NEW DIGS, WRONGER IDEAS
Sometimes one change leads to another. When design and strategy company C2 started working on a new building three years ago, it was clear the firm’s address would eventually read Half Moon Bay instead of San Francisco … but C2 didn’t realize another radical transformation lay in store. Now studio principals are in the midst of morphing the business into a new venture called MavLab, which will focus on generating big ideas for clients, then sending many of them to outside partners for “rapid prototyping.”
“I’m always looking for, not so much the new thing, but the next big idea,” says partner John Bielenberg. And for MavLab, that philosophy means assembling panels of experts from different fields (ranging from behavorial psychology to design) for collaborative brainstorming. The teams will come up with ideas that wouldn’t be possible without such a diverse group, and since the studio doesn’t plan to execute all the ideas itself, solutions won’t be restricted by an internal skill set. (Look for more on MavLab’s launch in the November/December issue of STEP.)
As for the new building: It’s designed to facilitate “thinking wrong”—the firm’s process for coming up with innovative ideas. Next to a surf shop rather than more laced-up businesses, the building’s interior retains an unfinished feel, with plywood walls and exposed wiring instead of a slick aesthetic. Thick translucent plastic on the outside of the building (designed by architect Nilus De Matran) gives the structure a futuristic vibe. “It’s not just a new studio for us,” Bielenberg says. “We call it a catalytic mechanism.” Seems like it’s working already. www.c2llc.com
WINNING HAND
When P22 type foundry released a card deck in 2004, copies went almost as fast as chips at the blackjack table. The Buffalo, N.Y., type shop recently completed a new specimen deck, designed by in-house and guest designers, with a differentP22 font on each card … and an Easter egg-style surprise for those who take a closer look at the king, queen and jack of spades.
P22 alum James Grieshaber, now of Typeco fame, modeled these face cards after P22’s principals. But did he do them justice? “I don’t really have much hair,” notes Richard Kegler, director of P22, on whom the king of spades is modeled. “The hair is fanciful on James’ part.” And fanciful just might be the perfect descriptor for the entire deck, with card designs compelling enough that you may have a hard time focusing on your hand. A deck is $10 or free with a $100 purchase. www.p22.com
WAVE THAT FLAG If this isn’t a throw-down, we don’t know what is: “We invite you to prove that design has a real role to play in the fate of our world.” It’s from those rabble-rousers over at
Adbusters, who have launched the One Flag design competition. This activist project challenges designers to create flags that symbolize global citizenship. You have until Dec. 1 to throw our hat—um, make that flag—into the ring. But no words or clichés, please. An all-star cast of judges, including Michael Beirut, Rick Poynor and Steven Heller, will decide which entry deserves to rest atop the world’s flagpoles.
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/oneflag
EYES WIDE OPEN
In her new book,
How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum (Perigee, $14.95), Keri Smith brings to fruition some deceptively simple advice: Pay attention. She’s stuffed her book with beguiling ideas for observing the world in the service of creativity. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt crossed with a philosophy textbook and a charmingly illustrated handwritten ’zine. The exercises range from archeological dig—where you recreate things from your childhood with found objects—to blind observation, which involves exploring a dark room by touch. As Smith, an artist and illustrator, writes, “Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles.”
www.kerismith.com
GREEN THUMBS
San Diego advertising agency NYCA has something akin to a theme word:
grow. The creatives there nurture clients’ businesses, each other and the environment around them. And the latter literally involves getting their hands dirty: There’s a grove behind the firm’s office with a tree for every client, and in the past year the company planted The Learning Grove, a garden at San Diego’s Horton Elementary School, where kids dig in the dirt and even eat the fruits of their labor—tomatoes, carrots, strawberries and more. “They learn about responsibility and what it takes to nurture a life,” says Michael Mark, creative director and CEO at NYCA. The agency’s staff spent days clearing out trash from a small plot at the school, then turned it into a working garden that’s about 60 x 60 ft. NYCA hopes to take the concept to additional schools.
