FormFiftyFive™

This is a film about a design and cultural phenomenon; the Designers Republic™ (tDR), one of the most influential graphic design studios of the last two decades, who closed their doors in 2001.

If you’re a tDR fan, you might be interested in this – production company LCM Digital are attempting to raise kickstarter funding for “an ambitious, observational study of tDR™ and its continued global influence over the 25 years since its conception”. Through interviews with Ian Anderson as well as previous employees, industry professionals, clients and a local and international network of fans and aficionados, the film sets to reveal the myth and the reality of tDR™.

For further information, and to contribute to the documentory, please see LCMDigital’s kickstarter page.

A nice set of work from freelancer Pascal Barry, with strong typographic bias. I particularly like his Cephalonia font, inspired by Greek engravings. He’s also the creator of iconoci — a set of simple royalty-free icons.

Oxford and Brighton based Oak have a nice range of work on their new site, including branding/identity, editorial and lots of lovely art direction.

Really enjoyed looking through the work of prolific Belgian painter/illustrator Oli B.

Great mixture of mediums, especially the LMBRJK Studio sculptural collaboration – always good to see illustrators breaking out of what’s expected from them.

David Hieatt talks about his new company Hiut Denim. Photograph ©Davy Jones 2013.

At the beginning of May we attended London’s latest design conference POINT. Boasting some big names from the design world including, Erik Spiekermann, Morag Myerscough, Jonathan Barnbrook and video interviews from Alan Fletcher and Milton Glaser the bar was already being set pretty high. POINT took place over two days at Royal Institute of British Architects in London’s west end, the choice of venue (with it’s wooden panelled theatre walls, grand entrance stair cases and architectural-orientated bookshops) and list of speakers set an intellectual and academic tone to the conference.

With just one theatre for all the speakers there was a lot of speakers to get through in both days. For the most part this meant short 30 minute talks in order to stick to a tight formal schedule which kept talks concise and focused. Unfortunately this didn’t leave much time for questions both from the live audience or via Twitter. As both days progressed speakers towards the end of the day were given hour long slots which, for the like of Morag Myerscough and Matt Webb gave the audience a much deeper insight into their work.

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For anyone who’s in Tokyo before 2nd June we recommend checking out 21_21 Design’s audio-visual exhibition Design Ah!. Run by the same people behind NHK’s educational program of the same name, Design Ah! is curated by the super-talented Taku Satoh, Yugo Nakamura and Keigo ‘Cornelius’ Oyamada.

The exhibition aims to encourage us all to think about design in our everyday life and to foster young design minds that can make sense of the data overload around us. Visitors can experience design through all sorts of cool audio-visual exhibits.

One of our favourites “Ah! in motion” by tha ltd gets you to dance around and watch how the ‘ah’ phonetic symbol that’s projected on to the wall in front of you changes shape to follow your movement.

It’s a fun exhibition put together with lots of creativity.

Adrienne Pitts is an award-winning art director, designer and photographer from sunny New Zealand – currently the AD for jamie mag in London. As you might expect from such a talented photographer she also has an excellent Instagram presence, and enlightening tumblr.

Illustrator Jack Hudson and 3D image-making duo Lord Whitney have teamed up to produce a body of work inspired by the most vibrant, iconic, and downright weird record covers in history.

Jack and Lord Whitney have created an entire back catalogue of LP cover designs for a series of fictitious musical artists. But they’ve taken the concept a step further and commissioned established musicians to create original songs inspired by these artworks. They include Pulled Apart by Horses, Sky Larkin, Department M and more.

Check out Mock’N'Roll Vol 1 on Bandcamp.

The exhibition is on at Leeds Gallery until 7th May  and you can check out their tumblr for some behind the scenes antics.

The trio are looking to take the show to London – anyone interested in collaborating should get in touch using one of the links above.

Swedish branding and design studio Forsman & Bodenfors has recently launched their new site with loads of great new work. Forsman and Bodenfors started off 2013 by winning Interactive Agency of the Year by Art Directors Club and has been ranked one of the best agencies in the world. Amongst their recent work is this brilliant campaign to aid the homeless people of Gothenburg.

Faktum is a monthly street newspaper in Gothenburg working with the socially vulnerable, together with Forsman & Bodenfors they created this social media campaign which goal was to raise awarness about homelessness in Sweden and to engage people to aid their cause.

“Gothenburg has about 3,400 homeless people. Most of them find a roof over their heads with a friend or at a refuge, but some sleep in the open air.We have chosen ten of the places where they might spend the night – and made it possible for you to book them. Just like any hotel.You can book one for yourself, or as a gift for somebody else. Either way the money goes to our work for homeless and socially vulnerable people.”

Each “room” has it’s own tourist like description:

“Feel the city’s pulse from dawn to dusk at Gullbergsvass. This delightful dwelling is just a stroll from the romantic Dreamer’s Quay: a source of inspiration to musicians and artists alike. And all under the noble eye of the Skansen Lion from his centuries old fortress.”

Head over to the campaign website if you feel like booking in http://en.faktumhotels.com/

Friend of FFF, Matt W. Moore has updated his site with a whole host of stunning new work featuring his signature style of bold, angular “Vectorfunk”. Equally at home on Beer bottles, ski wear, urban sculptures, trainers, wall murals or ray-bans Matt’s art seemingly injects an energy to whatever it touches.

If you didn’t see it at the time, also check out our interview with Matt back in 2011 at OFFF.

Build has reprinted its Build—Works (01) book, and is now available via (by)Build Shop. The book is a collection of the studio’s projects from 2005 to 2010, and interleaved with a selection of arresting images of the Build sphynx cats Brockmann & Betty photographed by Jason Tozer. Previously only available to prospective clients, and briefly as part of Build’s Blood, Sweat & 11 Years exhibition in September last year, the demand for a reprint has been high.

Like the company it represents, Build—Works (01) is small (165 x 240 mm) but perfectly formed – and as with all Build print it has been lovingly created. Generation Press have printed it on their lovely new B2 press, and it features an enticing mixture of papers. It’s great to handle and sits perfectly alongside the 11 Years Show Catalogue – it’s easy to forget how much great work Build have under their belts and flicking through this book is a great reminder. In a world of constantly changing websites this book is a worthy and fitting addition to any designers book collection.

The ever-affable MCP was kind enough to answer my questions…

Michael, i’ve been chasing a copy of this for ages – what made you decide to do the re-print, and why now? what’s different about the book this time around?

As you know we originally made the book only available for prospective clients but we had so many people trying to get hold of a copy we decided to reprint it. We also have our online shop now (bybuildshop.com) so we have an outlet for it. As a studio we want as many people to see our work as possible, and in some ways the book acts as a printed archive of some of our work as some of the projects are not on our site anymore. I’ve always loved the permanence of printed objects so Build—Works (01) does that too, it’s a selection of our work committed to paper forever.

The book is slightly different this time, its the same format, same number of pages, it still has the poster slip-cover, the back pages aren’t french-folded, and we don’t have the single Lilac Colorplan tip in like edition 1 did. But Scrub/Generation Press reliably informs me that the print is a far better quality in this edition. In his own words “We’ve learned a lot since then, and the new press is really performing brilliantly”. We’ve been sent copies of the slip-cover and the quality is amazing. It feels really good to be getting the reprint done, it seems like a good time to do it.

We’ve discussed in the past the ideas you have for the (by)Build shop – particularly the printed publication side of things – how are plans coming along for that? Anything exciting in the works?

We are currently working on a few projects for our collaborative G/B/P publishing imprint which will hopefully see the light of day by the end of the year. It’s definitely something we want to push but it’s difficult to schedule when we have client work to do. The (by)Build Shop is doing really well, the shop team are doing a really great job, we are working hard to make sure the customer experience is tip-top. The recently launched print-on-demand section is doing well and we plan on expanding that with more prints. We spent a lot of time with Chambers Judd getting the shop site right and it seems to be paying off.

Like many of your projects the book was a collaborative production involving Generation Press, Jason Tozer etc…who’d be on your wish list to get involved with the inevitable Build—Works (02)?

We have a simple ethos of working with the best of the best, and Generation Press are exactly that. They never cease to amaze us, they get what we do and the level of craft, thoughtfulness and attention to detail is second to none. Jason shot the pics of our sphynx cats Brockmann & Betty specially for edition one of Build—Works which in itself was amazing. The shoot was hilarious, Brockmann wasn’t interested at all and wanted to get off the table as soon as possible. Whereas Betty was much more interested! We absolutely loved the results of the shoot and people still to this day mention the cats (‘Oh the book with the cats’).

Build—Works (02) is something we are currently looking at, maybe getting it out by the end of this year. The format will probably remain the same, but the design will change to reflect our current thinking. We will definitely be doing a new shoot for the cover/section dividers. Not sure yet who we will be doing that with yet, but would like to work with someone like Daniel Stier. We had some shots of our studio done recently by György Korössy which we will definitely be using in Works (02).

To celebrate the public release of Build—Works (01) Build will be opening their studio for a ‘pop-up’ (by)Build Shop on Thursday 9 May from 5-10pm. You will be able to buy selected prints and print-on-demand posters, custom built acrylic frames, Build—Works (01) and complimentary drinks for customers.

The book now retails at £25 but Build have kindly offered FFF readers the chance to pick it up at its pre-order price of £20 – just quote promo code ‘FFF2013′ when ordering. This offer expires on Wed 8th May so act quick!

Nessim Higson better know as iamalwayshungry sent me a link to his excellent 2013 motion reel.

Music: Cirrus, Bonobo

The Mighty Pencil, run Ben O’Brien, Laura Barnard, Abi Daker and Steven Bonner, is an independent not-for-profit organisation that works together with a select group of professional illustrators, including Aaron Miller, Tom Hovey and Sam Gilbey.

They are not an agency. All of their illustrators work independently, coming together as a collective under The Mighty Pencil banner to produce self-published pieces, such as an annual book of their work. If you’re interested in requesting one of their books, get in touch here.

Interactive designer and founder of the excellent Typetoken, Mike Sullivan (aka Mister) has launched his slick new site, featuring a whole host of tight, considered work for a client list as long as Shaq’s arm.

Incredible skill and craft from calligrapher Oriol Miró.