onedotzero 15
onedotzero film festival at the BFI begins tomorrow, and will showcase the latest in digital animation along with workshops, installations and an educational programme. This is the 15th year of the festival, so it marks a substantial achievement. Camberwell Press have acted as a partner to the festival by contributing design of the printed materials. So the posters that up in the BFI right now have been designed by me and Jake Hopwood.
Donald Smith
Through Camberwell Press I designed an invitation for Donald Smith’s anniversary celebration. As director of Chelsea Space he has been responsible for a lot of great exhibitions, a stand out example for me was the Barney Bubbles show. Review on Creative Review blog here.
Collaboration with Frederick Williams.
Print is a better example of dialectical modernism than the internet
Excerpt from an email conversation between Metahaven and Experimental Jetset published by here:
Experimental Jetset:
This is different on the internet, where websites and pages conform themselves instantly to cater to the personal tastes and preferences of the individual viewer. Google search results change from person to person, the advertisements that clutter online profiles are specifically targeted toward the viewer, etc., etc. This makes the online environment ultimately an individualistic, isolated experience, despite the promise of “being connected.” It also makes most online activity a somewhat unadventurous, undialectical affair, as you only will be confronted with stimuli that are algorithmically curated for you, based on what large corporations (such as Facebook and Google) expect you to want to see. Whereas, within the context of the street, you will be confronted with information that is not specifically intended for you—posters you might not immediately understand, slogans you might disagree with (or not), kiosks carrying newspapers that are not necessarily tailored toward your specific lifestyle, book stalls displaying secondhand books expressing conflicting opinions. In our view, it is this notion of print culture within the urban environment that offers the most dialectical, and therefore most modernist, experience. So it’s exactly that idea that we try to explore most in our work. And, as paradoxical as it may sound, it is this theme of modernist print culture that is also one of the main subjects of our online presence—whether it is our actual website or the Facebook group you mentioned.
Justifying unjustified texts
It there value in revisiting and reviewing books that have already been in print for some time? This question has occurred to me since reading Unjustified texts: perspectives on typography by Robin Kinross, originally published in 2002 by Hyphen Press. Kinross is the founder of Hyphen Press (publishing books on design since 1980), is a typographer and well respected design critic and last month was the subject of an interview feature in Eye Magazine. This collection includes previously published and rare articles and essays of his, and contains much valuable research and insight on design and typography, particularly the development of modernist typography and it’s proponents in Britain. The writing is serious, but never tiresome, the subjects are covered thoroughly, and Kinross gives the personal perspective of someone who knew many of the designers whose work he discusses.
3D–2D–3D–2D
The dates for the upcoming Peles Empire exhibition is set, they are beginning to build the show, and the design work is starting to go out. This is the E-Flyer:
AIR Editions
Available In Response, the company I founded at the beginning of the year is going to begin publishing small editions. I decided to make a pre-list double edition to start things off. So I have done something I’ve been planning for a while, which is to make a comprehensive printed version of the Colour Value film. In the interests of economy and efficiency, from the same B2 sheet of paper I have had two mini-publications litho printed, Out of the Grey, which is a list of every colour metaphor listed with every colour metaphor used in colour metaphors, and Speaking in Tongues, a list of every body metaphor listed with every body part used in body metaphors. The previous letter press version of Speaking in Tongues was a more limited application of the idea, while this version approximates a comprehensive list. First photos:
