the museum. But when you’ve told somebody for 40 years that they can’t come in, you can’t just stay, “The door is open! Please come in!” You have to actively go and get them. 

So I tell the museums that that’s what this is about. It’s about them going to the community and saying, “We value what you do. We value your words. And we hope that you have a degree of trust with us, and you’ll come and visit us and utilize the services that we have here.”

It’s commendable that you’re using these opportunities to exhibit your work to uplift others. 

That’s basically the way that I do things. When I work with organizations or museums, it’s about expanding the audience of that institution and bringing in new people to experience the services that that institution has.

The post Letterpress Printer Amos Kennedy Jr. Makes Art As Statement appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Peele has committed his film-savvy to horror using urban legends such as doppelgangers “to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia.” As critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film, “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.”

The new book explores alternate endings and deleted scenes, along with over 150 stills. This veritable reader’s guide includes annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor, who individually and collectively present “a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film.”

Inventory Press’ Adam Michaels is a known fan of 1960s paperbacks that documented the period’s most emblematic mainstream and avant-garde movies. Likewise, Us is an invaluable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film.

The post The Daily Heller: Jordan Peele’s Reel Deal appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

You’re in for a treat at our September PRINT Book Club. Letterpress printing legend, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. will join hosts Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to talk about Citizen Printer. The new monograph, out this month by Letterform Archive, celebrates the Detroit-born artist’s life and work.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is known for his type-driven messages of social justice and Black power, which he emblazoned on rhythmically layered and boldly inked posters. Now, with Citizen Printer, Kennedy’s inspiring story sits alongside his most important work, providing essential context for this contemporary Black artist. The book also acts as a call to action, giving readers tools for lifting their voices, too.

Citizen Printer features 800 reproductions representing the breadth of Kennedy’s posters and prints, plus original portraiture of the artist at work, a powerful artist statement, and a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon. The book’s dynamic, type-forward design was created by award-winning designers, Gail Anderson and Joe Newton.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history, and politics in exuberant, colorful, and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and The Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and other institutions throughout the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!

Don’t miss our conversation with Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. on Thursday, September 19, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Citizen Printer.

The post Citizen Printer: Amos Kennedy Jr. at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

As a lover of all manner of bars, pubs, dives, speakeasies, and cocktail lounges, I was eager to learn more about this latest endeavor from the Murrays and get my hands on my own copy. The pair’s responses to my questions about Great Bars of New York City are below.

Why bars? What is it about bars that you find so compelling and reflective of NYC culture and history?

We chose to publish a book highlighting New York City bars as we consider them to be the heart of New York City’s culture and neighborhoods. Historically, bars have always been melting pots and places where people from all backgrounds and cultures can mingle and share stories while enjoying a drink, and where relationships often start. For many New York residents, their neighborhood bar serves as a home away from home, where people can choose to be alone together. 

For many New York residents, their neighborhood bar serves as a home away from home, where people can choose to be alone together. 

We also feel the need to document these special places, similar to our work featured in our previous book, Store Front NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present, as many beloved bars have been forced to close in recent years due to economic pressures and rapidly changing neighborhood demographics.

You’re known best for your exterior photographs of storefronts. How is documenting interiors different when it comes to capturing tone, mood, and telling a story?

We approached our interior photography of the bars with the goal of capturing the essence of each location as well as including often overlooked details, especially ones that even regular visitors may have missed. We included an establishing photograph, often showing the overview of the space as you would walk through the door, and also photographed areas where patrons would spend most of their time while drinking, either at the bar itself or at a specific booth or table.

We photographed each bar using only available light, not bringing any additional equipment inside so that our photos would mirror the way the bar would appear during a typical visit.

What sorts of details typically capture your photographic eye?

We always seek out interesting architectural details, including handcrafted woodwork such as the mahogany balcony with its quatrefoil design inside The Campbell, the stained glass windows and back bar insets made by Tiffany at Peter McManus Cafe, and even the shoulder-height porcelain urinals in the men’s bathroom at Old Town Bar and Restaurant.

We also focused our lens on many of the items hanging on the walls and from the ceiling of the bars as they also provide insight into the bar’s history, including the turkey wishbones hanging at McSorley’s Old Ale House and the old saloon licenses at Fanelli Cafe.

How did you approach curating the 30 bars included in the book? What was your selection process?

In choosing which bars to include in our publication, we decided to concentrate on only the borough of Manhattan and focused on historic establishments, former speakeasies that sold illegal alcoholic beverages during the Prohibition era, as well as bars immortalized in film and literature. 

We additionally featured many lesser-known spots and dive bars including Rudy’s Bar & Grill, one of the city’s last affordable “working man” bars. Of course, there were numerous noteworthy locations we would have loved to include, but those will have to wait for another book!

Of the 30 bars cataloged in the book, do you have a favorite?

It’s so difficult to pick a favorite, but Pete’s Tavern holds a special place in our hearts as it not only has a beautiful historic interior, but also a welcoming staff and great food and drink. We try to stop by as often as possible and especially love visiting at Christmastime when the bar is strung with hundreds of lights and decorations.

Why does creating physical books continue to be so important to you both as photographers?

Since our journey as photographers began with documenting the streets of New York City using a 35mm film camera, printing our photographs and studying them has always been important to us. We have always felt that sharing our work in book form complements the subject matter by staying “old-school,” similar to the stores and bars we have photographed, while also capturing the patina and texture of the locations.

The post James and Karla Murray Raise a Glass to NYC’s Storied Bars in New Book appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Enlightenment, here we come.

The post The Daily Heller: Invaluable Wisdom, If You Want It … or Not appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Nine months into the pandemic, architect James Biber thought if he did something on Instagram every day, he’d know what day it was. So he started his timekeeping experiment by cataloging architects’ birthdays, eventually adding graphic designers and artists into the rotation. Michael Bierut saw what Biber was up to and thought it’d make great fodder for a book.

We couldn’t agree more—make room on your bookshelf for The Architect & Designer Birthday Book!

