Noisy Decent Graphics

Sketchbooks Encouraged

There are two exhibitions worth blogging about at the Design Museum right now.

The Design Museum has a lot of faults. But it gets one thing massively right and has done for a long time. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO TAKE PICTURES INSIDE THE MUSEUM.

I assume the reason museums wish to restrict this is that with the advent of cheap, small, high resolution digital cameras it is easy for someone to make unauthorised, good quailty, reproductions of famous works of art. But like all digital / social media etiquette dilemmas common sense has to become common practice. The Design Museum, for example, allows you to take pictures but they restrict the use of flash, which in a environment of controlled lighting makes getting artwork quality pictures hard, but gives enough freedom for blogs or personal sketchbooks.

I know of no museum that bans, or actively discourages sketchbooks, but the Design Museum is the only one I've come across with a little sign promoting it. In a world where every task is preceded by warning signs this is a refreshing change. Nice sketchbook icon too.

On to the exhibitions. First up, Super Contemporary.

It's an odd exhibition which has a lot to do with it's origins and a lot to do with the typical Design Museum faults. The origins first:

"Design Museum has joined forces with Beefeater 24 to celebrate the fearlessly progressive spirit of London's greatest creative minds, past and present. London is after all where Beefeater has called home since 1820. Having created its new luxury gin, Beefeater 24, in 2008, it wanted to celebrate its own achievements as well as those of other creatively-minded Londoners. Collaborating closely with the design museum on super contemporary has offered up the perfect opportunity."

This is more than a sponsored exhibition, it feels like an idea that came from Beefeater's marketing department. Still, nothing wrong with that if the exhibition is good.

And the exhibition is good. But only good. (Apart from the usual complaint of being too small) it's main fault is that it's too obvious. Too bland. London design in the 60's? Let's have that Fletcher, Forbes and Gill picture. The 80's? The Face.

There's nothing wrong with that. I'm partial to a bit of 60's Pentagram and The Face still looks as awesome today as it did then. But it just feels like you've seen it all before. (You may not have seen it all before of course, in which case you should go immediately.)

60's, 70's, 80's all nice and easy to eulogise about. And then we get to the 90's. Or worse the 00's. That's a lot harder to curate and the exhibition peters out a little bit.

But still, there's loads of good stuff and even if you've seen it before it's still great to see things like this.


So (and I feel like I've said this before) worth a visit, usual Design Museum caveats apply. More pictures on Flickr.

Second, Mariscal Drawing Life.

This was better, because it was so unexpected.

Lots and lots of lovely colour and graphics. Vibrant with an unmistakable energy. Javier Mariscal is a truly multidisciplinary soul designing furniture, interiors as well as graphics. And he of course designed the "most profitable Olympic mascot".

And this wonderful mural outside the Design Museum.

Picture taken from casacombr, usual stuff applies.

The colour and movement in the lines and shapes is very refreshing. It's very rare I like this sort of illustration / graphics crossover stuff. But this is great. Lovely stuff. Worth going to see. More pictures on Flickr.

The two exhibitions together make a visit worthwhile and there's the added benefit of catching the Jan Kaplický retrospective, which I haven't blogged about. That's good too.

I've just realised I'm writing this like you're all Design Museum veterans. In case you're not, the Design Museum is based in Butler's Wharf on the southside of the river by Tower Bridge. Nearest tube London Bridge or Tower Hill and walk across the bridge. About 10-15 minutes riverside walk from each.

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction

I've just had an email from James Pardey who sent me a link to his wonderful website. The Art of Penguin Science Fiction.

Rather than me witter on for ages, let us hand the microphone to James who will witter on for a bit about this fab project.

"The purpose of the website is to complement a series of articles I've written for the Penguin Collector's Society on the history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books from 1935 to 1977.
 
The website is primarily intended to be a visual experience (there are over 150 Penguin sf covers, which Penguin has granted me a licence to use) with the articles going into more detail about the sf itself, and the connections between sf and twentieth-century art (abstraction, surrealism, Pop, etc.) which is my main area of interest. This linkage between sf and modern art will also be the subject of some talks and further articles in newspapers and magazines that I am now planning.

