To win the popular vote in any race, be it state or national, one must be popular. Voters have to be proud of their candidates, or at least revile their opponents. And so when it comes to designing campaign graphics for buttons, bumper-stickers, Web sites, television ads and the like, it’s all about an easy, quick identification of a candidate or their message, and something to invoke a voter’s pride so they become participants, wearing, displaying and distributing their candidate’s messages and imagery. (more…)

What inspired you to become a fine artist/designer?
I started relatively young. I saw a movie called, “A Dog of Flanders”, about a young boy who paints and it somehow struck me. So I bought some paints and got started in about 4th grade. I really enjoyed the work of Marc Chagall and Paul Klee. Their paintings were magical and felt truly connected to the universe. In high school I got interested in Illustration. Brad Holland, Maxfield Parrish, Aubrey Beardsley, and Alan Cober were among my favorites. I took classes in painting and received some awards and scholarships towards college. (more…)

The evolution of black-and-white cinematography has officially begun. The shadow-play and etched starkness of two-tone movie-making has always been more of an artistic statement than a reasonable field in which to play out a story told on-screen. Christian Volckman’s 2006 noir-thriller Renaissance dives head-first into the deep end of exploring, and destroying, the probable limitations of filming with 3D motion-capture animation in an exclusively black-and-white setting. The images that he and his team have created over the staggering production span of seven years help to redefine the nature of black-and-white cinema, ushering in new field on which to play.

Teenagers and the Internet are a no-brainer combination, and websites from Facebook to Pitchfork are well aware of this. They know those fickle beasts called “trends” are more than alive and kicking, but they also know that loyalty and honesty can’t be put on the back-burner: they need to be squarely front and center. Martina Fugazzotto, a 25-year-old self-described designer based out of Brooklyn, New York USA, makes sure this happens at gURL.com, a content site and online community aimed at teenage girls, and with her own personal work, which she showcases on her website, MartinaMartina.com. It’s difficult to pin Fugazzotto’s work; some images look like they belong in a lusciously illustrated graphic novel, while others seem to embody a sense of frenzied, rambunctious kitsch. A constant thread found weaving through most of her work, however, is the intricate mix of loud and subtle takes on gender, emotions, and physical development, and the ways in which sexuality, stereotypes and frankness play into those topics. (more…)

In 1997, a new search engine calling itself AskJeeves was introduced to the internet. The website had adopted Jeeves, a character from the stories of P.G. Wodehouse, as a sort of mascot – seemingly the ideal symbol for a search engine. Like Sherlock Holmes or Dumbledore, Jeeves is one of those literary characters whose wisdom never fails.

“Here he was, with his head bulging at the back and on his face that look of quiet intelligence that comes from eating lots of fish,” Wodehouse writes in his novel Carry on, Jeeves. “I knew from experience what a wizard he was at removing the oppressed from the soup.”

However, upon closer inspection, the company’s use of Jeeves is anything but obvious. How many people nowadays read Wodehouse? How many have even heard of him? But according to Patrick Crisp, the Director of Public Relations for Ask.com, Jeeves’ genius side was never the real point.

(more…)

For a long time music and the visual arts were married. But the last ten years have been rocky, especially when music split for a rather extended rendezvous with the Internet (having flings with mp3s and other digital files). And while music moved on to new types of media, it left design with the kids: vinyl, cassette, and CD.

Album art just doesn’t have the same place in our culture as it used to have. Even as recent as the early 90s, album art had a decent amount of living space on the square CD cover. Although, the 5-inches offered up by the CD cover shrinks in comparison to the 12-inches of the vinyl LP sleeve that gave designers a much larger canvas on which to experiment and showcase their talents.

(more…)

Barbara Kruger, certainly one of the most recognizable and influential contemporary female artists, is a woman whose style and statements transcend the mundane designs of modern signage. Appearing in such places as on the back of matchbooks, billboards, shopping bags, t-shirts, television, and in subway cars, as well as exhibited in public spaces around the world, Barbara Kruger’s work sneaks up to viewers and makes them pay attention.
(more…)

The mark of a truly unique artist is when one can distinguish an artist’s work instantaneously. A simple glance at one of Victor Gastelum’s pieces and there is no mistaking that they are his. Mexican, working class and punk influenced, Gastelum’s work has his historical DNA scattered all over it. One can feel the influence marked by watching hours of Mexican wrestling and digging through old photos albums. The eyes carry the weight of comic books, Teen Angel magazines and punk rock in his sketches. As much of a private person Victor Gastelum is, his artwork reveals it all.
(more…)

Si Scott is among the most notable of the freelance design creatives today. Very much in demand, his work has appeared in Massiv, Computer Arts Magazine, advertising for Casio and The Royal Academy of Arts’ 2006 Summer Exhibition. Drawing since he was very young, Si attended Leeds College of Art and Design where he developed his love for designing his own typefaces. He then went on to Buckinghamshire Chilterns University where he began to expand his methods of expressing himself through graphic design. He has held posts with a number of exclusive London-based studios, including Frost Designs and is currently a part-time lecturer at Leeds College. His work can be found at www.siscottdesign.com and www.somagallery.co.uk.
(more…)

Art is (or it should be) a value-free creation. It merely is. The artist had a vision of something and created a physical manifestation of that vision. Because the artist had no particular goal in mind, just the act of creation, no one truly has the right or ability to say art is good art or bad art. In that sense, what’s hanging on the fridge is equal to what’s hanging in the Louvre.

Designs, on the other hand, can be good or bad largely because of the functional nature of the concept. Looks aside, a chair, for instance, can be well-designed or poorly designed, good or bad, in terms of its ability to function as a chair. Art has no such functional component.

Here is where design gets interesting in a way many in the various design fields may not consider, and it brings us back to my previous point (Aug. 10 article) that design is not a single concept, but a bifurcated one. I want to expand on my earlier ideas.

Design includes both a functional component and an aesthetic one. Art is concerned only with aesthetics. I heard an Infiniti commercial recently that touched upon the idea that the car must be both functional and beautiful. But I don’t hear the functional/aesthetic split discussed much, at least not among the graphic designers I hang around with. I think it helps explain, however, why we see so much bad design.
(more…)