Biber was the book’s editorial conductor, and Bierut was the designer. Our discussion with the duo was insightful (the book features many women creators that were new to us) and oh-so-fun (tune in to learn what everyone really thought of Bob Gill).

The design is very simple, like Massimo Vignelli’s Audubon field guide series. The spreads are sparse with the focus on a visual at the top and the anecdotal and often relational history with the author.

Designers love working with constraints. This project was full of parameters that were fixed and could not be negotiated. It made it a fun project.

Michael Bierut

Part of the magic of the physical reading experience happens on the spreads, which sometimes mirror each other (like the Williams-Kent spread above). Sometimes, as in the Gehry-Savage spread below, they provide a visual contrast.

A particularly interesting discussion point centered around the bane of all publishers: the clearance of images. And, we’re talking IMAGES. Three hundred and sixty-six, in fact. A team of people worked tirelessly to find and obtain permission for the book’s visual content. When unable to clear for a variety of reasons from a good, old-fashioned ‘no’ to hearing crickets from the estates, Bierut got creative.

For Milton Glaser, they relied on an overhead shot of Times Square chairs arranged in the shape of Glaser’s famous logo from a personal friend. For Charles Addams (right), they opted for a pull quote. Their visual stand-in for Dan Flavin’s work is genius.

Register here to watch the recording.

Haven’t purchased your copy of The Architect & Designer Birthday Book? You can order one here.

The post Book Club Recap Biber & Bierut: Architects, Designers, and Images (So Many Images) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Letterform Archive is offering a reprinting of W.A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design by Bruce Kennett with a Kickstarter campaign and a special $60 pricetag until September 10.

This is a book to spend a year with.
—Steven Heller

Letterform Archive kickstarted the first printing of Bruce Kennett’s comprehensive biography of Dwiggins. It was funded in two days and quickly sold out. This beautiful book is not just a biography; the pages are typeset in a custom digital version of Dwiggins’ Electra typeface, with 1200-plus images and Dwiggins’ essays set in his typefaces.

“The name W. A. Dwiggins usually brings to mind typefaces for Linotype and books for Knopf, but his amazing career has myriad additional facets. Over a period of fifteen years, I researched, wrote, photographed, and designed this book to honor his creative forces, exploring material from the Boston Public Library, Letterform Archive, my own private collection, and other archival sources,” says Kennett, the book’s author. “The book serves as inspiration for anyone in the visual arts — whether it be graphic design, illustration, textile design, printmaking, calligraphy, type design, or puppetry.”

The book will remain available on Kickstarter and at museum shops after this date. However, the early campaign premiums are worth a look.

Running through his life is a joie de vivre and lightness of spirit than can serve as inspiration for all of us.
—Bruce Kennett, author

Learn more about W.A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design and become a backer on the book’s Kickstarter page.

The post Call Yourself a Graphic Designer? You Have W.A. Dwiggins to Thank appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Few resources shine as brightly as Designing Brand Identity in the ever-evolving landscape of design. Now in its 6th edition, Wheeler brought on Rob Meyerson to coauthor and steward the book. With practical advice, case studies, and step-by-step strategies, this book is a beacon for anyone seeking to navigate the intricacies of branding with confidence and creativity.

Wheeler’s vision and expertise have left an indelible mark on the field, empowering countless professionals and students to transform how brands are conceived and executed. Her dedication to demystifying the branding process is a testament to her passion for design education, and her legacy lives on through this book. For more on that legacy, PRINT honored her memory this year. You can also listen to Debbie Millman’s 2011 interview with Wheeler on Design Matters.

The introduction of the 6th edition offers an insightful look back at the last two decades of branding. We’ve excerpted the intro Q&A with Wheeler and Meyerson below, with permission.

What are your biggest takeaways from twenty years of writing Designing Brand Identity?

Alina Wheeler (AW): Since the first edition, we’ve put supercomputers in our pockets, fallen in and out of love with social media, weathered a pandemic, and witnessed massive change in the climate and global politics. At the same time, branding has changed immeasurably. Now, major rebrands are mainstream news. People use (and misuse) phrases like “on brand” in daily conversation. Brand expression is omnipresent across all digital platforms, content marketing is a cost of entry, and armies of algorithms track our every move. We continue to see a dramatic increase in best practices across organizations big and small, B2C and B2B, driven by new generations of agile leaders. And companies are rebranding more often—identities that would have once lasted 20 years are now revised after just five. Writing Designing Brand Identity has reminded me how much courage it takes to effect change. And that no one does it alone. Through this book, I’ve aspired to capture the strategic intelligence and boundless creativity of our colleagues around the world. We are infinitely grateful to all who have shared their time, stories, wisdom, and insights as they build the brands of the future.

Why a sixth edition? Why now?

AW: When I began writing Designing Brand Identity in the early 2000s, there was no comparable book. It was the resource I needed in the heat of a new engagement—a book that would provide a shared vocabulary and process for management and the marketing team, supply a list of the major brand name changes in the last century, and remind me of the irrefutable fundamentals of branding. It was a way to keep me up to speed on the most current thinking on user experience, approaches to decision making, and global best practices. Since then, hundreds of smart, new branding books have come out. But Designing Brand Identity remains the most comprehensive resource available. Over 20 years, five editions, and eleven languages, it’s been a living document in which I’ve continuously collected and updated best practices, processes, and trends. The sixth edition is the strongest one yet. As long as branding exists, Designing Brand Identity will always have new insights to share.

How (and why) did you select a coauthor?

AW: After 20 years, it’s time for a new generation of brand thinkers to take the lead. Two things have allowed me to be effective writing this book: being “in the game” — working with clients, attending conferences, networking with peers—and committing to creating the best book I could. So, when I began the daunting search for a co-author, those were my top priorities. Who’s in the game? Who will truly commit to helping me create the best possible version of Designing Brand Identity? Rob Meyerson has occupied every seat at the branding table, from start-ups to mature, multinational, public companies. He’s led strategy teams at world-renowned brand consultancies and boutique agencies. He has lived and worked in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Southeast Asia; he understands the importance of cultural insights. As Global Head of Brand Architecture and Naming at HP, he hired and managed top-tier branding firms and was “in the room” helping to create a new, multi-billion-dollar brand—Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And as an independent consultant, he’s demonstrated his commitment to understanding, improving, and educating the global branding community through his writing and podcast.

What’s changed in the sixth edition?

Rob Meyerson (RM): Our main goal was to ensure the book is not only up to date, but forward thinking in terms of how brands are built and maintained, trends impacting the world of brands and branding, and examples of amazing work. We’ve added detail and rigor to pages about brand strategy, brand architecture, and naming, as well as ideas that have more recently gained relevance in branding, such as AI, social justice, and evidence-based marketing. And we continued our efforts to feature a diverse cross-section of work in terms of geography, agency size, and types of client companies. Just as important is what hasn’t changed. We’ve preserved the three-part structure (Basics, Process, Best Practices), built on the comprehensiveness of previous editions, and factored in insights from dozens of industry experts. Designing Brand Identity is still organized as a reference book, with bite-sized pieces of useful information—a book for busy people undertaking the monumental challenge of building or overhauling a brand.

What did you learn working on this book?

RM: Creating a new edition of Designing Brand Identity is a massive undertaking: Over 150 two-page spreads, each with its own set of challenges, examples to source, and experts to consult. It means capturing, distilling, and organizing the collective wisdom of an industry, then sharing it back in an easily digestible format. Doing so forced me to gain a deeper understanding of some topics and learn about others for the first time. Alina’s assertion that “no one does it alone” is more than a statement of fact—it’s a mindset. It’s been an honor to work with Alina on this iconic book. Doing so gave me a front-row seat to the impact she’s had on the lives and careers of so many people in our industry. Time and again, senior executives and acclaimed designers would jump at the opportunity to contribute to the new edition—not only because they relied on this book early in their careers (many of them did) but because of how giving Alina is with her time, attention, and expertise. I’m certainly not new to collaborating, networking, or community building, but working with Alina on this book has been a master class.

What’s next for Designing Brand Identity?

I reached out to Rob, curious to hear his perspective on leading the way forward as he takes the helm.

What do you believe have been the most significant changes in the branding landscape in the last 20 years, and how have these changes influenced the updates in the sixth edition?

RM: In some ways, it feels like everything has changed. When the first edition was published, none of us had heard of an iPhone or Twitter, and most of us had never heard the name Barack Obama. And changes like these—in technology, culture, and elsewhere—have had immeasurable changes in how we build and manage brands. Meanwhile, branding professionals and academics continue to advance the thinking on how marketing and branding work. Every edition delves into relevant topics, updates best practices, and provides fresh examples and case studies. For example, in this edition, we added information about AI, evidence-based marketing, and how brands responded to the murder of George Floyd.

We added a two-page spread on social justice, which shows examples of how brands have stood up for social justice, provides dos and don’ts, and highlights some of the brands that changed their names or logos in the wake of George Floyd’s (2020) murder. We also added over 50 new case studies in this edition—the first time since the first edition that the book has had a full refresh on case studies—and aimed to highlight some environmentally friendly and socially responsible brands. Brands featured in the case studies include nonprofits, fully electric cars, reusable packaging, and even a sustainable alternative to cemeteries.

What are some of the most compelling case studies or examples included in the sixth edition?

RM: Of the 800+ images, diagrams, and examples of brand touchpoints in this edition, over 75% of which are new, it’s tough to choose favorites. What I like most is the diversity of work highlighted in this edition—and I mean “diversity” in just about every sense of that word. Big, famous brands, like Pepsi and Nike, and smaller, local brands, like a convenience store in Costa Rica. Work from every continent. From well-known agencies like Pentagram and COLLINS to boutique agencies. B2C and B2B. For-profit and nonprofit. We wanted to show a range, and I think we succeeded.

Why do you believe Alina Wheeler’s impact continues to resonate with today’s brand strategists and designers?

RM: Alina’s known globally as the author of Designing Brand Identity, and of course, that book has had—and will continue to have—a huge impact on branding professionals everywhere. (As an example, Alex Center of CENTER says it’s “the book that first taught me how to build brands.”) But, Alina made a significant impact even before she wrote the book as a female agency founder, a founding member of AIGA Philadelphia, and an advisor and mentor to countless agencies and young professionals around the world. And those who had the chance to meet her personally will remember her generosity, humility, wisdom, and humor. She loved helping people in their careers, she was passionate about design and branding, and she was optimistic about the future. In many ways, Designing Brand Identity is just an extension of those traits.

Anyone working on future editions of this book should constantly be asking themselves, “What would Alina do?” We’ll do our best to make some of her ideas a reality, and I think she’d love to know that we’re continuing to push the envelope. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.
—Rob Meyerson

Thanks to Alina Wheeler for her monumental contributions to the branding world, which continue to inspire and guide us. And here’s to the next chapter of Designing Brand Identity — I’m looking forward to what comes!

What do you want to see from Designing Brand Identity in the future? Sign up at dbibook.com/news to send feedback and stay in the loop on future plans.

The post The Enduring Legacy of Alina Wheeler’s ‘Designing Brand Identity’ appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At the next PRINT Book Club, architect James Biber and designer Michael Bierut will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss their new book, The Architect & Designer Birthday Book.

The book is described as a thoughtfully curated collection in a stunning package that recognizes and celebrates the birthdays of famous, infamous, and often overlooked designers and architects.

 It’s the design book you didn’t know you needed (and will not be able to live without).


Inspired by architect James Biber’s mid-pandemic Instagram project, in which he posted a birthday bio of a designer or architect (famous or less so) every day for a year, The Architect and Designer Birthday Book is filled with personal, opinionated, and humorous observations on fascinating figures past and present.


These anecdotal histories include:

• Architects from the Aaltos (Aino and Alvar) to Zumthor
• Rivals Bernini and Borromini
• Photographers Lee Miller, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Vivian Maier, Dody Weston Thompson, Margaret Morton, and Judith Turner
• Midcentury modernists Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, and Florence Knoll

The book’s author, James Biber is an architect and founder of the firm Biber Architects, based in New York. He has designed projects as diverse as the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, the USA Pavilion at the 2015 Expo in Milan, Italy, the restoration of Richard Neutra’s Sten-Frenke house in Santa Monica, and, for one client, twelve houses across the country.

Michael Bierut, the book’s designer, is a graphic designer, design critic, and educator. A partner at Pentagram since 1990, Bierut has worked with clients such as The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Robin Hood Foundation, MIT Media Lab, Mastercard, and the New York Jets. He also designed the ubiquitous H logo for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Don’t miss our conversation with James Biber and Michael Bierut on Thursday, August 22 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion here, and buy your copy of The Architect and Designer Birthday Book right here.

The post Biber & Bierut Talk Birthdays at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

There are two strata of graphic designer: the known and the unknown. The former gets invited to all the conferences, is featured in magazines, annuals, books, and may even have a monograph or two. The latter is not exactly unknown, but rather ignored by the people who use what they’ve made. Anonymity is built into the output of a service profession like ours. Rarely does a designer sign logos or layouts they’ve done, and package designs are not a canvas for personal expression. Paul Rand, Lester Beall, Saul Bass and Milton Glaser insisted on signing or receiving visible credit for their work, and their respective styles were recognizable enough that when a signature was absent, its provenance was obvious.

This was rare—if not unacceptable—for what Joseph B. Eron and Elizabeth Eron Roth call “supermarket art” in the monograph about their father, Ted Eron Designed That (Glitterati Editions).

Ted Eron was one of the most prolific of the ubiquitous yet under-represented artists in design history. We’ve all seen, used and consumed the boxes, cans, bottles and tubes that Ted, and his brother Abbott, designed at their eponymous Eron and Eron Industrial Design offices in Engelwood and Cresskill, New Jersey. The office invented the containers for Birds Eye foods, Mum deodorant, Vitalis (hair goop), Excedrin (the no-nonsense gothic type treatment for The Extra Strength Pain Reliever, still on shelves), Ballantine Draft Beer, Baker’s Cocoa (for General Foods), Krylon Spray Paint (a staple for graffiti artists), and Elmer’s Glue. I am excited to learn that Ted also redesigned Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for Hershey, helping it rise as “America’s fastest-growing candy product” (the design is so iconic it has all the cognitive power of an everyday stop sign). But the most happily surprising package design, which was hailed in a 1960 issue of Modern Package Magazine as “rescuing a business,” was FLAV-R STRAWS, one of my favorite products as a kid. All one had to do to change the flavor of milk to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry was suck on the straw.

Joseph and Elizabeth knew Ted as a commercial artist and art teacher, but were not entirely sure about his legacy until they dug into the artifacts he had saved. The family has a large amount of Ted’s work, and realized there was something historically significant about his output. Ted died in 2003 before his children had a chance to delve deeply into his recollections. By the time “Mad Men” rolled around, granddaughter Allison Sarah Roth began to notice parallels in Ted’s work to what was portrayed on screen. “As the photographer of the book about her grandfather’s life,” writes Joseph in the preface, “Ted would be assured that Allison would zoom in on the things that matter.”

Ted Eron Designed That—which was first published in 2019, but did not do well, in part owing to COVID—is not a scholarly treatise on the role of graphic and industrial design in American capitalism. It takes for granted that our system is based on innovations and conventions that serve a public and reaches that consumer through eye appeal as much, if not more, than function. What comes through is an uncritical, respectful and, consequently, insightful look at a rediscovered career and the impact the field had on the designer’s clients. By extension it addresses in an anecdotal way how marketing, branding, advertising and design together formed economic infrastructure that separated capitalist from non-capitalist systems.

Ultimately, Ted Eron Designed That is part family album, part career monograph and in large part a foundation for further design historical exploration.

The post The Daily Heller: Ted Eron and the Iconography of American Supermarket Culture appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“Aside from their practical functions, streetlights broadcast the social status of developments,” writes Mandelkern, “and often became emblems of their neighborhoods.” Developers were not required by code to plant streetlights. But in L.A. they “were a surefire way to boost property values.”

From a design point of view, many of the poles were crafted with classical or beaux arts details. “If developers liked to portray Los Angeles as a new American Greece of Rome, streetlight manufacturers helped build the backdrop.” The lighting columns shared similar plinths, shafts and capitals with ancient architectural forms. As Mandelkern notes, “Unlike the towering electrical masts, which looked like objects out of an H.G. Wells novel, the familiar ornaments studding the ca[s]t-iron lamp posts seemed to normalize the still new technology.” Outdoor lighting became a lucrative business in L.A., and lighting emerged as a popular—and practical—art.

Mandelkern’s book is a deep dive into the social, cultural and artistic importance of these urban gems (which are, incidentally, often covered with official street signs and illegal stickers). Included is design history in concert with contemporary urban exploration. Vintage lampposts are often removed and replaced by uniformly unadorned columns with more energy efficient LEDs, but there is a movement of urban preservationists trying to retain L.A.’s heritage.

In addition to preservation, Mandelkern covers the art: the LACMA installation Ubran Light (below) pays homage to and becomes an icon of the city with a “gothic forest” of light. While most outdoor lamps and lighting are matter of fact, I, for one, am always unnerved when one goes out. It is similar to when a tree loses its leaves before its time, and all that’s left is a memory of light and life.

The post The Daily Heller: Los Angeles’ Heavenly Lights appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Malinic, who leads the London-based Brand Nu Studio and Brand Nu Books, has dedicated over two decades to helping fellow creatives forge successful paths. His previous releases, such as Book of Branding and Book of Ideas, have received widespread acclaim. They are essential resources for entrepreneurs, designers, and brand creators.

Creativity For Sale is a comprehensive guide for artists, writers, designers, and other creatives who want to ignite successful careers and businesses. It offers practical strategies for building and amplifying personal brands and provides powerful tools for meaningful growth.