My main area of interest is the linkage between modern science fiction - by which I mean Jules Verne and H G Wells onwards - and twentieth-century art (abstraction, surrealism, Pop, etc.).
 
Where Penguin comes into this is that in the 1960s they launched an sf series with covers by the great Germano Facetti. But instead of using pictures of aliens, rocketships, and bug-eyed monsters, Facetti chose reproductions of paintings by Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro and Rene Magritte to name a few. Why? Well, each painting was carefully chosen to tie in with some aspect of the novel, and it is these connections that form the heart of the website and the articles that I've written to accompany it. The articles are being published by the Penguin Collectors' Society (last December and two more due this year) but the articles and website only go so far.

There is more to explore, such as the links between J G Ballard and surrealism, Jules Verne and the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux, Delvaux and Ballard, etc., etc. I am therefore planning to examine this in some talks and further articles for newspapers and magazines. Incidentally, instead of starting in the 1960s I decided that both the website and articles should start at the beginning, when Penguin was founded in 1935.

I did this in order to tell "the whole story" since the early orange-and-white banded covers of Penguin books have since become regarded as design classics and, to many people, miniature works of art in their own right. And after the sf series in the 1960s, the influence of Pop Art and Op Art can be seen in the later Penguin sf covers by Alan Aldridge and Franco Grignani, while those by David Pelham have also achieved iconic status. Facetti was no stranger to sf either, as he appeared in La Jetee, a seminal art-house sf movie by the French New-Wave director Chris Marker."

The Changing Face of Letterpress Reminder

Remember I said I'd remind you of this? Well, true to my word I'm reminding you of this.

Changing Face of Letterpress

This looks good. It's on in March, but I'll remind you nearer the time.

Hussein Chalayan | Design Museum | Review

A short exhibition deserves a short review I find.

This exhibition is good in that very Design Museum way. IE go if you're in the area and don't expect to be there very long.

I'm not really a big Hussein Chalayan fan and I was pleased to note that you don't have to be to enjoy the exhibition. It's interestingly put together and it moves along at a decent pace. It's unusual but not wanky.

When I was there it was besieged by fashion students who making the most of the Design Museums wonderful Yes You Can Take Pictures We Are All Grown Ups approach to copyright.

You should go, if you're in the area. Just don't expect to be there very long. More pictures on Flickr.

Saul Steinberg - Dulwich Picture Gallery

Here's an exhibition that good and not very good all at the same time. Saul Steinberg at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

What's good?
The maps are fantastic, a delight. The detail and the wit are a joy to behold.

The typography (wait, typography is maybe a bit strong) the drawings with type in are lovely. The drawings have a lovely depth to them.

What's not good?
It ain't very big. Actually, it's even more spatially challenged than a Design Museum exhibition and that's quite a feat.

There isn't enough stuff from the New Yorker. Just the one cover.

It feels a bit pricey at £9. Nine pounds isn't exactly a lot of money, but it feels like a big deal for a very small show. Still, better to spend your hard earned at cultural venues than the local Wetherspoons...

So go. You should definitely go. Just lower your expectations a little bit. Mike Dempsey has written a good post about Saul here. A must read if you like that new Audi cardboard box ad.

The History and Mystery of the Universe

In Portland I went to see Buckminster Fuller, The History and Mystery of the Universe. Essentially it's a 2.5 hours of Bucky (played by Doug Tompos) working his way through his theories.

Yes, 2.5 hours of Bucky.



That's pretty intense. It's good, probably very good, but it's a bit heavy. One man shows are always heavy, but a one man Bucky show is heavier. It's better than reading about it though. He has props, he moves around, he asks questions, he has videos and he sketches. All good stuff.



I came away understanding a little more, but regretting that such brilliant ideas can't be packaged up and explained a little easier. I can't help thinking his theories would get a better hearing if they were a little easier on the ears.
 

D&AD stuff

I'm sorry I haven't done a review of the D&AD Annual like I have in previous years. It feels a bit late now you've all seen it haven't you? It's online anyway for members and non-members alike. Which is fantastic.

