graphic design

And speaking of mod marvels, our fontastic friends at House Industries (makers of a swell set of Eames House alphabet blocks) have teamed with Japan’s Medicom Toys to celebrate the ubercollaborative company’s fifteen years of creating unreasonably covetable figurines. Meanwhile, Medicom’s iconic BE@RBRICK line hits the double-digit mark this year. Both occasions called for fresh logos (get your limited-edition print here), the creation of which House illustrates in the below video. That coppery creature is a giant BE@RBRICK customized by Adam and Angelo Cruz in what House’s Rich Roat describes as “a multigenerational merger of hand-rubbed copper metallic lacquer and hand-striped One-Shot enamel.”

Serkan Ozkaya’s “Radisson/Picasso,” a “manipulated ready-made.”

Serkan Ozkaya has made a chair from 15 sticks of spaghetti, lobbied the Louvre (unsuccessfully) to turn the Mona Lisa on its head for a few days, and created hand-drawn replicas of major newspapers. With the help of a 3D rendering program, the Turkish artist made a supersize golden version of Michelangelo’s David for the Istanbul Biennial in 2005, although the 30-foot-tall statue proved impossible to install and ended up shattering into pieces before the exhibition opened. No such tragedy is likely to befall his pocket-size “Radisson/Picasso” (above), a pair of manipulated matchboxes that is among the lots on offer in Storefront for Art and Architecture’s benefit auction. Also up for online bidding in advance of Thursday evening’s NYC soirée honoring Barbara Kruger and Bernard Tschumi are works by the likes of Louis Kahn, James Welling, Vito Acconci, and Robert Venturi, who with Denise Brown contributed a jazzy sketch of a McDonald’s.

Here at UnBeige, we’ve been known to select dining establishments based on their chairs and typefaces, so when the James Beard Foundation announces its annual slate of award nominees, we head straight for the design and graphics categories. A posh swimming pool in Las Vegas (the celebrity chef version of Branson, Missouri) was the setting for yesterday’s announcement of the 2012 contenders, selected by committees of industry professionals in each of the categories. Duking it out for the James Beard Award for outstanding restaurant design (for North American establishments designed or renovated since January 1, 2009) are a trio of Gotham heavyweights: Thomas Schlesser of Design Bureaux for Boulud-on-the-Bowery DBGB Kitchen and Bar, Bentel & Bentel for their overhaul of famed Le Bernardin, and Glen Coben of Glen & Company for the breath of fresh air that is Miguel Sanchez‘s Romera. The restaurant graphics category is also dominated by New Yorkers: graphic gourmand Richard Pandiscio gets a nod for the Americano at Hotel Americano, while Jon Santos of Common Space Studio made the shortlist for the boldly nostalgic brand he cooked up for The Dutch. The left coast avoided a shut-out thanks to Clive Piercy, who keeps it cool at Air Conditioned and is nominated for whipping up tasty graphics for Farmshop in Santa Monica. Winners of the 2012 James Beard Foundation Awards will be announced on May 7 at a Lincoln Center ceremony hosted by Alton Brown. Wear your fanciest clogs!

(Photo: Wright)

“They communicate fast. And with style and wit,” noted the circa-1965 promotional copy for Howard Miller’s Pronto Posters, designed by the George Nelson & Associates team of Bill Cannan, Lance Wyman, and Irving Harper. Screenprinted onto sturdy masonite(“treated so as to stay new-looking and be used and re-used for years”), the set of 24 placards tackled a range of freshly minted workplace safety regulations and best practices, from the strategically bandaged figures of “Wear Your Helmet” and “Use Your Safety Guards” to pseudocharred “Flammable” and “Think,” in which our magenta man has forgotten his pants. An original trio of Pronto Posters (pictured) is among a stellar line-up of Nelsonian lots—don’t even get us started on the 1954-55 Carousel Weather Vane (so Crying of Lot 49!)—that will go on the block at Wright’s Modern Design sale on March 29. “They add flair and humor to the surroundings, improve morale, reduce accidents, and aid efficiency,” promised Miller. At an estimated price of $1,500 to $2,000 for the set of three, how you can afford not to buy them?

(Photo: Bill Simone)

Never underestimate the power of license plates (as Cosmo Kramer once reminded us). They did the trick for the Society of Design (SOD). When the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit wanted an effective and memorable way to invite letterer, illustrator, designer, and Daily Drop Captain Jessica Hische to be a part of its 2012-13 speaker series, they looked no further than the Department of Transportation. SOD members researched the state’s custom license plate program (eight characters max, including one space), convinced 34 people to change their vehicle registrations, and mapped out a multi-plate message to Hische, a Pennslyvania native who is now based in San Francisco. After filing and re-filing oodles of paperwork over the course of several weeks, they finally had their invitation, in the form of 27 freshly pressed license plates.

The next step was to take the charming analog project to the digital realm. A website was created (invitinghische.com), and called to the attention of Hische via Twitter. “Pennsylvania misses you tremendously,” tweeted SOD to the designer. “Please come home.” Her response was immediate, heartfelt, and, fortunately for those who are now driving around with the plates on their vehicles, in the affirmative. “I am crying at my desk. I’ve never been so touched by a group of people I don’t even know!” Hische tweeted in response. “And the answer of course is YES! I will marry you! I mean come to Pennsylvania.” And she’s bringing presents. Each of the SODers involved with the project will receive a delightful drawing: Hische’s hand-lettered version of his or her name.

Can design change the world? Of course. The challenging part is figuring out how to best harness the power of design to make a difference, for clients and causes alike. A pioneer of this tricky, potent, you-know-it-when-you-see-it combination of design thinking and social entrepreneurship has been Worldstudio, the New York-based marketing and design agency that specializes in creating and implementing programs for corporate clients that support their social responsibility platforms. Between projects for the likes of Adobe and The Metropolitan Opera, Worldstudio principal Mark Randall co-founded (with Steven Heller) Impact! Design for Social Change, a six-week summer intensive at the School of Visual Arts that is now in its third year. Meanwhile, interest in the field of design for social impact is surging, and as Randall and friends gear up for a March 1 panel at SVA on the social design job market (a taped webcast will be posted online following the event), we asked him to tell us more about how good design can do good.

How do you define “social design”?
This is a great question, and one that the design community is slowly defining. In the broadest sense, social design uses design thinking and creativity to improve the human condition and to ensure a sustainable future for us all. A social design approach can be applied to a wide range of areas; non-profits and NGOs, civic design, corporate social responsibility, as well as social enterprise and social entrepreneurship.

Was there a particular project or point in your career that got you interested in social design, or was it an area that you gravitated to more gradually?
As a kid growing up in the 1970′s I was engaged by the ecology movement and Woodsy the Owl—”Give a Hoot! Don’t Pollute!” In 1993, David Sterling, who at the time was a partner in the legendary firm Doublespace, approached me to design a logo for a concept business that he was developing. He wanted to create a design studio that incorporated a social agenda into the work that was done on a daily basis. His ideas were unformed at the time, and as we worked on the identity together we discovered that we viewed the world—and design—in much the same way. Our conversations helped to shape what the business could and ultimately would be. Instead of being his designer I became his business partner. David left the business almost ten years ago, but I have continued the work that we do with a great group of collaborators.
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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