On the other hand, Mindful Creative offers a roadmap for navigating the peaks and troughs of creative life, career, and business. It encourages readers to reflect on building positive habits and focusing on mindfulness. Through sharing his hard-learned lessons, Malinic provides valuable insights that have transformed his own career and life.

In line with his commitment to sustainability, both books are printed by Park Communications in London, using 100% offshore wind electricity from UK sources. The production process emphasizes environmental responsibility, utilizing vegetable oil-based inks, recycling 95% of press chemicals, and achieving an average recycling rate of 99% for associated waste. The paper is sourced from well-managed, FSC®-certified forests, ensuring the books are certified climate-neutral print products with calculated and offset carbon emissions.

Enthralled with the idea of injecting mindfulness into hectic creative pursuits and navigating chaotic agency life, Radim and I discussed what it means to be a mindful creative and how to build out a toolkit for the 21st-century designer. Our conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below.

I love that both new titles aim to help creatives find success in their career while also avoiding burnout. What I found particularly interesting in Mindful Creative was about mood and flow states. What did you observe in the industry and perhaps your career that compelled you to write about this topic?

These two books are the books that I wish existed 20 years ago when I was starting out. We start our creative careers because we want to do the thing, and we don’t necessarily think about what else we must do to help ourselves actually survive it. It’s like wanting to be a runner; if you go running 5K, 10K, 15K every day, you’re going to start hurting because you need to do all sorts of other things to help you be better at running.

Creativity is meant to be a beautiful topic that makes us feel something and gives us our livelihood. The creative industry can have such a narrow focus that only when things go bad do we start thinking, well, why us? Why now?

I think there is a reason why we sometimes need to burn out to find where the happy middle is. As much as we want creativity to be 100% amazing all the time, it will never be because we are not 100% all the time. It’s understanding how to be okay when we’re not okay and how to look out for others when they’re not okay.

We’ve chosen creativity as our livelihood and profession. And it has so many variables. We must grow, learn, and develop resilience. And we don’t talk about it enough.

In our last conversation, you brought up the idea of facilitating a 21st-century designer toolkit, hoping that your recent books could be part of that toolkit. What tools do 21st-century designers need and why? How does this differ from the needs of the 20th-century designer?

When you look back, there was a lot of focus on being skilled in a certain way to deliver the work. Companies like Adobe, for example, still focus on helping you to make the thing. 

Looking at the 20th-century toolkit, there were design education and software skills, but we missed the soft skills. Where would you put mental health or mindfulness into those layers?

A friend of mine summarized our creative work in the early 2000s by saying, it was get the work done or get the sack. The world was much more cutthroat, cynical, and driven for results.

From what I’ve experienced, people didn’t care if you had troubles or weren’t particularly well; it was “you’ve got an hour lunch break. This is the work that needs to be done. This is the job, go.”

It did not stimulate creativity or discussion. It only added to the percentage of people in our industry who are unhappy. When you look at the statistics, 55% of people in the creative industry are unhappy.

We’re meant to be the unicorns, with fairy dust and sunshine all the time, and it’s not. Why is that?

We try to adopt old ways of creative working and adapt them to new projects and generations, and nothing improves. As a society, everything is moving much faster, especially now, with more knowledge, understanding, and resources. Small tweaks can actually create big results, but most people don’t think about it.

I wrote Mindful Creative because I have lived every sort of creative life and career, from freelancing professional to running my own studio. What burned me out was the fact that I could work every hour of every day.

I reaped the benefits of a more connected, democratized world, which was amazing. But I had no definition of when to stop. For me, creativity was an untamed beast because you can work as long as you want. At the time when I was pushing myself so much, I had a commission for the Canadian launch of Bacardi Breezers. And I told myself, I will make this the most amazing work of my life. There was no need. I just needed to answer the brief and do my best work. I didn’t have to stay up for long hours, but the social media cocktail and the number of followers drove me.

The 20th century was much simpler. We had portfolio books; there weren’t personal websites. Creatives didn’t have to consider making reels. In the 21st century, we have created a much more content-rich and opportunity-rich world. There’s more work than ever before. But we’ve added so many layers that it’s really hard to understand how to operate through those layers.

How do you navigate everything that’s around you? How do you cherry-pick what’s good for you or what can be good for you? And how do you stay true to yourself?

And that is hard to do, especially when you have an immature mind because you feel like you’re falling behind. So many things in our daily lives make us feel inadequate because we’re questioning, am I good enough creatively? Have I got the right idea? Am I doing enough? Am I promoting enough? Do I have enough likes?

Some people pretend that they’re okay and that they’re flashy and going somewhere. But if you don’t have a signposted purpose of where you want to be with your career, then you will do all those things I did 10 or 15 years ago. Going after every platform, every like, every follower, every piece of work, every client, everything.

When I look back, I can’t remember, apart from the Bacardi Breezer campaign, what I did 15 years ago. And I can’t pinpoint why I was working so much that I broke myself. There are no gold medals to win. I was working for something, towards some big picture, but I didn’t have to do all of that.

I needed to discover why I was doing certain things because the work was just a tool. The work enabled workaholic behaviors. We hide in our work behind instant gratification. We take on more because it pushes the pain away and it pushes our reality away.

Our creative lives were simpler before the Internet and social media. Now, we must be like an octopus with eight limbs trying to juggle many things. A 21st-century designer toolkit also implies adaptability to rapidly evolving technologies and trends. How do you stay current with tools and techniques while fostering balance to avoid burnout?

We can do many more things we couldn’t do in the past. I remember having a fantastic conversation with someone who used to be an illustrator for Gucci. His career sounded amazing, but having a linear career is rarer today. I enjoy that I could have reinvented my career five or six times in the last 20 to 25 years. My general curiosity has always led me to ask, what’s next? What’s that? What’s this?

Because the world is so multi-layered, you can do all these incredible things. And that was impossible before, you know? Today, if you have a problem, you can find a way to solve it yourself.

Compared to working for others, running your own show is much more demanding but so much more enriching when you find your own solutions.

