Superman through the years in two minutes:
There’s a list of annotations on the DC Comics blog.
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Published October 17, 2013
Tag: video
Published September 6, 2013
Close Not Touching: Penguin Designer Gerald Cinamon
Close Not Touching is a beautiful short film by DILLONROSE.COM about the work of designer and typographer Gerald Cinamon.
Born in Boston in 1930, Cinamon moved to England in 1960, eventually becoming chief designer at Penguin Books. Strongly influenced by Swiss design, Cinamon utilized a combination of bold colour, clean lines and sans serif typography that was unique in British book design at the time. Now an influence on a new generation of type-inspired designers, the film includes a conversation between Cinamon and David Pearson:
An exhibition of Cinamon’s work, Gerald Cinamon: Collected Work Since 1958, opened at the ICA in London this week, and new book Graphic Design Gerald Cinamon, designed by Danny McNeil at SEA design, is available here.
Although a live appearance by Cinamon has had to be cancelled, Pearson will be discussing text design at Penguin at the institute on September 13.
A full-length feature documentary about Cinamon by DILLONROSE.COM will be available to download from iTunes in February 2014.
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Published July 16, 2013
The Photo Man
Mark Kologi collects found photos. In this weirdly fascinating short film he discusses buying and selling the personal pictures of complete strangers:
(Does he remind anyone of Steve Buscemi? Is that just me?)
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Published July 9, 2013
Franz Kafka – 130th Birthday
Now this is truly wonderful: Designer Pablo Delcán has created an animation to celebrate Kafka’s 130th birthday based on Peter Mendelsund’s cover designs for Schocken Books:
Schocken have just re-released five of Franz Kafka’s letters as eBooks with new covers by Peter, and, if that wasn’t enough, Peter has written a short post about Kafka and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich — whose music accompanies the video — on his blog Jacket Mechanical.
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Published June 26, 2013
Ivan Brunetti’s Aesthetics
I’m a little late in the game on this (as usual), but teacher and cartoonist Ivan Brunetti has a new book out this month from Yale University Press. An illustrated autobiography of sorts, Aesthetics: A Memoir is a retrospective of Brunetti’s work to date, including previously unpublished drawings, personal photographs, and handmade objects:
There is a short excerpt from the book at the Paris Review Daily, and a lengthy review at The Comics Journal.
Coincidentally, Brunetti is also the cover artist for latest edition of The New Yorker:
Published June 20, 2013
Cartier-Bresson: “photographs are like a Chekhov short story”
On the New York Times Lens blog today there is first part of an interview with the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Conducted by journalist and filmmaker Sheila Turner-Seed in Cartier-Bresson’s Paris studio in 1971, the interview was apparently for a film-strip series on photographers produced for Scholastic:
I’m not interested in documenting. Documenting is extremely dull and I’m a very bad reporter. When I had an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946, my friend, Robert Capa, told me, “Henri, be very careful. You must not have a label of a surrealist photographer. If you do, you won’t have an assignment and you’ll be like a hothouse plant. Do whatever you like, but the label should be ‘photojournalist.’ ”
All my training was surrealism. I still feel very close to the surrealists. But Capa was extremely sound. So I never mentioned surrealism. That’s my private affair. And what I want, what I’m looking for — that’s my business. Otherwise I never would have an assignment. Journalism is a way of noting — well, some journalists are wonderful writers and others are just putting facts one after the other. And facts are not interesting. It’s a point of view on facts which is important, and in photography it is the evocation. Some photographs are like a Chekhov short story or a Maupassant story. They’re quick things and there’s a whole world in them.
By a strange coincidence I recently stumbled across a video of Cartier-Bresson talking about his work (via A Piece of Monologue I think). There appears to be at least some overlap between the film and Turner-Seed’s interview at the Times, so I assume it originated with her? (More knowledgeable people, please feel free to chime in!)
Sheila Turner-Seed’s daughter Rachel Seed (also a photographer) is working on a personal documentary about her mother called A Photographic Memory.You can donate to the project on Kickstarter.
(pictured above: Cartier-Bresson photographed by Dmitri Kessel)
Update: The second part of Sheila Turner-Seed’s interview with Cartier-Bresson is now available on the New York Times Lens blog.
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Published June 10, 2013
‘Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes’ in Chicago
The exhibition of cartoonist Daniel Clowes’ art work that first appeared at the Oakland Museum of California last year, is travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Opening at the end of June, Portuguese TV channel Canal180 has (weirdly / not weirdly?) posted a short (English-language) video about the show:
The show is accompanied by the book Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes published by Abrams.
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Published June 5, 2013
Design in a Nutshell
The Open University has created a fun series of short animated introductions to six of the most important movements in design history. Starting with the Gothic Revival, it looks at the Arts and Crafts movement, Bauhaus, Modernism, American Industrial Design, and Postmodermism.
Here are the films on the Bauhaus and Modernism:
(via Coudal / Open Culture)
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Published May 29, 2013
Inside Random House: “The Art of Cover Design”
Part a series of videos about the workings of Random House, The Art of Cover Design features interviews with an impressive roster of designers: Marysarah Quinn, Robbin Schiff, Chip Kidd, Peter Mendelsund and Christopher Brand…
Published May 13, 2013
Inside Steven Heller’s Cave
Since I was an infant, I have feared my father’s den. Based on its ancient relics and mass clutter, I have since referred to the location as “Steven Heller’s Cave.”
Steven Heller’s son Nicolas (A.K.A. Ricky Shabazz) has made short video about the apartment where his father stores some of his more controversial design artifacts and ephemera:
Bonkers.
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Published May 8, 2013
Google Doodle for Saul Bass’ 93rd Birthday
Google marks Saul Bass’ birthday with a neat animated short based on his work:
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Published May 7, 2013
Carolie Bickford-Smith—A Series Woman
In this new interview with Gestalten.tv, Penguin Press designer Coralie Bickford-Smith talks about her love of books, her design process and the importance of research:
[vimeo 65388307 w=500]
Coralie’s work is featured in Fully Booked: Ink on Paper, published earlier this year by Gestalten.
You can read my 2009 interview with Coralie here.