Now, some other D&AD news. They've started putting lectures online as podcasts, which is brilliant. Easy and accessible and the quality is good.

Lots of people leave comments on my review of the Ivan Chermayeff lecture saying they wish they could watch it. Well now you can.

Tony Davidson is up there as well, as is Irma Boom and Paul Davis. You can subscribe straight through iTunes (opens link in iTunes).

There's some good interviews with Kyle Cooper and Garrick Hamm on YouTube, all well worth watching.

The brilliant 45 years of pencils exhibition is now on Flickr.

Last but not least you can now enter the D&AD Awards. After all the fuss last year it's important that us graphic designers enter some bloody good work and that we win. There's only one way to win and that's to enter. So enter. They've made it cheaper this year too!

D&AD 45 Years Exhibition Book

Anyone want this? I don't.

I don't mean that to sound ungrateful. It's a very nice thing. It's just that it'll sit on the shelf and you know, just sit there. Doing nothing. Adding no value to the world. So I thought someone might be able to give it a better home.

Errr, you can't read that, sorry.

It's designed by Build (I bet you lot love Build, don't you?) and it features all the text from the excellent D&AD exhibition. It's all the Presidents talking about their favourite piece of work from their year. Very good.

So pop over to the FAQ's, find my email address (think of that as an initiation test) and send me your address. First address I get - gets the book. Simple. Bosh. Break it down.

UPDATE: Competition closed. It's going to Matthew in North Yorkshire.

The Rhizotron at Kew Gardens

Rhizotron originally means "clear-walled chamber through which one can observe roots as they grow". This version is a little different as it climbs through and over the tree tops at Kew Gardens.

I was impressed by how it seemed to fit into it's surroundings. It would have been an obvious (aesthetic) choice to make it from wood but I prefer it in metal (iron?). It looks stronger for a start. I know wood can be as strong as metal, but I can imagine that those of a vertigo disposition would feel better knowing it was made from metal. The rust colour looks organic and even bolts have a natural feel about them.

I loved the way they've mirrored the look of tree branches for these supports. It's got that nice exciting engineering Brunel look about it. It doesn't look threatening. It looks cool.

The view are pretty cool too and you get to walk amoungst the trees. Little plaques tell more about the trees as you pass and there's even a Bluetooth game.

Actually the Kew website is pretty good and there is a good interactive map of all the trees. Exactly the sort of thing Kew should be doing. Good.

All good fun. At the moment it's a temporary structure but I hope they make it permanent. More pictures on Flickr.

I liked this as well. Reasonable, common sense, non preaching, on brand message, environmentalism. One last full stop wouldn't hurt though.

The Fastest Art In Town

I went to see Martin Creed's Work No. 850 the other day.

A person runs through the main gallery of Tate Britain, as though their life depended on it, roughly every 30 seconds.

Is it art? No. Is it a great, fun, interesting way of getting people into an art gallery? Yes. So is it art? God knows. It is however tremendous fun and it's free. Therefore I commend it to the House.

(More pictures on Flickr.)

Richard Rogers at the Design Museum

The Richard Rogers exhibition at the Design Museum is very good. You should go. It's full of those lovely models that architects make.

Those models must make for brilliant "pitch theatre".

But it's also got great typography. Those great big signs are gorgeous. Really lovely.

But you should go because, in a bit of a shock for the Design Museum, the other exhibitions are worth seeing too. There's some very cool, interesting and playful stuff from Industrial Facility and there are some colourful photographs from Tim Walker. And of course they let you take lots of pictures.

Esquire Covers Exhibition

I went to the Esquire Magazine Covers exhibition at The Hospital the other day. Don't waste your time going, it's shit.

They've taken great covers from the sixties, the Muhammad Ali, the Vietnam one, the Dustin Hoffman one etc, and recreated them with, er, people from the fashion industry. It's not even well done. Bad photographs and bad Photoshop work. It's quite insulting to be honest.

Anyway. One of them is good and that's this recreation of the Warhol cover with Paul Smith. You can buy these exclusive, limited edition covers at the exhibition and so I bought the Paul Smith one. It cost £5 and came in a handy, foil blocked paper bag. Maybe that's the way forward for magazines - put them in over elaborate bags and raise the prices?

