Very Elle, Very Cool

With so many photographers and stylists working for both editorial and advertisers, fashion magazines are finding it impossible to create a distinct tone of voice through their imagery. Instead, it is typography that is increasingly being used to separate ‘ed’ from ‘ad’. Joining the likes of David James’ Another and M/M’s Arena Homme Plus is new-look French bi-annual Very Elle, designed by Non-Format’s Jon Forss and Kjell Ekhorn.

Part of the studio’s brief was to use its renowned typographic skills (displayed, for example, in the design of Varoom magazine) to give the magazine a singular voice that would set editorial pages apart from the advertising. “This led us directly to the idea of creating typefaces especially for the magazine,” they say. Forss and Ekhorn created Heroine, an adaptable family of display faces used for headlines and standfirsts. “The magazine aims to celebrate women from very diverse fields so it was important for us to develop a family of typefaces that would not only signal high fashion but one that could span the whole spectrum,” they say. “To begin with we created an ultra-thin version which would be used for the main feature openers in the fashion sections of the magazine. Then we began work on a bolder, much brasher version and then, regular and thin versions.”

They also decided to employ blocks of type with very tight spacing. “To avoid the inevitable problems with clashing ascenders and descenders, we produced alternative versions of each typeface with extended charac ters,” they explain. “These can be altered to get an offending ascender or descender well out of the way and, as a bonus, they also provide an appealing visual texture within the body of the text.” 

The result is a really beautifully crafted magazine that absolutely succeeds in creating a distinct voice - this is, after all, a mass-market publication, not a niche arts title. There have been other periods when type has come to the fore in magazines - think the three B’s of Brodovitch, Brody and Baron. And no doubt advertisers will soon catch up with editorial’s use of elaborately expressive type – it’s often the same people doing both anyway. But for now, editorial pages like these offer a rare chance for typography to shine.

CS Shanghai: Final Thoughts

Shanghai after 4 hours sleep in 3 days and the hottest Szechuan meal known to man

Three days isn’t long enough to do more than scratch lightly at the surface of a place but my time at the Creative Social in Shanghai did bring home the scale of the changes that China has undergone. There are no more Period Police for a start…

We heard about the dreaded Period Police from writer and journalist Lijia Zhang. Her memoir, Socialism Is Great, record her life as a young worker in a missile factory in Nanjing. She had wanted to be a writer but, aged 16, her mother took her out of school in order for Lijia to take over her job at the factory. She thought she was doing her daughter a great favour as a job at the factory meant security for life: “The factory was a mini state of its own,” Lijia said, “it fed us, there were hospitals, a library, a kindergarten school, we had indoctrination at its meeting halls. Our whole life was contained there.” But it was a life that was totally controlled by the state: “We weren’t allowed lipstick, or high heels. The width of our trousers was controlled.” And every month the women among the factory’s 10,000 workers had to line up before the dreaded Period Police to prove that they were not pregnant and thereby obtain their ration of sanitary towels.

Charity Ads: A More Mature Approach?

Kids Company by AMV.BBDO. Art direction/ design: Paul Cohen. Copy writer: Mark Fairbanks. Photography: Thom Atkinson

The unscrupulous among the advertising community have often tended to look upon charity accounts less as an opportunity to help those in need and more as a chance to help themselves. Is a more mature approach emerging?

Charity campaigns have often been taken on with the express intention of winning awards and, in order to do so, many have resorted to crude tactics. In the mid-90s when outrage over ‘shock advertising’ was at its peak, some of the worst offenders were for small charities many of which, miracu lously, were never heard from before or since.

But perhaps there is something of a more mature approach emerging. The first thing that occurs with these campaigns is the amount of copy used. It’s not so long ago that we were all bemoaning the death of long copy in advert ising. And yet all four campaigns use lengthy, discursive texts to make their case: in Kidsco, the copy runs to nearly 400 words. The style is convers ational.

