To my bewilderment, I was recently made aware that my logo design for Ashley May’s Canvasface was selected amongst a collection of over 5,000 submissions to merit inclusion in the newest edition of Letterhead & Logo Design (Vol.11). LL11 includes work from such firms as Pentagram, Sagmeister, Inc. and local heroes Design Army, who’ve done a bang-up job in designing the book and compiling the over 400 entries. I am thrilled and honored to hold company in the ranks of such talented folks.
Pictures (bad ones, at that) of my handiwork in context below.
Btw, if you’d like to own this hardback volume AND are the thrifty type, you can purchase the book on Amazon for way cheaper than off the shelves at Borders (or Walden Books if you live in Kansas).
Last Saturday I had the honor of being a participating artist in the 6th Annual Transformer Gallery Silent Auction and Benefit, held at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC. To my relief, my piece, “Equivalence” actually sold (and six bids above the starting bid at that!). Pretty stoked that I at least made back what I paid for in materials and framing. Oh, and then there’s the whole “somebody actually liked my work enough to pay money for it” which is always a nice feeling.
Anyway, just wanted to put the red alert out that I have in fact posted the piece that went into the auction along with another, more personal work under the featured projects section. Take a gander if / when you have the inclination. I have a few more projects / goings-on that I’ll be highlighting here in due time, once I catch my breath from the whirlwind that was October.
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On a related art note..and, while this isn’t a matter of immediate significance as such, I wanted to speak briefly about a particular website that has become a personal favorite of mine over the course of the year, (named rather curiously) But Does it Float?. Ostensibly, it takes the typical ‘blog’ format of presentation, with a more or less daily curation of images pertaining to fine art, design, anthropology, illustration, architecture and moving images.
To its credit, the site is short on (read: devoid of) criticism and manages to say a lot with a little. The minimalist black text on white background does a good job of recreating that similar feeling one gets walking into a sterile, white-walled gallery, complete with tiny museum plaques (set in Georgia, no less). At any rate, I’ve quite enjoyed the thoughtful selection of artwork and the pairing of rather enigmatic fragments of prose derived from assorted literary, scientific and philosophical texts to comprise the title for a given post, leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps. It is a refreshing and satiating respite from the usual blog junk out there and offers a bit more focus than the time-killing-eye-candy-wormhole nature of sites like dropular and ffffound.
Recently I’ve amassed quite a pile-up of quality literature on my shelf. Unfortunately, reading these days has become confined to the sparse 15 minutes between home and work on the g2, (and only, of course, if I’ve opted against the alternative of dozing off for a few.)
Anyway, slowly but surely I’ve been putting a few items into the rotation. Over the summer I picked up a few vintage finds at Eastern Market that I’ve just gotten around to, including Dostoevsky’s The Double (sweet cover art below) and Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, which I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read. I also picked up a rather curious novelty of sorts entitled The Wonderland of Tommorrow. If you ever wanted to know what the future looked like in 1961, this book gives it to you straight (check out the cover below). It is seriously like a field manual for the rides at Epcot center. Chapter 3 is called “Machines Will Take Over.” Okay.
Back in the spring I subscribed to the magazine Gastronomica, a quarterly journal on the culture of food. It’s the most minimalist, elegantly art-directed food magazine I’ve ever laid eyes on and I love it. Sort of like the New Yorker meets Bon ApetÃt, (and I hate the New Yorker, personally. It’s way too pretentious for its own good and that’s exactly what this is, almost.) Food is arguably more democratic though, so I don’t mind it as much here. Cultural-foodie-trivia-cum-editorial pieces, short fiction and photo-essays abound. An OCCASIONAL recipe. Though, it’s worth picking up for the covers alone.
As awesome as those are my main focus the past two weeks or so has been this wonderful release from Unit Editions called Studio Culture., a tight little set of interviews profiling a handful of prominent designers / studios based out of the UK, greater Europe and the Americas. I learned of it via Build’s blog and sprung for the limited edition signed copy immediately (at half price? duh). Included in the truly great lineup of studios featured are Michael C. Place of the aformentioned Build, personal faves Non-format, Edenspeikerman, iconoclasts Experimental Jetset, Milton Glaser Inc., Paula Scher / Pentagram, Spin, Marian Bantjes and several other trendsetting studios, many of which I hadn’t previously known of. The work and candor of these individuals is inspiring to say the very least. Definitely worth picking up if you’ve ever wished you could sit down with any of these people and pick their brain as to how they got their operation off the ground and what it took / takes to keep it going. My only gripe is that there were no studios doing strictly motion / interactive work profiled at all. That romantic allure of traditional print and branding over new(er)-school web persists I guess.
Finally, I decided to drop a bit of money on two particularly special monographs. The first, (previously cited personal favorites) Non-Format’s LOVE SONG published by purveyor of fine art books, die Gestalten, and the second, Stefan Sagmeister’s Made You Look. Both of these have been great to flip through whenever I need to take a break for a minute or am looking for a drop of inspiration. The bi-color stereographic printing on the Sagmeister cover is particularly great.
So, look it. This is the first post I’ve had the nerve to write in a while (mainly due to a busy schedule, night-owl-addiction, and too many other things on the radar to bother with a blog that nobody reads).
ANYWAY, the point is. Nessim Higson of IAAH just updated. For the uninitiated, Nessim Higson is 1/3 (or 1/4 these days possibly, or some other fraction) of Yes Yes Y’all and is a talented as fuck multi-media, multi-discipline designer / illustrator / artist. His new work looks great as always, and as expected.
Interestingly the current iteration of his site appears to be on the temporary side, so dig in while you can. Looking forward to what he’s got planned for the final build.
As an unabashed devotee of all things Broken Social Scene (Kevin Drew, et al) related, I was intrigued by Feist’s recently released “music video” / short film for her track The Water off of 2007’s The Reminder. The album, while very mainstream pop-accessible (thank you, Starbucks).. featured some rather striking artwork, and in my opinion held its own, musically. A really solid production from all angles–not least of which resulted from (again, presumably) Kevin Drew’s capable hands in the studio, it remains one of my faves from 2007.
Add to the list of Drew’s talents: film director. Refreshingly enough, Drew helms directorial duties for the aforementioned Feist featurette (the video for which, I’ve included below), which stars Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Breakfast on Pluto) and David Fox. Quite aptly, the deliberate, unfettered pacing of the narrative garners just the right amount of melancholy from the song. While the video starts out (well, and continues throughout) rather slowly, the scene progression never feels overwrought and incidentally succeeds in not boring me to death. Basically this qualifies as a victory.
No stranger to sweet music videos, Director’s Bureau affiliate Patrick Daughters and frequent Feist collaborator has also produced many an on-screen success for bands like Bright Eyes, Department of Eagles, Liars, Death Cab for Cutie, and so forth. His videos for 1234 and Mushaboom, amongst others, are probably the twee-est, most endearingly adorable productions I’ve watched in quite a while. And, as admittedly saccharine as they may be, are quite impossible to resist. I tried snagging a quicktime of I Feel It All from the Director’s Bureau (incidentally, home to Geoff McFettridge’s film projects and commercial reel) but failed. Alas, you tube will have to suffice. Embedded below for your viewing pleasure. Feist + pyrotechnics + running around in a field with a stick = win.
All images property of Victor Alejándro Aguilar © 2010 unless otherwise noted.