There's a more sensible discussion about these over on Jeremy's blog.

Golden Anniversary Celebration McDonald's

Chicago is home to the Golden Anniversary Celebration McDonald's. Essentially a huge McDonald's built to celebrate their 50 year anniversary.

The angle of the photograph isn't quite right, but the building sits under two huge arches which, when viewed from the right angle, form one massive golden M.

I was told they had an exhibition upstairs of every toy they'd ever given out with a Happy Meal. This isn't correct, but they do a have an interesting display of memorabilia through the ages. I'm no McDonald's fan, but there's some fascinating stuff here.

There are some pretty funky arches on that cup.

I wonder how many they've sold now?

I bet that Rubik's Cube is worth a few coins now. More pictures, inevitably, on Flickr.

From Russia To Flickr

I went to the Royal Academy's From Russia exhibition the other day.

It was packed. Too packed really, but don't let that put you off. It's a great exhibition. Lots of blockbusters like this  Matisse.

That bloke in the glasses is a happy chap, isn't he?

The best bit for me was this model of Tatlin's Tower. It reminded me of this secret project. In fact maybe that secret project should be called Cardigan Bay's Tower?

Another thing I'd not seen were these paintings by Kazimir Malevich. He coined this excellent expression, "the zero of form". I'm not 100% sure what that means but I like it none the less. To me it means stripping an idea down to the bare essentials. The zero of form. The opposite of Peter Saville.

Here's the zero of form of some Russian icons. The kind you find in a Russian church. They appeal to the graphic designer in me.

Continuing the Russian theme there's another great exhibition on at the moment. It features the work of Alexander Rodchenko and it's on at The Hayward gallery on the Southbank.

We've designed the minisite for this show and there's a great little competition where you can upload your Rodchenko style photos to the Flickr group. The latest pictures get pulled through to the ministe and the 10 best pictures will be exhibited in the foyer of The Hayward from 14 – 27 April, in the final weeks of the exhibition, which is pretty cool.

The Flickr group is getting some decent traffic and if you ask me (and I'm a bit biased) it's a good, sensible idea and an appropriate combination of Rodchenko, Flickr and the web. If you're asking.

Both exhibitions are well worth a visit.

Stereoscopes

Tom and I popped down to the Photographers Gallery last week for a signing of the new Magnum book. I didn't buy a copy, and I should have done. I should have done. And I could have got it signed by 5 or 6 Magnums. Damn.

Still. Whilst we were there they had an exhibition called Seeing Is Believing, which is about all sorts of things, but which has some fantastic old stereoscopes.

I don't have any big point to make here, I'm not advocating the arrival of wifi enabled stereoscopes or anything. I'm just saying that old stereoscopes are a good thing. If a little fragile and fullstopless.

Ivan Chermayeff

To end Beauty Week here's some pictures of the wonderful work of Ivan Chermayeff who spoke at the D&AD lecture on Wednesday night.

No words, just amazing work.

Normal, normal service will return next week.

Exhibition Review: Friendly Fire - Jonathan Barnbrook

When I went to this I should have mentioned that I also went to Friendly Fire - Jonathan Barnbrook.

I don't like Jonathan Barnbrook's work. I find it too style driven and Ray Gun for my liking. I don't like Adbusters either.

Still, he's a very good graphic designer and he does lots of interesting work. Squeezed behind the Hadid exhibition is an exhibition of his work and I really enjoyed it. It helped that lots of the work was explained better in the 'exhibition' context. Do yourself a favour and make a visit to both exhibitions soon.

There are some more pictures here.

Get some Z at the Design Museum by Henrietta Thompson

I went to see the Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Design Museum the other day. It's good. It's not just about the buildings, Hadid does some really interesting drawings and paintings. And she's one of those rare people who manage to make the finished product look like the concept sketches. You can see more pics over on Flickr.

My good friend Henrietta Thompson has been writing for the exhibition blog and she's spotted something I think you'll find interesting. Henrietta is a professional writer (for proper publications like Arena, Monocole, Blueprint and the Guardian) so the words are by her and the pics are by me.