In Qatar, an Art Museum of Imposing Simplicity

The new Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I. M. Pei, opens next week in Doha, Qatar.
Nicolai Ouroussoff writes: "Rising on its own island just off the city’s newly developed waterfront corniche, it is the centerpiece of an enormous effort to transform Qatar into an arts destination."
"The inaugural festivities on Saturday, including a performance by Yo-Yo Ma, attracted art-world luminaries from around the globe.
"Viewed under the light of a spectacular evening fireworks display, the museum’s colossal geometric form has an ageless quality, evoking a past when Islamic art and architecture were a nexus of world culture. At the same time it conveys a hope for reconnecting again."
"Mr. Pei visited several proposed sites in downtown Doha before settling on the area just off the end of the seafront corniche.
"Worried that his building might one day be hemmed in by new construction, he asked Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairman of the museum’s board, to build him a private island so that his monument would be isolated from the rest of the city."
"The building seems austere by the standards of the flashy attention-grabbing forms that we have come to associate with Persian Gulf cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi."
Mr. Ouroussoff says the museum "recalls a time when architectural expression was both more earnest and more optimistic, and the rift between modernity and tradition had yet to reach full pitch."
"The museum, which houses manuscripts, textiles, ceramics and other works mostly assembled over the last 20 years, has emerged as one of the world’s most encyclopedic collections of Islamic art.
"The origins of its artifacts range from Spain to Egypt to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia."
“Islam was one religion I did not know,” Mr. Pei said in an interview. “So I studied the life of Muhammad. I went to Egypt and Tunisia. I became very interested in the architecture of defense, in fortifications.”
“The architecture is very strong and simple,” he added. “There is nothing superfluous.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/arts/design/24muse.html?_r=1&ref=design

CS Shanghai: The City Past and Present

Textile hanging featuring Shanghai landmarks by Jellymon

There’s a feeling that Shanghai has returned to its roaring glory days of the 30s, which means huge energy, huge opportunity…and huge inequality

The first speaker session at the Creative Social Shanghai event this morning was by New York-based writer Stella Dong who recently published Shanghai: the Rise and Fall of a Decadent City. Stella gave a great potted history of a city that, as recently as the 1840s was just a quiet market town. “Shanghai is a city that no longer exists but in many ways has come full circle,” she said. “Old Shanghai was a freewheeling place, it was about being greedy for material things and for life which is what Shanghai is once again after a long hiatus.” Modern advertising came to Shanghai thanks to those lovely people at British American Tobacco who, in the early 20th century, came up with the idea to give away calendars featuring pretty Chinese girls [who also appeared on posters, which other brands copied, see below]. The images became iconic and unique to Shanghai.”

Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/cs-shanghai-the-city-past-and-present/

Killer iPhone Apps

Give an iPhone owner half a chance and they will happily launch into a lengthy demonstration of the latest slew of ‘apps’ that they’ve downloaded for their pocket-sized gadget. Apps are, essentially, packages of software that utilises (hopefully) the best properties of the iPhone’s hardware - ie the multi touch screen, GPS, and the impressively sensitive accelerometer. These properties, combined with a powerful operating system (Unix) and fast internet connection speeds mean that the iPhone is, in short, a creative programmer’s dream come true. Here at CR, we’ve been checking out a wide variety of apps and have compiled a round up of our current favourites…

Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/killer-apps/

Islamic Innovation in Dubai.

Islamic Innovation in Dubai.
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on November 12

On the road to the airport in Dubai, I passed a big billboard sign. It said:

“Innovation Thinking Based on Islamic Values.”

Fascinating.

other comment:
Cincinnatus
November 14, 2008 12:36 AM
Hey Bruce:
It's more like Frightening!
Have you any idea what the terms Islmamic Values means? Do you realize that Islamic law, Sharia, and Constitutional Law are 100% anti-thetical? Or are you OK with a Supremacist Ideology, with no Freedom of Conscience, Religon, Speech & Assembly? Are you willing to throw away the Golden Rule? Or the notion that All Men (& Women) Are Created Equal?

If so, then Fascinating may be the correct term.
If not, then mine is.

6 words means a lot. Many things could be thought under this statement.
Depending on positive as well as negative thoughts.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is the Grand Designer.

Hank Paulson is taking heat from economists, Wall Street institutional investors and politicians in Congress for changing the federal government bailout policy. The stock market went down last week partly on the fear that no one is in charge in Washington and that there isn’t any stability yet to the financial crisis and deepening economic recession. So Paulson the conventional wisdom is that Paulson is failing—and may be a failure.

That is simply not true. Paul is doing what he should be doing, which is what designers do—he is looking at the facts on the ground and iterating and prototyping as he goes. With the housing bubble bursting, we are now in a period of fast change, high uncertainty, and deep confusion as to what to do. Standard policies won’t work. New programs have to be created on the fly. The best strategy is to try many things, fail fast, learn from the failures and move on. This is what Paulson is doing.

In fact, the big question facing the US is this: What do you do when you don’t know what to do? The answer is design your way into the uncertain future. Which is what Paulson is, in effect, doing. Paulson is the Grand Designer.