Let’s say I’m launching a new coffee company. There are resources at my fingertips to learn processes from stock fulfillment to building creative assets. But possibilities and more opportunities come at a price. The world is heavier than ever before. Our brains have to catch up. What was available to us ten years ago differed from five years, three years, even a year ago. That is really fast. And we have yet to process some of the stuff we did 20 years ago, let alone, you know, what’s happening now.

With emerging technologies now, especially AI or blockchain, do you see these tools as means to empower designers to create more sustainably? Or, like you mentioned, does this add to the world’s heaviness?

It comes from within. Let’s say you are good at tennis. You have a good serve. You know how to hit that sweet spot every time. But to get to that point, you need time to develop. In creativity, you can be on the pitch just because you’ve got the right software, even if you don’t have years of development. Once you’ve had some practice, the heaviness of life comes from every angle.

Years of experience teach us how to deal with the other side of everything we wish for. We don’t always talk about it, but there is a dark side to creativity, entrepreneurship, freelancing, or running a studio. We need to talk about both sides so that people can prepare for all kinds of situations.

When it comes to new tools like AI, we panic because it’s not a piece of shit tool anymore. We ask ourselves, is it going to hurt my business? Because I have grown my roots and gone through many experiences, I don’t get so worked up about potential threats.

So, consider which part of AI is a threat to your business. There are parts of AI that can replace me in various ways. But can it really? You need someone to operate the AI. It’s human-enabled to give you a result. We’ve had AI in our lives for a while. AI takes a few bits and bobs and creates a collage from it or another solution. We’ve been doing this in Photoshop for the last 30 years.

When photography came out, painters were upset. You no longer have to paint the landscape because you can take a picture. So the painters moved on to Cubism. AI gives us a challenge and a kick up the ass to do better. It has given us this sort of steroid, hyper, turbo, creative calculator that you can use to see what you can do with it, you know?

If you don’t have a mindful, emotionally mature foundation, that’s when you feel a threat from something like AI. When it comes to high-end creativity, the market still and will always appreciate experts, talent, specialists, and professionals.

It’s the idea of using AI in the ways we need to. There are still photographers and painters. Both are equally valuable. There’s just a slight shift in how they are utilized.

I believe that AI is here to stay. We should think about how to use AI to our advantage because, like the tools you have in Photoshop, it can save you hours. It used to take me two or three hours to retouch an image, but with content-aware fill, it takes ten seconds. And it’s done really well—in fact, impressively.

It’s more about the functionality of our tools, rethinking ideas, or combining ideas we’ve always had.

We need to get it right for legal purposes and implications. It’s evolving too fast for our collective consciousness. Sometimes, technological advances that take time feel less ominous. But AI has been around for quite a long time; we just relabeled it (Grammarly is an example, and we’ve been fine using it as such). 

In the latest episode of the Creativity for Sale podcast, you talked with Mike Schnaidt, the creative director of Fast Company, discussing his career and the process of writing his book, Creative Endurance. My big takeaway was how vital endurance is to the creative process. It takes time to find your rhythm and make sense of your work. But staying committed and continuing to learn and grow is essential. How do you approach cultivating creative endurance in the digital age when flashing lights and alarms seem to be everywhere?

Endurance is something that we don’t necessarily think that we might need as creatives.

When you think of great designers—they are the ones that produce great work seemingly all the time—their careers are all about endurance. Paula Sher, for example.

When you see your peers doing amazing things, it’s easy to sit on your hands and say, yeah, I’m not going to do that. Creative pressure, or what I call ambitious anxiety, is prevalent; not only do you want to do more than you’ve ever been able to do, but you want to do them now.

Preferences become important when you realize it’s impossible to do it all. How do you choose what’s good for you? It takes time to find out because, at first, you want to do everything all the time.

Mike said it beautifully: It’s the understanding of how we can actually come back another day, how we can continue to move forward. 

I had to follow the advice of my books and simplify because I was running a successful studio, but it was making me unhappy because I couldn’t do all of it. I couldn’t be the brain for another three or four people every day, plus be a dad to my family and try to write books. I wasn’t necessarily looking after myself. So, it was about simplifying.

It’s taken all those iterations of my life and creativity to make every mistake and realize that I’m not the only person doing this. Whatever you do, someone else has done it before. It’s about being honest about everything that we do.

Aside from allowing yourself a couple of decades to figure this out, what advice do you have for creatives just starting their careers to cultivate resilience and endurance in their creative practice?

Make a plan about how you will look after yourself and build your personal and creative toolkits. Creatives around my age never made that a priority. Ask yourself: What do I do that stops me from greatness?

What makes you unique? Everyone has a creative journey. What is your creative and personal foundation? There’s no single correct answer to this. It’s about trying to be less of everything and focusing on your creativity, not on pleasing the algorithm. 

Looking after your soul will help you lessen the need to connect with hundreds and thousands of people. Focusing on your circle of friends or clients will get you further because you’re working with people who actually understand you and know how you communicate.

Imagery courtesy of Radim Malinic and Luke Cleland.

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When he decided to portray the remarkable story of The Lobstermen of Little Cranberry Island, award-winning photographer Tadd Myers committed to a design and production process as sustainability oriented as its subject.

Myers’ 40-page book marries words, images, and carefully selected paper to depict the inspiring heritage of a community and the industry that has supported it for generations. Founded in 1978, The Cranberry Isle Fishermen’s Co-Op comprises 28 independent fishermen and one woman from Little Cranberry Island, Maine. The Co-Op delivers its daily catch live or cooked and vacuum-sealed, marketed as Little Cranberry Lobsters, to restaurants, distributors, specialty stores, and individuals across the country. Though the 200-acre island has only 85 year-round residents, one grocery store, one pier, and one restaurant, it boasts an abundance of rugged natural beauty and a strong commitment to preserving its lobster legacy through careful environmental stewardship.

In this spirit, the Co-Op has collaborated with government agencies in establishing trap limits, size limits, and safe-guarding egg-bearing females. All lobsters are Marine Stewardship Council certified, sustainable, and traceable. In March 2019, the Co-Op began the process of solar power installation, projected to cover 110% of its energy needs and reduce its carbon footprint by 22,073 pounds every year.

