graphic design

We're sure your head hurts too after last night's pummeling of greasy food, beer, and some occasional bits of football thrown in there for good measure, so we'll start out gently this morning. An interesting new iPhone app has been released by the Japanese company Wowlab. Called addLib (not to be confused with the popular sound card company, AdLib, of the 1980s), it's essentially a random design generator. You plug in a photo, it kicks out a poster that looks like it might have been laid out by some famous Swiss designer, all at random, using "the Grid System, a fractal theory, the golden ratio, and the Facial Recognition System." A fun toy, sure, but we'd be interested to hear what you think it says about design, that quality can come from formula rather than unique, practiced artistry. Or are we just over thinking the whole thing? Here's the app in action:

When The Diving Bell and the Butterfly began its rounds in American theaters, one of the final directorial details attended to by Julian Schnabel was selecting—and then fine-tuning—the typeface and hue of the English subtitles (the film is in French). Hearing Schnabel thoughtfully discuss the merits of pale yellow text versus the usual white left us wishing that more visual artists and designers were at the helm of feature films. It also made us acutely aware of subtitles wherever they appeared. In this month's issue of Opera News, writer Matthew Gurewitsch takes on opera captions, which usually appear as supertitles projected on a screen above the performance or (as at New York's Metropolitan Opera) on tiny LED consoles embedded into the back of each patron's seat.

Despite their drawbacks (drawing the eye away from the stage, undermining the illusion that the actors are real people acting on their own impulses, in real time), titles "have become as integral to an opera production as sets and costumes, wigs and makeup," writes Gurewitsch. "Yet most designers and directors give them scant attention, taking the titling systems of the houses they work in pretty much as they find them." [Translation: graphic design opportunity alert!] He goes on to offer examples of creative titling, including performances that have experimented with non-standard typefaces and excerpted longer stretches of text at a time, allowing the viewer to refer back to previous lines. Then there are the times when titles go beyond translation:

...Titles have been known to mutate into commentary, marginalia, or even hypertext, as in a rare revival of André Grétry's Zémire et Azor at Houston Grand Opera in the early 1990s. In particular, I remember an aria di bravura in which the heroine had a great many more runs and roulades to toss of than thoughts to pin them on. "Neat, hunh?" one title read, when the steeplechase was at its dizziest.

When a website defies both logic and easy description (e.g., Scanwiches), you know you're in for a treat, and so it is with the "I Can Read Movies" Series by Mitch "Spacesick" Ansara. The growing collection of film-based book covers designed with a Saul Bass/Alvin Lustig flair imagines "novelizations of major pictures" such as Ernest Goes to Camp, Space Jam, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—in Japanese (English subtitle: "Mr. Wonka! Just Punisher of Coddled Children"). Click on each cover for a bonus comment/film quote. In the case of Wonka, it's "You're going to love this...just love it," which should be said with a maniacal Gene Wilder gleam in one's eye.

Just a little while back, we'd noticed a copy of the July issue of Esquire, which featured model Bar Refaeli, nude, with handwritten type all over her. "Quickie Stefan Sagmeister rip-off," we thought, as we usually do when we see this sort of copy of his two most famous handwriting-on-body pieces. It's what we thought even more recently when we ran across this new campaign for the breast cancer awareness magazine Pink Ribbon. We would have moved passed it, as we usually do, but then we ran across this post over at Peachfuzz about TBWA/Chiat/Day's newish ad for Absolut:

Totally "Things I Have Learned..." right? We might be a little late to have seen this spot, but given all the other places we're seeing his work in, we think it's worth asking if we are now in what would be considered a wider movement to rehash old Sagmeister ideas? If so, why now? What's in our collective consciousness that's making us do the things like those linked above or stuff like the clearly-referential, much passed around tattooed Swedish magazine? Has this always been going on and we just haven't noticed? Or is this all just a case of laziness? As Peachfuzz puts it: "If you're going to be a hack, at least cover your tracks by not picking the guy every clueless first semester design student lists as his favorite designer."

(All photos by George Delgado except above right, by NY Portraits)

Even the most severe recession in recent history can't keep great design down. "No matter how bleak the situation into which we have been thrown by the global economy—it does offer opportunities. Designers need only invent them," said AIGA president Debbie Millman in a speech welcoming guests to the annual AIGA Design Legends Gala, held earlier this month at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. "By understanding our living and working context, we blow open avenues of opportunity and innovation not yet charted or explored." The highlight of the design star-studded evening was the presentation of the 2009 AIGA Medals to designers Pablo Ferro, Carin Goldberg, and Doyald Young.

AIGA medalists past and present take to the stage.

Steven Heller presented the medal to Ferro, draped in his signature red scarf, for "introducing narrative and nonlinear dimensions to design for films, changing our visual expectations, and demonstrating the power of design to enhance storytelling," while Paula Scher did the honors for Goldberg, who was lauded "for her exquisite ability to join intelligence, craft, and an eye for the evocative image in designing iconic pop-cultural and literary artifacts, and for her commitment to design education." Young, who just turned 83, was recognized for "demonstrating the power of a lifelong love of the craft of calligraphy, type, and graphic design, for his contributions as an author, and for his dedication as an educator" and received his medal from Deanna Kuhlmann-Leavitt. JetBlue and Patagonia took home the the AIGA Corporate Leadership Award, and 22 designers from around the country were honored as AIGA Fellows.