Money, Lovely Money

Before the Euro, Dutch money was the most beautiful in the world. A new Five Euro coin, designed by artist and architect Stani Michiels, is a worthy successor to a great tradition

Michiels won a Dutch Ministry of Finance competition to design a coin with the theme of ‘Netherlands and Architecture’. “I approached the subject ‘Netherlands and Architecture’ from two points of view,” he says on his blog. “On one hand I paid tribute to the rich Dutch architecture history and on the other hand to the contemporary quality of Dutch architecture. These form also the two sides of my coin. Traditionally the front of the coin needs to portray the queen, while the back side displays the value of the coin.”

For the front of the coin, Michiels listed the names of prominent Dutch architects according to how many hits they gained on the internet: “Of course this order changes over time and as such this is another time stamp on the coin besides the number ‘2008′. Only the first 109 architects fitted on the coin, so that was immediately the selection.”

On the reverse, Michiels referenced the sheer number of architecture books published currently, arranging different sized books around the edge of the coin so that the space between their tops forms the outline of a map of The Netherlands. “The books rise as buildings towards the center. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces. The following scheme reveals the process:”

African Textiles

“Movement Nr. 13”, 2004, by Owusu-Ankomah
Karen Rosenberg writes:
To the casual Western eye, “African art” equals “African sculpture” — masks, headdresses and ritual figures. As two new exhibitions make clear, this picture is laughably outdated.


A 19th-century man's robe from Liberia.
“The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents 19th-century fabrics alongside a few relevant contemporary artworks. Flipping the scales, “The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles/Recent Art” at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery emphasizes the place of traditional textiles in works by contemporary African artists.


A 19th-century kente prestige cloth from Ghana.
The patterns of African textiles fall into three categories: woven, dyed, and printed or painted. In many woven fabrics, like kente cloth, narrow hand-loomed bands are joined together. Curiously, the designs of many dyed fabrics echo the structure imposed by the loom.


A print cotton textile from Akosombo Textiles Limited, 2007.
Any show of contemporary African textiles would be incomplete without some reference to commercial wax-print fabrics. The Grey’s selection illustrates the breadth of wax-print designs: some reproduce images of political and religious leaders, while others feature bold abstract motifs.


A print cotton textile from Akosombo Textiles Limited, 2007.
Any show of contemporary African textiles would be incomplete without some reference to commercial wax-print fabrics. The Grey’s selection illustrates the breadth of wax-print designs: some reproduce images of political and religious leaders, while others feature bold abstract motifs.



Link: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/10/arts/1010-TEXT_11.html

The World, Up Close

Started in 1974, the Nikon International Small World Competition is held annually to recognize excellence in photographs taken through a microscope. This year, there were more than 2,000 micrographs entered from around the world. Browse through top 10 images and listen to some of the photographers explains their shots.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/16/science/20081016smallworldgallery.html

The Art of Calligraphy

Calligraphy from Iran dated 1603-4.
Holland Cotter writes:
In the hands of artists over the centuries the Koran became a devotional object of surpassing beauty.


A pen case with hinged inkwell inscribed with a prayer from Turkey, circa 1850.
“Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, circa 1600-1900”and “Writing the Word of God: Calligraphy and the Qur’an,” both at the Asia Society, are perfect in size and proportion, gorgeous, and worthy of the book they honor.


A set of calligrapher's tools from Turkey, Iran, and India.
“Traces of the Calligrapher” is a manual of the techniques of fine handwriting and luxury book making, illustrated by superb examples of tools of the trade and finished products.


A pen case with inkwell from India.
No tool was more essential than the ink pen. The pen was an emblem for the creation of the world, when primal matter issued forth from God like ink on a page. The skill with which a calligrapher trimmed the nib – ideally with a single, deft knife stroke – was assumed to say everything about his force of character.


The pen came with sumptuous accoutrements. Small flat objects, called maktas, originally bits of stone on which the pen rested when cut, were transformed into miniature sculptures of walrus tusk and gold.


Paper scissors from Iran and Turkey.
Parchment was used for early Korans. Then paper became common and inspired yet another line of ornate instruments. The finger holes of a large pair of scissors made in Ottoman Turkey form calligraphic characters that spell out one of the names of God. With every slice, the idea is, you say a prayer.


A calligrapher's table from Turkey.
Over time, an entire industry of calligraphic accessories flourished, including calligrapher’s tables as ornate as altars.