www.nyca.com
BLOGGING BY MAIL
The web may be instantaneous, but Rob Giampietro decided to shutdown his design blog for a week in favor of snail mail. “Design is something between a gift and a good,” says the principal at New York design firm Giampietro+Smith. “I talk about this a lot on [my blog] Lined & Unlined, and I wanted to find a way to give my readers a gift.” So he launched Posts by Post, offering to send out free postcards to anyone who gave him an address. About 200 people took him up on the offer, and they received six different postcards over a week. Giampietro based each card’s design on a previous blog post, with imagery ranging from a Paul Rand’s UPS logo to an illustration of the hedge maze from
The Shining.
www.linedandunlined.com
ART: THE BEST MEDICINE
There are nearly 50 artists credited in the back of
Magnificent Marvelous Me!, but this book’s real stars are the kids who complete the activities in it. These young people have siblings with a serious illness or disability, and the book provides them an important creative outlet. “Their lives will be changed, because they’ll have a place to express themselves,” says Steffanie Lorig, founder of Art with Heart, the Seattle nonprofit behind the book. “If they don’t have a place to express themselves, they swallow it.” All the content is based in therapy, but the compelling pro-bono artwork helps make healing fun. A clown by Seymour Chwast, for instance, ups the giggle factor for a page of knock-knock jokes.
www.artwithheart.org
FAST FORWARD
Much like the famous TED conference, Pop!Tech hinges on big ideas; this year the event tackles a particularly timely theme: Scarcity and Abundance. The conference’s 600 participants, who typically hail from such diverse fields as design, art, government and science, will take a look at the planet’s resources and what today’s shifting realities mean for the future. Speakers include writer Malcom Gladwell (
Blink, The Tipping Point), PostSecret founder Frank Warren, antiviolence innovator Gary Slutkin and MIT roboticist Kelly Dobson. The conference takes place Oct. 22–25 in Camden, Maine … alas, it costs an eye-popping $3500. For those strapped for cash or time, there’s also a free simulcast online.
http://poptech.com
RETURN OF THE FIFTH DIMENSION
The Twilight Zone is almost 50 years old, but its original stories are about to take on a fresh look. This fall the classic TV show becomes fodder for a series of graphic novels, beginning with the release of
Walking Distance and
The After Hours. These classic episodes from the show are the basis for the first two books in an eight-book series, which is being created by students, faculty and alumni from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and published in the U.S. by Walker & Company.
About 20 people connected with the school’s Sequential Art department have worked on the project. They didn’t prepare by sitting in front of the boob tube. “We asked them not to watch the TV show,” says Anna Burgard, director of industry partnerships at SCAD. “We wanted them to have their own vision of who these characters were.” The school shopped the idea for two years at the Bologna, Italy, book fair and handled everything from script adaptation to illustration, lettering and color separations. www.scad.edu
Sample spreads under consideration for Louise Sandhaus’ book-in-progress, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California and Graphic Design
LEFT-COAST DESIGN
In California the ground is constantly shifting—both literally and figuratively. “There’s this feeling of constant upheaval and change,” says Louise Sandhaus of LSD in Los Angeles. “It’s this culture built on revolution and discovering one’s own path.” And she believes this singular environment has created a California graphic design aesthetic, one that’s visually and philosophically different from work coming from other states. Sandhaus fell down the California design rabbit hole five years ago, when she began
researching a book she intends to publish in 2010. It’s to be titled
Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California and Graphic Design, and initial spreads from it feature colorful, funny and often weird work created between 1935 and 1985. This highly curated collection of classic imagery includes some of Sandhaus’ favorite discoveries, such as the work of Merle Armitage, who made such unorthodox choices as putting the title page in the middle of a book.
www.californiagraphicdesign.net
BUSINESS-SAVVY
The Designer as Author program at New York’s School of Visual Arts has produced such home runs as Target’s prescription bottle system. But on the digital media side, there wasn’t a similar program blending design and business. So Steven Heller, who cochairs the school’s MFA design department, and Liz Danzico, an expert in information architecture and usability, conceived an MFA in Interaction Design to fill the hole. “I wouldn’t say it’s important to train students as entrepreneurs,” says Danzico, chair of the new department, which launches as a two-year program in fall 2009. “But it is important to get them thinking about how their designs can contribute in a business or everyday context.” To that end, students will work with real-world businesses during the program.
