graphic design

Frederic Goudy had one, so did Philip Johnson and Robert Rauschenberg. The Eameses had two. Pentagram is awash in them. George Lois wears his to bed. We’re talking about AIGA Medals, the graphic design world’s highest honor. Today AIGA announced its 2012 medalists: Ralph Caplan, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Armin Hofmann, and Robert Vogele. Caplan will be honored for his “discerning eye, deftness with words, and wonderful sense of humor toward defining design over half a century through writing, editing, and teaching,” while Lustig Cohen gets the nod for for her integration of “European avant garde and modernist influences into a distinctly American, mid-century manner of typographic communication.” AIGA recognizes Swiss graphic designer Hoffman, who Paul Rand once described as a shape-shifting “daredevil driver, mountain climber, teacher par excellence, and guru,” for his broad and deep influence in “teaching the power and elegance of simplicity and clarity through a timeless aesthetic, always informed by context” while the entrepreneurial Vogele is singled out for having “nurtured the creative potential of generations of Chicago designers, challenging all to think about design for the greater good.” They will be presented with their James Earle Fraser-designed medals on April 19 at Bright Lights: The AIGA Awards in New York. Tickets for the design star-studded benefit, co-chaired this year by the dynamic duo of Su Mathews and DJ Stout are on sale now.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Enhance your resume and your vacation photos with the mediabistro.com mothership’s two-day crash course in Adobe Photoshop, back by popular demand. In one short weekend (March 3-4) you can get up and running on the program of programs—the subject of many an ethical debate—under the guidance of images whiz Rob Tannenbaum, a photo editor who has worked for The Martha Stewart Show and wields a master’s degree in newsroom graphics management. Learn more here.

One of the main design minds behind the sharp-looking and widely lauded pages of GQ is headed for New York. Thomas Alberty has been named design director of the weekly, which lost Chris Dixon to Vanity Fair in September. The appointment is another boon for the art side of New York‘s masthead, following the recent appointment of Christopher Anderson as the inaugural photographer-in-residence.

“Tom is a hugely talented designer and maybe more importantly a very smart one, and I am thrilled he has accepted our invitation to become the next design director of New York,” said editor-in-chief Adam Moss in a statement issued Friday. “There is a long history of big design talents at this magazine’s helm, and I feel confident that tradition will continue.” Alberty has been with GQ since 2004, most recently as art director, and previously worked at New York, Travel + Leisure, and Men’s Journal. He begins in his new post on February 6 and will join art director Randy Minor, photography director Jody Quon, and the rest of the magazine’s visual team to create what Moss describes as “the next, exciting incarnation of New York.”

In a move that we hope will land him the network-TV variety show he so richly deserves, Chip Kidd will give a talk at this year’s TED Conference, which gets underway on February 27 in Long Beach, California. The charismatic author, editor, art director, book jacket designer, Batman expert, and rock star will lead off a March 1 session entitled “The Design Studio,” according to the program line-up released today. Kidd will be followed onto the TED stage by Andrew Bolton, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, who may shed some light into the global phenomenon that was “Savage Beauty” (he organized the McQueen blockbuster) or just help to get the audience thinking outside their boxy polos and khakis. Rounding out the session is IDEO founder and Stanford professor David Kelley, who is expected to address his passion for “unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.”

Meanwhile, New Yorkers have a couple of imminent opportunities to get their Kidd fix (and wouldn’t Kidd Fixx be a great name for that TV show?). Tomorrow evening, the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art hosts an evening of Bat-Manga. Kidd will discuss the Japanese Bat-mania phenomenon, the basis for his 2008 book, amidst the museum’s current exhibit of original artwork and lavish cover art from the Batman-manga comics. And on Thursday, January 26, he’ll be on hand for “The Next Chapter,” an AIGA/NY-sponsored look at e-publishing dynamics. What does Kidd know about digital publishing and the future of the book? Absolutely nothing, so he’ll be moderating a panel of people who actually do, including Carin Goldberg, Craig Mod (500 Startups, Flipboard), and Jeremy Clark (Adobe).

In a year studded with beautiful new volumes by and about artists and designers ranging from Alexander McQueen to Andrea Zittel, these are the five that we found most inspiring.

Autobiography of a Fashion Designer: Ralph Rucci (Bauer and Dean) by Ralph Rucci, with photographs by Baldomero Fernandez
Fashion designer and artist Ralph Rucci has been betrayed by key members of the fashion press, who should have made him a household name years ago, but critics, curators, and connoisseurs have picked up the slack. This just-published volume is a fascinating follow-up to Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness (Yale University Press), published in 2007 to accompany the Museum at FIT’s exhibition of the designer’s work. Like Rucci’s exquisite creations, Autobiography of a Fashion Designer rewards patience and close-looking, with pages of lush color photos and descriptions of the couture techniques used (and in some cases pioneered) in the Chado Ralph Rucci atelier. Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography (1980), a kind of exhaustive visual index of the artist’s life, this book also tells the stories behind 20 objects Rucci has collected in his lifetime. It’s a fitting tribute to an uncompromising designer with the soul of artist.