The Best Buttons of 2008, in One Man’s Opinion

The Best
The words may sound sexist, but for Republicans, this button, with its pinkish celebratory hue and the party emblem, signifies a historic shift.



No. 2
Few campaign logos have been so well designed and identifiable. This motif works effectively with and without words, and is likely to have a life beyond the campaign.



No. 3
Parody is a powerful weapon. This button lampoons Mr. Obama’s slogan, “Hope,” and by using the official “O” logo sends the perfect sarcastic rejoinder.



No. 4
George Bush had his “W,” Barack Obama has his “O” (a single initial does not work for John McCain). This spare oval is both elegant and unmistakable.



No. 5
Less is often more. The simple McCain logo does the best job of conveying affiliation.



Honorable Mention
If Jerry Garcia were alive, he’d probably approve.

This long 2008 presidential race has been a wellspring for button designs, some produced by the campaigns and others by entrepreneurs. The computer has made it easy to customize a design for any cause or special interest.

Producing and selling these buttons has become a fairly lucrative business (on average, small buttons sell for $2, larger ones for $10 in Union Square in Manhattan, for instance). With the campaign finally drawing to a close, buttons have been selling like blue spruce on Christmas Eve, and some designs are almost gone.

Above, a nonpartisan look at some of the best.

Steven Heller teaches at the School of Visual Arts and writes the Visuals column for the Book Review. His latest book is “Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State.”

A Sign

We recently received this most robust of invitations in the post. Yes, it’s an actual sign made from Perspex, inviting us to an exhibition of Perspex signs by artist Mark Pawson which will open later this week on 7 November and run until 23 December at Tatty Devine on London’s Brick Lane.

“I made twelve of those [invitational] signs,” explains Pawson, “the colour combinations are all slightly different - a way of working which carries through to the work in the show, and Perspex/acrylic is such a great tactile material to work with – it comes in a curious, limited sort of retro colour palette. Many of the pieces for the show are ideas/designs that might otherwise have found their way onto badges or postcards but have been given a more solid tangible, 3-D presentation as Perspex signs.”

Photography of these actual signs will be used in the bog-standard invites to the show. That’s right, CR got special treatment: “Most of [the actual Perspex sign invites] will go to press/magazines that have covered/been supportive of my work,” explains Pawson, “but if I look at them much longer I’ll want to keep them all for myself!”

The signs in the exhibition have all been laser cut and etched at Tatty Devine, and all the colourful letters in relief have been glued on by hand, by Pawson. Here are a couple of signs that will feature in the show…

What I take from this is the power of direct mail.
Although the cost of the mailer would be massive… so is the exposure!
I am sure it has been worth every penny.

All I Want For Xmas

For the special Christmas edition of their creative get-together, Glug, Ian Hambleton (of Studio Output) and Nick Clement (Made Studio) have launched a seasonal competition. Creatives are invited to respond to the statement, “All I want for Christmas is…” to be in with a chance of winning some rather tasty prizes.

So, here are the entry details from the Glug chaps:

Send entries via post, FTP or email by December 1 to:

‘ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS…’
STUDIO OUTPUT
109 BLACK BULL YARD
24-28 HATTON WALL
LONDON EC1N 8JH

GLUGLONDON@GMAIL.COM using the subject: ALL I WANT FOR
CHRISTMAS IS…

Make sure to include all of your contact details with your entry and any extra information that the judges might require.

Tickets for the Christmas Glug event go on sale tomorrow (November 1) and are available from gluglondon.co.uk. It’s a non-profit event, too, so all proceeds will be donated to a charity nominated by Ian and Nick.

This party is going to be a complete surprise for "all I want this xmas is...."
Completely design oriented!!

Stop Motion: Toys that take on human-like responsibility...

The Big Picture

Hervé Descottes; an architect working today on the contemporary New York skyline.The principal lighting designer and president of L’Observatoire International, Descottes has been charged with illuminating major landmark sites around the city from Columbus Circle to the newly renovated High Line.

“Lighting can have an incredible visible or invisible power,” says Descottes, one of whose first projects as a lighting designer, back in 1991, was to light the Mona Lisa after it was reinstalled in the Louvre. Here, he is testing his handiwork at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, which was designed by Greeley and Hansen, Hazen and Sawyer and Malcolm Pirnie, in association with Polshek Partnership Architects, and will include a sculptural visitors’ center by the artist Vito Acconci and a waterfront nature walk by George Trakas.