After learning about the Co-Op’s multi-generation lobstermen members and sustainability bona fides, Myers was determined to tell their story. The Lobstermen of Little Cranberry Island showcases a selection of 24 stunning images culled from thousands that Myers and his team captured over a week of shooting on board the lobster boats and on the island.

Myers has spent the last two decades working with clients including American Airlines, Apple, Chevrolet, Harvard University, New Balance, Sprint, The United Way, Titleist, and Walmart, and in 2020 he was named one of the world’s best advertising photographers by ARCHIVE Magazine.

When conceiving this project, Myers kept an eye on sustainability at every step.

“This is my fifth and largest book project, and I wanted to make a piece that was not only beautiful but also deeper in concept,” says Myers. “Once we started talking about this book with the Co-Op leaders – who are incredibly enviro-conscious in how they source their lobsters – I was determined to find a printer and papermaker, also based out of the Northeast, who were equally sustainable in their approach and values.”

He selected Villanti Printers (doing business out of Milton, Vermont), the first printer in that state to receive Forest Stewardship Council certification, and the ninth in North America. Founded in 1959, the third-generation, family-owned business unites a “Culture of Craftsmanship” with on-going sustainability investments, including the installation of one of Vermont’s largest rooftop solar arrays, VOC-free inks, and a comprehensive recycling program which includes all wastepaper, bindery scraps, plastic, wood, metal, and more.

The promotion was designed by Jeff Barfoot and Geoff German, who were creative collaborators at the time. Both have continued to impact the design world; Jeff Barfoot is now Co-CEO and Chief Creative Officer at *TraceElement and Geoff German serves as Creative Director at Squires&Co.

“Designing a promotion like this is easy when you have images like this to showcase. The key is to not overcook it. Let the amazing images be the hero, pepper in some fresh typography, add a conceptual support element (we loved the idea of using the rubber band to play off of the lobster claw bands) and don’t let the design get in the way and spoil it,” says Barfoot, reflecting on the creative process.

Myers knew from the project’s outset that he wanted to showcase the Co-Op story on uncoated stock. “I loved the idea of uncoated — it fits the imagery,” he says. “If you were only worried about perfectly toned and contrasted imagery you’d go with coated, but then you lose the feel. Everything I saw I was shooting I was seeing on uncoated stock.”

The path to paper led Myers to Monadnock Paper Mills, the oldest continuously operating paper mill in the United States, and its Astrolite PC 100® uncoated fine paper. Based out of Bennington, New Hampshire, the over 200-year-old mill’s longevity matches its high sustainability profile. Astrolite PC 100, like all Monadnock materials, is FSC Certified (FSC C018866), manufactured carbon-neutral (VERs), and made with 100% renewable Green-e certified wind-powered electricity (RECs) under a third-party certified ISO 14001 Environmental Management System.

“Tadd’s book is such a testament to his creative chops, ability to tell a story through great photography, and insight into how printing and paper can help to tell that story on a deeper and more meaningful level,” says Julie Brannen, Director, Sustainability Solutions for Monadnock. “We couldn’t be more pleased to help him achieve his sustainable vision along with our two long-term partners, Clampitt Paper and Villanti Printers.”

The meaning invested in this project’s design is mirrored in a quote from Co-Op member and Captain Steve Philbrook in The Lobstermen of Little Cranberry Island, which is both available to view online and for purchase at Myers’ website.

We are bound by the ocean on this island. It creates a spirit of cooperation and neighborliness that brings us all together. It gives us a shared purpose and shared goal of making this business work. You definitely feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself when you are on the ocean.

Steve Philbrook

The post Lobster Tales, Sustainably Told appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

To help spread the Musée de l’Impression sur Étoffes gospel and share pieces from its collection with the masses, TASCHEN has released a two-volume collection of works from the museum entitled The Book of Printed Fabrics: From the 16th Century Until Today. Compiled and authored by Aziza Gril-Mariotte, an art historian, textiles specialist, teacher, researcher, and the former head of the Musée de l’Impression sur Étoffes, the books contain high-res images of almost 900 pieces spanning four continents.

The first volume of this collection starts in India, recounting the origins of textile design in the Far East and how those patterns then made their way to factories in Europe. Volume one digs into the histories of some of the most beloved textile styles and trends, such as toile de Jouy and the development of certain color ranges.

Volume two delves into the innovations of textile manufacturers and designers during the 19th and 20th centuries. These include cashmere motifs and the emergence of natural and floral depictions.

More than an informational resource, these books are glorious works of art in their own right. Bright red spines and a gorgeous slipcase make for eye-catching decor on any coffee table, side table, or bookshelf.

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We are lucky that Warren Lehrer didn’t heed his Queens College Art School drawing instructor’s advice that words and images operate in two different languages and hemispheres of the brain, so don’t combine them. Instead, Lehrer took from that his mission in life.

He doesn’t see himself as a designer or author in the traditional sense. But with his background in visual arts, words on the page have always married with the content. Steven Heller described Lehrer’s aptitude as performative design—creating stages for text to play.

And what gorgeous stages Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word are! The double release was serendipitous rather than planned. Both projects are based on short stories, have bifurcated formats (that dichotomy again), are led by visuals, and illuminate women whose lives have been torn apart and have to start over from scratch.

Our conversation was full of design geekery, like Do Si Do bindings, translating the reading experience into coding language, and storyboarding. There was also a rich discussion of the collaboration behind both books: Lehrer’s process with artist Sharon Horvath for Jericho’s Daughter and how words came together with music (composer Andrew Griffin) in the interface (designed by creative technologist  Artemio Morales) in Riveted in the Word.

Both books are available for presale. Riveted in the Word is sold through the Apple App Store (searchable under ‘book apps’). You can purchase Jericho’s Daughter through Earsay Publishing.

There are a bunch of upcoming book launch events (more info on Warren Lehrer’s website). If you are in NYC, you are invited to the May 31 double book launch at the Center for Book Arts.