Since its last redesign more than a decade ago, the government-issued "Choking Victim" poster has adorned the walls of New York City restaurants with scenes of a faceless duo safely performing the Heimlich maneuver in a Constructivist swirl of step-by-step instructions on "how to dislodge food from a choking person." Brooklyn artist Alex Holden took it upon himself to freshen up the ubiquitous poster, softening the didactic graphics and primary colors with a comic strip-style take in a soothing blue and white palette. His reimagined "Choking Victim" poster contains all the same life-saving information but sets the choking scene at a beachside resort, where members of the upscale crowd (one collapsed, one standing and wearing a fedora) escape death among the palm trees and festive party lanterns. Holden's poster has already been adopted by a few more aesthetically astute restaurateurs, who find his version much easier to swallow. Here's a look at the full poster:

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"In any other country, Milton Glaser would have been knighted by now," says Steven Heller (himself deserving of a life peerage). The School of Visual Arts is doing the next best thing—at least until Queen Elizabeth wises up—and mounting a retrospective of nearly 100 works created by Glaser for the College, where he has been on the faculty since 1960 and currently serves as acting chairman. Opening August 31, "Milton Glaser's SVA: A Legacy of Graphic Design" is curated by Heller and Mirko Ilić. The dynamic duo, along with archivist Beth Kleber, have scoured SVA's Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives to assemble works ranging from the original artwork for the iconic posters created for SVA's ongoing subway campaign to rare printed pieces such as the 1963 announcement for the course Glaser taught at SVA with the late Henry Wolf. And look sharp for the new poster Glaser has produced for this exhibition that was inspired by his recent foray into designing textiles for the soon-to-be completed SVA Theatre. "I believe the work I've done for the School is more adventuresome than anything else I've done, primarily because of the audience," Glaser has said. The retrospective will be on view at the Visual Arts Gallery through September 26.

Although we liked it better when the food section was saved for (pre-crossword) dessert, we give two thumbs up to the recently redesigned—and trimmed down—New York Times Magazine, which this past Sunday wowed us with a radiation-soaked drop capital that zapped readers into Jack Hitt's fascinating story of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic's stint as an incognito new age guru (don't miss the wonderfully loopy photos by Lars Tunbjork that accompanied the piece). Also catching our eye was Ethicist Randy Cohen's response to a high school graphic design teacher who wondered if he should dock points from students who followed an online tutorial to complete a Photoshop assignment —even though the teacher had previously OK'ed the use of such tutorials. Cohen, whose jittery cartoon identity of years past has been replaced by a wise-looking silhouette by Matthew Woodson, designed a compromise...

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It's proving to be a banner year for designer documentaries. In the wake of such must-see films as Valentino: The Last Emperor, Objectified, and Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight comes Died Young, Stayed Pretty, a raw look into the underground world of indie rock poster design. Iranian-born Canadian filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian spent four years shooting the film, which screened at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival and has its New York premiere next Friday at the IFC Center.

DYSP takes viewers into the offices, studios, backyards, cars, and lives of artists such as Art Chantry, Brian Chippendale, Print Mafia, the Ames Brothers, and Rob Jones. Along the way, Yaghoobian harvests killer visuals (gig posters for everyone from Arcade Fire to Marilyn Manson as well as inspiration-soaked sojourns to carnivals, zoos, and the gigs themselves) and delightful—if occasionally profane—commentary, including spirited debates about the glut of octopus imagery in rock posters (great minds...) and memorable quotations ("With a band like Elf Power, can't go wrong"). Of course, it proved impossible to choose just one poster for the film, and so there are six (Bryce McCloud's swashbuckling feline design, above, among them). Check out the film's trailer, below, and then head to GigPosters.com, the world's largest historical gig poster archive.

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The people have spoken, and they liked the old Hartford Courant, before the paper's hasty redesign last summer in the wake of significant staff cuts. And the paper has listened, reverting to the traditional horizontal placement of the nameplate and scrapping the wee ".com" that the redesign had appended. "The horizontal nameplate really gives us more flexibility for story play and more variety from day to day," Melanie Shaffer, design director at the Courant, told Poynter Online's Sara Dickenson Quinn. "(The vertical nameplate) just started to seem a little limited—not a lot of options for how to play the page."

In an online poll described by Jeff Levine, the Courant's new senior vice president and director of content, as "not scientific," readers were asked to weigh in on three possible front-page designs, including one liberally accented with a hue that we'd describe as "USA Today Blue." Almost 95% of readers favored a return to a more traditional layout. Many respondents used the poll to provide additional feedback to the paper, weighing on issues ranging from the positioning of features, local news, and Dilbert (a staple of the business page) to the reformatted TV listings. More than one commenter mentioned the Titanic and deck chairs. "The masthead is the least of your worries!" advised commenter Al. "You should concern yourself about the paper's content—ever since you featured a front-page article on Outhouses, your paper has gone downhill."