This is a project that began a decade ago and will probably finished by 2015. The plant, with its 50-plus-acre site and eight massive sludge tanks operating 24/7, was hardly a subtle addition to the urban landscape (glowing right next to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel); the challenge, for the architects and also for Descottes, was to remain sensitive to the surrounding residential neighborhood.

In other words, Descottes says, “we didn’t want it to look like a refinery.” This is usually the kind of industrial institution that requires only functional lighting, says Descottes, who ultimately enveloped the site in a veil of blue light. (Blue, he explains, has a sense of purity and cleanness.) L’Observatoire works on some 25 projects all over the world at any given moment — from Frank Gerhy’s Louis Vuitton Foundation, under construction in the Bois de Boulogne, to a residential building to be built in Kuala Lumpur by Jean Nouvel. Still, the wastewater plant, he insists, is definitely one of the most glamorous. “Sometimes it doesn’t smell so good,” he says. “But at least it doesn’t look so bad.”

Your brand is not your logo

Looking at the above picture we could say that smart marketers definitely understood that a new logo can't increase market share. Also that the cheap logo can't be defeated by the expensive one. Thy also realize that the logo is like a first name, it's an identifier.

So, when Pepsi and BestBuy start 'testing' logos, and proclaiming that a new logo might change their market share, that definitely not going to work. Logo is the first identity. It's like a name. It obviously depends on how the new change has been done. Our eyes are so use to looking at the old things that may be we don't want to see something that is just changed little bit here and there. It's a visual perception that's set. Unless its changed in very expressive way that's going to surprise people or gonna get WOW effect in front of their eyes than yeah I think it would work.

But looking at the image above its going to go all in vain.
The punchline is: take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

Link: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/your-brand-is-n.html

Return of Mac

Above picture: A screen grab from the latest Apple ad.

Apple has just fired off this, a second shot in the direction of Microsoft’s I’m A PC commercial…
Stop the bickering, enough already.
"Hello, I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype," says a Microsoft engineer in one of the ads.

The second new ad from Apple shows PC brandishing a buzzer, beeping out the word "Vista" whenever it is mentioned by the Mac character, played by actor Justin Long.

"We don't say the V word any more. It doesn't sit well with frustrated PC users. From now on we're going to use a word with a lot less baggage: Windows," PC says in the ad, which appears to be a dig at Microsoft's strategy of not mentioning the word "Vista" in its ads.
While Microsoft's entire campaign seeks to convey the message that many of the earlier problems plaguing Vista have since been fixed through software updates, Apple's new ads ignore this and continue to portray Vista as a broken operating system.

Apple appears to be winning the public perception war.
The Apple ad also showed that if a vista consumer wants to switch to Mac all thy have to do is go to Apple store where they'll easily transfer their data.

Apple is surely leading.

Link: http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

Storyboard: Toys that take on human-like responsibility...

Storyboard - Upload a Document to Scribd

Toys that take on Human-Like Responsibility

The Banks Have Some Explaining To Do

After monumental errors, nosediving share prices and the humiliation of nationalisation, the banking world has changed forever. So will their corporate identities and advertising adapt to fit the new realities?

It might seem that logos, commercials and colour schemes should be the last thing to occupy the banks right now, what with global financial meltdown and all, but surely campaigns and brands developed for a very different time (ie last week) can no longer be appropriate? Ever since the early 90s, banks have been attempting to project a friendlier, less formal image. Heraldic devices and serif type were steadily ditched in favour of rounded edges and updated typography. Everything became shinier, more colourful, less forbidding. It was all about innovation and modernity as banks started to project themselves as dynamic global brands, reflecting a shift in their management style and business aims – the upshot of which we are now experiencing.



Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/the-banks-have-some-explaining-to-do/

Do You Speak Pompey?

Jodie Silsby, a recent graphic design graduate of the University of Portsmouth and D&AD New Blood winner, has mapped her beloved city by its slang, renaming each street in the Pompey dialect…

The map, entitled Portsmouth Vernacular, is the result of a research project looking at the origins and use of slang. “My family goes back four generations in Portsmouth,” says Silsby. “I’m proud that the city has its own phrases and dialect and the map should be seen as a celebration of that.”

Silsby’s map was created for a national project called Doin’ My Nut In that invited students to investigate slang through typography. “I knew students from all over the country would be answering this brief but that I was the only one from Portsmouth,” Silsby explains.

The Portsmouth Vernacular map is now available to buy from Silsby’s website, jodie-silsby.com, in black, cyan or fluorescent coral ink.

