CR Blog

News and views on visual communications from the writers of Creative Review

Archive for February, 2007

Dylanologists of the World Unite (and sticker…)

Gavin 27/02/07, 18:22

The Ballad of A J Weberman sticker sheet

A sheet of 12 stickers (just like the one shown above) that celebrate the documentary film The Ballad of AJ Weberman, is included in each copy of Creative Review this month. Happy stickering!

When filmmakers Oliver Ralfe and James Bluemel discovered a 1960s recording of a phone conversation between self-professed Dylanologist AJ Weberman and Bob Dylan, it peaked their curiosity…

72+

Mark 22/02/07, 17:35

posters

To say that design studio Bibliothèque are avid collectors of graphic design would be something of an understatement. It’s more like they have an addiction to sourcing print classics, particularly from the European Modernist tradition. But they’ve finally managed to find an outlet for one of their favourite collections; Otl Aicher’s work for the 1972 Munich Olympics, in the form of an exhibiton of some of his best work from the project, and the show, 72, has just launched at London design store Vitsœ.

We met up with Bibliothèque, Mark Adams, owner of Vitsœ, and designer Michael Burke who actually worked on the Olympic project with Aicher and had invaluable first-hand experience of the processes and methods involved in creating this seminal body of work. The following is the full transcript of the discussion that took place at Bibliothèque’s studio. (An edited version appears in our current March issue as part of a four-page feature on Aicher’s legacy and the 72 exhibition).

Promos of the week

Eliza 21/02/07, 18:36


It’s high time that we shared some of the music video brilliance that has been sent into Creative Review towers over the last couple of weeks. First up is some lovely animation by Louis-Philippe Eno for The Hidden Cameras‘ Death of a Tune.

Making Charity Shop Art Better (but Still for Charity)

Mark 20/02/07, 17:21

Cooper
Dave Cooper’s take on an otherwise fairly innocuous paint-by-numbers picture

The Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, California has been showing a range of bastardised paint-by-numbers artworks for its latest exhibition, Charity by Numbers. Each painting has been completed in its requisite palette of mundane colours – there are nautical scenes here, depictions of riverside cabins, animals and forests there – and then a range of contemporary underground artists (including Boris Hoppek, Ian Stevenson and Dave Cooper, above) have added their own daubings onto the canvases.

Deadly Designs

Mark 19/02/07, 13:15

Rock

Photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s new collection of work examines some of the myths surrounding contemporary Israel where, quite often, things aren’t really as they first appear. A series of mundane objects – a melon, a beer can, a rock, for example – in fact turn out to be bombs or, rather, re-creations of bombs made by the Israeli Police Force’s Bomb Disposal Unit (based on the designs used in actual attacks) and now housed in their informal museum in Jerusalem which reveals when and where they were used and how many people were injured or killed.

A poster about posters

Eliza 16/02/07, 18:13

ryan_gander_final9.jpg

Former Creative Future winner Zak Kyes created this series of posters in collaboration with Wayne Daly to accompany artist Ryan Gander’s talk at the Architectural Association in London last week. In keeping with Gander’s work, which focuses on language, ideas and communication, the poster itself became an artistic collaboration between the artist and Kyes. A conversation between the two about the nature of poster design forms the text that runs down the right hand side of the poster, while Kyes commissioned nine illustrators to draw a portrait of Gander at the artist’s request, because, as he explains, “I have never been drawn, and often watch those guys outside the Pompidou drawing people but am always too reserved to get one done.” Gander’s favourite of the nine renditions is by Ed Fella, shown above.

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Monitor

Great street art animation (painted directly onto walls) by the one and only Blu (link: Coudal)

Inside North Korea as photographed by a Russian news service. (Link: Coudal)

So the sun's been shining this week in Blighty... but the guys at Hunter (purveyors of posh wellies) are no fools. They've just launched a spanky new website (by Edinburgh-based design firm, Lewis) in time for the British Summer

Adrian Shaughnessy's Graphic Design on the Radio series starts again tomorrow (9th May) with Spin's Tony Brook, followed by John Walters and Simon Esterson of Eye, Simon Waterfall, KarlssonWilker and Mike Dempsey. Tune in at Resonance FM

Iron Man is the latest feature film to get a 'remixed' trailer (to be distributed virally) courtesy of VJ boffins Addictive TV

Production company Up The Resolution has a spanky new website

The finalists for the UK's Angel of the South are announced: is it us or are they all a bit uninspiring?

Designer and illustrator Stephen Kelleher has just produced a smashing limited edition poster that's available from his website's shop

A new development on the flash mob: freeze mobbing

The Adam and Ron Show is the title of the exhibition of Ron English and Adam Neate's work that opens today at London's Elms Lesters Painting Rooms

D&AD Pencils on sale in market store! Not really... it's a promotion for the awards dinner

An artwork has died in the Design & The Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA New York

NODE and Kate Moross are the two latest artists to create limited edition, two colour (red and black) prints for If You Could's 2008 print series project

Vignelli's NYC subway map: updated and available as a limited ed. print of 500, from Men's Vogue (link: QBN)

BRAG – a Brighton-based collective of gig poster artists are having an exhibition of their work every weekend in May