Books, Design and Culture
Shape is a lovely short film about design. Designed and directed by Johnny Kelly, and written by Scott Burnett, the film was commissioned by PIVOT Dublin to encourage young people to think about the world around them and where design fits in:
Kelly and Burnett recently talked to Creative Review about the project:
The duo looked at other recent design films, including Helvetica, Urbanized and Press Pause Play. They also found influence in films from the past, including Why Man Creates by Saul Bass, and “pretty much every educational/informational film made for IBM in the 60s and 70s”, says Burnett. In the end it was Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten that proved most useful. “Powers of Ten did offer the eventual breakthrough but conceptually rather than visually,” says Burnett. “Eventually the only thing that made sense was to zoom out and not make design the subject, but have it instead as the invisible catalyst in the story. Once we realised that then a lot of the early ideas found their way into the story which we just made nice and simple – a day in the life where the changes that are happening around us all the time are made visible.”
You can find out more about the project at SHAPEMAKECHANGE.
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Dress Code‘s documentary short about typographers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Font Men, “gives a peek behind the curtain into the world of Jonathan and Tobias. Tracking the history of their personal trajectories, sharing the forces that brought them together and giving an exclusive look at the successful empire they built together.” The film is a SXSW 2014 Official Selection:
I felt rather sad watching this knowing that Hoefler and Frere-Jones are parting ways acrimoniously.
(via Quipsologies)
2 CommentsWay Too Indie explores the visual themes of American film director Wes Anderson:
for all his towering success as an American auteur, the look and feeling behind each Anderson film finds its influences more rooted in foreign cinema. The tracking camera, moving from room to room, examining the bourgeoisie and upper class in the films of Luis Buñuel (e.g. El Angel Exterminador) laid the groundwork for the dolly and tracking shots in Anderson’s Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and early sections of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The frenetic energy and overall zeal found in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim serves also as the celluloid backbone of most of Anderson’s works, specifically Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The melancholic swoons of the silver screen’s longing romantics permeate Moonrise Kingdom, Hotel Chevalier/The Darjeeling Limited and in the romance subplot of Bottle Rocket. These films share the same sort of beautiful yet honest moments found in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou.
(via Coudal)
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Sara Wood kindly let me know that fellow designer Steve Attardo has not only started his own freelance studio NinetyNorth Design, but also delivered this rather fine jacket design for Laline Paull’s forthcoming novel The Bees.
The book’s publisher Ecco has put together a rather nice trailer based on Steve’s cover design. It was conceptualized by Ecco’s art director Allison Saltzman and animated by Justin Cassano:
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“Are you filming, or am I wasting my fucking time?”
A short film by Jamie Roberts about British fashion photographer David Bailey, who I will forever associate with David Hemmings propeller-purchasing photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up:
The film was commissioned by Dazed & Confused.
1 Comment“Supercut Genius” Nelson Carvajal has put together a seven-minute tribute to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman who died on Sunday, aged 46. Surely one of the greatest actors of his generation, Hoffman’s extraordinary range and versatility are on full display in the video.
Read New York Times obituary.
See also: Lynn Hirschberg’s 2008 New York Times Magazine profile of Philip Seymour Hoffman and June Stein’s interview with the actor for BOMB Magazine from the same year.
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Helen Yentus, the art director of Riverhead Books, designed two covers for the recently published On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee. The regular hardcover — which is beautiful in itself (see below) — has a hand-lettered jacket. The second, for a limited edition of the novel, comes in a white slipcase made on a 3D printer. In this video, Helen talks about the 3D printed slipcase, designed in collaboration with the MakerBot Studio:
This isn’t the first time Helen’s worked with MakerBot. In 2011 she used the 3D printer to create the letters on the cover of The Innovator’s Cookbook by Steven Johnson:
Earlier this week, someone I know (you know who are!) suggested that people who work in publishing like to pay lip-service libraries while not actually making use of the services they offer. I can’t speak for everyone else in the industry, but this couldn’t be further from the truth as far as I’m concerned. I spent a lot time in libraries as a kid, and I use my local library now more than ever. There are two pretty simple reasons for this: I’m curious about stuff, and I can’t afford all the books I (or my curious kids) want to read!
All of which is to say, I’m very grateful for public libraries and, like many people, I find our politicians attitude to them deeply depressing. My local library is always busy. It is full of people — of all ages — making use of the quiet, uncommercialized space to read, work, or just sit. The computers in particular are in constant demand. It is an important part of our community.
In the face of planned service reductions, advocacy group Our Public Library has commissioned this animated short film on the Toronto Public Library, narrated by author Vincent Lam:
The film was made by James Braithwaite and Josh Raskin, the creative team behind the award-winning animated short, I Met the Walrus:
A city hall forum on the future of Toronto’s Public Library will be held in the Council Chamber at City Hall on Sunday, November 24th.
(via Ron Nurwisah)
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Interviewed at the AGI Open London 2013, Michael Bierut discusses his work, living in New York, and shares some advice for aspiring designers:
In a video for Design Within Reach, Steve Kroeter, the president of Archetype Associates and founder and editor in chief of Designers and Books, talks about the books that inspired him:
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In this interview from the AGI Open in London earlier this year, Chip Kidd talks about his work designing books covers, his involvement with comics and, of course, his obsession with Batman:
You can read recent interviews with Chip discussing his new book Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design at Publishers Weekly and The New York Times.