Apparently Silsby is now working on an even more ambitious project; to map London slang. When we get more details of that undertaking, we’ll be sure to post them on the blog.

I think its something different for sure and also something that could be put at practical use.

Pepsi To Leave ‘Em Laughing

In October 2008, it was announced that Pepsi would be redesigning their logo and re-branding many of their products. Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max will use all lower-case type face for name brands, Mountain Dew will be renamed "Mtn Dew," and Diet Pepsi Max will be re-branded as Pepsi Max. The brand's blue and red globe trademark will become a series of "smiles," with the central white band arcing at different angles depending on the product.

It's going to spend $1.2 billion over three years to change everything about its brand. – “How they look, how they’re packaged, how they will be merchandised on the shelves, and how they connect with consumers” - which will be done by the Arnell Group.

I think its a good idea of making Pepsi symbol modular. THy are going to keep colors same so identity is still going to be there. The basic shape of it is also going to be there. Thy are only going to change white stripe for the different sub-brands. Variations on a theme is always a suitable approach, but calling it a smile, grin, laugh etc. is of course absurd.

To watch this is going to be of great interest but what I feel here is either its going to be super hit or super flop. Depending on how smartly thy will put it up.



Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/pepsi-to-leave-em-laughing/

Assignment 3: Presentation

What Would You Like To Ask D&AD?

For Excellence, for Education, for Enterprise and not for profit.
Garrick Hamm of Williams Murray Hamm has just taken over as the new president of D&AD.

There were no D&AD awards in the graphic design category this year (although graphics-related pieces did find favour in other categories). This situation led to a wave of criticism of the organisation. This was not just relating to the judging of the awards - the results seemed to act as a catalyst for an outpouring of frustration concerning the relationship between D&AD and the design community and even the purpose of the organisation itself.

Hamm, in his role as president, has pledged to address some of the concerns of the design industry. D&AD, to its credit, also conducted a series of discussions with designers earlier this year to air grievances and consult on ways forward. So now it’s your chance to contribute. Post your questions for Hamm here and we will select what we feel are the most relevant to ask on your behalf when we meet with him on 20 October.

1HUND(RED) Converse shoes on show

This is a link to the book Art & Sol which has a project to marry art with sneakers. This could be explored at the Converse store on London’s Carnaby Street – which is currently hosting an exhibition of sneakers designed by 100 different image makers for the Converse 1HUND(RED) Artists program.

This exhibition showcases 100 designs for the 1 hund(RED)project which varies from shoe to shoe. Like different designers who has made this design. Their names could be identified inside the shoe which contains unique number locator. These numbers could be reffered on converse.com for the artist detail.
This one in part in a good cause – apparently 5 to 15% of the net proceeds (depending on the shoe) from every sale of the Converse (PRODUCT) RED range will go directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Anyway, as well as the production versions of the shoes designed for the project, the exhibition also displays original hand-painted, customised shoes by a selection of Converse 1HUND(RED) contributors, including Ben Drury, David Rainbird and Precious McBane… Originals are framed on the wall with the production versions sitting below.

It's a real good concept i would say for the consumer as well as for the fund raising organization. Who doesn't like personalized stuff in today's world? Most of the people like it that's because I feel there's a emotional value attached to it. More over to have name of the artist, his/her design on it. That's truly awesome!


Design #58: by Steve Monti. Canvas upper with leather overlay


Design #30: by Jeremyville. Printed graphic on leather upper


Design #56: by Agathe de Baillencourt. Handpainted original design submission. The production version of the shoe, which is also on show in the exhibition, looks pretty close to this too…

Link: http://www.converse.com/#

Assignment 2

100 Years of the Roundel

Sasan Hiller | Simon












Rose Fin | Phil Allen













Peter Blake | Paul Noble













Paul Mcdevitt | Jim Isermann













James Ireland | Imran Qureshi












Henrik | Des Hughes













Clare woods | Catherine










Bob & Roberta Smith | Alicia Framis



Roundel icon which is the icon of Underground in London is completing 100years. To celebrate 100 years of London Underground's iconic roundel, Art on the Underground has commissioned 100 contemporary artist to create artworks based on the symbol.

The artworks are currently on show at the Rochelle School in Shoreditch, London, until October 30 and a number of them will also appear as posters on the Underground network. Here is a selection of our favorites.

I feel majority of these are very poor considering Art on the Underground has appointed 100 contemporary artist to create artwork.


Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/100-years-of-the-roundel/