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu
TAKE A DESIGN HOLIDAY
Mark your calendar for National Design Week, which takes place Oct. 19–25. The third-annual recognition celebrates design’s role in everyday life, and it’s accompanied by a slate of events from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. There’s free admission for the week, a teen design fair and the official gala for the National Design Awards. Not in New York? Vote for the People’s Design Award online Sept. 22–Oct. 21, or just think of it as a good excuse for a happy hour. You can also find nearby design week events through the museum’s Design Across America map. www.cooperhewitt.org
SCRIPT-TASTIC NEW FONTS
The beauty of hand lettering lies in inconsistencies, but how to capture those variations within the confines of type? House Industries appears to have mastered the art of imperfection with the new Studio Lettering collection, which includes three script typefaces and a set of illustrated shapes. The typeface Swing, for example, contextually chooses from three letter alternatives to achieve the best look. Sable, on the other hand, varies the size of consecutively repeating letters in homage to brush lettering in advertising.
www.houseind.com
ADDED DIMENSION
It’s called taking a page from Hollywood. Building on a marketing campaign encouraging designers to think big, then think bigger, Jupiterimages took on a whole other dimension in a recent 3D mailer. Capitalizing on a revival of interest in 3D movies turned out to be a good idea for driving visitors to the stock image company’s site, where they could view special 3D imagery, according to VP Kendall Higbee. “The goal of this type of marketing is to be more experiential in introducing ourselves to prospects,” he says, pointing out that 3D online is a relatively new realm. Jupiterimages doesn’t sell 3D images, but it won’t be casting this selling technique aside: In true Tinseltown fashion, there will be a sequel. Request a set:
sales@jupiterimages.com
& NOW FOR SOMETHING … ADDITIONAL
Ah, the mighty ampersand. It’s hard not to love such an elegant, shapely replacement for the letters
a, n &
d … & now you can rejoice with other diehard ampersand lovers at a blog aptly titled The Ampersand, devoted entirely to the symbol. You’ll find leads on fan gear, including an ampersand pin, T-shirt and bookends, & you can keep up with the mark’s appearances in advertising, design & real life. And for the perfect interior object on which to ponder while absorbing the blog, consider one of House Industries’ exquisite new ampersand objects &/or T-shirts.
http://ampersand.gosedesign.net, www.houseind.com
One of 10 stamps designed in 1988 for The Dickson’s Stamp Collection by the Duffy Design Group.
IN MEMORIAM: TALMADGE DICKSON, 1915–2008
Talmadge Dickson embodied sophistication blended with equal parts courtesy and Southern charm. For more than half a century, he unerringly steered the illustrious Atlanta printing company that bears his name. When “T.D.” and his son Gary propelled the company into the electronic age, the company’s repertoire of specialty printing and finishing techniques became accessible to designers everywhere. The Dicksons’ enthusiasm for experimentation inspired innovative projects, from corporate identity to event collateral to packaging—and some of the most memorable paper promotions ever.
Talmadge Dickson’s passion for printing was omnivorous. He was a self-taught typographer, an eloquent advocate for fine papers, an intuitively strategic thinker. He would sketch out a multicolor engraved logo with the enthusiasm of a chef trying out a new recipe. Talmadge Dickson’s passing is in one sense the end of an era, but his dedication to quality and his admiration of creativity endure. His standards and spirit imbue the firm’s self-promotions and printed samples cherished by designers and paper-lovers across the country. www.dicksons.com
WEB-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