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Get some Z at the Design Museum

Give us a “Z”! Give us an “A”! Give us an “H”! Give us an “A”! Zaha Hadid is the queen starchitect - the undisputed champion of signature architecture.

Critics and fans alike have long wondered where she finds her inspiration - where do her forms come from? Her architecture rarely fails to astonish, and yet it is always unmistakably her own. It has been attributed to her willingness to experiment with new technologies, her tireless pushing at the boundaries of materials and construction methods. Over and above all that, however, Zaha is an artist. And her conceptual approach begins by taking a long hard look at herself.

From the moment she could write her own name, Zaha has been creating masterpieces. Her trademark geometric Zs are almost certainly the starting point for every project, but it is perhaps only when we see all her buildings, paintings, plans and projects together that we can fully appreciate how she follows through with those perspective warping combinations of As and Hs. And every now and then she will surprise us with a beautiful sinuous D curve and a rare straight vertical I. There’s no doubt about it, this architect puts the “I” in “iconic”.

You can see more pics over on Flickr. This post also appears on the Zaha Hadid Exhibition Blog.

Open House 2007

I love Open House. Even if I have seen the logo somewhere before.

I love architecture and I love going to buildings that you don't normally get to see, I love London and, obviously, I love design. So Open House is right up my street.

Technically Open House is the name of an organisation that promotes appreciation and debate of the built environment in London. The organisation started in 1992 and I think the Open House London Weekend started later than that, but I could well be wrong. During Open House London Weekend, many famous, hard to access and residential buildings of architectural significance open their doors to the general public. For free. Fancy going to the top of the Gherkin? With Open House Weekend you can.

I moved to London in 1997 and for the first time in my Ten Year I went to Open House this weekend. For the previous years weddings, birthdays, holidays, more weddings and other such must attend events have stopped me attending Open House. Trust me, it's become a bit of a 'thing'. This year I finally made it.

An hour long queue of people wanting to see a small house in Peckham.

Something that I guess has changed in ten years is the advent of serious architecty property programmes like Grand Designs, serious as opposed to Changing Rooms etc. I hate these programmes.

I like architecture, I like design and like most Londoners I can sit and talk property prices with the best of 'em, but these shows leave me cold. I find them really boring. Another wet room - sigh. Another wall of glass bricks - sigh. Another standard two bed flat turned into a one and half bed apartment with the kitchen on the roof and the bedroom in the wet room - sigh. Oh shit we're £30k over budget, how did that happen? Etc etc etc.

I reliably informed by people whose opinions I trust that Grand Designs is the best of these programmes. The house shown below had won some sort of Best of Grand Designs Award.

I can see why. The house was brilliant. Really clever and interesting. (It has a retractable roof for fuck's sake!) The photos don't do it justice but the house was squeezed into a piece of land that was 4 meters wide at one point. There were loads of really clever ideas.

There wasn't enough room for a proper bathroom so you slide back the bed and voila! There's a bath underneath.

Round the corner a bit and there isn't enough room for a sink, so you pull a drawer out and voila! There's a sink.

I don't want to be down about the house, it was brilliant. And it was really clever and it was really well done and well thought out. But it all just felt a bit, laboured. A bit hard work. A bath under a bed is a brilliant piece of design and engineering and it may even be practical, but isn't it just a bit - complicated?

I think there's a huge amount of visual comfort in seeing stuff laid out before you. Remember those beds that flip up into the wall? That's a good idea, but isn't it comforting to see your bed in the room? Wayne Hemmingway talked about this once, he said one of the reasons so many new housing estates were really ugly was because the British insisted on parking their cars right in front of their house so they can see them.

Like I said I don't want to slag the house off, but this whole Grand Designs sort of thing leaves me cold.

Open House isn't just about modern architecture. There are old buildings too. This house is from the 1700's. It was lovely. But this really brought home the Openess of Open House.

This is a picture of someone's clothes, in that person's house on a public website. It's a bit weird isn't it? Maybe it isn't.

I also went to look at the HQ of the Thames River Police. Not clever, not good deisgn, not prying. Just jolly good fun.

There are a few more photos on Flickr.