Register here to watch the entire discussion.

For more, listen to Debbie’s 2019 Design Matters interview with Warren Lehrer.

The post Book Club Recap with Warren Lehrer: A Multimedia Feast of Words & Pictures appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Hello, hello. So the big news: I managed to escape to London for a day. Have to go down and refill the tanks every now and then. Thanks to some very intense and regimented planning, I managed to fit in a lot of art: the recently made-over National Portrait Gallery; the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery; the World Photography Awards at Somerset House; and Richard Serra’s six large drawings at David Zwirner. But the highlight of the day was this errant cardboard box that slowly and flamboyantly drifted down James Street to the delight of everyone.

In between all that frolicking about, I did manage to grab something to eat at the fantastic Lina Stores on Greek Street – sat next to Ruth Bloody Wilson. I was very cool about this, of course. I pushed the boundaries of nonchalance so far I think she actually ended up being starstruck by me.

Back in the real world of the internet, I got a little bit lost in the Rural Indexing Project, photographically documenting the architecture of America. Fascinating to see the buildings grouped by tags – I had no idea there were a number of uniform Post Office designs, for example.

Only a few days left for Unit Editions/Volume’s Anita Klinz monograph Seeking Beauty to hit its funding target. It looks absolutely lovely, but at fifty quid a pop, I can see why it might be some way off. I would imagine students/young designers are a huge section of the target readership for this sort of book, and that price tag is a heck of a barrier, but it now seems like the norm. There’s definitely a market for smaller, simpler design books at a lower price point.

I’ve finally switched to Chrome, and a big thank you to Alex for recommending the Control Panel for Twitter extension. It’s basically resets the design and usability back ten years – which is of course a very good thing.

… and then I immediately went a bit viral with a dumb bit of photoshopping. Kind of tangentially related: “Planet of the Apes” Goes to a ’70s Mall, an excellent find from the LIFE archive.

Hanging Stones, a five hour circular walk of abandoned buildings in the North York Moors, all housing Andy Goldsworthy artworks. Yes please.

Elsewhere across the newslettiverse: Animation Obsessive on how Ghost in the Shell was deliberately engineered for western audiences; Owen D. Pomery examines a particularly fine Tintin spread; Nick Asbury launched his new book The Road to Hell.

And finally a quick affiliate plug for Freeagent, without which my business would pretty much collapse into a void of unutterable fiscal despair. With this here link you get a 30-day free trial plus 10% off your subscription, which is nice.

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 photo courtesy the author.

The post Meanwhile No. 200 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Lowrider culture is far from specific to Los Angeles, with vibrant pockets represented around the country. The nonprofit lowrider organization Slow & Low recently published a retrospective book of the same title, the first formal documentation of the lowrider community in Chicago. In partnership with Nick Adam’s team at the design studio Span, Slow & Low was created with the utmost thought and care to showcase the photographic archive of twelve years of the nonprofit’s events and festivals. In addition to its gorgeous and vibrant imagery, the book features essays from Slow & Low co-founder and curator Lauren M. Pacheco and ethnographer, cultural critic, and professor Dr. Ben Chappell.

Span took on the design of Slow & Low with the imperative that every detail and aspect of the book must somehow reflect lowrider culture. They worked closely with Pacheco and her co-founder, Peter Kepha, to ensure they achieved this, from the editorial considerations to the page layouts and materials.

The book’s grid, for example, creates an elaborate page sequencing system that balances variation and repetition, creating perspective shifts and contextual relationships. From page to page, the photo compositions create a filmic cadence where motion, zooming, and surrounding angles evoke the sensation of cruising.

Lowrider culture is about far more than cars, and Slow & Low aptly reflects that. Beloved community photographers shot the 112-page photo archive presented throughout the book with a firsthand understanding of the culture, offering an intimate and authentic insider’s perspective. The range of photos depicts lowriding as a way for individuals and the community to have a voice of creativity and pride, featuring waving Mexican flags, airbrushed Aztec symbols, and folklórico performances in the background, to name a few.

The photos have been curated and sequenced by Span and then printed in full color with a spot gloss varnish on high-gloss coated paper. This meticulous process better reflects the look of the candy-colored cars on display, a nod to the vibrant aesthetics of lowrider culture. The effect also feels like a family photo album. The book’s front and back are printed with silver ink on natural paper to contrast the glossiness of the photos. The silver ink has a reflective quality inspired by the engraved chrome of lowrider cars and viclas.

The book’s body copy is set in Canela, designed by Miguel Reyes at Commercial Type. Each column of the Canela text baselines to the bottom of the page and rises to hit different heights meant to represent the hydraulic bounce of a lowrider. The display type is Respira, designed by Lucas Sharp with Wei Huang at Sharp Type. Respira was inspired by blackletter, which is a signature lettering style in lowrider and Chicano cultures.

Meanwhile, the Slow & Low front and back covers also feature the blackletter style, stamped in white foil on a black textile texture. The form is reminiscent of the letter-based tattoos that read top-to-bottom on many forearms within the lowrider community. This style also pays homage to the way churches often depict text, given the importance of faith within those in the lowrider community.

The book is stitched with myth-sewn binding to open flat, allowing you to immerse yourself in each photo fully. It concludes with a series of 360 silver ink photo booth photos featuring over 1,000 members of Chicago’s lowrider community, all taken at the 2022 Slow & Low festival at Navy Pier.

Concept, Design Direction, Design, Content Collection & Curation: Nick Adam

Design: Grace Song and Cheryl Kao

Printing: OGM

Writers: Lauren M. Pacheco and Dr. Ben Chappell

Curators: Lauren M. Pacheco, Peter Kepha, and Edward Magico Calderon

Photographers: Carmen Ordonez, Carolina Sánchez, Don’t Get Shot, Edward Magico Calderon, Fernando Ruiz, Katrina Nelken, Manuel Lagunas, Manuel Velasco, Max Herman, Mike Pocious, Nick Lipton, Peter Kepha, Sebastián Hildalgo, and Nick Adam

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