Alexander Girard by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee (Ammo Books)
Treat yourself to the amazing Alexander Girard mega-monograph by designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee. The product of nearly four years of research and, at 672 pages, an innovative scheme of printing and binding, this book is a must for any design lover. Oldham was granted exclusive permission to sift through the fastidiously kept archives of Girard (1907-1993), who is best known for his folk art-infused textiles for Herman Miller but also designed everything from buildings to typography. “I’d estimate that 90 percent of the work in the book hasn’t been seen,” Oldham told us earlier this year. “Wait ‘til you see the stuff from his early design career, in the ‘20s.” And take a closer look at the image credits: many of the archival photos were taken by frequent Girard collaborator Charles Eames.
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Rare is the design buff who can resist a good World War II poster (full disclosure: we’ve lost entire weekends to History Channel marathons in which grainy Hitler footage featured prominently), from the classic “Loose Lips Sink Ships” variety to the less catchy call to “Save waste fats for explosives.” A number of U.S. libraries have made their WWII poster collections available online—we like that of Northwestern’s Government and Geographic Information and Data Services Department—but the Brits have gone us one better. The Imperial War Museums (IWM) recently launched the first in a series of apps devoted to Great British Posters from the Second World War. Developed by Artfinder and available as a free download at the App Store, it brings 30 posters from the massive IWM collection to your iPhone or iPad, where you can scroll, pinch, and zoom to your heart’s content on graphical implorations to Keep Calm and Carry On, grow your own vegetables, and walk short distances. The app includes the stories behind each poster and details on its designer.

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com

‘Tis the season for shiny new things, and among the gifts under the tree at mediabistro.com this year was a redesigned homepage, part of an ongoing effort to spruce up the company (which keeps the lights on here at UnBeige) in both the online and offline worlds. The homepage features a fresh header and logo as well as mega dropdown menus and a search box. “Previous to rolling out the new design, there were ten navigation points, and now, four, which happen to be, not accidentally, the four core areas of our expertise,” explains mediabistro.com creative director Skipper Chong Warson. “The left-hand sidebar also went away and the site became fixed-width.” Some additional tweaks and fixes are underway, but the creative team has already begun work on phase two of the project, a makeover of the content stream and site-wide sidebars. Warson took time away from optimizing mega dropdown menus to answer our questions about the redesign.

If you had to describe the new homepage in three adjectives, what would they be?
We’re not done yet, but in terms of what we’re aspiring to throughout the process: succinct, current, and compelling.

What were the priorities in redesigning the mb homepage?
There were many, to be sure—fixes for consistency, meeting modern needs, organization of content, branding, etc.—but really it’s about focus, focus, focus. Mediabistro doesn’t lack for content or product offerings but where we’re really concentrating our ongoing efforts is on clarity of message; one of the many ways that visual design excels, taking a large pile of information and helping people with different levels of acquaintance and experience make sense of it.

With any change, in life and in design, there’s always stress and some period of adjustment. People are going to come to the site and say, “Where’s community? Where’s the freelance area? Where’s this? Where’s that?” Which is why search was so important to this equation. There’s a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes to make the search work—the hinting, the logic, the styling.
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There are plenty of interesting bits and pieces going on outside of architecture as well so far this week, so let’s commence:

After four months of a lockout of unionized art handlers at Sotheby’s, things still don’t seem to be progressing toward stability. According to a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the lockout has now cost the auction house $2.4 million in fees ranging from temporary employees to extra security. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the company just gave its CEO, William Ruprecht, a $3 million raise. Union representatives for the art handlers are quick to point out that their entire contract dispute totals $3.3 million.

In Washington DC, the Smithsonian has reportedly hired Wolff Olins to help in a major rebranding. The main thrust of that effort is set to be the roll out of a new tagline next year: “Seriously Amazing.” The Washington Post reports that the organization has thus far paid $1 million “for research and creation of the slogan.”

Speaking of rebranding efforts, the always great Brand New blog has filed its own year end list, starting with their picks for the very worst identity changes in 2011. Unfortunately, it seems to have been written before State Farm unveiled their new logo.

And finally: so much for the potential of the Tate possible eschewing corporate sponsorship from British Petroleum following a full year of protests (and now likely more to come in 2012). The museum has renewed their contract with BP, telling the BBC, “The fact that they had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.”

Just a couple of years after his then-ubiquitous and not-yet controversial poster of President Obama made the cover, Shepard Fairey is back at it again for Time‘s Person of the Year edition. The artist has designed the cover for the annual issue, wherein this time they picked “The Protestor”, once again skipping an individual person and instead focus more of a concept. If you’re familiar with Fairey’s work, you’ll of course recognize it immediately, with his familiar propaganda-esque illustration and coloring. Christopher Knight at the LA Times thinks the match between Fairey and Time is a perfect fit, though not at all in a good way, calling the Fairey a “designer dissident” and the only artist who “is really suitable for the job of creating the publication’s inevitably ironic cover.” Knight gets more critical from there. Here’s a bit:

The style oozes cozy, collectible nostalgia. On the cover of Time, the schmaltzy result trivializes the portentous power — and authentic potential — of the “Arab spring,” Occupy Wall Street and whatever might-or-might-not be breaking now in Russia. Questioning authority never looked more corporate and conventional.

Criticism aside, let’s just hope Fairey made sure to get the photo rights behind the illustration more squared away this time around.

“The work kind of reflects me as a person. It’s the way I live my life. It’s the way I’m happy and comfortable with—making work that’s produced very simply. I print it all in a local print shop near where I live, and it’s all very simply made. It kind of talks about, I suppose, my life philosophy and a different way of living that’s not about amassing huge amounts of consumer goods. It’s just this different way of doing things, being independent and positive in the way you live.

There are a few different strands in my work. I do work with more abstract imagery that’s more visually colorful, but the text stuff is the most direct. It’s about a very simple message, communicated in the simplest way. The phrases are things that I hear in conversation. ‘I like it. What is it?’ That’s something my wife says quite a lot. Things that are quite everyday, really, but when you make them into a poster and the typography’s very strong and bold, it seems to give them an importance.”

-Designer and illustrator Anthony Burrill, whose work is featured in the exhibition “Graphic Design: Now in Production,” in an interview with Paul Schmelzer