Paul Sahre is so freaking good. Here’s his poster for the 30th anniversary of AIGA, “The Dawn of Mac,” which I am sorely tempted to purchase.
Triboro is a design studio in New York that seems committed to formal and typographic experimentation even when part of a larger commercial, client-based structure. Their website of 77 web buttons reflects endless experimentation and play with a variety of forms. I also appreciated their “leftovers” section of their website, where they have compiled unpublished sketches, type treatments, illustrations, and other formal experimentations that may or may not have made it to the final round.
Below is their typeface design Cidre, a hand-painted typeface that reminds me of the custom typefaces in Godard’s films.
The New York Times recently started a tumblr blog called The Lively Morgue where they post photographs from the Times archive (estimated to include 5 to 6 million prints and 4 million negatives). Though the photographs are worthy of their own investigation, the Times is also publishing the back side of each photograph, which I found to be far more interesting. Here you see multiple layers of annotation, by multiple hands, before and after the photograph was published in the newspaper. As one who appreciates marginalia, process notes, and proofer’s marks, these back stories are absolutely wonderful. The Times describes and identifies the different layers of annotation:
A note about back stories: to enhance the photos’ value as artifacts and research tools, we’ll present an image of the reverse side of each print. In many cases, you’ll get to see how often the photo was used, in what context and at what size; the information provided by the photographer; and the information that made it into the published caption. An annotated reverse side of a photo from the morgue appears below, offering some clues about the kinds of notations you’ll see over and over again as you explore the Lively Morgue.
Picasso and the Allure of Language was an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery a couple years ago. The volume above, Le chant des morts (The Song of the Dead), was on display, and it consists of forty-three poems by Pierre Reverdy. It’s a wonderful example of the combination and juxtaposition of the textual and the visual arts—Reverdy hand-wrote the text and Picasso created accompanying lithograph illustrations. When Picasso received Reverdy’s handwriting, he remarked that it was “‘almost a drawing in itself.’ Consequently, the artist decided against figurative illustrations, which might repeat the curved quality of the poet’s hand, in favor of abstract decorations in the manner of medieval manuscript illumination.”
Though Alexander Calder is known for his mobiles and public sculptures, he also created these wire portraits of iconic figures and close friends. I recently saw an exhibition of these portraits, and there’s a wonderful interplay between the dimensionality of the sculpture and the shadows they cast on the wall.
Below are some of the photographs that graphic designer and photographer Herbert Matter took of Calder’s work and his studio. Matter’s photographs are purposefully dark, focusing on the shadows and play of Calder’s work.
Todd St. John, of the studio HunterGatherer, recently came and gave a talk as part of the year-long video lecture series. St. John creates painted wood block figures that he uses for stop-motion animation. There’s a nostalgia to the animations—partly because of the older format of stop-motion, partly because some of these videos are intended for a child audience—but I appreciate how the physicality of moving these wood pieces shapes the entire work.
A nice, simple animation by Part & Parcel in New York.